Hamed Sarfarazi/AP

An Afghan family on the outskirts of Herat, Afghanistan, flees fighting as government security personnel took back control of parts of the city from the Taliban, Aug. 8, 2021.

It was a small act of resistance against the Taliban, made by an Afghan daughter weeping at the grave of her beloved father, who was murdered by the insurgents.

The final resting place for Amir Mohammad Malakzai – a district governor gunned down in broad daylight Thursday, in front of two of his sons – could not have been simpler: a mound of dirt on a forlorn western Kabul hillside, marked on either end by two large black rocks.

Alone, draped in black and reading passages of the Quran, his 18-year-old daughter used white stones to spell out “Allah Akbar,” God is greater.

Those words have been used triumphantly by Islamist militants for years as they waged an ever-advancing insurgency against American troops and the Western-backed Kabul government. But in the past week they have been turned into a rallying cry by Afghans against a Taliban juggernaut sweeping across the country as foreign forces withdraw.

Taliban spokesmen complain that “infidels” are turning the chants of “Allah Akbar” against them, and warn that culprits will pay a price, even as the United Nations stated Friday that the Taliban offensive is exacting an “extremely distressing” human toll.

Mr. Malakzai – a highly respected and popular local leader, who family members say refused repeated Taliban offers of $500,000 in recent months to surrender his Saydabad district in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul – fended off daily death threats.

Those threats became so severe that the governor last month taught his wife and two daughters how to use weapons, with instructions to fight “to the last drop” of their blood, should the Taliban attack.

From one perspective, Mr. Malakzai’s killing is an example of how the Taliban’s ruthless tactics are spawning angry determination for revenge, signaling that a largely unwelcome jihadi takeover will not sit easily with a population bloodied into submission.

Yet as Taliban gains blot out more and more of the Afghan map, his death is also a case study in the extreme peril of standing on principle in defiance.

handout photo

The late district governor Amir Mohammad Malakzai is pictured during military operations earlier this summer to fend off a Taliban takeover of his Saydabad district of Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan.

“My father taught me the lesson of courage, masculinity, and patriotism, and I want to follow his path so I could fulfill all my father’s aspirations,” says Mr. Malakzai’s eldest son, a graduate in engineering, who asked not to be named for his safety.

“He is a martyr of the homeland in the path of God, and I am proud of his martyrdom,” says the son, who would sometimes shadow his father to protect him if he left the house alone, without his five bodyguards.

Subterfuge, and an ambush

Mr. Malakzai’s second son and a younger one were with their father when they were on their way to a Kabul wedding. A man claiming to be a resident of Saydabad called, saying he was in urgent need of documents to be signed, and convinced them to drive to one address, then another.

Upon arrival at the last location, Mr. Malakzai stepped out of the vehicle. Three masked gunmen stepped out of an old vegetable shop and shot him in the head.

“Life is forbidden to me until I take revenge for my father,” cries the second son, a university student, his eyes bloodshot and barely able to speak.

“I am sure that God is with us, because in the last nights, in all the provinces of Afghanistan, all people chanted the slogan ‘Allah Akbar’ against the infidel Taliban,” says the eldest son. “In our country, every terrorist group has been destroyed with the words ‘Allah Akbar.’ Now is the time to destroy the Taliban.”

That aspiration may be easier said than done, no matter the level of personal outrage.

The Taliban have captured six provincial capitals in the past four days – including the northern prize of Kunduz – after not controlling a single one since 2016. Several other key provincial capitals, defended by increasingly exhausted Afghan security forces, are under Taliban assault.

Karen Norris/Staff

By Sunday, the Taliban had seized 229 of Afghanistan’s more than 400 districts, far more than the 66 controlled by the government, with 112 still contested, according to the Long War Journal.

The vast majority have been overrun by the Taliban since President Joe Biden announced in April that the remaining several thousand U.S. troops would withdraw, unconditionally, by the end of summer.

No progress in peace talks

Thousands of NATO troops, who relied on the American presence for logistical support, have now left, too. A U.S.-Taliban deal signed in February 2020 included insurgent promises not to attack provincial capitals, and to start peace talks with the Kabul government. Those have made no progress.

