by anand gopal
the afghanistan war told from the ground up, through three afghans caught inside it — a taliban commander, a us-backed warlord, and a village housewife (heela). gopal's argument cuts hard against the official story: after 2001 the taliban had mostly surrendered, but the us needed enemies to fight, so warlords fed it the names of their own rivals as "taliban" and settled private scores on the american dime. the war largely manufactured the insurgency it claimed to be fighting.
the essence
- the enemy was often invented. men who'd already gone home got dragged back into a war that wouldn't let them quit — the "war on terror" chasing targets that warlords conjured for their own ends.
- the war happens to the powerless. same lens as curfewed night — read from the floor of an ordinary life (heela's especially) and the geopolitics dissolves into what it does to a family.
- no clean sides. the title is the thesis: survive a brutal system and you're already compromised.
notes i took
- taliban — a pashtun name given to students who were students of the quran.
- how the taliban became a force of governance among the warlords of mujahideen. this is interesting.
the title, and the whole lens
there are no good men among the living, and no bad ones among the dead.
— the dead become noble in memory; the living are inevitably compromised by surviving a brutal system.
related
- books
- curfewed night — same lens: war from the civilian's floor
- anand gopal