Can the Taliban womb produce better than Haibatullah?
Author: Mohammad Moheq, Analyst (Afghanistan)
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Now the question is: can the womb of the community called the Taliban produce a better leader than Hibatullah? Will the intelligence services - nannies from near and far, who pour millions of dollars into Taliban mouth every week, finally help him give birth to a child who will at least produce someone like Abu Mohammed Jolani? Or is such a hope based on illusions and even a painful caesarean section can only bring out an imperfect creature and the hard work of the midwives is wasted?
Finding a clear answer to these questions is difficult, but you can get a clearer picture by putting the puzzle pieces together. The emergence of someone better than Haibatullah among the Taliban requires preconditions, which I will discuss.
First, a different understanding of the world. A person who thinks like Haibatullah, that is, who divides the world into two camps - black and white or good and evil - and considers himself the leader of the white and good, and all forces and groups alien to him - black and evil, he still lies in the womb of the "Haibatullah ideology" - and does not enter the real world, which is much more extensive and colorful, and cannot understand the world differently. All ideologies are narrow wombs, and because of this, their followers cannot see the world as it is. We have not yet seen anyone among the Taliban who would talk about the diversity of society and show their awareness of the world's diversity.
Achieving such an understanding requires recognizing the "other", which is accepting otherness. The group that has built its work based on bay'ah (demanding allegiance) from others and blind obedience to its mindless leader has not yet believed in the humanity of others but considers everyone as sheep who must quietly and calmly "listen and obey" the instructions of the shepherd of the flock.
Some of the leaders of this group, who have gone with the help of the secret services to Dubai, Qatar, and Moscow, and some who secretly go to Shanghai, Delhi, and other places, see with their own eyes what the world has come to and how great the difference is between them. But this side of the issue is not important to them. Not even one of them dares to stop and seriously think for a moment that people have not achieved these successes because of murders and suicide bombers, and that a better way should be found than to be proud of suicide battalions!
Even some of them, who act more wisely and sometimes cautiously, say that girls have the right to study. However, analyzing the world situation, they conclude that there are two superpowers in the world - one is the USA, and the other is the Taliban! Can he, who breathes aid money, come to a different understanding of the world with such a crude and childish rationality?
Walking at the foot of the skyscrapers of Dubai and Doha, they say to themselves: "Look at the power of God, we who were in schools yesterday and had to go from one gate to another to collect bread for the night, are now sitting at the same table with the Arab billionaire emirs."
This trembling is precisely the knot that cannot be untied in their closed minds and does not diminish anything from the stupidity that has taken hold of them. It makes them stronger in their fanaticism and narrow-mindedness and in the blessing of jihad and martyrdom through which they have attained such grace. They are sure that they will be able to climb with these cans of nasvar on the modern towers of the world and take a diplomatic photo in this shirt and shalwars, which is not a sign of any civilization in history. They only become more inspired by jihad and suicide.
Secondly, for a different personality to emerge, it is not enough to have a different understanding, it is necessary to have enough courage. In all groups affected by ideological fanaticism, from the Soviet Communist Party in Stalin’s time to the Nazi Party in Hitler’s Germany to the Chinese Communist Party in our time to the “velayat-e faqih” system of Iran, there have always been those who believed in the fallacy of the ruling ideology and the ignorance of the regime’s leaders and who were aware of the destructive nature of their policies, but who lacked the courage to oppose them.
In Iran, Mohammad Khatami was much wiser than the so-called moderate elements of the Taliban and much more educated than them, and he was able to raise the slogan of Iran for all Iranians and promise the people better days. But his courage against tyranny culminated in the publication of Tradition and Thought under Authoritarianism, and no further. And now, several decades later, this country is facing even more bitter and dark times and mourning its lost days.
Unlike Khatami, in China Deng Xiaoping dared to oppose Mao Zedong's policies and as a result, lost power and went into exile for several years, but eventually, he became the spark of reform in that country, which later emerged from the shadow of Mao's policies. Otherwise, if these policies had continued, there would not even be a mouse to eat in this country today.
If there are those in the Taliban who think differently from Haibatullah, they should clarify their line of discourse at least as much as the reformists of Iran, even if they have no more courage than Khatami, they should be prepared to face house arrest like Hotami or, like Xiaoping, go into exile. If signs of these two characteristics appear in some Taliban, then we can hope that this community has reached the border of birth and will emerge from the cramped womb of Haibatullah into a more spacious world. Any hope without reliable evidence is naive optimism, even if experienced politicians fall for it.
There are other cases for comparison and understanding of the issue which I will skip so as not to prolong the discussion. Otherwise, I would have to explain what harm school education, especially of the Deobandi type, brings to the mind and psyche of man, how it blinds the sources of human perception, and how its natural product is "serving the command of good and forbidding evil." They cannot even think about why the world today praises Mohammad Jolani for his deeds but criticizes them.
