Karzai Rhetorical Analysis

On Friday, April 21, 140 Afghan soldiers were brutally killed in a rampage by the Taliban in the northern province of Balkh, in Afghanistan. The attack, one of the deadliest in the past two decades, took place in an army base and targeted soldiers who had just left the mosque after Friday prayers and were preparing for lunch. Though the official death toll has not been reported yet, a shortage of coffins has been affirmed, making some speculate the death toll could be as high as 200.

In a press briefing, former Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, condemned the attack, and said, “After this attack, I can no longer call Taliban as our brothers.” This statement is antithetical to Karzai’s policy of his ten years in office, where he constantly sympathized with the Taliban and attempted to negotiate with them. Karzai referred to the Taliban as the Afghan people’s brothers, and often painted a picture of the insurgent group as innocent children who had lost their way and needed their brothers’ and sisters’ to reintegrate to the society.

However, Karzai’s rhetoric was unquestionably lethal. While the government was pleading for negotiation and venerated the group, Taliban leaders consistently refused to negotiate. The group unfailingly kept burning schools and launching attacks that took the lives of thousands of innocent Afghan children, men, and women.

However, Karzai is not the only Afghan official guilty of this. Abdul Karim Khoram, former Minister of Culture and Information, notoriously known as a Pashtun nationalist, has repeatedly referred to the Taliban as “our brothers,” identifying with the group and even canonizing them. Numerous parliamentary members and several other ministers are complicit in this as