In the shadows of five ongoing wars in which America is complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing and genocide, in Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, and the undeclared wars against Venezuela and Cuba as imperial conquest and colonial dominion, two of those fought on both American and foreign fronts in the repression of dissent on our university campuses and in the ICE white supremacist terror force abducting and imprisoning without trial all nonwhite persons but most especially targeting Venezuelans, I write now in memorial of the lost cause of secular democracy in Afghanistan but also now in America.
We are now a captured state of the Fourth Reich and a client state of Russia which I call Vichy America, to disambiguate the Trump regime from any legitimate American state. As Afghanistan was under American imperial occupation and dominion during the longest war in our history, so are we now, and much of our future in the Age of Tyrants which has begun may be read in its dark mirror.
The Last Stand of liberty was lost at Panjshir because Pakistan played the role of Russia in America, and while they won a Sunni buffer state between themselves and the Dominion of Iran just as we did in Syria for the Arab-American Alliance, Russia in the capture of our nation through propaganda, dark money, and interference in our elections has won a free hand in the conquest of Ukraine.
And though I fought the Taliban with everything I could bring to the game, their victory over American foreign colonialism against vast and seemingly unstoppable force and power must give us hope that one day, too, we will win our independence, sovereignty, and our future.
As I wrote in my post of September 8 2021, With the Lions of Panjshir: A Notebook of Resistance; I greet you from a place of great darkness and beauty, beyond all limits of the human and boundaries of the Forbidden, among the unknowns marked Here Be Dragons on our maps of human being, meaning, and value. Here ancient truths are tested, and new truths are forged with the limitless possibilities of becoming human. Of these truths I speak to you as a witness of history; of wonderful things, terrible things.
It is a place wherein the flaws of our humanity are reflected in the brokenness of the world, but one in which true heroism is possible and the sacred wounds we bear can open us to the pain of others, where the redemptive power of love reveals the truth of ourselves and our interdependence as our brothers keepers. Is this not the beauty of humankind?
The best and most accurate summation of the Battle for Panjshir thus far is written by Santosh Chaubey for Reuters, Resistance is Futile: Why Panjshir Falling to the Taliban is Inevitable; “Panjshir valley of northern Afghanistan, the last province to resist the Taliban’s complete control of Afghanistan, has fallen as per the claims made by the Islamist force. But if we see the genesis of the Taliban’s emergence this time, we find that the Panjshir valley resistance is already a lost battle with no international support coming to the rescue and sustain it against the combined strength of the fundamentalist outfit and Pakistan.
Ahmad Massoud, the Panjshir leader and head of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA), and Amrullah Saleh, the caretaker President of the previous Afghan government, are both appealing to get some international support for the challengers. But with major powers like the US, Russia, China, Germany and Britain and the United Nations willing to give the Taliban a chance if they mend their ways, the NRFA, it seems, is going to be just a minor resistance group localised to a limited area if it continues with its efforts.
The United Nations Security Council recently adopted a resolution on Afghanistan. While Russia and China abstained in the vote on the resolution sponsored by the US, UK and France, the message was very clear that the international community had no problem with a Taliban-led government if the Islamist outfit ensured that Afghanistan would not become a terror hub again, like it was under the 1990s Taliban government regime: naturally with additional norms like upholding human rights concerns of women, children and minorities.
(Here I append my own commentary: Norms which like the eradication of Islamist terror are likely unenforceable; fig leaves of legitimacy.)
Clearly, the international community is looking towards a peaceful political settlement this time in the country that has seen civil wars for over 40 years and is willing to give the Taliban a chance with their rapid takeover after the withdrawal of the US and other international troops that showed the powerlessness of the previous Afghan government and inoperability of the security mechanism developed by America across the country since 2001.
Afghanistan has been a graveyard for many countries. The USSR invaded it in December 1979 but faced a humiliating loss after a decade of war much in the same way as the US and other international forces have seen in the last 20 years. While the Soviet Union’s withdrawal led to a bitter tribal war between different Mujahideen commanders with no alternative arrangement set in place and saw the emergence of the Taliban, this time the international community is much more concerned with terror becoming the biggest global threat and its deep correlation with Afghanistan in the past.
