The Bonn plan might have been perfect for a country being formed from scratch. Here, however, a story was already in progress, the story of a long-standing struggle between contrary impulses that kept pulling this society in opposite directions, polarities that included city versus countryside, change versus stasis, new versus old, state bureaucracy versus tribal relationships, secular institutions versus religious establishment, national military versus spontaneously self-organized local guerillas, and a central government operating out of Kabul versus an amorphous universe of
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