It is sunrise on a Saturday morning in spring, and the peaks of the Hindu Kush are gleaming from a recent hailstorm. A bearded man in an Afghan National Army uniform is examining vehicles as they leave the bus station in western Kabul. I have been warned to keep a low profile during this part of my journey to Ghazni, a province ninety miles south of the capital along Highway 1, since informants here — the ANA soldier, perhaps, or the money changer, or the boy selling phone credit — often pass intelligence to Taliban down the road. As unobtrusively as I…