To sum it up, the international community is not going to encourage another movement in Afghanistan this time like it did for the anti-Taliban resistance Northern Alliance in the 1990s – until the Taliban fail and go back to the ways of the 1990s to become a radical, fundamentalist insurgent group again that harbours terrorists and threatens global security.
Though the Taliban have denied this, emboldened by Pakistan’s direct support, they now claim to have completely captured the landlocked valley. As confirmed by Ahmad Massoud, Pakistan bombed the valley to give the Taliban an upper hand over the NRFA fighters who were bravely taking on the Taliban forces for the last three weeks.
With direct air support through drone bombing, Pakistan also air-dropped its special forces to fight alongside the Taliban. And though the Taliban have assured the international community that they will not allow Afghanistan to become a terror hub again and will not allow terrorists to use the nation’s soil to plan and perpetrate terror attacks in other countries, the Taliban force at Panjshir valley also includes al-Qaeda fighters.
The correlation between ISI chief Hamid Faiz’s landing in Kabul on September 4 and the Taliban’s claim of complete capture of Panjshir province on September 6 can’t be ignored.
Though the NRFA says the Taliban claim is false, releasing a tweet this morning that says the “Taliban’s claim of occupying Panjshir is false and NRFA forces are present in all strategic positions across the valley to continue the fight, assuring the people of Afghanistan that the struggle against the Taliban and their partners will continue until justice and freedom prevails”, the fact is the NRFA lost its main voice and spokesperson Fahim Dashti in the battle on Sunday while Amrullah Saleh is missing and is reportedly in Tajikistan and Ahmad Massoud has fled.
Panjshir valley resisted the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and the Taliban takeover between 1996 and 2001. But the difference between then and now is the sweeping capture of Afghanistan by the Taliban all across the country, in 33 of the 34 provinces. Just Panjshir was left, but with claims made by the Taliban releasing video clips showing their fighters raising the Taliban flag on Bazarak, Panjshir’s capital city, and capturing Ahmad Massoud’s house and patrolling the valley’s streets, this province too has largely fallen.
The Taliban were not able to capture the northern areas of the country so effectively the last time, in the 1990s, as the Northern Alliance and many ethnic minorities inhabiting these areas fought well with international support. But by co-opting ethnic minorities like the Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmens and even Hazaras of this area this time by including commanders of these tribes, the Taliban have swept the entire northern Afghanistan area, including the border posts.
The local leadership of Panjshir previously had access to the supply routes to get essential items and arms and ammunition even during the war phase. But this time, these supply routes are under Taliban control, and while controlling the narrow entrance to the valley, they have blocked the roads and have ensured that food, medical and other emergency services supplied to the valley are entirely cut off.”
There are some claims in this article clearly written by someone who is here in Panjshir which I would amend; most importantly, the Taliban have occupied government offices and other parts of the capital of both symbolic and tactical value, but this is not the same as control when the NRF remains armed and can strike at will throughout the province.
Both the government of Afghanistan in exile and Massoud himself remain secure and defiant, having escaped to Tajikistan while we fought diversionary and rearguard actions as well as the main battle on Sunday in which Fahim Dashti was killed, and the fighters of the NRF themselves are like lions with an arena full of prey to hunt; nothing frightens them, not even aerial bombardment, and though they can be killed they cannot be defeated.
As the Taliban have come to their home, the defenders of Panjshir will return the courtesy and come to theirs in Kabul. No program of pacification can entirely crush resistance in this mazelike series of over twenty valleys and goatpaths over towering cliffs in which perhaps a quarter million people live; and it is an hour’s drive from Kabul, where the NRF and other allied sleeper cells, rollover suicide teams, local reaction forces, and infiltration agents within the Taliban and other groups, await their moment of retribution. No conflict in these conditions can be final.
