Afghan Commentary Post

  By Wahab Raofi   Pakistani warplanes have recently struck villages in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, near the border. Civilians were reported killed. Kabul called it aggression; Islamabad described it as retaliation against Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan militants operating from Afghan soil. The Taliban denied it. Neither side agreed on the facts, let alone a remedy. This was not a new argument. It was the same argument the two countries have been having, in varying registers of violence and diplomacy, since Pakistan’s creation in 1947. At the center of it sits the Durand Line—a roughly 2,640-kilometer mountainous frontier drawn by the British colonial administrator Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893, dividing Pashtun populations between what are now Pakistan and Afghanistan. For over a century, Afghanistan has refused to formally recognize it. Pakistan has never agreed to renegotiate it. In the gap between those two positions, people die. The ethnic argument—and its limits ...

  The Pundit’s Free Ride: How Media Cheers War Then Walks Away On the first days of a war, confidence comes cheap. Precision strikes are called decisive. Deterrence is declared restored. Early success is treated not as a moment to question assumptions, but as proof that the assumptions were right all along. Weeks or months later, the tone shifts. Progress becomes uncertain. Objectives blur. Casualties mount. And some of the same voices that welcomed the opening salvos begin to hedge, then to distance themselves. What was framed as strategic clarity is recast as miscalculation. Questions emerge—about purpose, planning, and exit strategy—that might have been asked before the first strike. This pattern is not new. But it is visible again. Consider a model case. Imagine a conflict beginning on February 28, 2026. Early reports emphasize speed and precision. Much of the commentariat responds in kind. Gerard Baker , editor-at-large of The Wall Street Journal , captures the mood: “You ...

  The Pundit’s Free Ride: How Media Cheers War Then Walks Away On the first days of a war, confidence comes cheap. Precision strikes are called decisive. Deterrence is declared restored. Early success is treated not as a moment to question assumptions, but as proof that the assumptions were right all along. Weeks or months later, the tone shifts. Progress becomes uncertain. Objectives blur. Casualties mount. And some of the same voices that welcomed the opening salvos begin to hedge, then to distance themselves. What was framed as strategic clarity is recast as miscalculation. Questions emerge—about purpose, planning, and exit strategy—that might have been asked before the first strike. This pattern is not new. But it is visible again. Consider a model case. Imagine a conflict beginning on February 28, 2026. Early reports emphasize speed and precision. Much of the commentariat responds in kind. Gerard Baker , editor-at-large of The Wall Street Journal , captures the mood: “You ...

  When the Next World Crowds Out This One In many conservative Muslim societies, people are taught from an early age to prioritize the afterlife over the present world. While belief in the afterlife is a central part of Islam—and has inspired extraordinary acts of charity, patience, and moral discipline—an excessive focus on it can become harmful. In some contexts, belief in the afterlife has not merely guided moral life; it has been used to shut down inquiry, justify stagnation, and protect existing power structures. It can discourage curiosity, suppress new ideas, and drain the intellectual energy societies need to progress. The question, then, is not whether Muslims should believe in the afterlife, but whether that belief has, in certain contexts, been used to foreclose questions that urgently need answering. Growing up in Afghanistan, I often heard a familiar response when people questioned why Western countries enjoy better living conditions: “This world belongs to non-belie...

  I am proud to announce the release of my latest book, Afghanistan 2028, now available on Amazon Kindle. Below, I share the Author’s Note, detailing the vision and personal journey that led me to write this story. Why I Wrote This Book The Story Behind the Story It began with a simple question. At a neighborhood coffee shop, a man about my age — a college professor named Jak — leaned across the table during our conversation and asked: "Why does Afghanistan keep falling, state after state?" I drove home that evening turning the question over in my mind. So much has already been written about Afghanistan's past — its wars, its wounds, its endless postmortems. So I decided to do something different: instead of looking backward, I would write a proposal for the future. A roadmap to break the cycle. And I would tell it not as a dry academic lecture, but as a Socratic dialogue. Who am I to write it? I was born in Afghanistan and left following the Soviet invasion in 1983. Sinc...

    Why I Don't Want to Live in My Native Afghanistan Because My Mind Is Not My Own — It Belongs to the Tribe   Wahab Raofi My uncle, a retired doctor, once told me about a patient who came to him complaining of a rash on his back. A closer examination revealed the cause: a colony of lice had taken hold in the skin, feeding quietly, invisibly, for who knows how long. The image never left me. Not because it was grotesque — though it was — but because it raised a question I couldn't shake: can something just as parasitic, just as hidden, colonize the human mind? I believe it can. I call them the lice of the mind. These are the thoughts, beliefs, and identities implanted in us before we are old enough to examine them — by our parents, our communities, our religions. Like lice, they are introduced early, burrow deep, and become so entrenched that by the time we notice them, removal is painful and often resisted. Unlike lice, we rarely even recognize them as forei...