The rifle that erased the last vestiges of Mr. Wahidi’s childhood is a byproduct of the past two months of alarm as a Taliban offensive swept across the country. Mr. Wahidi is one of the many Afghans who have been swept up in a militia recruitment drive as government forces have struggled to keep the Taliban at bay. These militias are not new, and have carried many names in the past two decades, often under the auspices of government ownership: local police, territorial army, popular uprising forces, pro-government militias and so on. But what has happened across the country in these recent weeks — championed by Afghan leaders — is a new mutation that many fear is an all-too-close echo of the way Afghanistan fell into civil war in the 1990s. “I hope peace will come to Afghanistan,” Mr. Wahidi said, quietly and as an afterthought, before slinging his rifle and mounting his motorbike, decorated with an Afghan flag.

Source: New York Times July 17, 2021 09:01 UTC