The Taliban did not win.

But oh how they did not win is another story, one written in the blood of children. You see when they began to lose the army asked them to surrender and let women and children go – for the army pretended to have scruples in a time of war, and thus refused to shoot women and children.

The Taliban clung to their last hope in this shoot-out, the children became their human shield. They hid behind the children till the army ran out of patience and shot everyone dead anyway – even those officers who refused to shoot children.

Perhaps it was the only way, perhaps there never could have been rehabilitation for those brainwashed into religious extremism. The ones who made it out of that mosque and were sent back to their villages and cities lingered on uncomfortably in our thoughts, would they one day come back stronger and pose the same threat to us?

Why couldn’t the army have killed everyone?

What an awful thought to think. To watch young women and children piled into vans and sent home, away from the Taliban but to think were they hostages or accomplices? 

To have a part of you that wished them all dead. To think that whatever has been touched by this cancer can no longer be cured. 

They brought bulldozers to shovel the children’s bodies into the open sewers.

Trauma and Resilience II / Zainab Abbas / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Education Futures (2023-24) by is licensed under a