Warlords of Afghanistan
October 17, 2005 9:34 PM   Subscribe

Warlords of Afghanistan
Author and illustrator Matt Weems covers the usual suspects from both within and from outside this embattled country, as well as several figures not as well known. Oh, and you can buy coasters.
posted by mcstayinskool (5 comments total)
 
In a Hollywood movie Hekmatyar would be the evil foil to the heroic Masud. He would be an angry Islamic fundamentalist dressed in black, throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women and assassinating local tribal leaders that might rival his power. He would be the pawn of foreign secret service paymasters like the ISI, CIA, and Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. He would unfeelingly sacrifice peasants for his cause, rocket the helpless civilians mixed in with his enemies, and his ruthless ambition would prevent the creation of a new peace. Unfortunately, in real life Hekmatyar was all these things.

Beautiful.

By 1992, 20 years of civil war had replaced many of the old Khan families with warlords who abused the peasantry. When Mullah Omar heard about one of these cases, a local warlord who had kidnapped children for sex, he was moved to action. He gathered a troop of old mujahideen buddies and Islamic students, attacked the warlord’s compound, freed the children, and hanged the warlord up high for all to see. This kind of celebratory lynching would become a Taliban signature.

This was in Kandahar, which has retained cultural practices permitting men to have teenage boyfriends -- ashna -- before they get married. (cf. Lawrence of Arabia) The warlord allowed his soldiers to do this. Whether Omar's distaste was motivated by protection for children or distaste for homosexuality is between him and Allah, I suppose. Kidnapped is probably the wrong word; the analog is Thai parents who sell their similarly-aged daughters into sexual slavery. In one version of the story the clashes began with a falling out between commanders who were enamored of the same boy.

Kandahar comes out of the closet; The kandahar frolic
posted by dhartung at 11:00 PM on October 17, 2005


Nice crash course in Afghan warlords. I like the cartoons too. Thanks.
posted by Devils Slide at 11:59 PM on October 17, 2005


Thanks -- I've bought a set for my office boardroom...
posted by runkelfinker at 2:50 AM on October 18, 2005


Somehow I feel that I will not maximize the marginal utility of my next 15 dollars by purchasing the warlords of afghanistan coaster set.
posted by gagglezoomer at 7:16 AM on October 18, 2005


Excellent site, very well written and useful. Thanks!

I did notice that on the map page it says the Hazara are "of Mongol stock"; this is an oversimplification so extreme as to be misleading. The Hazara unquestionably have a Central Asian culture and claim to be descended from Genghis Khan's army, but there's not much evidence to support this, and if we took people's claims about their origins at face value, we'd believe the Pushtuns were the Lost Tribes of Israel.
posted by languagehat at 7:28 AM on October 18, 2005


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