Taliban Army Chief Rewrites Afghan Identity As His Own People Turn Against Him

Addressing a crowd of around 1,000, Taliban army chief Fasihuddin Fitrat claimed that the men fighting in the anti-Taliban fronts are not Afghans at all, dismissing their struggle as a staged, foreign-sponsored project and, predictably, blaming Pakistan. Take his argument seriously for a moment and watch it collapse under its own weight.

By that reasoning, Sami Sadat and Yasin Zia must have grown up in the lanes of Lahore’s Bhati Gate.

The record says otherwise. Sami Sadat is a Pashtun raised in Khair Khana, Kabul, who once commanded the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps in Helmand and today heads the Afghan United Front. Yasin Zia comes from Shakardara district in Kabul, served as Chief of General Staff and later as Acting Defence Minister, and now leads the Afghanistan Freedom Front. Both are Kabul-born, yet Fitrat brands them outsiders.

Then there are the commanders whose deaths Fitrat parades as victories, Akmal Ameer and Haseeb Panjshiri. Did they hail from Lalu Khait in Karachi? According to his own front, Haseeb Panjshiri had not left Afghan soil once in the five years before a Taliban ambush killed him in Salang. If these men were foreigners, why display their deaths as prizes? The truth is simple: Fitrat killed Afghans and now relabels them Pakistanis to bury his embarrassment.

The hypocrisy cuts even closer to home. If time spent in Karachi turns someone into a Pakistani, Fitrat qualifies before anyone else, since he went to Karachi for religious studies and joined the Taliban from there. Pakistan gave him an education, and he answers with fabrication.

This is the Taliban’s idea of a general: someone who manufactures nationalities on demand, who dishonours Afghan dead because his own countrymen are turning on him, a deceiver dressed in uniform, a coward hiding behind a microphone, and a buffoon with no answer for why Afghans across 29 provinces have taken up arms against his regime.

SAT Commentaries, a collection of insightful social media threads on current events and social issues, featuring diverse perspectives from various authors.

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