Nor can any victory here be described as total; Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires for many reasons, among them the shifting and multiple loyalties of its people, not merely a checkerboard of traditional ethnic divisions and independent warlords but also an operational environment wherein an entire military culture of armed and trained fighters follow whoever best serves their interests and from antiquity pursue war as a profession, change the ideologies and goals of their factions or join others opportunistically, and many competing organizations share members or have infiltrated each other so thoroughly it has become impossible to tell the wolves from the sheep.
The Taliban has seized Afghanistan; but the Taliban, cohesive through its origins in the fifty students of Mullah Mohammad Omar who founded it in 1994 in Kandahar to restore sharia law, is today united by only four things; first and foremost resistance to American imperialism and colonial dominion and the Deobandi ideology which recasts Islamic faith as anticolonial liberation struggle as it was developed in Delhi in resistance to the British Empire and instrumentalized by Pakistan through its mosques and madrasas; secondly the historical narratives of victimization and blood debt of a decades long anticolonial war of independence which have forged a national identity represented by the Taliban, third the personal charisma, authority, and lines of patronage of its leaders and the direct loyalties of their forces, who are often also clan and tribal leaders with the authority of kings, and fourth unifying institutions and authority such as the Quetta Shura command in Pakistan and the Haqqani Network de facto intelligence service. Having a secure base of operations across an open border with its patron Pakistan has been crucial to its success, but the Taliban is both a proxy of Pakistan, who has recreated Afghanistan as a Sunni buffer state and key ally between herself and Iran, and a genuine independence movement.
These are its strengths; the weaknesses of the Taliban are its ethnic balkanization and chaotic factional multiplicity which make exercising direct control of its own forces problematic. The Taliban remains a theocracy and unifying institution, but with a feudal army, where a nobleman commands his own sworn fighters and obeys his own direct lord but that lord cannot command his soldiers personally, not a modern one with a unifying chain of command. When the situation begins with three major competing organizations of Sunni fundamentalism, Taliban, Islamic State, and al Qaeda, locked in a titanic and ferocious life or death struggle for dominion whose fighters are often members of more than one group, and becomes complex with dozens or possibly hundreds of factions, to claim that anyone is in control or can rule here in Afghanistan is absurd. And here lies the great opportunity which Chaos offers us; to seize our power from any authority who would subjugate us.
The call of Chaos is simply one which I cannot resist, though I am here in Panjshir specifically because of a debt of honor I owe to the father of its current warlord Ahmad Massoud, the legendary warrior Ahmad Shah Massoud. So as the Pineapple Express run off the books by special operations forces to smuggle their former partners out of the country during the debacle of the Kabul airlift neared completion, I was organizing an expedition across the Khyber Pass from Peshawar, the heart of the Taliban’s government in exile and bastion of its Pakistani Intelligence handlers and advisors as well as the gateway to the world’s largest arms black market and its tribal borderlands.
Panjshir is lost, and with it the immediate hope of independence from Taliban theocratic tyranny in Afghanistan as well as the American colonial imperialism the Taliban has freed the nation from. This is a predictable phase of anticolonial liberation struggle and a form of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes, as we are sadly familiar with in the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mugabe, and so many other revolutions which become tyrannies, though there are special and unique conditions here in Afghanistan and limits to the comparison of theocracy to any form of liberation struggle arising from secular Humanism as embodied in the American and French Revolutions on the one hand and the Russian and other communist revolutions on the other.
What must be done, as Tolstoy and Lenin asked with such very different results? For now we must work to bring change and restore democracy and our universal human rights to a sovereign and independent Afghanistan, and move from throwing stones to throwing words. Before all else is this; the people must be co-owners of the state who have chosen to be human together in ways which it embodies, and not its slaves.
I will fight on, for the liberty and humanity of the peoples of Afghanistan and the world, wherever men hunger to be free.
