Lashkargar, Afghanistan –
It was early summer, 1982. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was gathering momentum against the mujahideen, the country’s disparate but increasingly widespread resistance movement. I’d just trekked for 10 days across rugged mountains from neighboring Pakistan to the beleaguered Panjshir Valley, an assertive thorn against the Red Army’s might barely 40 miles north of Kabul.

I was traveling with a half-dozen mujahideen guerrillas accompanying a French medical team being sent to replace a group of volunteer doctors working clandestinely among the civilian population.

My purpose was to report on the largest Soviet-led offensive against the mujahideen to that date. More than 12,000 Soviet and Afghan troops would attempt to crush 3,000 fighters led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, known as the “Lion of Panjshir” and one of the 20th century’s most effective guerrilla commanders.

Last month’s NATO-led operation in Marjah in Helmand Province – the largest offensive of the current war – put me in mind of the Panjshir. There are clear lessons from the nearly decade-long Soviet occupation that the international community might heed in its ninth year of war in Afghanistan, with the biggest battle campaign now under way.

The Panjshir push was roughly the same size as the Marjah offensive – called Operation Moshtarak – and involved 10,000 to 12,000 coalition and Afghan troops. In the Soviet war, Western journalists reported primarily from the guerrilla side. But in contrast to most of today’s media, embedded with NATO troops, we had constant access to ordinary Afghans. We walked through the countryside sleeping in villages, with long evenings spent drinking tea and talking with the locals. Frank conversation doesn’t happen when one party wears body armor or is flanked by heavily armed soldiers: Afghans will only tell you what they think you want to hear. Or, even more crucial, what suits their own interests. Hence the highly questionable veracity of opinion polls in Afghanistan today.

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NEW YORK – Britt Daniel can’t resist some dry humor when asked what it means to him that his band, Spoon, sold out a gig at New York’s prestigious and spacious Radio City Music Hall weeks in advance.

“We sold all the tickets,” the singer deadpanned.

Yes, literally. Probe a little and you’ll catch some pride that this was accomplished without advertising, despite advice that they needed it.

The propulsive rock band from Austin, Texas, is a rarity in today’s music business — an act that hones its craft over many years and picks up more and more dedicated fans as it goes along. Seventeen years after Daniel and drummer Jim Eno got together, the arrow keeps pointing up.

The band’s 2001 album, “Girls Can Tell,” sold 100,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The next two discs registered 157,000 and 220,000 sales. The 2007 album, “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga,” sold 325,000 copies and earned Spoon a gig on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” The new disc, “Transference,” is just starting out.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 17 (New America Media) – Four students who were brought to the United States by their families
when they were young and are still undocumented are walking 1,500 miles
from their homes in Miami, Fla. to Washington, D.C., to ask for
immigration reform.

Carlos Roa, 22, is one of the four Trail of Dreams walkers who are
calling for the implementation of The Dream Act, federal legislation
that would give undocumented immigrants who came to this country as
children a pathway to citizenship after completing college. It would
also give them access to private loans, to help pay for their university
education.

JERUSALEM – The sleepy Ramat Shlomo neighborhood at the center of the debate over Israeli construction in east Jerusalem shows no signs of the political furor.

On a recent morning, a bearded father carried his son from a car seat to a kindergarten. Teenage girls in shin-length skirts waited in a supermarket checkout line. The monotony of low buildings with light stone facades was broken only by an occasional grocery store or pizzeria.

The gulf between the way Jerusalem is seen by Israelis and by many in the world is nowhere more apparent than it is here.

For Ramat Shlomo’s Orthodox Jewish families — and for most Israelis — building Jewish homes in any part of Jerusalem is a natural right. Palestinians, who have spent four decades watching Israeli construction permanently change the face of the city, see every new housing project in east Jerusalem as a blow to their desire for a capital here.

Ramat Shlomo is in northeast Jerusalem, just outside the invisible line that delineates the part of the city Israel controlled before 1967. On one side lies Ramot, a larger Jewish neighborhood also built on land Israel conquered in that year’s Mideast war, and on the other, less than a mile away, is the Arab neighborhood of Shoafat.

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In a dark alleyway not far from the bustle and glare of Tokyo’s Shibuya district, smoke smelling of scorched starch spirals from a wood burning stove set in the bed of a small truck. A sonorous ditty coming from a horn on the roof announces the arrival of something that seems oddly ancient in a city that often feels futuristic: the sweet potato vendor.

Until the late 1970s, vendors of all stripes tramped Tokyo’s streets, armed with goods and a gimmick. The caramel candy man told tales; the frog oil man rapped; the herb seller dressed like a hermit. Most are now gone, replaced by 24-hour convenient stores and complex vending machines, but Table-mono, a company that peddles healthy tofu products, has revitalized the once fading industry. Table-mono sellers blow a catchy tune on toy trumpets and cater to both a housebound and nostalgic elderly population and a younger group who are health-conscious and in a hurry.

“People today want good food but they want it on their terms,” says Elizabeth Andoh, an American who moved to Japan in the mid-1960s and has authored several books on Japanese cuisine. “These mobile shop keepers have found a very good match with the customer base.”

Street vendors first appeared in Japan four centuries ago, when the Edo Shogunate issued special vending passes to merchants who could not afford a storefront. The practice was briefly suspended during World War II when food being rationed, but in the decades that followed, street vending, catering to a new generation of housewives who embraced eating fresh local foods, blossomed. Then, in 1970, an international food expo held in Osaka introduced Japan to coffee and hamburgers. Chain restaurants and all-night supermarkets opened in step with the nation’s booming economy, and food vendors fell by the wayside. (See pictures of Japan in the 1980s and today.)

The ones that survived offer something no store can. “The sweet potato vendor conveys the feeling of winter,” says Seiko Yamazaki, who researches consumption trends at the Dentsu Institute, part of the Tokyo-based ad agency. “You hear his song and it makes you feel warm. You imagine eating this piping hot potato.”

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