Our War Against the Pashtuns

“In any case, most of them are not really fighting for the Taliban as such, but for what they see as the defense of their country and their honor, and for revenge for relatives killed by Western forces. The apparently overwhelming US and Northern Alliance victory has however proved largely illusory in the long run not only because of the underlying strength of Pashtun numbers in the region, but because Pashtun conservatism has been re-energized by the US and NATO military presence itself.

Quite apart from the absolutely disastrous aspects of Western strategy and behavior over the years and the awful character of the Karzai regime we put in place in Kabul, the US and NATO “occupation” of Afghanistan has fed into an absolutely central premise of Pashtun culture, which is—in the words of a supporter of the secular and anti-Taliban Awami National Party in Pakistan—that “every Pashtun is brought up from his cradle to believe that to resist foreign occupation is part of what it is to do Pashto,” in other words to follow the honorable path of a Pashtun. “

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