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African-on-African method of political resolution to be arbitrated years later at International Criminal Court. For our wars, see Collateral Damage. And don’t listen to those Armenians.
It has been almost four years since 47 of Taliban fighter Abdurrazak Yousufzai’s close friends and family members were mistakenly killed by U.S. bombs at a wedding party in Deh Bala, Afghanistan.
As the war in Afghanistan rages into its second decade, you might expect Yousufzai to be an angry, bloodthirsty Pashtun desperate for revenge against his family’s killers; but you would be wrong. Yousufzai, 24, recently turned himself in at a local police station in Jalalabad in his native Nangarhar province. He has offered his services to President Karzai to, as he puts it, “rid my beloved homeland of the terrorist menace.”
Mainstreamisms is the first international media outlet to speak to Yousufzai. This is his remarkable story, in his own words:
Mainstreamisms: Abdurrazak Yousufzai, thank you for taking the time to speak to us.
AY: In the name of God, most gracious most beneficent. It is my pleasure.
Mainstreamisms: Why did you join the Taliban in the first place?
AY: After the incident at Deh Bala, I was upset. We are actually from a nearby village. We were walking, all of us in the wedding party, to Deh Bala and stopped for a rest. This is when the helicopter gunships hit us. It was chaotic, very bloody. Many died. The bride was my sister. She died. Three of my brothers died. Many cousins. We have a big family, most of us were there. It was a bad day.
Mainstreamisms: That’s when you decided to join the Taliban?
AY: At first the Americans said it wasn’t them. But after they admitted that it was, and they thought we were terrorists, a local commander came to talk to me. I was 21, I was incensed. He gave me an AK-47 and promised me 10,000 Afghanis (roughly$200) a month if I joined him and his men to kick out the invaders and exact revenge in the name of my family and our honour. At first it gave me pride. I hardly did much, quite boring actually, I was just to keep my weapon and gather at an agreed location to fire at certain invisible targets from time to time. I myself prefer reading. So after a while my anger dissipated. Especially after I began visiting Jalalabad’s internet cafes.
Mainstreamisms: What happened there, tell us what led you to defect?
AY: Well first of all I need to thank my uncle, who was badly wounded in that mistaken bombing. He doesn’t have arms and legs now. I want to thank him because he always insisted on the value of an English education. He used to be an English teacher at a school in Kabul many years ago. So he gave me the tools to uncover the internet.
Mainstreamisms: Tell us what you read there…
AY: I would use some of the 10,000 Afghanis the Taliban commander was giving me to travel to Jalalabad and visit one internet cafe. Then another. On my first day I was so excited I typed “Afghanistan” into google but came across so many negative things about. I think I spelt it wrong the first time actually! (Chuckles) Then slowly, slowly, month by month I started reading many articles about my country and the global implications of the war. So now, I consider my time with the local unit of the Taliban to have been an aberration. A mistake that any young man might make, but one that needs to be rectified as soon as one attains wisdom. Which is what I have done now.
Mainstreamisms: What do you mean? You support the war now?
AY: My time memorizing the Quran in my village when I was six years old, trained my memory well. So I would remember everything I read on the internet on my trips to Jalalabad. For example, Thomas L. Friedman really opened my eyes up to the post-9/11 realities on the ground. And the necessity to oust the Taliban and get rid of Al Qaeda sanctuaries. He said: “Think of all the nonsense written in the press—particularly the European and Arab media—about the concern for ‘civilian casualties’ in Afghanistan. It turns out many of those Afghan ‘civilians’ were praying for another dose of B-52’s to liberate them from the Taliban, casualties or not.”
That really got me thinking. I realized my family may have died, while regrettable…my sister and brothers may have died…they died for a higher purpose.
Mainstreamisms: Who else were you reading?
AY: Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens as well, God rest his soul. Gone too soon. He was a powerhouse. Every word that I read, it felt like chains were coming off my mind. When he said:
“We are rid of one of the foulest regimes on earth, while one of the most vicious crime families has been crippled and scattered….I was highly impressed by the evolution of military strategy and tactics since the bombs-away inglorious days of the Vietnam era. Many of the points made by the antiwar movement have been consciously assimilated by the Pentagon and its lawyers and advisers. Precision weaponry is good in itself, but its ability to discriminate is improving and will continue to improve. Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect.”
