A former Taliban envoy taught me a valuable lesson one day. As we sat in an academic institution in a European capital, he told me his story, or perhaps it was somebody else’s story, but it was representative of the story of his people, living in large extended families in rural areas with minimal facilities and entrenched poverty. A bomb was dropped by a plane on his village one day, he said, killed all of his immediate and extended family members, parents, siblings, aunts, cousins, the whole lot. Desperate, depressed, and raised on a culture of revenge as duty, what could he do, he asked?
He was referring to Pashtunwali, the tribal moral code and rules of behaviors, based on principles such as Turah (courage and bravery and defense of land, property, and family), Nyaw (justice), Nang (honor), Badal (revenge) and Awyaar (pride) but also Melmestia (hospitality), and Nanawatai (forgiveness or giving asylum). Nanawatai could in principle be used to offset the tradition of revenge, but the bomb from high up on the sky, and sometimes from an unmanned drone, rendered obsolete the axiom of looking into the eyes of the enemy while forgiving or settling the score. What could such a person do but pick up arms, asked the former Taliban?
I could think of many other ways to respond to such a personal horror than bombing others’ extended families and committing suicide attacks that inevitably killed many civilians, including schoolchildren. But underlying the question of this Taliban sympathizer was really another more valid query: Having witnessed such a devastating personal loss, no matter who started the war first, how could one avoid the seed of hatred from being planted in one’s heart?