Instead, U.S. airstrikes are being deployed to slow Taliban advances on cities. And Taliban commanders have told their fighters they have defeated a superpower and will soon achieve “victory” over the “infidel” Kabul government.

Mr. Malakzai told the Monitor in a February 2020 interview, “They tell their people ... ‘After the [U.S.-Taliban] deal is signed, we will create our own government, and kill and eradicate those who worked for the previous [U.S.-backed] governments.’”

Such an assassination campaign targeting officials, journalists, and civil society activists has already been underway for months. Last week in the capital, Taliban militants attacked the house of the defense minister, and Saturday killed a former spokesperson of President Ashraf Ghani.

The Taliban surge led to an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Friday.

Afghans are “waiting apprehensively for a dark shadow to pass over the bright futures they once imagined,” the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, told the council. “It is difficult for me to describe the mood of dread we are faced with every day.”

Afghanistan risks “descending into a situation of catastrophe so serious that it would have few, if any, parallels in this century,” warned Ms. Lyons. “This is now a different kind of war, reminiscent of Syria recently or Sarajevo in the not-so-distant past. To attack urban areas is to knowingly inflict enormous harm and cause massive civilian casualties.”

Abdullah Sahil/AP

A Taliban flag flies in the main square of Kunduz city, in northern Afghanistan, after fighting between Taliban and Afghan security forces, Aug. 8, 2021.

The dangers are felt most in personal stories of loss and doused hopes.

Afghans who worked with him since the Taliban era of the late 1990s, for example, say Mr. Malakzai, who earned a master’s degree in political science in Kabul after a journalism degree in Pakistan, was a selfless helper of his fellow citizens from Wardak. He worked with a charity, and then served for years on the provincial council, working on water and sanitation projects and expanding the school system to include girls’ education.

Taliban influence is wide in Wardak, and militants besieged Saydabad district in the spring. With the help of extra Afghan security forces and Afghan airstrikes, they were repelled after a month. One photograph from the time shows Mr. Malakzai, wearing camouflage and with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, striding away from a military helicopter.

After the Taliban were repelled, Mr. Malakzai’s brother, Sawab Khan Wardak, says he received a request in late May to meet the Taliban. The insurgents told him they would give $500,000 if Mr. Malakzai would peacefully hand over his district – a common and effective Taliban tactic to buy off local officials and low-paid, embattled garrison soldiers.

Mr. Malakzai refused that offer, and several others made directly over the phone. But he was unable to marshal any more government troops. After another 10-day siege, the bullets ran out and the Taliban took over the district on June 27.

“He did not betray his country”

“My brother was not a traitor,” says Mr. Wardak. “Even though I was against his working in the government, I am proud that he did not betray his country and his people. He defended them with great courage.”

By contrast, Mr. Wardak blames weak government and corruption in Kabul for the inability to protect his brother – even in Kabul – and the inability to send reinforcements, leading to such swift Taliban advances.

“If there is strong will and the leaders of the government are not traitors, the Taliban are nothing – they can’t progress,” says Mr. Wardak. “But unfortunately we don’t have faith in our government.”

After Saydabad fell, the offers of Taliban cash turned to daily death threats against Mr. Malakzai. Worried for his life, he told friends he might not have long to live.

“Every time he came home, some guests came with him. He was always trying to help people,” recalls his tearful wife, who asked not to be named.

“I will never forgive the savage Taliban, and will teach my children to take revenge for their father by education, not violence.”

The man is seated, his legs and hands outstretched, wearing a colorful ensemble of blue and red stripes. His back is straight – he’s alert and ready to protect his descendants from misfortune and illness. 

This knee-high reliquary made of wood pegs, split cane, vegetable fiber, and cloth was once used to house specific ancestral spirits, researchers think. Such figurines are produced by ethnic Bembe in central Africa and were traditionally used to hold human remains that, according to Bembe beliefs, will pass through stages of an endless cycle of being. 

This figurine took its own zigzag journey out of Africa to end up in a small Midwest museum. Just don’t expect to find all that information on its accompanying sign. 

“Straight up donation. And that’s pretty much all we know about it,” says Laura De Becker, an associate curator at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor. 

