Third in a series.

Three decades ago, in the same U.S. embassy the Taliban wrecked last week in Kabul, I was asked by a fondly remembered ambassador (Robert Neumann) to brief a visiting congressional delegation. I’d been in Afghanistan less than a month. “But, sir,” I protested meekly, “how can I brief anybody – let alone congressmen – when I’ve been here only four weeks?”

“When in doubt,” said Ambassador Neumann, “say that it’s too early to characterize the situation.” Then he winked at me and added, “In Afghanistan that statement is never wrong.” Two situations now require new characterizations:

I. Tuesday’s column (Oct. 9) questioned how far President Musharraf of Pakistan had actually gone in ending aid to the Taliban. And how fully he would prove it. The concern was prompted by the long-standing – and, by some official Americans, long-overlooked – autonomy of Pakistan’s secret services. For the better part of two decades a powerful intelligence fiefdom called the Inter Services Institute has shaped as well as implemented Pakistan policy towards Afghanistan. For the past half decade ISI has been the main conduit for support to the Taliban.

Now, in a bold stroke at a risky time, Musharraf has sacked the pro-Taliban ISI chief General Mahmood Ahmed. Two other top officers, also supporters of Afghanistan’s hyper-Islamist regime, have also been shifted (one to ceremonial duties, the other to retirement). In the words of courageous and knowledgeable Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, “Now the secret services are going to cooperate fully with the CIA in the capture of bin Laden.”

Does Musharraf’s action constitute proof? No, but it helps, and Ahmed Rashid’s assurances ease my skepticism, at least for now. Key issue: How about lower levels of ISI’s officer corps? What’s their level of Taliban investment?

II. In fuller public view – and contrary to this column’s Oct. 4 counsel of masterful manipulation from afar – the U.S.-led coalition has gone to war. My purpose here is not to second-guess our president. Instead let’s use buzkashi, the ancient, equestrian game of Afghanistan, to help him further define ongoing considerations.

As described last week, buzkashi (literally “goat-grabbing”) is like rugby on horseback and may be the wildest game in the world. Riders, sometimes numbering hundreds, struggle to grasp the goat (or calf) carcass off the ground and ride free and clear of everyone else. Various Afghan governments tried to codify buzkashi with teams, uniforms, scoring circles, and, numerical totals, but the game on the steppes remains a war of all against all.

Even during the 1980s when Afghans were rhetorically united in their jihad against the Soviets, teamwork was typically ragged. Once the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the real buzkashi began as one Afghan warlord after another strove for supremacy. “Every goat,” as they say in the game, “has four legs,” and the past dozen years have witnessed a Hobbesian tug-of-war. Gradually this all-against-all conflict resolved itself into two sides: the not-so-allied Northern Alliance and the Taliban (itself less allied than many assume). These recall pre-war government attempts to create buzkashi teams and teamwork. Such efforts were usually fiascoes and proved effective only when enforced by superior authority (armed police and soldiers who supervised national tournaments).

Afghan Buzkashi Truth #1: No team (or faction or regime) stays together of its own accord. Such groups fragment into deep-rooted rivalries unless controlled by force from above. Had the Taliban achieved total military victory in the recent past, they would likely have begun to fragment almost at once. The Northern Alliance will surely fragment if it captures Kabul and declares itself the government of Afghanistan. Only some super-ordinate force – symbolized, for instance, by ex-King Zahir Shah and empowered by the international community – can achieve lasting control.

Reputation is the true currency of Afghan politics, and never more so than for the sponsor of a buzkashi. His is the key role: announcing the game, inviting the guests, organizing the extensive hospitality, supplying the vast sums of prize money, and – acid test – proving himself able to restrict three or four days of equestrian mayhem to the actual game itself. Success in this public venture earns the sponsor enormous prestige. Henceforth he is known as someone who can order events, achieve his ends, and impose his purpose on chaos – the sort of man to support in real world struggles for concrete spoils.

All too often, however, the game boils over into fierce and bloody brawls. The sponsor is thereby disgraced in this public arena. His initiative has failed, his name “falls,” and then – worst of all – his supporters abandon him. They ride away, literally and figuratively, in search of some other patron, now in the ascendancy, who is more likely to provide them with political rewards.

Afghan Buzkashi Truth #2: Don’t venture a buzkashi in Afghanistan unless you know – flat-out know – that you can control it. By bombing, the U.S. has now, in effect, announced its sponsorship of a buzkashi. Once announced and begun, the venture can’t be retracted. Let us hope and trust that our “buzkashi sponsor” (President Bush) can control what he has started: That our “guests” (coalition partners) will stay the course and not ride away, that our “hospitality” (diplomacy) proves embracing, that our “prize money” (material resources) will suffice, and that the “mayhem” (violence) can be contained and not spread to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Western Europe, or our own country (in some awful re-play of Sept. 11).

Back to the importance of reputation and “name.” In buzkashi as elsewhere in Afghan culture, the dynamic of impression management is crucial. Buzkashi participants are forever surveying the field for hints of weakness, especially sponsor weakness. Can he really control the event, or will it go up for grabs? The buzkashi sponsor makes every effort – including hiring a “town crier” on horseback – to convince all concerned of his unassailable capacity. As long as impressions can be managed, the sponsor stays in charge. Power is as power seems.

Afghan Buzkashi Truth #3: Manage impressions to your advantage. This truth is neither fresh nor limited to buzkashi, but it merits emphasis because, apart from government spokesmen, the current town criers are not hired by sponsor Bush. Most notably, Osama bin Laden is himself a master propagandist. Sunday’s Al Jazeera footage showed him in top form: a charismatic genius who, having walked the walk of holy war, also talks the talk of the Muslim street and mosque. (How many Americans understood bin Laden’s allusion to “80 years” of Muslim humiliation? Why “80 years”? From Khartoum to Karachi, Muslims understand.)

Can Osama be silenced … and by means other than censorship of Al Jazeera? The sooner it happens, the better the chance of mayhem being contained and of fence-sitters not “riding away” in the wrong direction. Pakistan and Uzbekistan – our two key coalition “partners” which border on Afghanistan – are both already muttering about their desire for a rapid conclusion. Otherwise … well, who knows?

All buzkashis, no matter how well planned, are inherently problematic. Once the game is begun, anything can happen. Now that we’ve started, let’s finish the sooner the better.

Dr. Whitney Azoy is an anthropologist and the author of “Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan.” He served with the U.S. Embassy in Kabul during the 1970s and was most recently in Afghanistan in April 2001.