The state of mind behind the inability to grant Afghanistan success

After our visit to Afghanistan, the articles in which we relayed our impressions here were published not only in Turkish but also in Arabic and English. As might be expected, they provoked rather different reactions. I had actually finished relaying my impressions, but the ways in which the articles were received also give us an opportunity to touch on some important subjects.

I say "as might be expected" about the reactions because what we saw and said was of a kind that would shake the commonplace perceptions about Afghanistan and the Taliban. Attributing ignorance and superficiality to the Taliban, for example, is a customary mode of perception. Stating the most basic fact it overlooks is enough to shake this perception. The Taliban consists of madrasa students, headed by very powerful scholars and educated people who have produced works. Attributing ignorance to them is nothing but an ignorant reaction to the fact that they look at matters differently.

On the other hand, the equation of Islamic violence and terror, which Western imperialists used to colonize the Islamic world, has been so effective that on the day the Taliban drove out the occupiers, it left behind a crowd running desperately behind the cargo planes of the fleeing US army, crying "don't leave us here." Yet the Taliban, to whom only immoderate and bigoted violence is attributed, made an extraordinary move the moment it took office, belying the fears and expectations of the whole world with the amnesty and social peace it declared. But who heard about this? Someone needed to say it and bring it to the world's agenda, because the climate of violence that the occupiers had caused over 20 years, killing millions of people, was cut off like a knife on the day the Taliban came, and since that day, that is, for 4 years, Afghanistan has been living under an extraordinary climate of peace, calm and stability.

We expected that some would be amazed and astonished at our account of what we saw directly with our own eyes in Afghanistan. Admittedly, there were also many people who were amazed and showed this mature attitude. But a segment did not refrain from displaying its super-orientalist prejudices against Afghanistan. It not only pretended not to hear our observations, dismissing them simply as "praise of the Taliban," but tried to devalue them.

Frankly, we owe praise to no one, neither to the Taliban nor to anybody else. But does it not deserve sufficient amazement to have been able to bring a country from 50 years of war, that is, from an environment in which everyone has a blood feud against everyone, to a clear environment of peace within a short time, almost within a single day? Making such a decision is easy enough, but is the success in implementing it in Afghanistan, a traditional society where blood feuds are perceived as honor, not a cause for amazement and appreciation?

And what about having cut off the production and trade of narcotics like a knife? In Afghanistan, the world's narcotics center, from the day they arrived, the whole narcotics world was destroyed by Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada's order of a few words: "The cultivation, trade and use of narcotics are forbidden." This too is among those matters that are easy to order but hard to implement. There are mafias, warlords, tribes that make their living from it. The Taliban authority has been able to enforce this order against all of them.

And that is not all: is it not a practice deserving sufficient appreciation to have rescued from this swamp and treated, within a short time, millions of Afghans who had become addicts, and to have found jobs for some of them? In so-called civilized societies, getting someone who has once fallen into the swamp of narcotics properly out of it is not even a possibility. In Afghanistan hundreds of thousands of people have been treated and rescued in a way peculiar to themselves, and given jobs as well. As our car moves along certain streets, an Afghan says: "It was not possible to pass along this street so comfortably before. People who had taken drugs would block our way from left and right with their weapons and knives and steal everything we had. Passing along this street like this now was unimaginable before."

A level of public order has been achieved in Afghanistan that has not been experienced in 10 years. You can travel to every part of Afghanistan now with the highest possible security. Even a woman can comfortably walk the streets of Kabul at night. This is a level of security unseen in the history of Afghanistan, and having been reached within a short time, this level has continued for 4 years.

Municipal services in Kabul have begun to be run at the lowest possible cost and with the highest possible quality.

There was a beggar problem; all the beggars were gathered, those whose reasons for begging were genuine were put on salaries, jobs were created for some of those who remained, and the others were told that heavy sanctions would be applied if they begged. Now you cannot see a single beggar in the streets. With its meager budget the administration has, within a short time, produced extraordinary social-state practices.

Corruption and public spending having been brought down to a minimum, a great deal of infrastructure work, irrigation canals, and huge investments in fields such as mining having been started; inflation having fallen to zero, the dollar, which was 130 Afghanis, having fallen to the 67-70 band, and a significant cheapness despite a low standard of living: these are developments everyone can see without any need for praise.

Moreover, in the meantime, Iran and Pakistan, as soon as the government changed hands, immediately began sending back to Afghanistan at least 500 thousand refugees from their own countries. In such a short time, without any foreign or other resources, they had to cope with this problem too, and they have not displayed a bad performance at all.

Our observations concerned many "unexpected" or never "attributed" successes of the Taliban, true, but does relaying its successes in certain fields amount to regarding it as flawless, faultless and perfect in every respect?

What is this fear of? Would it not be more correct to look at the psychology behind not attributing success to a Muslim country, and especially to the Taliban, who resisted the occupiers to the end, fought for independence, expelled them from the country and achieved complete independence? Might it not be that our view of them is precisely through the eyes of the imperialists whom we too know as enemies because of those they fought and who once occupied us as well?

Of course it is precisely so. They even harbor a bit of grudge against them for this. Perhaps they did as much as we could not. They did not go the way of agreement with the occupiers, they made no concessions to them, they made no concessions from their culture and identity, they did not adopt their occupiers' dress, culture and identity. Is it this?.. Perhaps...

Those who immediately declare us "praisers" because we made two objective observations about it carry the matter to another kind of officiousness: they put forward all the negative news they have heard about Afghanistan, true or false, and try to attribute contradiction to what we relayed. Yet it should not be so hard to understand: what we relayed from Afghanistan does not say that there is no negativity, weakness, poverty, wrong or backwardness there; what we have recounted is only what we have recounted, and asking about what we did not recount is another way of closing one's ears to what has been recounted.

Another typical reaction is the effort to position the Afghans against Türkiye, against Turkishness. Why do they do this, are those who do it aware of what they are doing? I am not sure. Most recently, on the basis of a news item about the demolition of the monument of the famous Turkish poet Ali Shir Nava'i, the Taliban has been cast in almost the full role of Turk-hater.

Let us say that the first source of the news was the British broadcaster BBC, so as not to leave you wondering what is going on. Because we have run out of space to tell it, but the details of the incident are of course not as told, and are very instructive. To be continued in the next article.