These are stories. This is the perspective of someone living in exile, essentially since 1980. Salman Rushdie said that the person in exile’s view of their homeland is always through a cracked mirror, and that’s totally true for me. I’ve always been very careful to make sure people don’t confuse me with some Afghan ambassador or Afghan representative. I haven’t lived there for a long time.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
Who are the Taliban? The Taliban emerged in 1994 amid the unrest following the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. They used brutal public punishment, including flogging, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more about their origin story and their track record as rulers.
But I do have a perspective, and I feel strong about what’s going on in Afghanistan, and I have a deep affection and a deep emotional connection with the people there, with the country, with the culture, with the history and the heritage. . I hope my books give some insight into what Afghanistan is, beyond the usual storylines that we see in the media about Afghanistan as a breeding ground for terrorism or the Taliban, the opium trade, the war cycles.
Afghanistan has so much more to offer. It is a beautiful country with a beautiful, humble, friendly, hospitable, hospitable and charming people. Anyone who’s been to Afghanistan says, “I’ve been to many places in the world, but I’ve never been to a place like Afghanistan.” We call it the Afghan bug – people who go there get infected with the Afghan bug. It’s a very special place. It’s a beautiful place, physically as well as the people themselves, and once you know that, once you’ve tasted it, once you’ve been in contact with those people, and broken bread and drank tea, the tragedies, the things you see on television take on a whole different dimension. It gets personal and it just gets really, really painful.
What else do you want people reading this to know?
Many, many Afghans bought in what the US sold. They joined American goals, they joined American initiatives, fully aware that doing so would make them a target in the eyes of insurgent groups like the Taliban. They did it anyway in the hope of a better future for the country, in the hope of a better future for the children, in the hope that the country would become more stable and peaceful, more representative of all walks of life in Afghan society. I believe they were incredibly brave to do it.
So I want people to contact their representatives, their leaders, and say, we have a moral obligation to those people, we have to evacuate those people. We cannot allow our partners – the US has called the Afghan people “our partners” for 20 years – we cannot allow our partners to be killed. To be locked up, beaten and tortured and persecuted now that we’re gone. We have a moral obligation to carry on.
