New York Times: The bay windows in the Bost Hotel’s dining room looked out across the Helmand River. For all the river’s immensity, the current, borne hundreds of miles from up in the Hindu Kush, spoke only in whispers. The air hummed with mosquitoes. Beyond the river, on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, red tracer rounds arced across the night sky. Click here to read more (external link).