Part 3—Understanding Afghanistan: A story of two massacres
Read Part 2 of the series here
The Backstory
She/her. PhD researcher. Building something. Donate, support.
Part 2—Understanding Afghanistan: The ethnic minefields, and Taliban is not a Pashtun problem
Read Part 1 of the series here
The Backstory
Part 1—Understanding Afghanistan: The origins of the Taliban
Author's note: A few days before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I came across a tweet by Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary who noted (with a tinge of bitterness) that the Taliban’s past, present and future are all the same. This was in response to the militant group’s induction of sanctioned terrorists and ‘genocide perpetrators’ into the Afghan halls of power. In this series, I delve into the Taliban’s first foray into the country, the ‘who’s, the ‘what’s and the ‘where’s, contextualise it with an abridged version of Afghanistan’s history, analyse the complex ethnic dynamics that drive the country’s politics, and pose a number of questions: Is the Taliban really a Pashtun problem? How do we deal with the innate contradictions in Afghanistan’s governance systems in the national and local levels? More so, what can we learn from the Taliban of the past that we can hopefully extrapolate to a Taliban of the future?
The Backstory