Not knowing the figurine’s provenance raises legal and ethical questions at a time when museums across Europe are grappling with a colonial legacy of looted artwork and artifacts. In recent years, amid increasing calls for restitution, some European governments have repatriated items to Africa. Germany recently agreed to return hundreds of artifacts to Nigeria that had been earmarked for a new museum in Berlin. 

The question for U.S. institutions, which aren’t directly tainted by colonialism in Africa, is to what extent they should investigate their own collections for traces of duplicity and theft and then reconsider who may be the rightful owner. This marks a change for cultural institutions that have acquired artwork from auctions or collectors that may pass through multiple hands along the way. 

“We’ve had quite a number of American museums reaching out to ask how they could [return] some of the works in their possession,” says Enotie Ogbebor, a Nigerian who works with institutions and governments to facilitate the return of stolen artifacts. These include the Benin Bronzes, a series of works made of bronze and other materials that invading British forces removed from the Kingdom of Benin – in present-day Nigeria – in 1897, many of which were later auctioned off. 

Mr. Ogbebor is based in Benin City, Nigeria, where a new museum is being built to house repatriated artifacts. He points out that Benin Bronzes are found in museums from Los Angeles to Cleveland to London to Berlin, often prominently on display.

“This is not a case of ‘Give me back my stolen artifacts, and never talk to me again,’” he says. Instead, he envisages a future of collaboration, sharing, and loaning of artifacts among cultural institutions – but finally on the terms of the countries, or specific communities, where those objects originated. 

Mr. Ogbebor hopes that greater awareness in the U.S. and Europe about the issue will keep it on the front burner. “There was an injustice perpetrated 130 years ago. It’s time to close that cycle, so that the people who own this culture, these cultural artifacts, can get them back, be able to see them, study them, learn about them,” he says. 

Daniel Bockwoldt/dpa/AP/File

Three pieces of Benin Bronzes are displayed at the Museum of Art and Crafts in Hamburg, Germany, Feb. 14, 2018. Germany is returning hundreds of artifacts known as Benin Bronzes, which were mostly looted from western Africa by a British colonial expedition and subsequently sold to collections around the world, including German museums.

A “no-brainer”

So where does that leave U.S. museums and their collections of non-Western objects? 

“Don’t keep the stolen things. Like, that’s it. It’s kind of a no-brainer,” says Carlee Forbes, an art historian whose job is to identify such items at the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. The museum, which is part of the School of Arts and Architecture, specializes in cultures from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas.

But not keeping “the stolen things” is often easier said than done. Ms. Forbes is the beneficiary of a grant that has allowed the museum to research the provenance of its African collection. For other institutions with large collections and scant documentation for objects, the task of investigating and potentially returning artifacts is daunting. Still, curators say that there’s no turning back to the era when U.S. museums would snap up global artifacts without asking too many questions. 

In Ann Arbor, Ms. De Becker is staging an exhibition of various works, including the Bembe figure and some Benin Bronzes, whose origins will be investigated concurrently with their display, as part of the show. Part of her motivation in doing so is because hosting an active exhibition is a workaround way to get the time and resources to investigate the works in question. The exhibition opens this month.

The ad hoc approach by private institutions to restitution in the U.S. stands in contrast to the push for restitution in Europe, where governments are involved and where many major museums are public. In 2007, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to support the repatriation of African artwork and artifacts. “Africa’s patrimony must be celebrated in Paris but also in Dakar, Lagos, and Cotonou,” he said on a visit to Burkina Faso. 

Controversy over the provenance of Western collections isn’t confined to African patrimony. The U.S. recently returned thousands of antiquities to Iraq, including many looted after the U.S. invasion in 2003 and sold to private collectors. 

At the Fowler, Ms. Forbes and other museum researchers have identified works from South Africa and Ghana as potential items for restitution, as well as six Benin Bronzes, which they’ve determined were looted in 1897. Another 14 bronzes have been identified as “likely stolen.” 

But Fowler researchers had to be picky: The museum hosts roughly 30,000 pieces in its African collection. The grant covers only a subset of 7,000 pieces donated in the 1960s. Researchers zeroed in on 800 items that were deemed important and had some documentation. 

Slow progress on restitution

Still, just because collections are well documented doesn’t mean that their owners are eager to repatriate items acquired under dubious circumstances. 