On September 5 2021 I wrote; Confusion during fighting in Panjshir; the Taliban have been lured into a trap in the valley and cannot escape while the resistance control the passes. Taliban mountaineers have been captured attempting to climb the cliffs and seize gun positions. But the road north leads not to resupply or transshipment, but to Taliban held areas, and communications are sporadic. Panjshir is isolated from support, no help is coming from the international community, and the fight now rests with mobile teams behind Taliban lines; significant forces await a route to bring aid. Meanwhile the Taliban in the valley, including elite units and the Red Faction shock troops, are fighting ferociously for survival, as are the people of Panjshir. This is a battle of mutual annihilation, glorious and terrible; it remains to be seen whether it is also futile.
In a post of September 6 2021, I wrote; Taliban has captured the capital of Panjshir using Pakistani drone bombing and airdropped elite Pakistani units, and Massoud and the government in exile have fled to Tajikistan. Now the game has become one of Occupation and Resistance.
To a friend’s post bidding good riddance to Massoud on the basis of his father’s personal moral failings as a CIA allied warlord implicated in sex trafficking, slave labor, and the heroin trade, I replied; No one anticipated Pakistani drone bombardment and direct support with airlifted special forces units, nor do I wish to fight Pakistan as they helped us win the independence of Kashmir from the 1990-1993 invasion and brigandage by India, an independence which lasted until 2019, and allied with me personally in circumstances of horror and desperation; I have met among the enemy a number of those I originally met as allies in Kashmir thirty years ago and other places since, including Pakistan Intelligence Services operatives now advising Taliban commanders they have cultivated and worked with as key assets since the mujahideen period of the Soviet invasion, and their descendants. I spent an evening at a campfire dining with some of them and am not mistaken; they certainly knew me.
Of course you are right that local constructions of values including ideas of gender equality and freedom do not align or share much common ground with ours, and opium is the currency here; America’s soldiers were de facto enforcers of our client warlords control of the heroin market and guards of the opium fields. I do not mean to suggest that there are good and bad sides to heckle or cheer on; we are all bad guys here.
Why am I here? Maybe I just like lost causes, to quote a despicable villain and monstrous perpetrator of sexual and racist terror from Gone With The Wind, a character who nonetheless had some great lines. This world we humans have built for ourselves shapes us to the service of power and its authoritarian systems and structures of inequality and elite hegemonies of weaIth, power, and privilege, offers few innocents to champion, and as George Bernard Shaw suggests in Pygmalion with the magnificent character of Eliza’s father; the requirement of virtue to merit help, whether it be charity or solidarity of action, is a false dichotomy which serves to perpetuate unequal power and maintain hegemonic elites.
I have found but one general principle as a guide to disambiguate when we must resist by any means necessary and when we must forebear the social use of force, and it is not in defense of the innocent as this places a moral burden of judgement on victims of unjust authority, and often there are no innocent.
No, my test for the use of force is simply this; who holds the power?
When is it good to be bad?
In Nietzsche’s formulation, how do we hunt monsters without becoming monsters ourselves?
To these questions I give a hunter’s reply; I am not a good man, who forebears to challenge unjust authority, nor do other people’s ideas of virtue interest me if they take away our power to resist evil. I am far more useful to you than that, if you are among those who engage in struggle against unequal power, theocracy and imperial dominion, tyranny, state terror, carceral states of force and control, fascism of all kinds, violations of our universal human rights and of our ideals as a free society of equals which include a secular state, liberty, equality, truth, and justice.
I am a bad man who is on your side.
For myself, the only thing you need to merit help is to need help, and the test of the use of force and violence is a simple question; who holds power? I am a revolutionary for whom the seizure of power is about autonomy and the restoration of balance. I am on the side of those whom Frantz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth where ever they may be, and I place my life in the balance with those of the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased.
I celebrate the victory of the people of Afghanistan over the American Empire even if that takes the form of the Taliban for now, and have argued for our recognition of them as a legitimate independence movement and the government of Afghanistan. But I cannot support the genocidal conquest and assimilation of one ethnic group by another, nor the violation of the sovereignty and independence of any state claimed by another. There is but one legitimacy which any state may claim; the will of its people.
