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is he who rules. That once meant the ancient irrigation canals, but now it’s a city’s water supply. My theory is that the rebels sabotage Dushanbe’s water to undermine the legitimacy of the ex-Communists. If they can turn it off permanently, the city falls.
    Granted, it’s a theory easier to believe than to prove, but I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants ever since I got here. The fact is, I have only the haziest understanding of Central Asia, or even of Tajikistan and its civil war. The place is a spy’s nightmare; American baseline knowledge is zero.
    As an example, we’re not even sure who the important political players are in Tajikistan. We know who the president is, of course, the man I sat next to at dinner, and the ministers. But there’s a small, secretive clique that really runs the country. A Central Asian scholar at Harvard, Richard Frye, calls these cliques “charismatic clans”—tight-knit extended families who ruthlessly look to their own for survival. Nationalism and ideology come into play only when it serves the interest of the clan.
    So far, so good, but all we know about the charismatic clan that runs Tajikistan is that it can be traced to Kulyab Province, or, to be precise, a village called Baljuan. The president is only the clan’s face, while a handful of members in the shadows run the army and the security services. Kulyab was the site of a former Tsarist penal colony, and today many Tajiks look at the Kulyabis as a band of unreconstructed criminals.
    From time to time I stop by the door of the Russian politicalofficer, hoping he can clear up the question of the Kulyabis for me. After all, the Russians have been here for more than a century, while I’m still short of year one. But all I get out of my visits is a cup of tea and a cookie.
    The fortunate side of it all is that Washington doesn’t really care whether I understand the place or not. I don’t have a shred of evidence for it, but my hunch is that James Baker, George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state, opened our embassy in Dushanbe solely to remind the Russians that Tajikistan is no longer a piece of their empire. An embassy here is an act of pure defiance. The fact that the Russian 201st is all that keeps the peace and prevents our plucky embassy from being sacked and burned to the ground is a detail Washington doesn’t like to consider.

SIX

    Most of the highly experienced officers in the study, in contrast, concentrated their visual focus on the target/suspect, catching only a fast glimpse of their sights in their peripheral vision and relying primarily on “an unconscious kinesthetic sense to know that their gun is up and positioned properly.”
    In the recent study … elite officers were able to read danger cues early on and anticipate the suspect’s actions ahead of time so they could stay ahead of the fight. They knew where a gun was likely to appear and were focused there before it did. So they were able to get protective rounds off sooner than the suspect and sooner than the rookies .
    That anticipatory skill can only be developed through experience. At the training level, that means extensive experience with dynamic force-on-force encounters and realistic simulations in which you learn by “being there” over and over again in a wide variety of encounters what to expect and how to look for and recognize danger cues .
    —Force Science Research Center
    Northern Virginia:
DAYNA
    I t’s still dark when a white van with government plates drives under the Marriott’s portico and pulls up next to me. The driver’s window slides down a couple of inches. “You Dayna?” It’s dark, and all I can see of him is the Oakley wraparound sunglasses cocked on his forehead. He doesn’t wait for my answer. “Get in. We’re late.”
    I walk around and open the panel door to find nine guys asleep, backpacks and duffel bags piled everywhere. The only place free is occupied by a leg. The guy it belongs to wakes up and