The largest collection of Benin Bronzes is at the British Museum in London. Its display caption describes their provenance, noting they were taken as “official ‘spoils of war’ and personal trophies”; it says the museum is “actively and openly investigating” them in collaboration with Nigerian partners. But it has repeatedly rejected calls for repatriation.

In June, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the restitution to Nigeria of two Benin Bronzes and a brass head from the city of Ife. But it excluded the museum’s other holdings from Benin, estimated to number somewhere between 150 to 300. (The Met did not respond to requests for comment.)

Courtesy of Chika Okeke-Agulu

Chika Okeke-Agulu, director of Princeton University’s Program in African Studies, has criticized U.S. museums as moving too slowly to restitute improperly acquired African artifacts.

Chika Okeke-Agulu, director of Princeton University’s Program in African Studies, says that U.S. museums deflect criticism by arguing that Africa was colonized by European powers “and therefore ... restitution of objects that were taken during the colonial period was largely a European problem. But, of course, that’s nonsensical.” 

He says their slow progress on the restitution of African artifacts contrasts with the norms and procedures established for returning art seized by the Nazis and their allies during the Holocaust or from Native Americans by European settlers. 

Professor Okeke-Agulu commends Germany’s return of artifacts to Nigeria and draws a parallel with U.S. institutions that, like Germany, largely acquired looted African works on the international art market, rather than through direct colonial seizures. American museums, he says, “should ask them[selves] what makes them different from Germany, and German museums?”

Still, Mr. Ogbebor saw a significant shift in the Met’s decision to return three objects to Nigeria, and is hopeful of more to come. “We know that once there’s a groundswell, once this thing starts blowing ... when we follow it up with a lot of diplomacy and continuous interaction in America, we’ll get better results,” he says. 

Back in Ann Arbor, museum workers are beginning to research the exhibition pieces. Ms. De Becker is hopeful that institutions and art dealers can make progress on the thorny issue of restitution so that museums can “continue to be able to show African artworks, both historical and contemporary, and to celebrate the cultural traditions of the continent.” 

In the case of the Bembe reliquary, researchers will try to figure out whether it journeyed to the U.S. under benign circumstances or if they should consider handing the man in red and blue cloth back to ethnic Bembe who live in the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. That is, if the statue is a man. Ms. De Becker has always thought of the statue as depicting a male, though she admits that’s not a certainty. 

Add one more item to the list of questions that might finally be answered. 

Chinatopix/AP

The sun sets near a coal-fired power plant on the Yangtze River in Nantong in China's Jiangsu province on Dec. 12, 2018. Chinese power companies have begun trading credits to emit carbon dioxide on China's first national carbon exchange that launched in July 2021.

China has launched a national carbon emissions trading market to put a price on the most prevalent greenhouse gas. As the world’s largest emitter of carbon, China has drawn global attention for its long-awaited efforts to curb carbon emissions. It has set a goal of reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030 followed by declines in subsequent decades. Its market-based approach to controlling emissions differs from that of other countries in its focus on energy efficiency. 

What are carbon trading markets?

Carbon trading markets and carbon taxes are two primary tools governments are increasingly using to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which constitute 80% of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The 2015 Paris Agreement, endorsed by nearly all countries, set a goal of world carbon neutrality by the mid-21^st century and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

On a carbon market (also known as an emission trading system, or ETS), emissions credits are bought and sold at market prices. Governments authorize the number of credits that are available to trade. By decreasing the number of credits, regulators push up the price of carbon and incentivize polluters to emit less.

The world’s 64 carbon trading markets and carbon taxes combined cover 21.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, up from 15.1% in 2020, according to World Bank data. Much of the increase is due to China’s launch in July of its national ETS, now the world’s largest carbon market.

How does China’s carbon market compare?

China’s ETS – nearly a decade in the making – covers about 30% of its annual greenhouse gas emissions, or 4 billion tons of carbon, spread across more than 2,000 power companies. The market is a step forward for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s goals of reaching peak carbon emissions in 2030 and net neutrality by 2060. China produces about 28% of global emissions of carbon dioxide, more than any other country.

China’s ETS market differs from other countries’ in scope and design. It initially covers only coal- and gas-fired energy plants, with a plan to expand to other industries. More mature markets such as that in the European Union include industries such as construction, steel, and transportation.