No one may with justice or natural right speak or act in another’s name without their consent; thus Rousseau teaches us, and it is this principle of Natural Law which founded America in the Declaration of Independence.
How shall we answer those who would enslave us?
This we must ever resist, beyond hope of victory or even survival. And in resistance and refusal to submit to authority we become Unconquered and free, for nothing can take from us our refusal of consent to be governed, mastered, and enslaved.
Let us run amok and be ungovernable; let us bring the Chaos, and be free.
Panjshir: Resistance fighters vow to defend Afghanistan’s final anti-Taliban holdout | AFP
August 16 2024 Anniversary of the Fall of Kabul and Afghanistan
September 6 2024 Remembering Afghanistan and the Last Stand At Panjshir
The Afghan Resistance I ARTE.tv Documentary
What was the Taliban’s method for capturing Panjshir valley? A timeline story
In The Name of My Father, Ahmad Massoud
Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Sandy Gall, Rory Stewart
(Foreword)
Afghanistan: Inside the Taliban’s Emirate • FRANCE 24 English
Life in the Taliban’s Afghanistan
The Fall of Kandahar
Taliban Country PBS
Why Panjshir Is Falling to the Taliban
Has Panjshir Fallen to Taliban? Ahmed Massoud Denies Reports Of Heavy Clashes And Taliban Victory
Fall of Panjshir: Drowning of the last hope of the Afghans
The Fall of Panjshir September 8 2021
https://countercurrents.org/2021/09/the-fall-of-panjshir
A Journey Along Pakistan’s Historic Khyber Pass (2000)
Peshawar Smugglers’ Market
Counting the Costs: A Reading List for Understanding Afghanistan and America’s Longest War
Afghan Voices: History and Literature By Afghan Authors:
The Essential Rumi, Rumi: the Big Red Book, Coleman Barks translator
Games Without Rules: history of the Afghans, Destiny Disrupted: a history of the world through Islamic eyes, Tamim Ansary
The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear, The Patience Stone, Earth and Ashes, A Curse on Dostoevsky, Atiq Rahim
A Woman Among Warlords, Malalai Joya
The Storyteller’s Daughter: One Woman’s Return to Her Lost Homeland, Saira Shah
Kara Kush, The Sufis, The Way of the Sufi, Tales of the Dervishes: Teaching Stories of the Sufi Masters Over the Past Thousand Years, Caravan of Dreams, The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin, The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin, Idries Shah
General Histories of the American- Afghanistan Wars:
The American War in Afghanistan: A History, Carter Malkasian
Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan, Michael Griffin
In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan, Seth G. Jones
The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014, Carlotta Gall
Swimming With Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War, Kevin Sites
A History of America’s War in Afghanistan by People Who Fought It:
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, Doug Stanton
Not A Good Day To Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda, Sean Naylor
Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan, Sean Parnell & John R. Bruning
Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight Against All Odds, Rusty Bradley & Kevin Maurer
The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, Jake Tapper
Roberts Ridge: A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan, Malcolm MacPherson
The Chosen Few: A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan, Gregg Zoroy
The Hooligans of Kandahar: Not All War Stories are Heroic, Joseph J. Kassabian
American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant, Ann Scott Tyson
And in fiction, there is nothing like William T. Vollman’s Surreal novel of his fight as a volunteer with the mujahideen against the Soviet invasion, You Bright and Risen Angels, referential to the triumvirate of Great Books written about the Second World War, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, and John Hawkes’ The Cannibal.
My Kit For Hope:
The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
The Trial of Socrates, by I.F. Stone
Invictus, by William Ernest Henley
Dari
همانطور که در پست خود از سپتامبر 8 2021 نوشتم, با شیرها از Panjshir: نوت بوک مقاومت; من شما را از یک محل تاریکی بزرگ و زیبایی استقبال, فراتر از تمام محدودیت های انسان و مرزهای ممنوع, در میان ناشناخته مشخص شده در اینجا اژدها بر روی نقشه های ما از انسان, معنی, و ارزش.
