Stop Chasing the Past and Start Building the Future?

-

 

Over the past few days, social media has once again been consumed by arguments over history. Who killed Sardar Daoud Khan? Who poisoned Amir? Who was responsible for the death of Hafizullah Amin? And who did what a century ago?

I want to be careful here, because history matters, and these are not trivial questions. Understanding what happened, and why, is part of how a society learns from its mistakes and holds power accountable. My concern isn't that we ask these questions. It's that we seem to only ask these questions — the same accusations, recycled every few months, rarely moving an inch closer to resolution, and almost never followed by the harder question: now what?

Watching one of these threads unfold this week, a man in his sixties and a young university student were trading the exact same arguments their fathers likely traded thirty years ago — same accusations, same certainty, same dead end. Neither walked away from the conversation with anything new. Neither will look up next week and ask what to do about the schools in their own city.

That's the pattern I want to name: we relitigate the unchangeable past with more energy than we discuss the changeable present. How much longer will we keep chasing our own tails, while neglecting the conversations that could actually shape Afghanistan's future?

Imagine if even a fraction of that energy went instead toward questions like: What would it take to get more girls back into classrooms in a given province? What does a functioning judiciary look like given the constraints we're actually operating under? How do we build economic opportunity for a generation that has known almost nothing but instability? These aren't easier questions. But they're ours to actually work on, and arguing about them moves something forward. Arguing about who poisoned whom in 1979 does not.

Instead of asking only "Who was responsible?" — we should also be asking "What is my responsibility today?"

Part of what keeps us stuck, I think, is a habit of conversation where questioning an elder, a leader, or a long-settled narrative is treated as disrespect rather than as a normal part of thinking. I've watched a young person raise a reasonable question about a widely accepted account of events and get shut down — not with a counter-argument, but with silence, or a version of "that's not for you to question." That habit is small in any single instance, but it adds up to a culture where very few ideas ever get pressure-tested, including the ones that badly need it.

We don't need to abandon history to fix that. We need to add something alongside it: a willingness to challenge assumptions, follow evidence, and treat disagreement as useful rather than disloyal.

That is why I've made a personal commitment to publish at least one article every week focused on where we go from here — not instead of history, but in addition to it. To me, that's what a space like Facebook should be used for: not just airing opinions about the past, but building the habit of thinking together about the future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iran's war on Afghan Refugees

-
Image
    Iran’s War on Afghan Refugees: An Unfair Scapegoating Strategy By Wahab Raofi   Human beings are members of a whole In creation of one essence and soul If one member is afflicted with pain Other members uneasy will remain If you have no sympathy for human pain The name of human you cannot retain n   Saadi Shirazi, Iranian poet   In the aftermath of the 12-day Iran-Israel war, Iranian authorities have launched a quiet campaign of terror — not against an external enemy, but against their own people,” Karen Kramer wrote in The New York Times . What remains largely untold, however, is that the regime’s crackdown falls disproportionately on Afghans residing in Iran. Much like Nazi Germany, which scapegoated Jews to deflect blame for its own internal failures, the Iranian regime targets the most vulnerable — poor and defenseless Afghans — whether they live legally in Iran or seek refuge from turmoil. This form of collective punishment no...
Read more

Taliban's Illusion of Exceptions

-
Image
  The Taliban’s Illusion of Exception. On August 16, the Taliban mark their so-called “victory day” in Afghanistan. They present themselves as an exception to Afghan history, claiming permanence where others failed. Yet the history of this land tells a different story — one in which rulers, no matter how powerful, are ultimately forced to flee. Nearly two centuries ago, on August 3, 1839, Amir Dost Mohammad Khan abandoned Kabul and fled north toward Bukhara. His flight came after the British, fearing his growing ties with Russia, backed his rival Shah Shuja and marched him into Afghanistan with British forces. Kabul fell, and Dost Mohammad had no choice but to escape. His downfall was not only a matter of battlefield defeat but also the result of great-power politics and internal weakness — forces that have toppled Afghan rulers again and again. Shah Shuja himself did not escape this fate. On April 5, 1842, he was killed while trying to flee the country by supporters of Wazir Akb...
Read more

Surprisingly, I Was Wrong Not to Vote for Trump

-
  A shorter version of this piece appeared in The Washington Post. This is the full version.     By Wahab Raofi I am a registered Republican. And like many others, I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. His tone and rhetoric alarmed me. He said things that sounded extreme — like letting Europe defend itself, raising tariffs, or threatening to deport immigrants en masse. I feared the worst. But in hindsight, much of what Trump actually did — particularly in his foreign policy — has turned out to be effective. As Bret Stephens of The New York Times wrote, Trump may go down as a “surprisingly successful president.” He achieved what others only talked about. NATO’s European members and Canada began spending more on defense — something past U.S. presidents asked for, but too politely. Rather than dismantling the transatlantic alliance, as his critics feared, Trump arguably reinvigorated it. Realizing my mistake set me to thinking. Much of my adult life has been consumed...
Read more