The Taliban is an extremist nationalist group that in 1994 established itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Though that is the simplified version. The Taliban is a complex network of militant groups stitched throughout Afghanistan and Western Pakistan with unspoken ties into governments within the region. For example, the Taliban’s Haqqani network, or who the New York Times refers to as “The Sopranos of the Afghan War,” hold aggressive militant control over Pakistan with impunity at Pakistani solider checkpoints. Yet, they are not solely a military body. They run businesses and operate fluidly. When describing the Haqqani base in North Waziristan, Serial narrator Sarah Koenig says, “If you’re imagining a wild, desolate, inaccessible terrain, it’s not like that.”
It is safe to say that there are many misunderstandings of the Taliban. In the western world, they are what many recognize as terrorists. They are whom we send our men and women to fight against in Afghanistan. Yet, it is the “us vs. them” mentality that overlooks the political unrest within the Middle East altogether. Afghanistan is in the midst of a civil war of the interpretation of Islam. Meaning, though we tend to generalize the whole state of the Middle East as an extremist group targeting Americans, the discord is among the people in the state as well. The idea is put forth that some Muslims are considered to be more pure than others. With a history of government disputes between the Talban and the other rulers in the region, it has become the Taliban’s goal to go against their government and promote their idea of Islam.
Journalist David Rohde describes that from the Taliban’s perspective anyone who lives under the Karzai government of Afghanistan or Musharraf government in Pakistan are “nonbelievers and deserved to die”. “Because I wasn’t Muslim, I was impure” is what Bowe Bergdahl explains during episode four of Serial 2. To his captors, Bowe was considered dirty, unclean. At the small meals he was fed, he had a plate that was set aside for him-only Bowe could eat off of this plate because of his impurity.
However, in terms of culture, this idea that non-Muslims were uncleanly is a contemporary Islamic ideology. Bowe describes that one day an older man lectured the younger guards that they shouldn’t see Bowe as “dirty.” He tells the anecdote that explains that Bowe could hold a piece of bread in his mouth, and the elder would take the bread from Bowe’s mouth and put it in his own. “The profit taught to treat all humans humanely,” Bowe said quoting the elder.
I believe that many times when we think of the Middle East we paint a picture of savageness. We selfishly imagine these wild, desolate, inaccessible places when in reality it is composed of organized structures and detailed thought. As Rhode says commenting on the Haqqani network base, “this was a Taliban mini-state, that functioned openly, that repaired roads, and ran schools, and had some form of basic health care.” And from this, my current understanding of the War on Terror is that it is much more intricate than what is spoken about in the United States.
