The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

grounded. There is too much reliance on intuition in it, and too much pessimism. But,” saidOsadchiy after a long pause, “it certainly has a right to exist and to be heard. If any of ourmost trusted sources share your perspective, let us make this opinion known at the verytop, in the Center.”Starostin understood the last phrase to mean: “Provide your prognosis about theevolution of the political situation in Afghanistan, but don’t proclaim yourself the author.Refer instead to established and trusted agents.”Orlov-Morozov grew concerned. “I hope we will not be expelled for making such aprognosis. The need for the existence of the Kabul KGB Residency was already discussed inthe Center. Some think that AGSA will soon be able to transfer the necessary information toMoscow, rendering our unit redundant.”Everybody noticed how Starostin giggled when he heard the deputy resident’swords.“What’s wrong?” Osadchiy asked the young operative strictly.“Do you know what I was thinking about just now? I was thinking that meetingssuch as ours already took place ten thousand years ago. As I was listening to AlexanderVictorovich, I thought of an episode from the poem Shakh-nameh * . I will describe to you theessence of the episode. Prophets of the future come to the evil Czar Zokhak, who has areputation for executing messengers bearing bad news. They must interpret his dream, butthey are scared to death, since if they reveal the mystery of the dream, they will surely losetheir lives. However, if they hide the truth out of fear, then they will still be executed for* Shakh-nameh (“a group of czars): an epic poem written in the tenth century by the great Persian poetFerdowsi. This poem describes a time that is referred to as a deep, ancient time even in the sacred group ofZoroastrian aveste (the tenth to sixth centuries B.C.).401