HERE'S TO THE MIDDLE AGES: AFGHANS KEEP IT SIMPLE The tribal system, so detrimental to building an effective multiethnic state, offers tremendous support to people struggling to survive in impossibly difficult times. My translator Jovid's rented adobe-walled box on the outskirts of town here, which would normally house six people, is currently home to 15. Three of them, an old man and his two children, are refugees from neaby Kunduz who walked here after an errant American bomb destroyed their neighborhood. Four more are distant relatives who moved in after four years of drought made farming impossible.

The rest are orphaned children, not even distantly related to Jovid's family. The orphans are from the neighborhood; their mothers starved to death after their fathers died in battle. There are few orphanages in Afghanistan; there's no need for them.

"Someone just takes them in," Jovid replied when I asked him what happens to most orphans. Just to be clear, Jovid's family is desperatly poor. Still, it would never occur to them not to feed a hungry person.