در اینجا حقایق باستانی آزمایش می شوند، و حقایق جدید با امکانات بی حد و حصر تبدیل شدن به انسان است. از این حقایق من به شما به عنوان شاهد تاریخ صحبت می کنند; از چیزهای شگفت انگیز، چیزهای وحشتناک.
جایی است که در آن عیب های بشریت ما در شکسته شدن جهان منعکس شده است، اما جایی که در آن قهرمان واقعی امکان پذیر است و زخم های مقدسی که ما تحمل می کنیم می تواند ما را به درد دیگران باز کند، جایی که قدرت رستگاری عشق حقیقت خود و استقلال ما را به عنوان برادران حافظ ما آشکار می کند. آیا این زیبایی نوع بشر نیست؟
طالبان دفاتر دولتی و دیگر بخش های پایتخت را هم با ارزش نمادین و هم با ارزش تاکتیکی اشغال کرده اند، اما این همان کنترول زمانی نیست که ان آر اف مسلح باقی بماند و بتواند به خواست خود در سراسر این ولایت حمله کند.
هم دولت افغانستان در تبعید و هم خود مسود همچنان امن و سرپیچی می کنند و جنگجویان خود ان آر اف مانند شیرهایی هستند که عرصه ای پر از شکار دارند؛ هیچ چیز آنها را نمی ترسد، حتی بمباران هوایی، و هر چند آنها را می توان کشته آنها را نمی توان شکست داد.
با آمدن طالبان به خانه شان، مدافعان پانجشیر حسن نیت را پس خواهند داد و به خانه های شان در کابل خواهند آمد. هیچ برنامه ای از اقیانوس آرام به طور کامل می تواند مقاومت در این سری پیچ و خم بیش از بیست دره و بز کوهی بیش از صخره های قوی که در آن شاید یک چهارم میلیون نفر زندگی می کنند خرد;
و این یک ساعت رانندگی از کابل است، جایی که سلول های خواب NRF و تیم های انتحاری رولور، و ماموران نفوذ در درون طالبان و دیگر گروه ها، در انتظار لحظه قصاص خود هستند. هیچ درگیری در این شرایط نمی تواند نهایی باشد.
و نه می توان هر پیروزی در اینجا به عنوان کل توصیف; افغانستان به دلایل زیادی قبرستان امپراتوری ها نامیده می شود که در میان آنها تغییر مکان و وفاداری های متعدد مردمش، نه صرفا یک شطرنجی از تفرقه های قومی سنتی و جنگ سالاران مستقل
اما همچنین یک محیط عملیاتی که در آن کل فرهنگ نظامی از مبارزان مسلح و آموزش دیده به دنبال هر کس که به بهترین وجه در خدمت منافع خود و به دنبال جنگ به عنوان یک حرفه، تغییر نام جناح های خود و یا پیوستن به دیگران فرصت طلبانه، و بسیاری از سازمان های رقیب به اشتراک گذاری اعضای و یا به یکدیگر نفوذ کرده اند تا به طور کامل آن را تبدیل به غیر ممکن است به گرگ ها از گوسفند بگویید.
طالبان افغانستان را تصرف کرده اند؛ اما طالبان، هر چند در ریشه های آن پنجاه دانش آموز ملا محمد عمر که آن را در سال 1994 در قندهار تاسیس شده برای بازگرداندن شریعت، امروز تنها با چهار چیز متحد است؛
اول و مهمتر از همه ایدئولوژی دیوبندی که ایمان اسلامی را به عنوان مبارزه آزادی بخش ضداستعدایی باز می کند، همان طور که در دهلی در مقاومت در برابر امپراتوری بریتانیا توسعه یافته و توسط پاکستان از طریق مسجدها و دانشکده های آن ابزاری شده است؛
دوم روایت های تاریخی قربانی شدن و بدهی خون یک جنگ طولانی ضد استعماری استقلال که هویت ملی را به وجود آورد، سوم کاریزما شخصی، اقتدار، و خطوط حمایت از رهبران آن و وفاداری مستقیم نیروهای خود،
و چهارمین نهاد متحد کننده و اقتدار فرماندهی کویتی در پاکستان و شبکه حقانی در واقع سرویس اطلاعاتی. داشتن یک پایگاه امن عملیات در آن سوی مرز باز با پاکستان حامی اش برای موفقیت آن بسیار مهم بوده است، اما طالبان هم یک طرفدار پاکستان و هم یک جنبش استقلال واقعی است.
