https://nationalpost.com/news/world/cash-strapped-taliban-selling-tickets-to-ruins-of-buddhas-it-blew-up
The :matt-jokerfied: quote about how the Taliban fighters being forced to clock in at an office every day was the absolute victory of neoliberalism. By the end of this decade I predict that the Taliban will do a global propaganda push, not unlike what Mohammed bin Salman tried, to put forward a new "reformist" leader and court better relations with the west.
Imagine spending your whole youth training to overthrow the previous government and seeing your buddies dying for a cause, only to end up working in a poorly light cubicle punching numbers.
If you haven't since it already (I was originally linked to it from Hexbear), this article is a great read:
A large number of Taleban fighters have moved to Afghanistan’s cities since the movement’s capture of power, many of them seeing life in the city for the first time in their lifetime. These fighters, many of whom are from villages, had lived modest lives, entirely focused on the war. Their circumstances have changed entirely since the Taleban’s victory. Guest author Sabawoon Samim has interviewed five members of the Taleban who have come to live in Kabul, a city they had seen as being at the heart of the ‘foreign occupation’ with its ‘puppet government’ and a population degraded by Western ways. How have they found the actual Kabul and its people, and what do they think about having to earn a living for the first time, keep office hours and live in a city full of traffic and millions of other inhabitants?
They were talking about how they felt more free fighting and riding horses and living in caves than sitting in offices and wasting time browsing the internet all day
The Taliban being led by revisionists (but islamists) is one of the funniest things to me in the current world order.
It's morbidly funny how the Taliban "won" by facilitating the transformation of America into a security state and the US "won" by inflicting Neoliberal ennui on Afghanistan
For all of about a week, until she starts airing her opinions and libs realize she isn't a Westerner and instead has a mind of her own like with Malala who turned out to be a socialist (communist?) and called the Afghan invasion an occupation and has basically disappeared from the public eye cause no news outlet wants to talk to her anymore.
http://www.marxist.com/historic-32nd-congress-of-pakistani-imt-1.htm
Yeah Malala the based as hell communist. She's awesome and it's a shame the tools of the bourgeoisie defang her message so effectively.
Is this really any more depressing than Mount Rushmore?
At least the Buddhist ruins weren't destroyed to make a much shittier monument. Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe suffered not only the indignity of being brutally defaced, but of being defaced to blast and chisel the faces of slavers and genociders on it (and Lincoln, which we can say is equivalent to a rubble Buddha).
Both are still a massive cultural loss, of course.
interesting that the AP coverage is all about China's involvement, but natpost omits it
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-afghanistan-business-china-europe-3a5074c2043729df5d8f147d6aa0ee3d
edit - oh the AP article is from March 2022
