"It's too cold to Jihad" When I read this statement in the article "What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban" by Ian Fritz, It was impossible for me to picture it as a joke between 2 friends who can sometimes be as lazy as I get in winters. Infact, it was impossible for me to digest the whole article in first read. And I wonder why? Maybe because the media has imprinted such an image of Taliban in our heads that our minds refuse to see them as human beings. But if we squint our eyes enough, thay seem like any other organisation of people, who have their own beliefs, true or not, just like if we squint our eyes enough, the line between a religion and a cult blurs. And just like any other organisation, they have a hierarchy of people, where the bottom ones are the most ignorant and delusional, who are sacrificed first on a rainy day, for a purpose that is supposedly much bigger than themselves.
Their perspective
When we are young and naive, we constantly seek for a purpose in life. We are high in energy and yet lost in path. And when at such an influential age, we come across something that adds value and purpose to our life, we grab it with all your might. That is how people are recruited to cults. Now add a big spoon of pluralistic ignorance to it, and you get the perfect recipe for Taliban recruitments.
Be it flat earth believers, illuminati believers or Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, because science and the masses don't believe in them, they are dismissed by the world as a group of ignorants. But to them, it is their whole lives. They have invested their youth and happiness in something with a hope that they'll be rewarded in their afterlives.
Root of the problem
When I wondered a little more, I found myself asking what is the root cause of it all. And as can be clearly seen from the above analysis of their perspective, it is ignorance. And if you dive a little deeper, the reasons for ignorance are lack of education, no exposure to the outer world and a simple case of narrow-mindedness. If you keep hearing something is right from the day you are born, you start internalising it and when you grow up, you refuse to believe that there can be an alternative truth.
Solutions
For the past two decades the US has put financial and military pressure on Afghanistan and yet, as soon as they withdraw their troops, the Taliban re-captures it. This shows that whatever progress they had done was in no way a sustainable for a peaceful Afghan. The best solution could be spreading literacy and awareness and increasing employment, specially among youngsters, who are most prone to talibani recruitments. This is definately not a solution that shows results fast or is easy in implementation, but whatever impact it makes, it is long lasting and has huge impact. For every teenager not involved with Taliban, there is a family living a peaceful life with a hope for a better future.