Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

The struggle against patriarchy and other oppressive structures has been sacrificed to the imperatives of a propaganda war. It is easy to forget now that through much of the 20th century it was not the “Taliban” or “al-Qaeda” that imperiled “civilization” and “freedom.” Until only two decades ago, communism rather than terrorism constituted an existential threat to the world and its people. Neither the New York Times nor the Reagans and Thatchers of the world seemed too worried about the Taliban then. As Reagan, referring to the forefathers of today’s terrorists, the mujahideen, triumphantly declared in 1985, “The gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” One should, of course, give those who acknowledge their mistakes the benefit of doubt. Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, among others, have reluctantly acknowledged that western governments are at least partly responsible for the phenomenon today called “terrorism.” These governments, it is claimed, will not abandon Afghanistan and the wider region again. The irony is that obscurantism has hardly been banished to the dustbin of history by the tens of thousands of NATO forces that have been fortifying Kabul and its environs for a decade, bestowing freedom and democracy upon the common hordes, […]