Wow. Powerful stuff. And when you consider that NATO and the Americans are all taking the utmost care in restricting civilian casualties and collateral damage - and I as a Taliban fighter was a legitimate target…it made sense for me, and it makes sense for my people to be on the right side of history.
Mainstreamisms: But what did your family know about 9/11 or the geopolitics of the region? They were completely innocent.
AY: I ask myself these questions on a daily basis. Were they really completely innocent? When I consider how quickly most of those who were left in my village mobilized to join the Taliban, it tells me there is something wrong with us, structurally. As a society. What is wrong with our education system? The way we treat our women, it is appalling. I have also been googling some history. How many Sioux or Navajo are in charge of their own affairs in America. How many aboriginal Australians have won a Nobel Prize? This is important to realize. Sometimes the march of progress takes casualties, but often those casualties have themselves to blame for failing to fix themselves before they need the help of others to rebuild, rejuvenate and restore glory to their civilization for the greater benefit of all. Foreign invaders you might say. As a Pashtun, who believes in the hospitality of our cultural code Pashtunwali, I take it as a duty to welcome foreigners bearing gifts, knowledge, progress.
Mainstreamisms: But after ten years not much has changed in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion, if you look at the statis…
(Interrupts)
AY: That’s because the Taliban continues to want to keep us in the stone ages. Because of their so-called resistance.
Mainstreamisms: What about women’s rights? The Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation recently said: “In practice, the demands of extremist elements residing in the presidential palace, particularly those in the judicial bodies as well as the Afghan Ulema Council, always outweigh those of the international community,” and it also said President Karzai is endorsing legislation that cements women as second-class citizens.
AY: I agree that violence against women is in all communities in Afghanistan, among us the Pashtuns, the Hazara, the Tajiks… This is all the more reason for us to seek more western help, not less. Step-by-step. Did you see the Time Magazine cover with the woman with her nose and ears cut off?
Mainstreamisms: Yes.
AY: Time was right. This is what will happen if western forces leave Afghanistan. All women will be like this. If the Taliban wins…and their so-called resistance, which I am ashamed to have been apart of.
Mainstreamisms: But what about the resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s? Was that wrong?
AY: We are a proud people and communism was something else. That needed to be resisted. Besides, if we had turned fully red during that time, I read a paper on this in Foreign Affairs…then the entire hemisphere’s future might’ve been different. The Soviet sphere of influence would’ve extended.
Mainstreamisms: What do you mean?
AY: That would’ve been the end of free market economics and democracy, period.
Mainstreamisms: How?
[Long Pause]
AY: I’m still doing some research on that.
Mainstreamisms: Talking about being a proud people, how has your family responded to your defection?
AY: Well, most are dead, as I mentioned earlier. But they are martyrs anyway. The others who survived are either Taliban or Taliban sympathizers: I tried to test the waters by providing some of the rationale for the war, but it didn’t “fly” as you might say. But most are illiterate, peasant types. They only know that this is their land; any invaders who might’ve killed some of their family members need to be fought. Most, except my uncle, don’t even know who Hamid Karzai is, have never even been to Kabul, have never heard of Pakistan, have never heard the word democracy, they are Taliban and they don’t even know who Osama Bin Laden is too, can you believe it? Eh? It’s a little primitive… endearing too. Anyway, I decided to leave and hand myself in before any of them did anything silly.
Mainstreamisms: This brings up an interesting point. What do you think of Bin Laden’s killing?
AY: He got what he deserved.
Mainstreamisms: And as a Pashtun from the border area, who has fellow Pashtuns across the border in Pakistan, where there are Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek e Taliban), what do you think is Pakistan’s role in all of this?
AY: It’s regrettable that my people are still in this archaic, pre-nation state mentality. They know nothing of sovereignty or anything like that. Not only do they not recognize the border, many don’t even know there is one. Primitive, really. So they wander across into Pakistan and get themselves shot sometimes. Pakistan as a nation is duplicitous, I have read. I like that word. Did I say it right?
Mainstreamisms: Yes. But what about Pakistan’s sovereignty being violated by the U.S. with the raid and Bin Laden’s killing? What do you think of Bin Laden’s killing inside Pakistan without the knowledge of the government there? And the drone attacks?