این نقاط قوت آن است; ضعف های طالبان بالکانیزاسیون قومی و چندگانگی جناحی آشفته آن است که اعمال کنترل مستقیم نیروهای خود را مشکل ساز می کند. وقتی وضعیت با سه سازمان بزرگ رقیب بنیاد گرایی سنی، طالبان، دولت اسلامی و القاعده آغاز می شود
، در یک زندگی تایتانیک و وحشی و یا مبارزه مرگ برای سلطه که مبارزان اغلب اعضای بیش از یک گروه قفل شده است ، و پیچیده می شود با ده ها یا احتمالا صدها جناح ، ادعا می کنند که هر کسی در کنترل است و یا می تواند در اینجا در افغانستان حکومت پوچ است. و در اینجا نهفته است فرصت بزرگ که هرج و مرج به ما ارائه می دهد; تا قدرت ما را از هر قدرتی که ما را تسلیم کند، به دست آورد.
من پاسخ دادم که به پست یکی از دوستانش که بر اساس شکست های اخلاقی شخصی پدرش به عنوان یک جنگ سالار همدست سیا که در قاچاق جنسی، کار برده و تجارت هروئین دست داشته است، رهایی خوبی به ماساژور داده است
هیچ کس پیش بینی بمباران هواپیماهای بدون سرنشین پاکستانی و حمایت مستقیم با واحدهای نیروهای ویژه هوایی؛ من در میان دشمن با تعدادی از کسانی که در اصل سی سال پیش به عنوان متحد در کشمیر ملاقات کردم و جاهای دیگر از آن زمان ملاقات کرده ام، از جمله عوامل سرویس های اطلاعاتی پاکستان اکنون به فرماندهان طالبان توصیه می کنند که آنها به عنوان دارایی های کلیدی از زمان حمله به شوروی، و نوادگان آنها کشت کرده اند.
من یک شب را در یک آتش سوزی صرف غذاخوری با برخی از آنها و اشتباه نیست; آنها قطعا من را می شناختند.
البته شما درست است که ساخت و ساز محلی از ارزش ها از جمله ایده های عدالت جنسیتی و آزادی را هم تراز نیست و یا به اشتراک گذاری زمینه های مشترک زیادی با ما، و مواد مخدر ارز در اینجا است؛ من به این معنی نیست که نشان می دهد که طرف خوب و بد به heckle یا تشویق در وجود دارد. ما همه آدم بدها اينجا هستيم
چرا من اينجا هستم؟ شاید من فقط می خواهم علل از دست رفته، به نقل از یک شرور نفرت انگیز و عامل هیولا از ترور جنسی و نژادپرستانه از رفته با باد، یک شخصیت که با این وجود به حال برخی از خطوط بزرگ است.
این دنیایی که ما انسان ها برای خودمان ساخته ایم، ما را به خدمت قدرت و سیستم ها و ساختارهای استبدادی نابرابری و هژمونی های نخبه ای از وزن، قدرت و امتیاز شکل می دهد، بی گناهان کمی را به قهرمان شدن ارائه می دهد،
و همانطور که جورج برنارد شاو در پیگمالیون با شخصیت باشکوه پدر الیزا پیشنهاد می کند، نیاز به فضیلت برای کمک شایستگی، چه خیریه باشد و چه همبستگی عمل، یک دوگانگی کاذب است که در خدمت دائمی کردن قدرت نابرابر و حفظ نخبگان هژمونی است.
