Mahir Ali IN one of his earliest published works, the World War I poet Wilfred Owen describes a trainload of young Englishmen unceremoniously being dispatched to the front. A line from that poem came to mind when the news broke about American forces abandoning their Bagram airbase in the dead of night: “So secretly, like wrongs hushed up, they went.” It was a few hours before the Afghan commander expected to take charge of Bagram realised that his allies had pulled the plug. The ensuing blackout served as a signal to would-be looters on the periphery of the base, who plundered it before the local troops woke up.