One of the most important trade routes in Asia was closed last week while a boyish-looking man everyone calls "the general" showed around the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal clambered to the top of a roof, where "the general" -- officially a colonel in the Afghan Border Police -- pointed out the area where NATO forces plan to build a new $20 million border station.

U.S. forces are not allowed near the teeming border when it is open, so they have never seen quite how Colonel Abdul Razziq, the 30-something Afghan border police boss in Spin Boldak, single-handedly rules over billions in international trade. They say he has done a good job keeping the border moving and secure. They also believe he is, as one senior military official put it, "a crook."

Or, as Lieutenant-Colonel Pat Keane, head of a NATO unit trying to improve Afghanistan's border controls, put it more delicately: "He keeps the peace down here. Trucks flow, commerce flows. At the same time, he is getting additional incomes."

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