من یک اصل کلی را به عنوان راهنمای ابهامات در زمانی که ما باید به هر وسیله ای که لازم است مقاومت کنیم و زمانی که ما باید استفاده اجتماعی از زور را تحمل کنیم، پیدا کرده اند و آن را در دفاع از بی گناهان نیست چرا که این مکان بار اخلاقی قضاوت بر قربانیان اقتدار ناعادلانه است، و اغلب بی گناه وجود ندارد.
نه, آزمون من برای استفاده از زور است که به سادگی این; چه کسی قدرت را در دست دارد؟
کي خوب است که بد باشي؟
در فرمول نیچه، چگونه می توانیم هیولاها را شکار کنیم بدون اینکه خودمان هیولا باشیم؟
به این سوالات من پاسخ شکارچی را; من مرد خوبی نیستم، که برای به چالش کشیدن اقتدار ناعادلانه پیشی می گیرم، و نه ایده های مردم دیگر که فضیلت دارند، اگر قدرت ما را برای مقاومت در برابر شر از بین ببرند، به من علاقه مند است. من برای شما بسیار مفید تر از آن هستم،
، اگر شما در میان کسانی که در مبارزه با قدرت نابرابر درگیر هستند، نقض حقوق بشر جهانی ما و آرمان های ما به عنوان یک جامعه آزاد برابر که شامل یک دولت سکولار، آزادی، برابری، حقیقت، و عدالت، مذهبی و سلطه امپراطوری، زورگویی، ترور دولتی، دولت های کارسرال زور و کنترل، و فاشیستی از همه نوع است.
من مرد بدی هستم که طرف تو هستم
برای خودم، تنها چیزی که شما نیاز به کمک شایستگی این است که نیاز به کمک، و آزمون استفاده از زور و خشونت یک سوال ساده است؛ چه کسی قدرت را در دست دارد؟
من انقلابی هستم که به دست گرفتن قدرت برای او درباره خودمختاری و بازگرداندن تعادل است. من در کنار کسانی هستم که فرانتز فانون آنها را هر جا که باشد، بدچاره زمین می نامید، و من زندگی ام را در تعادل با کسانی که از ناتوانان و ناتوانان، خاموشان و پاک شدگان هستند، قرار می دهدم.
من پیروزی مردم افغانستان را بر امپراطوری امریکا جشن می گیرم حتی اگر این امر در حال حاضر شکل طالبان را بگیرد، و برای به رسمیت شناختن آنها به عنوان یک جنبش استقلال طلبانه مشروع و دولت افغانستان استدلال کرده ام.
اما من نمی توانم از فتح نسل کشی و تحریک یک گروه قومی توسط گروه دیگر حمایت کنم و نه نقض حاکمیت و استقلال هیچ دولتی که مورد ادعای دیگری باشد. اما یک مشروعیت است که هر دولت ممکن است ادعا وجود دارد; از مردم آن خواهد شد.
هیچ کس ممکن است با عدالت و یا حق طبیعی صحبت می کنند و یا عمل به نام دیگری بدون رضایت آنها; بنابراین روسو به ما می آموزد، و این اصل قانون طبیعی است که آمریکا را در اعلامیه استقلال تاسیس کرد.
چگونه باید به کسانی که ما را به برنده می کنند پاسخ داد؟
این ما همیشه باید مقاومت کنیم، فراتر از امید به پیروزی یا حتی بقا. و در مقاومت و امتناع از تسلیم شدن به اقتدار ما فتح نشده و آزاد می شوند، برای هیچ چیز نمی تواند از ما امتناع ما را از رضایت به حکومت، استاد، و به بر بردگی.
اجازه دهید ما را اجرا amok و غیر قابل اداره می شود; اجازه دهید ما را هرج و مرج، و آزاد باشد.
Torch of Liberty 