Crucially, it puts a price on carbon intensity – how much is emitted per unit of energy generated – not the absolute level of emissions that regulators use in Europe, Canada, and other jurisdictions. This means overall levels can still continue to rise in China. 

“China’s market is still mostly about carbon intensity rather than a real cap,” says Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing. This reflects Beijing’s priority of maintaining economic growth, while laying the groundwork for future overall carbon cuts. “This will send a clear signal that the free emission of carbon will … end,” says Mr. Ma.

Are China’s goals achievable?

As with other carbon trading markets, China’s new national ETS opened in July with a relatively low trading volume and price level – only $7.4 per ton – that is not likely to have a significant impact on its short-term emissions, say Chinese environmental experts. Prices are significantly higher in more developed ETS markets – from $57 per ton in the European Union to a high of $126 in Sweden. The Paris accord recommends a price above $40 per ton to achieve carbon reduction goals.

China’s ETS has other weaknesses. Many carbon-intensive industries are not yet covered, fines for non-compliance are low, and reporting and enforcement have been problematic in pilot programs. “All this needs to be improved. It’s going to take time,” says Mr. Ma.

And while Mr. Xi has shown a top-down commitment to tackling climate change, “big power plants continue to be part of China’s development,” says Yanzhong Huang, author of “Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and its Challenge to the Chinese State.” Still, as more extreme weather hits China, growing public awareness of the causes and impact of global warming could generate pressure for change, as it did with air pollution, he says.

Wayne Mrnak hops out of his pickup and drops to his belly to slither under the wires of an electric cattle fence.

“Touch it, and it will bite,” he says with a grin. He dusts off and strides 100 yards into the middle of his cattle pasture. White-faced Hereford cows jog over, greeting him loudly. He quickly inspects their trough to make sure the pipeline bringing fresh water from a pump is working.

“Hundred degrees out, if these cows don’t have water, some won’t survive,” he says.

This stop is one of a half-dozen on a 60-mile loop he does every day – his “water check,” he calls it. With temperatures soaring in this dry pastureland of North Dakota – and no rain to speak of in a year – the survival of the cattle is in Mr. Mrnak’s hands.

While attention is focused on California and the Southwest, ranchers in the Great Plains are laboring to survive a drought that covers all the West and much of the Midwest. 

The call of history is heavy on them. The heat and drought of the past year evoke the struggles of their ancestors; grainy old photos are reminders of the stern-faced immigrants who raised families in crude one-room log cabins, and gritted through dirt-billowing droughts and heat. They persevered. Those who followed are determined to do so, too.

Mr. Mrnak has been raising cattle in Bowman for six decades, a fourth-generation rancher. His great-grandfather homesteaded a “section” – 160 acres – here. His grandfather survived the Dust Bowl: They were down to one cow – “they fed her tumbleweeds” – and he sent his wife and two children to a relative in South Dakota because they had no food.

Mr. Mrnak recalls hearing stories from his father. His grandfather had a mental breakdown over the stress. But still they kept the ranch. That is the goal of struggles here – to keep the ranch. That is his job now.

To do that job, ranchers are paring their operations, struggling to save a few of the best animals they have spent generations breeding. 

“They say history repeats itself. That’s what I’m afraid is going to happen,” says Mr. Mrnak. He is a soft-spoken man, careful with his words. But the burden of his worries are clear. The future of his ranch weighs on him “every day, of course,” he says.

Cattle raisers throughout the northern-tier states have little margin. They typically leave their cattle on the pastures to eat grass all summer and into the winter, if possible. After that, they may put out hay or silage to get the animals through winter, until the snows melt and the grass grows again.

But since June of 2020 there’s been almost no rain nor snow to keep the grass green and edible, and the heat has scorched what is there. The natural slough waterholes have dried. Mr. Mrnak worries that soon his cattle will have nothing to eat. And the hay that he and other ranchers grow to feed their cows has produced a meager yield. If he has to buy feed from another state, he could pay as much as a young cow is worth just to feed it for the winter.

Unless it “really rains, a two- or three-day soaker,” Mr. Mrnak will be faced with the prospect of selling off part of his herd.

