Living with Killing

general audience.
The fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021, was meant to mark
the end of the war in Afghanistan. More than 3,500 troops
from the NATO-led coalition died in the conflict, together
with some 46,000 civilians and almost 70,000 Afghan
soldiers and police. The victors were the Taliban, a non-state armed group that used insurgent tactics including
assassinations, suicide bombings and kidnappings to
achieve success. Its leaders framed this extreme violence
as a triumph of good over evil, belief over unbelief,
ideology over ambiguity. On their terms, they had fought a
just war

My research project will examine the personal weight of
this public narrative from the perspective of men who killed
on behalf of the Taliban. Using extended semi-structured
interviews with insurgents, I will create life histories of
Taliban militants involved in killing at different stages of
the perpetration process: propagandists, logisticians, foot
soldiers and commanders. Through these life histories, I
will examine how moral injuries and wounds of the soul
including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and
perpetration induced trauma have impacted non-state
armed actors in one of the most significant wars of the
early twenty first century. Whether or not religious belief
and ideology mitigate feelings of guilt and shame within
the Taliban will be one of the key questions I aim to
answer.