AY: Hitchens, God rest his soul, said it best: “If the Pakistani authorities had admitted what they were doing, and claimed the right to offer safe haven to al-Qaeda and the Taliban on their own soil, then the boast of ‘sovereignty’ might at least have had some grotesque validity to it. But they were too cowardly and duplicitous for that. And they also wanted to be paid, lavishly and regularly, for pretending to fight against those very forces.”
Mainstreamisms: And drones?
AY: As far as I know they take minimal civilian casualties. Even less than those in Afghanistan. America should consider using more here in Afghanistan, they are probably the most humane instruments of war. And war is ugly, let’s not forget. If we had more unmanned drones over here maybe my sister would’ve still been alive. And my brothers. And my cousins.
Mainstreamisms: How did you react when you heard that the accused U.S. Sgt. Robert Bales shot dead at least 16 civilians southwest of Kandahar. President Obama called it shocking. President Karzai condemned it too. How did you react?
AY: See, great leaders condemn these things. I’ve yet to hear Mullah Omar condemn a suicide bombing in a market.
Mainstreamisms: But the act itself?
AY: I think a full investigation needs to be had first. Can we be absolutely sure these were 100% civilians? Believe me, as a former Taliban, it’s not that simple. Also, I think this guy might have some “screws loose” as you might say. Besides, think of this: You live comfortably in America. Where the weather is good, people are friendly, you eat what you want, do whichever job you want to do, you can act in movies or be a doctor or imam or astronaut, nobody is shooting at you, you can marry whoever you want - and then they send you to a place like Afghanistan for one, two, three years where it’s dusty, poor, your wife is not with you and people like the Taliban are shooting at you all the time. These things can sometimes lead you to become angry, make mistakes.
Mainstreamisms: Abdurrazak Yousufzai it has been a pleasure speaking to you.
AY: And you. Peace be upon you.
Not sure what it means. Could be a pen. Or some other inanimate object. Used in routine rhetoric by our leaders before rejecting talks with terrorist leaders by asking, “But where’s your Gandhi?” (After we’ve already asked “But where’s your Mandela?”) Unrelated to small Gujarati man who brought down an empire and forwent underwear reportedly because he believed in freedom of movement.
Tragic tale of Goldman Sachs and the three bears: Mamandreou, Papandreou and Babyndreou. Solution to nation’s economic woes as elusive as the G-spot it occupies in the PIGS acronym.
In this age of the powerful outlaw state; the rogue state; the failed state,
… In this age of occupation; genocide and mass rape.
These are strange times.
Drones thousands of feet high above,
Angels of justice and love?
Or scars on our collective conscience?
Bombing out all the paperwork of judicial nonsense.
These are strange times.
Suicide bombing and collateral damage,
Peace processes of carnage – can we manage?
Dictators who fell as spring becomes autumn.
Or as they say here, the fall.
Dictators who fell,
Dictators who fall,
Dictators who are still falling…
and dictators who foiled the feeble,
And their democratic fight,
With all the might that tortures in the night.
These are strange times.
Slick PR firms, slick oil spills,
Toxic sludge and Wikileaks,
Toxic poison for the whistle-blower who weeps,
Be careful of the slippery slope, but to where?
These are strange times.
In this age of “Laws” of War and whores of wealth,
Biological and chemical weapons of stealth,
That dance around the boundaries of legality,
Question our morality…
Threaten our perceived immortality.
Mortal quest for immortal glory.
Dystopian sunrises fight Utopian sunsets,
Fight to be our top story.
Compelled to fairness, equal airtime a must.
In us thee must trust.
For the elephant that crushes a colony of a million ants,
And the solitary ant that bites at the elephant’s heel, as he vents.
Moral equivalence reigns supreme.
X-Factor and Idols spell the egalitarian dream,
For the everyman and the creme de la creme
But no free healthcare for the poor man’s pain.
Lest Socialism reign.
“We’ll recover, it’s not too late,”
Say, cardboard men with paper hearts who speculate,
In chocolate skyscrapers on Wall Street
Glad for the temporary cold, but fearing the impending heat,
Meltdown, the price to pay for the holy grail…
But worry not we’re too big to fail.
Walls that hem in, walls that lock out,
Walls of class, walls of clout,
Walls of shame, walls without a name,
Walls that we want, walls that we need…
Wallpaper-themed lives we lead,
Of hashtags and the status update
Flashy tools that makes us love and makes us hate.