This is a drastic move, he explains. Ranchers do not buy and sell faceless animals. They meticulously choose the parentage and gradually breed a strain that is often unique to their ranch. To slash their herd is to cut hard into that history of labor. “It’s unnerving,” Mr. Mrnak says.

Decades of work gone overnight

Three hundred miles up the road, in Rugby, North Dakota, Kyle Shively already has culled half his herd, and says he may have to sell the rest.

Doug Struck

Cliff Mattson checks Angus bulls up for auction in Rugby, North Dakota, July 22, 2021. Ranchers have been bringing more of their cattle to Mr. Mattson for sale. His website's home page says "pray for rain." According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, 88% of the county is in "exceptional drought," the highest category.

“For two weeks, I was depressed,” he says of the sale. “We care for our animals. I’ve had cows since I was five years old. Dad bought me my first cow and I kind of built on it. So, you know, 20 years of hard work and a lot of it’s gone, gone away overnight.”

At the Rugby Livestock Auction House, owner Cliff Mattson says some ranchers won’t even come to the sale barn to watch their livestock sold.

“They couldn’t. It was just too hard, too hard for them,” he says. “This is their livelihood.”

The sell-offs are swamping Mr. Mattson’s sale barn, where ranchers bring their cows for sale to slaughterhouses or feed lots. 

“We normally sell a couple of hundred head of cows every other week,” Mr. Mattson says. “Now, we’ve had a sale every week. We’ve had runs as big as 4,000 a week.”

But Mr. Mattson takes no joy in this booming business. The downsizing leaves his community bereft of its economic engine.

“You start getting rid of the cattle, then you don’t have the calves the following year,” he says. “So our numbers are going to be way down looking into the future. We are going to get rid of at least half our herd. A lot of these smaller towns rely on the ag industry to survive. People are going to have to move away.”

Mr. Shively agrees: “I think we’re going to see in this area the cattle go to the wayside,” he says. But if he has to sell his cows, Mr. Shively says, he would try to find another rancher to work for. The pride of ranching is in all of them.

“I think everybody in the ranching world loves their job. We just don’t get paid for it.”

The ranchers say it is all up to the weather. They will trim their herds, pull in their belts, but they need some late-summer rains and a heavy snow to heal the ground.  

“Yesterday I stuck my hand down a crack in the ground up to here,” Mr. Shively says, holding his arm up almost to the elbow. “That’s how bad the ground is cracking out.”

Brisk business, without celebration

This makes Ben Brase busy. He runs a well-drilling business in Rugby. Historically, in this area, cattle drank mostly from creeks or “potholes” – natural depressions filled from groundwater, rain, and melting snow. Now, ranchers are turning to wells and furiously running pipe out to troughs in their pastures, or even paying for public water to refill drinking tanks as the natural supplies dry up. They are working with an eye to the cloudless skies and a careful watch on their cows.

Doug Struck

Ben Brase (right) discusses the water brought from a revived well with rancher Jim Fragodt in Harlow, North Dakota, July 22, 2021. Benson County is rated 99% extremely dry, a drought category in which indications include crops that stop growing and dormant pastures. Mr. Brase's well-drilling business is based 30 miles west of Harlow.

“My cows still have some water from a slough,” says Jim Fragodt, watching Mr. Brase and his workers sweat in 90-degree heat on a bluff in Harlow, 30 miles southeast of Rugby. “But it could dry up any time. You gotta have water.”

Mr. Fragodt is replacing a long-abandoned well pump next to a 100-year-old red barn, once a thriving dairy barn, now vacant and sagging. In short time, Mr. Brase and his workers, Josh Rime and Chuck Gayle, have drawn out the blackened old well jack, and installed a computer-controlled pump into the aquifer 70 feet below. A stream of fresh water erupts from a hose. 

“I’m getting calls day and night,” says Mr. Brase. “We have more work every week than we can do.” He is booked out for a year, but does not celebrate. These are his neighbors, he says. He tries to respond to emergencies when ranchers suddenly run out of water. It keeps him at work into the night, missing dinners with his wife.

“It’s stressful getting calls day and night” from his neighbors, he says. “People call because they need the help. And I want to help them.”

My favorite moment in Tokyo happened when I wasn’t watching. 

