On 14 May 2024 we enjoyed an unforgettably delicious meal at an Afghan restaurant in Pakistan’s capital city.
You are looking at the sign in front of it, in Islamabad.
Sometimes a sign “tells” an already well-informed viewer something significant that is not stated directly.
Consider the establishment’s opening date.
On Christmas Day in 1979 Soviet troops invaded the then “friendly”, then “Socialst” Republic of Afghanistan.
This was allegedly at the invitation of Afghanistan’s regime.
Its leader – who had executed his predecessor – was then himself executed by the new “puppet” leader, who was flown in from the USSR.
The invasion et al was billed as an “exertion of fraternal aid”.
It led to a “civil war” which lasted for more than nine years, involved a great many nations and delivered a cornucopia of unintended consequences.
Among them: the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of the Taliban.
The USA provided armed support to the Mujahideen; many of those “freedom fighters”, who courageously resisted the Russian invaders, would go on to become the Taliban.
The combined stupidities of both Soviet and US regimes, plus the malign efforts of a host of other “bad actors” laid the foundations for the rise of the Taliban, Isis et al.
The 1979-1989 “Soviet-Afghan War”, the American-instigated (post-“9.11”) so-called War on Terror”, the West’s botched exit from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s “success” have delivered to Afghan citizens a particularly rich yield of death, destruction, oppression, impoverishment and hunger.
It is impossible to arrive at a precise figure, but the Afghan diaspora currently includes something well in excess of six million people.
That figure would be enormously higher if all who desired to escape were able to do so..and if other nations’ borders and “hearts” were open to Afghan refugees.
Still, since 1983, one family who fled Kabul has been feeding Islamabad’s more affluent residents very well indeed.