Outside Kabul, Afghanistan

Flying into Kabul, this country's sprawling, dusty capital first provides one of the world's most spectacular sights, the soaring, seemingly endless Hindu Kush mountains. Sharp peaks, snow covered and breathtaking these 15-18,000 foot giants are mere half-sized foothills leading up to their awesome cousins the Himalayas a thousand miles east. The aircraft an ancient 737 owned by a bare bones operation called Kam Air banks sharply left to avoid them, then dives into the brown haze that covers Afghanistan's principal and really only modern city.

About to leave this battered country, I'm struck by the fact that it widely defied my narrow expectations. While Iraq remains war-torn, the streets no longer run red with blood, the air isn't being split by bullets and the streets aren't erupting in violent blasts; at least those combat cliches are no where near as true as they were until just a couple of months ago.

The worst neighborhood in Baghdad remains Sadr City where on a single day in October there were nine separate bombings. Now, here as elsewhere in this slowly recovering capital, our GI’s have learned to fight with concrete, lining the roads with the massive barriers to prevent snipers and I.E.D. attacks, those wicked booby traps that have been the cause of most of our casualties.

The predominantly Sunni area around the Doura market has been Al Queda’s last stronghold in Southeast Baghdad, a grim and dusty enclave where in February, 553 sectarian murders were carried out, the bodies dumped sometimes among the few remaining open air stalls or the train tracks and road that runs through it. By November, the total number of homicides for this entire community of over a million was down to 30, a lower rate per capita than say Philadelphia.