We have spent billions trying to turn Afghanistan into something resembling a modern nation-state. While some of our efforts have been well-intentioned and laudable, the project as a whole is naïve in the extreme.

Last year, an Afghan woman named Gulnaz was the victim of rape. In a case of what you might call “adding injury to injury,” it was Gulnaz who wound up in prison.

Now, according to reports, she faces yet another assault to her dignity: She can stay in prison or marry her attacker.

Gulnaz was initially sentenced 12 years for adultery because her attacker was married. If that sounds grotesque to you, welcome to what is known as Pashtunwali, the Pashtun ethical and social code that, it must be noted, predates Islam.

Under Pashtunwali, if Gulnaz had spoken publicly about her rape, she would have damaged her family’s honor, so she remained silent and was imprisoned.

That would have been the end of her story had not international pressure occasioned by a European documentary prompted President Karzai to “pardon” her.

In another bizarre Pashtun custom, Gulnaz is requiring her rapist’s sister to marry her brother as part of the deal. This custom provides a way of deterring Gulnaz’s husband-to-be from harming her. Think of it as the Pashtunwali equivalent of mutually-assured destruction.

According to the New York Times, Gulnaz’s story reveals the “limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president.”

I draw two important conclusions from this appalling story. First, the U.S. policy in Afghanistan is hopelessly misguided.

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