Posted on Aug 15, 2022
A year on, the Taliban savor victory, while other Afghans pay the price
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https://www.npr.org/2022/08/15/ [login to see] /taliban-afghanistan-one-year-anniversary
"How beautiful is the spring of freedom!" exclaims elegant Pashto graffiti on a highway stop out of Kabul. The graffiti, in a Taliban stronghold, celebrates their forces' sweep into the Afghan capital in August 2021.
Now, a year later, the Taliban preside over a divided country with a battered economy, where hunger is rampant and human rights are assaulted; a country that aid groups fear has receded in the rearview mirror of the West.
Yet for the Taliban's loyalists and fighters, there is much to celebrate.
"This is freedom. This is real freedom. The invaders are gone, and now we have true Islam," says Ahmed Shah, a 40-year-old Taliban supporter.
After two decades of insurgency, the Taliban exhausted the world's most powerful military and their NATO allies, which agreed to withdraw from the country in a deal signed in February 2020. As Western troops were concluding their withdrawal last summer, the Taliban oversaw the rapid surrender, defeat or co-option of Afghan security forces — forces they saw as aiding a foreign occupation.
"How beautiful is the spring of freedom!" exclaims elegant Pashto graffiti on a highway stop out of Kabul. The graffiti, in a Taliban stronghold, celebrates their forces' sweep into the Afghan capital in August 2021.
Now, a year later, the Taliban preside over a divided country with a battered economy, where hunger is rampant and human rights are assaulted; a country that aid groups fear has receded in the rearview mirror of the West.
Yet for the Taliban's loyalists and fighters, there is much to celebrate.
"This is freedom. This is real freedom. The invaders are gone, and now we have true Islam," says Ahmed Shah, a 40-year-old Taliban supporter.
After two decades of insurgency, the Taliban exhausted the world's most powerful military and their NATO allies, which agreed to withdraw from the country in a deal signed in February 2020. As Western troops were concluding their withdrawal last summer, the Taliban oversaw the rapid surrender, defeat or co-option of Afghan security forces — forces they saw as aiding a foreign occupation.
A year on, the Taliban savor victory, while other Afghans pay the price
Posted from npr.orgPosted in these groups: 
Afghanistan
Taliban
Afghanistan Taliban
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 5
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And where families sell their baby girls into sexual slavery so they can feed the rest of their children for a few days.
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As a service member it's easier to feel contempt and scorn rather than pity and sorrow for Afghanistan. Part of you knows there are innocent families that just want to get by, girls who want to learn, women who want to work, men who want to raise families without being under the heel of oppressors. Yet you also know that while our withdrawal was total shit, their people rolled over and accepted it.
The Panjshir Resistance against the Taliban was dead before it started, the Afghan National Army completely capitulated, the government in exile was not supported, and the people either fled out of fear from a returned Taliban or stood there and accepted it.
They are a people who will mourn their losses but will also accept whatever boot that wishes to press on their neck. They are not a people willing to fight for anything better.
So in order to look on and not be broken in knowing that your brothers died there you do not look on in pity. You look on knowing that they allowed this to happen to themselves. No amount of time will change who and what they are, no amount of aid, no amount of education, nothing.
So for the blood of our brothers, and the treasure of our nation they threw it all away so their women and future generations can be eternally abused.
The Panjshir Resistance against the Taliban was dead before it started, the Afghan National Army completely capitulated, the government in exile was not supported, and the people either fled out of fear from a returned Taliban or stood there and accepted it.
They are a people who will mourn their losses but will also accept whatever boot that wishes to press on their neck. They are not a people willing to fight for anything better.
So in order to look on and not be broken in knowing that your brothers died there you do not look on in pity. You look on knowing that they allowed this to happen to themselves. No amount of time will change who and what they are, no amount of aid, no amount of education, nothing.
So for the blood of our brothers, and the treasure of our nation they threw it all away so their women and future generations can be eternally abused.
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Lt Col Scott Shuttleworth
Posted 5 h ago
Thanks Ice Cream man...Let's go Brandon!!!
--- -Derp!
Posted 5 h ago
Thanks Ice Cream man...Let's go Brandon!!!
--- -Derp!
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