At the men’s team gymnastics final July 26, Sam Mikulak, the ebullient American veteran, finished his vault, celebrated, and walked back to his seat. On the way he passed and high-fived each member of the rival Russian Olympic Committee squad, except for former world champion Artur Dalaloyan. He, despite showing no great interest, got a hug. 

Mr. Mikulak leaned forward, as though he were hugging his mother. Mr. Dalaloyan leaned back, as though he were hugging a squid – but emerged with grinning eyes. 

While this happened, I sat about 100 feet away in the parallel press tribune, having turned back to my computer after Mr. Mikulak’s vault. It wasn’t until later, when the gymnasts’ hug went viral, that I saw what I’d missed. 

How appropriate. 

For me, these three weeks in Tokyo have been a mosaic of small, face-to-face moments – impossible to see from afar, and sometimes even up close. 

I’ve seen a Japanese bus driver speak Castilian Spanish with a group of reporters from Madrid. (“Porque amo España,” he responded when they asked him why he learned the language.) I’ve listened to flight attendants excitedly wishing good luck to the Ecuadorian athletes sitting nearby. I’ve ridden with a French journalist who offered me a seat in her cab after my bus schedule randomly changed. I’ve been chaperoned through an unfamiliar city by thousands of polite volunteers. 

These moments are just as much a part of the Olympics as medals or the opening ceremony, yet over a lifetime of watching the Games on TV, I’ve missed them. But as with Mr. Mikulak’s hug, neither one fewer set of eyes nor a reluctant Russian can stand in the way. Even if no one is watching, they happen.

The last month, I’ve wondered whether and why the Olympics are worth it. Interest in hosting the Games is down, and Tokyo is likely to decrease it. These are set to be the most expensive Olympics of all time. With viewership plummeting, alongside trust in the International Olympic Committee, the payoff seems lower than ever. 

As I consider the other side of that scale, though, I return to those moments of kindness, isolated but inseparable interactions. These, I’ve decided, are the Olympics’ best argument. No matter where the Games take place, they unroll a movable feast of humanity. Unlike any other sporting event, the entire world sits at the table. 

Tokyo’s social distancing guidelines have discouraged routine acts of sportsmanship, like handshakes and high-fives. But over the last few weeks, athletes haven’t been able to help themselves. When Simone Biles returned from a mental health hiatus to compete in the balance beam final, each of her competitors approached her with congratulations. When 15-year-old skateboarder Okamoto Misugu fell on her final run, missing a medal and tearing up, the other finalists gathered around, picked her up, and carried her on their shoulders. 

Watching Katie Ledecky dominate the 1,500-meter freestyle and Andre De Grasse dash to the 200-meter gold has been fun. But the value in sport isn’t in the competition. It’s what competition brings out of its competitors. This year, it’s brought solidarity on mental health, with potential benefits for the wider world of sports. It brought out resiliency from Olympians who adjusted their training to reach the postponed Games, and then their expectations as they entered empty arenas. It brought candor and kindness from athletes who approached their limits, endured, and then applauded others who did the same. 

On my last day covering track and field, I spent almost 12 hours in the Olympic Stadium, baking in the kiln of a humid Tokyo summer. By the last event – the men’s 200-meter final – I was tired and grimy, having sweat through two shirts, two masks, and three applications of deodorant. 

I wanted to collapse in bed.

But I stayed and watched U.S. teammates Kenneth Bednarek and Noah Lyles place second and third, and then walk laps around the stadium draped in American flags. At one point, Mr. Lyles knelt and prayed. 

My bus was coming, so I didn’t stay to chat with Mr. Lyles in the athlete-reporter mixed zone. The next day, though, I read what he had to say. 

David J. Phillip/AP

Noah Lyles, of the United States, reacts after his third-place finish in the final of the men's 200 meters at the Summer Olympics, Aug. 4, 2021, in Tokyo.

The last year hasn’t been what he wanted. There were times when his sport was no longer fun and he wanted to quit. One of the top sprinters in the world, Mr. Lyles at one point aimed to win three gold medals in Tokyo. He left with one bronze. 

But before leaving, he told reporters about his struggles with mental health, and the difficulty he had coping at the Games. Speaking through tears, and even after a media official tried to end the interview, Mr. Lyles asked reporters to tell his story in case it would help anyone watching.