Apple man lives, Apple man dies,
Fruits of his labour forever chimes.
These are strange times.
Sorry to buck the trend
My activist friend
But your activ-isms have created schisms in my land
Reminds us of days gone by
As your ancestor’s ships arrived on our shores with the good book in hand
We are not obliged to match the size of the garments you cast upon us
™
We are not designed to conform to your fetishes
S&M
We don’t intend to bite the hand that feeds us
But forgive us
We may have lost our appetite a long time ago
You enter my dry windless summer
A land for you of infinite drama
Intervening, hunting for the killer in the wood
Strange that you should have such swings of mood
Forgive me for the bitterness swirling in my spleen
Your cash flows like our tranquil streams
Fulfilling the wildest dreams
Of our real tormentors
Our Kings and Queens
Send in the troops
In endless postcolonial loops
Like Black Hawk Dawn and Apocalypse Now
Let’s shoot some hoops in HD and together vow
Death to poverty, death to crime
Time to change the world one RT at a time
You raise awareness
But what of fairness?
Read, watch, click, send
In an over-saturated online wasteland
Millions and millions more informed
What if your history was deformed?
Yet still, my continent, to you a country
Welcomes you
Let the internet set the bounty
From ABC to ICC
Only because you love me
But if you love me, why don’t you ask me what I think?
Or do you fear that I, from the fountain, shall too deeply drink?
Sorry to buck the trend
My activist friend
But your activ-isms have created schisms in my land
Forgive me my beloved rebellious bird
Your voice, unshackled, deserves to be heard
But while you explore our forbidden fruits
Take me as an equal, from the leaves to the branch, to the trunk, to the roots.
Tonight, as I was on the way back home from work on Metro’s orange line, a pointless, minor punch-up broke out between two stupid chaps in one of the train carriages. The driver stopped the train and kept the doors closed at the Rosslyn stop, for about 10 minutes, until the police arrived. People were, expectedly and noticeably annoyed. Once thepolice arrived and sorted it out, the doors opened, some got off, some got on, we continued our journey. Then I got home in the dark, cold winter’s night…
If America was in the Middle East or Africa or Asia, this is how the incident may have been described by a journalist:
Even train journeys in the troubled country are filled with tension. As we arrived at the Rosslyn stop, where just a few steps away, above ground, stands the military leviathan Lockheed-Martin, a scuffle between two men in one of the train carriages. Hardly a month after the religious festival of Christmas, the possibility of slipping back into sectarian violence was the last thing that the people here wanted or needed, but it was difficult to say if religion played a part in the fracas. Rumours that both men were protestants, young and disillusioned in this country where unemployment sits at almost double digits. Both were known to have recently walked past the Occupy movement’s tents at McPherson Square.
The train driver immediately summoned Obama’s police. They arrived swiftly, at a Stalinist pace with Orwellian faces - and swooped upon the men, who were apprehended. Who knows if they’ll be seen again? Whether they might end up in the infamous “Guantanamo Bay” prison that has marked the past two regimes? The nervousness was apparent in the faces of my fellow train passengers, who refused to make eye-contact with each other, or me. The pain of two wars and an economy in free-fall has taken much from these people, but not their spirit. Underneath the grimaces lay a steely determination to change America, with many hoping that when they go to the polls in November, their vote will be expressed freely, counted fairly.
I reached my stop, and made my way up the steps at the station, watching a homeless man, reeking of urine, sitting casually on a broken escalator, asking passers-by for a quarter, even a dime. Sometimes humanity escapes this place. Nobody looked at him. The station today looked more run-down than ever, like an abused child calling out to the outsider asking for help after years of neglect.
I walked into the cold, and noticed that so soon after sunset, people were scurrying home. These streets may not be as safe as they used to be. An eerie tension, an awkward calm, an unofficial curfew seems to be imposed on this part of the capital. I crossed the road hurriedly, a locally manufactured car, called Dodge, appropriately, almost ran me off the road. On its bumper, a sticker: Bush/Cheney 2004. It’s clear that the people here want change - even if it means turning to the past, to chart their future.
In the distance an ambulance wailed, it might be a long night for medical workers here. I held my coat closer to me to avert the chill, hastening my footsteps to my apartment.
