Imagine you’re a woman on the streets of Kabul in Afghanistan. It’s a nice day out in the capitol city, but you don’t know that because of the burqa veil you’re wearing that makes you look like Cousin It. Your best friend walks by, but you can’t tell that it’s her underneath her burqa. As you walk, you spot a Talib. It’s not just an ordinary Talib foot soldier; it’s a member of the religious police. He wears a black turban, so you know to try and disappear yourself before he sees you. Too late – you’ve been sighted walking without a male escort, and that’s a no-no. You had to go out today and scrounge up some money by begging, because the food from the last UN aid shipment ran out yesterday. Anyway, the religious policeman does his job and throws you in jail, where your local Taliban guards are ready and willing to protect you – assuming protecting means cornering you and touching you inappropriately. As the policeman takes a break nearby, he casually tells the guards around you to knock it off because he knows that if they have their way with you, your family will kill you, and for some reason it’s in his best interests to keep you out of the guards’ hands. Sad as it may be, this story is analogous to one in which the US is the policeman, the guards represent Russia, and you are Afghanistan. This story is a reality now, but it was also a reality twenty years ago on a larger scale. Afghanistan has been suffering for so long now, that the Taliban regime is nothing but the latest road block to peace.
After WWII, the Truman Doctrine stated that there was a Soviet and Communist threat in Greece and Turkey, and to a lesser extent, Iran. Being the only Western power capable of preventing communism’s expansion, the US decided to halt it using all means necessary – both diplomatic and military. As the power struggle called the Cold War continued, the Eisenhower and Nixon Doctrines followed, and by the time of the Carter administration, the entire Middle East was threatened by communism. Carter saw the USSR as a benign entity and sought understanding, but when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979, that notion was discarded. Seeing the invasion as Russia’s first step towards the Persian Gulf, the US decided to send aid during the Reagan administration. No military forces were deployed, but other forms of aid were sent to the Afghan rebels. This was the beginning of their suffering and 21years of war.
The Cold War came to a close in the early 90’s and the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. From that war with Russia came a group of fighters with experience and strong religious convictions who were ready to create a new and perfect Afghanistan. The leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, wanted to make the country a state of pure Islam while avoiding a descent into lawlessness. He used his faith to recruit soldiers from Koranic schools in Afghanistan and from refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan. By 1996, he had swept through the country and installed the Taliban government. A force headed by former defense chief Ahmed Shah Masood retained 10% of the country and was the only seed of resistance to the Taliban’s hardline Islamic interpretations. Now, I haven’t read the Koran, but I have a hard time believing that the repression of women, the censorship of information, the export of herion, and public executions are part of Islamic law. While putting up with these and other crimes, Afghans have also had to deal with a three year drought, and they are feeling humorless now. They do have some hope, though, now that the US is attacking the Taliban. They know that it will be defeated and that they’ll have another chance to form a new and better government when that happens.
In the words of Afghani princess Amanullah (who’s now 82), “The world keeps moving. It changes everyday. One day, the Taliban will go. Things will get better. So, we wait.” They’ve waited through a decade of Soviet invasion, and a decade of the Taliban, so they’ll be able to wait for better days to come.
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