Fieldnotes on Humanity

It is 18 years after the September 11 attacks happened. I was in Dubai working for a used car company as an accountant. It was getting dark and we were about to close the gates to the garage. I walked inside the office, as usual, looking around what needs to be done at the last minute. The TV was on and it was on Al Jazeera Arabic channel. Back then, that was the only widely watched channel in the entire Arab world. I saw a plane hit the facade of a big tower and about 15 minutes later another plane hit another tower. I thought I was watching a movie. It didn't seem real. The clip was shown over and over and suddenly I saw from the upper part of the building smoke rises and later both towers collapsed. In my befuddled state I changed channels, and saw similar images. The Arabic channels and their commentators were speculating that Japan might have attacked the United States to take a revenge of 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some commentators were pointing finger...

Tonight, President Trump, announced his long-awaited strategy on Afghanistan . He vowed to work with Afghan government, to increase the number of troops and most importantly, to pressure Pakistan into ending harboring terrorist networks in its land. Trump's new strategy will ignite hope across Afghanistan, especially among young Afghans. Factually, this speech was by far one of the most important of Trump's speeches both historically and geopolitically. It is true that Pakistan is the nest for all sort of terrorist networks. Surprisingly, these terrorist networks are controlled and administrated by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI and the army. We all know that the ISI was complicit in harboring Bin Laden for years and we also know that the 2008-Mumbai attacks were carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist network based in Pakistan. Trump has put his finger on the pulse of the problem in Afghanistan. That is that the Pakistan must end its support for the Taliban....

In my previous blog post , I argued that Iran has not been successful in exerting its influence through the Hazaras in Afghanistan, despite its strong historical, cultural, linguistic, and religious ties with them. In this post, I will elaborate my argument about the extent to which some historical events, particularly during the Taliban regime contributed to Hazaras’ awareness, which eventually led to changes in their attitudes and their political behavior toward Iran. In the next blog post I will review some opposing arguments, but first, let me straighten out why this political divorce have happened and why the Hazaras are mistrustful of Iran. To find an adequate reason to why Hazaras refused and warded off Iran’s infiltration and noxious intention of fueling anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan, we have to look at some historical events that led to such drastic changes. In November 1998, when the Taliban force took over the city of Mazar-e Sharif for the second time, the chau...