Moral Injury and Haqqani

The Betrayal Just Grows Bigger

Howdy,

(Today, my BFF, Kate K, is taking over)

Veterans are suffering.  In many ways, one of which can be boiled down to one simple word: Haqqani.

Will has already spoken on this topic, but for those civilians in the audience, Jalaluddin Haqqani was an Afghan warlord and insurgent commander during the anti-Soviet war.  He later aligned with the Taliban, which set the foundation for the Haqqani network--one of Afghanistan’s most sophisticated and lethal insurgent organizations, which enjoys known support from Pakistani security elements.  

Poor Jalaluddin died in 2018, and his son, Sirajuddin, has since taken command of the Haqqani network.  His resume boasts several operations, including 2008 and 2009 suicide bombings at the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the 2008 attack on the Kabul Serena Hotel, the June 2011 attack on the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel, and the attempted assassination of former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai in 2011.  Given his record, the U.S. government has classified Siraj as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

He is also the Acting Minister of Interior Affairs in the post-2021 Taliban regime.  

This status affords Siraj immense freedom and protection, to such an extent that he recently held public meetings with the leader of the United Arab Emirates.  His glamour shot has been splashed across various media platforms for days.  He is no longer in hiding, fearful of American retribution.  Instead, he relishes his freedom, shaking hands and posing with powerful political figures in one elegant “fuck you” to the U.S.

So why does this matter to servicemembers and veterans?

Because of this text I recently received from one of them: “I sent men to their deaths trying to kill him.”

Valorous men and women lost their lives trying to protect this country from the threat of Siraj Haqqani and his criminal network.  Countless others have returned home, unable or unwilling to function in a world that boasts Siraj’s status as though he’s some legitimate world leader as opposed to a piece-of-shit terrorist with a taste for hunting Americans.

We’d like to be able to say that those who lost their lives fighting Haqqani did not die in vain.  But I’m afraid we cannot do that.  Not now.

We’ve grown accustomed to injustice in this country.  We’ve watched Black men and women die at the whim of the police, young girls who have been assaulted and must now carry their babies to term, and the crumbling of our own political system where the prime candidates convey more senility than savvy. 

But this is different.

This is personal.

Servicemembers have lost pieces of themselves—both literally and figuratively—on the modern battlefield that is Afghanistan.  They’ve come home fractured and incomplete, depleted from fighting a war we lost on many fronts.  

What should remain is their integrity and the faith that their work truly mattered and would be continuously pursued by the very government that first dictated the mission.

Instead, Haqqani walks free.  Without retribution.  Without remorse.  An incomprehensible outcome just a few years ago.

I won’t speak to the reasons why this might be so.  My singular hope for this post is that it sheds some light on the multitudes of ways in which military service can be cruel and punishing.  

So the next time you see Siraj’s picture in the paper, remember what he’s cost our servicemembers.  Those who so bravely fought, and sometimes lost, in the name of the greater good—only to watch Haqqani put up his own pedestal, where he safely remains.

Stolen valor, indeed.

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Global Friends of Afghanistan

We will publish our ninth episode of Shoulder to Shoulder: Untold Stories From a Forgotten War tomorrow.

We talked with our friends from Global Friends of Afghanistan, who had a lot to say about the Doha Surrender Agreement.

Have a listen:

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A Must Read

If you haven’t had a chance to read McKay Coppin’s Atlantic piece about NATO’s freak out over the prospect of a Trump victory then take some time this week and give it a read.

Fear of losing Europe’s most powerful ally has translated into a pathologically intense fixation on the U.S. presidential race. European officials can explain the Electoral College in granular detail and cite polling data from battleground states. Thomas Bagger, the state secretary in the German foreign ministry, told me that in a year when billions of people in dozens of countries around the world will get the chance to vote, “the only election all Europeans are interested in is the American election.” Almost every official I spoke with believed that Trump is going to win.

Until Next Time