You think so? Near the beginning of the preface of _Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban_ (Seattle and London, U of Washington P, 2001), Larry P. Goodson recounts an episode:
***** I was in Pakistan in 1986-1987 on a fellowship from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies to collect data for my doctoral dissertation on the relationship between the Afghan refugees, Afghan fighters, and Pakistani support for both. I lived in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, during that year....Everyone there was connected to the war, or so it seemed. The place reeked of intrigue (and also reeked literally, owing to the open sewers in the old city). Assassination and murder were commonplace as Soviet agents slipped across the border to destablize Pakistan's support for the Afghans. Peshawar was actually the "car bomb capital of the world" that year, although Beirut received all the press coverage for such activity, and there was never a night when tracers did not arc over the city, always fired by persons unknown for reasons unknown.
I probably should not have been surprised, then, that so many people thought I was an agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). I mean, there I was, driving around in an old jalopy that looked like the perfect candidate for a car bomb, dressed and groomed (long beard and everything) and to the best of my limited ability speaking like an Afghan, and people were supposed to believe I was a student? Right! With a flimsy cover story like that, and with so many real intelligence agents running around, it is little wonder that people thought I was one, too. I often wondered what the real CIA agents thought about my inadvertent impersonation.
(Goodson viii) *****
As it turned out, nothing untoward happened to Goodson (who seems not so much a leftist as a liberal), so the episode is merely funny -- lucky for him. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>