I thought about that request at Sunday’s closing ceremony – held in the rainless evening of an otherwise stormy Sunday. As the Olympic cauldron burned nearby, athletes entered the stadium one last time. A Swedish man dressed in all yellow ran along the grass with a flag tied to his back. Some Australian athletes, sitting on teammates’ shoulders, hoisted an inflatable kangaroo. A DJ spun turntables as a brass band played “Ode to Joy.” The feast was over; this was the after-party. Soon, everyone invited would go home, and take something with them. 

Mr. Lyles’ home is the same as mine, just a few miles apart in northern Virginia. Though we traveled different paths to Tokyo, we both had to find value in an unusual, restrained, sometimes ad hoc Olympics. His way was to run – fast – and tell his story on a world stage; mine was to listen. And, sometimes, to share.

On Friday an employee at my hotel, who had just called a taxi for me, stepped into the lobby to talk. We’d chatted every few days throughout my trip, since she spoke perfect English and my Japanese barely exceeds “arigato.”

She asked me what it was like finishing my 14-day quarantine and walking around the city – and admitted she was a bit jealous. As cases rose in Tokyo, she started limiting her time almost exclusively to home and work. It was hard, she said, watching so many people from outside Japan attend an Olympics the Japanese people couldn’t. 

So I thanked her, and told her how much the hospitality meant to a young reporter who knew these Games were a gift. She thanked me back, as I told her how Naomi Osaka climbed the steps to light the Olympic cauldron and how Hashimoto Daiki electrified a tiny crowd at the men’s team gymnastics final. I showed her some of the pictures I’d taken on my phone of Sunisa Lee, Novak Djokovic, and a host of drones that assembled a rotating globe at the opening ceremony.

She couldn’t watch any of it herself, but she was happy someone had the chance.

AP

Afghans who fled their home due to fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security forces gather at a park in Kabul, Aug. 9.

Two wars are now being heavily waged in Afghanistan as a Sept. 11 deadline nears for the withdrawal of American forces. One is a military contest between Taliban insurgents and the U.S.-trained forces of the elected government in Kabul. The other is for the truth.

A good example of the latter was the Aug. 6 killing by the Taliban of a top government spokesperson, Dawa Khan Menapal. He had become effective in countering the radical group’s narrative that its victory was inevitable. Mr. Menapal “was a young man who stood like a mountain in the face of enemy propaganda,” one official said.

For his part, President Ashraf Ghani has tried to score points against the Taliban in this “information war” by expressing confidence in government forces. His claims of victories – many not verified – are meant to counter what is called a “narrative of abandonment,” or the impression that the withdrawal of foreign allies would lead to defeat.

Both sides are clearly trying to influence the actions and attitudes of Afghan civilians, who remain crucial to the outcome of this war – perhaps even more so than bombs and bullets. In fact, it is their discernment of the truth about the war – cutting through the fog of war propaganda – that must be as closely watched as reports of battlefield gains.

Truth does not have to be the first casualty of war. Over the two-decade conflict in Afghanistan, many Afghans have struggled to assert their self-governance in shaping their society. The population is better educated, more organized into civic groups, and more digitally connected. Many do not want to be passive or ignorant, or become victims of a truth war. 

“We wanted to have heroes that are ... changing the narrative, giving people the opportunity to imagine something different,” says Omaid Sharifi, co-founder of the ArtLords, an artist-activist group that uses public art to gently tease both officials and the Taliban to be tolerant, empathetic, and honest. The group has painted nearly 2,000 murals in most provinces to spread its messages.

One unexpected expression of civilian empowerment has been the rise of local militias – some led by traditional warlords but others newly organized. “The emergence of the public uprising forces is now an obstacle to the Taliban narrative – a narrative that was more important for the Taliban than military victories,” states the Afghan newspaper Etilaat e Roz.

Even if the Taliban take control of most cities, they will face a very different Afghan population than they did in the 1990s, when they last held power. A good example is one ArtLords mural painted after the 2016 bombing of a Kabul university by the Taliban. The image depicts young people picking up their books, saying, “I am back, because education prevails.” The deeper message: Truth prevails.