That kind of awe-inspiring “honor” is more respectable, while the “honorary murder” that caused the cruelty of women is abhorrent. However, these two “honors” are interlinked.
On August 15th, the Taliban army entered the Presidential Palace of Afghanistan. The picture of many soldiers posing together in the office reminds one of the scene of the American Sichuan fans attacking Capitol Hill at the beginning of this year. Both types of people are religious believers who are not convinced, and feel that they are the bottom victims of the global system. What they seek is not the reform of the social system, but the desire to build a conservative moral community.
In the war, the opposing sides are often very similar. The conservatives in the southern region of the United States advocate a “culture of honor”, and the “Pashtovari” values followed by the Pashtun fighters of the Taliban also revolve around honor and ethics; the former is derived from The hostile western pioneering history, the latter out of mountains beyond the reach of national power. Where there is no legal authority to arbitrate, people must always arm themselves to seek the “private order” in law and economics. Fighting for honor means that they will never bear the price of being violated.
However, there can be many kinds of “honor”, and people often have various conflicting opinions on the evaluation of the Taliban, which is also reflected in the different words of Pashto. The awe-inspiring “honor” (nang) that can not be violated makes people feel more respectable, while the “honorary murder” that causes the cruel murder of women is abominable. However, these two “honours” are interlinked, because men who feel that women are “bad”, “elope” and “indiscriminate” and kill them, usually feel that it is their “honor” duty to supervise and defend women. Equality makes them useless.
If maintaining this kind of personality is also one of the motivations for Taliban soldiers to fight, then it can be said that gender desire internally drives national and religious movements. The etymology of the “honor” (namus) of “honor murder” is the ancient Greek “law” (nomos). A better Chinese translation of this Pashto word is “honor” instead of just “honor”. It means “keeping the norms.”
Turkish gender theorist Tahinsuglu pointed out in the book “The State of Ethics” that the murder of women who have lost their ethics is like the ancient Romans killing the so-called “naked life” (Homo Sacer). Today, women on the streets of Afghanistan put on their headscarves one after another, which is also the result of the expansion of the “sovereignty of moral integrity”.
The root of “sovereignty of integrity” comes from endless hostility and a state of war. This situation has caused men to become models of brave and belligerent fighters, while women are forced to seek protection from men or become property that men compete for. Even if women can gain a position in this system, they will become a member of the violent system under the premise of the recognition system.
How can the vicious circle stop?
On July 14 in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, which is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, nine Chinese workers were unfortunately killed in a bus explosion. This incident has been found to have been committed by the Pakistani Taliban, referred to as “Bata”. For this unstable border area, Yao Yuanmei, a professor at East China Normal University, once described it as “the black hole on the border between Abbas and Pakistan.” In addition to the governance issues left over by colonialism, the United States began to support the jihadists against the Soviet Union in the 1980s according to Brzezinski’s plan, so it became the base camp of the predecessor of the Taliban; later, the manipulation of neighboring military forces also made the Young people in the region are more deeply trapped in the cycle of turning violence to violence.
The Pashtun protection movement that emerged in Pakistan in 2018 is not pursuing violence against violence, but reflecting on and dismantling the cycle of violence that Pashtuns are trapped in.
They demanded that political forces stop using Pashtun youth to achieve their goals, and called on the new generation of Pashtun men to stay away from the image of warlike violence, because too many men and women have fallen victim to this image. It’s time for a change, and peacemaking should be the true “honor” of the new generation of Pashtun youth.
