Just yesterday I heard on the news that 80 people had been killed in a suicide bombing at a dog fight just outside Kandahar. It was said to have been the deadliest single suicide attack since the Taliban movement was driven from power more than six years ago.
It made me very sad and angry, as I am in the midst of reading a very fascinating and incisive book by Sarah Chayes, called “The Punishment of Virtue – Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban”. It seems that the Taliban, the name that instills fear into Pentagon officials and ordinary Afghanis alike, are still alive and well in Afghanistan, despite years of American rhetoric and miliary intervention.
This amazing book, by a very strong and inspiring ex-journalist, is set largely in Kandahar, a very signifacant strategic stronghold in a largely desolate and desperate region. It survived successive waves of aggressors sweeping across the high plains of the Hindu Kush, from Alexander the Great to Ghengis Khan, Turmalane, and more recently the Soviets. In between times a colourful culture grew and thrived. I was lucky to visit it in one of those “between times” – in the mid 1970’s – when I was able to witness a dog fight, at that very same place just outside Kandahar where 80 people were killed just yesterday. The news always seems to hit home harder, when you know the place, the people or both.
