Dr. Barfield is professor of anthropology at Boston University and the author of Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, 2010). Mr. Nojumi is a senior research fellow at George Mason University and the author of After the Taliban: Life and Security in Rural Afghanistan (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). The contents of this article are the authors’ alone and do not present the perspectives of any governmental or nongovernmental institution.