The first is that messy war in which, just in the past week, more than 40 high school students were blown to pieces in their classroom, hundreds of bodies were left abandoned for a week in the streets of Ghazni city or dumped in a river, and two important Afghan army units were destroyed, almost to the last soldier.

As they covered the war in Afghanistan, news reporters from the L.A. Times and NPR would ask interpreter Hashmat Baktash to arrange interviews with local people in hiding from the Taliban. Afghans near the U.S.’s Bagram Airfield spoke reluctantly and ...