San Marino. Network: “What is happening in Afghanistan?”
“In August 2021 the United States army definitively left Kabul after having fought a very long and cruel war. The whole world was shocked by the return of the Taliban, by the cold-blooded killings, by the images of starving children and women victims of the Shari’a ”.
You write it on Network Movement in a statement.
“Then the war in Ukraine broke out and the Afghans were left alone to grapple with their ancient demons.
What is happening in Afghanistan? In the ’80s there was a bloody Russian invasion, then the return of the mujahideen, then the conquest of the Taliban, then the arrival of the Americans, then the return of the Taliban who took over again while the rest of the world ran away. Can similarities, and perhaps projections, be made with what is happening in Ukraine?
Afghanistan is historically defined as “the tomb of empires”. It’s really like this? From the time of Alexander the Great to the unfortunate military adventures of the Soviet Union and the United States, the country, while torn apart by four decades of almost permanent war, has proved impregnable or ultimately uncontrollable by foreign actors who aimed to control it. to condition regional developments in Central Asia.
Why are women slaves not only to their men, but even to the state and their religion? Why have peripheral communities remained anchored to medieval ways of life?
Thanks to the contribution of Angela Venturini, we will ask all these questions to Farhad Bitani, author together with the well-known journalist Domenico Quirico, of the book “Addio Kabul”. Farhad will be a guest of RETE on Friday 3 June 2022 for his latest work, at 5:30 pm at the Bar Galleria, piazzetta Titano (under the Cassa di Risparmio). Then copy will be available for signing.
Farhad was born in Afghanistan and lived his childhood and adolescence in the war, attending the Koranic school. Son of a general of the mujahideen army, he knew the comforts and wealth of the power classes, then the misery and hunger of the persecuted when his father was fled from the prisons of Kandahar, he was wanted by Osama Bin Laden and the mullah Omar.
Farhad’s life changed when he arrived in Italy to study at the Military Academy of Modena to be then initiated into a career in the Afghan army. But in Italy he experienced a “different” way of thinking and relating to religion, which will change his life and his outlook on the world forever.
Back in Kabul in 2011, he suffered an attack by the Taliban where he was seriously injured. Miraculously surviving the incident, he decided to leave his military career and his country to change his life. This period of reflection will give life to the notes and stories that will become his first, best-selling, book “The last white sheet”. And now this “Goodbye Kabul” with Domenico Quirico.
The book can be purchased directly upon presentation, thanks to the collaboration with the Cosmo Library.