The Peril Of Victory: Taliban Office Workers Regret Leaving Their Caves

What was it that broke the souls of American men? The frivorce-industrial complex, obviously, but there must be more to it. Even us never-married bachelors aren’t thriving. What other common denominator could… could there be…

[GunnerQ looks up from his computer screen at the beige padded walls, the overhead fluorescent lights… the no-pile industrial carpeting…]

Taliban Militants Fed Up With Office Culture, Ready to Quiet Quit

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By Simmone Shah, 17 March 17 2023

We all are, Mohammed. We all are.

Taliban member Gul Agha Jalali works at the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation in Kabul. Jalali used to spend his nights planting bombs, but since the Taliban swept back to power in 2021, hundreds of fighters have returned to school.

Progress!

Almost two years after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the jihadists who transitioned from the battlefields to paper-pushing government jobs in the city are ready to quiet quit.

Progress?

The Afghanistan Analysts Network, a non-profit policy research organization working to increase the understanding of life in Afghanistan, released a report last month…

We won. Holy Spit, WE WON!!! We DID defeat Afghanistan! The Graveyard Of Empires! Just look at that freshly spawned, soulless NGO grunting out useless reports! And I am so, so sorry that my government did this to you, men of Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan Analysts Network, a non-profit policy research organization working to increase the understanding of life in Afghanistan, released a report last month examining how the jihadists who took over Kabul—many of whom arrived in the capital for the first time—were finding city life and their new roles.

“Everything I learned about staff meetings, I learned in caves while waging jihad against Great Satan: kill the bureaucrats before it’s too late, and IEDs in the donuts never gets old.”

Researcher Sabawoon Samim interviewed five jihadists who had spent several years of their lives fighting for the Taliban. “They ranged in age from 24 to 32 and had spent between six and 11 years in the Taliban, at different ranks: a Taliban commander, a sniper, a deputy commander and two fighters,” Samim wrote in his report. “Broadly speaking, all of our interviewees preferred their time as fighters in what they considered a jihad.” Now, the men find themselves shackled with the bureaucracy of running a country as they work civilian jobs and security positions, spend too much time in traffic and on Twitter, and yearn for the tranquility of village life.

“The shift to working within government structures has forced them to adhere to official rules and laws they never faced before. They find ‘clocking in’ for office work tedious and almost unbearable, although some said they were now getting used to the routine,” the report states.

“We couldn’t destroy the Taliban, but office work destroyed the Taliban,” said one Tiktoker, reviewing articles and quotes from the report.

The former fighters found themselves missing the freedom of the front-lines as they adjusted to the mundane nature of office work. Huzaifa, a 24 year-old former sniper, said, “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.”

“In our ministry, there’s little work for me to do,” said Abdul Nafi, 25. “Therefore, I spend most of my time on Twitter. We’re connected to speedy Wi-Fi and Internet. Many mujahedin, including me, are addicted to the Internet, especially Twitter.”

And with a 9-to-5 comes the dreaded commute—and actually having to show up for the job in order to get paid. “What I don’t like about Kabul is its ever-increasing traffic holdups.” Omar Mansur, 32, said. ”These days, you have to go to the office before 8 AM and stay there till 4 PM. If you don’t go, you’re considered absent, and [the wage for] that day is cut from your salary. We’re now used to that, but it was especially difficult in the first two or three months.”

This illustrates one of humanity’s most severe failings: the ability to seize authority is not related to the ability to administer authority. I’m sure there are Afghans who are naturally inclined towards paper-pushing, but they were not the people who volunteered for years of hard living against a heavily armed foe… and had fun while doing it.

Time and again in human history, an evil or weak regime gets what it deserves; its ass handed to it by a conquest made possible by its own misconduct; but as soon as the winners gets comfortable, they find themselves without the skills or temperament to govern what was won. Options are few and none are satisfactory:

1. The new ruler can militarize the government, because a military is what he DOES know how to run; hello, temptations to Empire.
2. He can leave the conquered administrators in place and hope they either like him, don’t thwart him behind his back and/or aren’t the reason the last government failed.
3. He can pick reliable people who did nothing to earn power, to wield it. Aka nepotism.
4. Eunuchs, or other people who have little to gain from a coup.

I’ve seen all four be tried in the history books. All have been found wanting. Juntas don’t know how to produce wealth. Giving second chances to the defeated, hah. And bringing in your own rulers results, all too often, in usury and pillage. Which is not a drawback if the new ruler is sufficiently blackhearted.

The only solution is wisdom. Which is most often employed in choice #4. Humans cannot directly judge another’s loyalties, but we can judge whether a person has no heirs or other interest that would make a coup sound like a good idea.

Daniel 1 in the Bible has such an example.

Then the king [of Babylon] ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility— young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service… The chief official gave them new names.

Having the luxury of time, Nebuchadnezzar selected some of the conquered Elites for three years of training (and loyalty testing). Hmm… when you think about it, this implies that the Babylonian Empire was also a foreign-born, foreign-led empire like today’s GAE. I also know that GAE creates college programs and other paths to power exactly like Nebuchadnezzar’s. Is that coincidence, parallel situations or the Empire That Never Ended?

Kamran, a 27 year-old deputy group commander, longs for the simple life. “Now, when someone’s nominated for a government job, he first asks whether that position has a car or not. We used to live among the people. Many of us have now caged ourselves in our offices and palaces.”

The Taliban appear to have chosen #1. They are soldiers trying to be civilians. The effort is making them miserable. Take one guess what they’ll do when they’ve endured their last staff meeting… since they’ve already refused to put their stay-at-home cousin in the job. And are expert bomb-makers.

Put down the donut. Stay away from the donut.