It has been over seven weeks since Kabul fell to the Taliban, and I read the following article today which had the following attention-getting headline — “I will never become a Taliban wife. I would rather die.”
This is so predictable. And so sad.
The United States leaves Afghanistan, the Taliban takes over, and you have the resumption of a certain kind of Islamic rule.
And life in Afghanistan moving forward becomes very different than it was before.
Maybe there will be less fighting and a certain kind of peace in Afghanistan moving forward, as long as one does not confront the Taliban. The little folk will “go-along to get-along” and not challenge the rule of the Taliban.
But it brings to mind conversations from my past.
I remember talking with CAIR representative Hussam Ayloush spokesmen when he came to speak with my students at the Jewish school I was working at back in the late 1990s. Ayloush was a Lebanese Muslim who attended the University of Texas and earned an MBA; he was educated and cosmopolitan, fluent in various languages, and an experienced world-traveler. He told me at the time the Taliban were “country bumpkins” who lacked any nuance in their interpretation of Islam, and were basically uneducated hillbillies. Even from the Muslim perspective in the Islamic world, Ayloush had little good to say about Afghanistan or the Taliban.
Similarly, I had an acquaintance who was among the first Green Berets to enter Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks. He said he slept in a cave every night because the locals shot rockets into the air nightly. He pooped in a bag and burned it the next day because there were no bathrooms anywhere. Half the Afghanis he met had only a first name — “Habibullah” or “Muhammad” — and no last name. He said the place was straight out of the 9th century. He claimed Afghanistan was more a collection of perpetually warring medieval tribes than a real “nation state” as we understand it. This guy spent a year as a special operations soldier in that place he referred to as “miserable.”
The words of these two men rung in my ears as the Afghan government fell just a handful of weeks after the Americans left in 2021 after almost two decades of U.S. military involvement there.
And now these peasant guerrilla soldiers from the 9th century — the Taliban — are in control of Afghanistan.
The Taliban always used to say the Americans might have “the watches” (communications technology, superior weapons, air power, etc.) but they had “the time” (the patience to fight, suffer, and die; nothing better to do; and an ability to wait the Americans and their NATO allies out until they left.)
They were right.
Now the Taliban are in charge of Afghanistan again after almost twenty years. They earned it.
The people of “Afghanistan” enjoyed a time where it was more able to join the modern world when Americans protected and financed some sort of an emerging civil society. Now will Afghanistan be dragged back into the 9th century? Will women be removed from any meaningful role in public life? Will gruesome executions and the like return via the Taliban?
That is yet to be seen.
A majority of the current population of Afghanistan was not alive when the Taliban were driven out of power in 2002. Two thirds of the people there now are too young to remember what life was like before.
Will they allow themselves to become subjects of a Sharia-law based, “hard-line” Taliban-run society?
That is yet to be seen.
Let me be frank: I have a hard time getting too worked up about this impoverished place called “Afghanistan” in the middle of nowhere which has already claimed too much American blood and treasure. But I will wish them well, in general terms (as long as it costs little). It is their country (as far as you can call it a country). Moving forward, it is up to them.
I remember reading Malala Yousafzai ’s book a few years ago. The liberal West — and especially liberal Western feminists — were in love with Malala. She was shot by the Taliban in the face in punishment for her drive to push for more education for local women. They awarded Malala the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her message and what she symbolized. “Take that, violent Pashtun extremists who shot her!” the Nobel committee thought. I doubt the Taliban were impressed.
Malala’s message and story are inspirational. But she evacuated to Great Britain for convalescence from Pakistan after she was shot in October 2012. She returned almost six years later. Malala was safe, as long as she lived in the West. But she was also out of the fight.
Time for her to stand up, if she has the courage of her convictions.
Time for Malala to fight for her vision of life for Pashtun women.
Get Malala a rifle.
Why?
Because she would need it.
Time for any Afghanis — Pashtun, or whoever — who want to live in a country not run by the Taliban to fight for what is theirs. Unless I am very wrong — and I don’t think I am — there is no other way.
You can’t ask the Americans or the Australians or the British or the South Koreans to fight your battles for you. Look at the South Vietnamese! (Is the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021 not unlike the fall of Saigon to the communists in 1975?) You have to be ready to fight and die yourself. As the old saying goes, “Freedom is never free.” You have to stand up and claim it. You can’t outsource it.
It is your country.
Or at least it could be.
Or you can go back to the ninth century with the Taliban.
I can understand why one might want to flee the country, as many have. The Taliban are coming! The tyranny and danger are real and immediate.
But in fleeing Afghanistan, you are giving up on Afghanistan.
When the communists took over in 1975 a huge chunk of Vietnam left that country for the United States, Canada, or France and they never returned — Vietnam was lost to them forever.
Do you want to lose Afghanistan in the same way and reinvent yourself somewhere else?
But the next few months might be bleak. Many are terrified for the future.
“I will never become a Taliban wife. I would rather die.”
So here we are.
What are you going to do?
Maybe Malala Yousafzai and others of her ilk can pacify, subdue, or reform the Taliban into some more moderate, modern form of government over time? Maybe the local feminists can coax the better angels of human nature in Pashtun militants and point towards a different future over a decade or two? Maybe the women living there can wield the power of moral suasion over the Taliban and effect change patiently through the generations?
I doubt it.
Malala, grab a rifle.
Or maybe that is unfair. Malala lives in neighboring Pakistan, not Afghanistan, even if she shares the same cross-border Pashtun culture.
So I will end by directing my words to the the 27-year old Afghan journalist, Fatema Hosseini, who claims she would rather die than be a Taliban wife. Maybe Hosseini should write a book, like Malala? Or engage in “advocacy journalism”?
No, that won’t get it done.
Grab a rifle, Fatema.
Fight for the country you want. Or get your boyfriend a rifle. Or your brother. In Kabul.
It is your country.
Your future.
Freedom is never free.
“One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world.”
