Spare a Thought for the Taliban

The Taliban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place, behind a desk and a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week, […] Life’s become so wearisome; you do the same things every day.

Thanks to regular Reader S for drawing our attention to this singular article about the Taliban, who, as consumers of NEWS will know, recently took control of the city of Kabul.

They promised to liberalise (or perhaps urbanise) their values and practices when it came to, say, the treatment of women, but they have instead behaved like a bunch of jerks as you might imagine.

A funny thing, though, is that some of the former Jihadi fighters who once spent their days doing target practice or scanning the open skies for American drones, now have to waste away at computers in order to run the city.

And they don’t like it.

Abdul Nafi, 25, a fighter now working as an executive director in the government, said he had to learn how to use a computer for his new job […] Yet there isn’t much work for him to do, and so he spends most of his time on Twitter, he told [a researcher]. “We’re connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujaheddin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter,” he said.

It’s easy to laugh because Westerners are quite used to gawping into computer screens and dreaming about escape. But these chaps have lived vigorous rural lives in service of something they see as valuable. (Even if that happens to be the pointless and barbarous promotion of Sharia law.)

So let’s not be without sympathy. I say “spare a thought for the Taliban” while they struggle to adapt to office life, which is apparently even worse than sleeping rough in hills of Afghanistan.

If anyone knows a Taliban, please buy them a copy of The Good Life for Wage Slaves or I’m Out.