Pray for Afghanistan
Dear Church,
The international community watched in horror as the Taliban reclaimed the whole of Afghanistan this week. Twenty years of efforts by the US government and the NATO allies to change Afghanistan from the cradle of terrorists to a law-abiding country went down the drain in days. It was a total shame to learn that 300,000 government forces were no match for the 60,000 Taliban resurgents. People worldwide could not shake off the lingering images of those desperately holding onto and falling off from the airplane taking off at Kabul airport.
How could the twenty years of blood and sweat evapourate in merely a few days? How could the government forces let their enemy have their way without putting up a fight? The international community was and still is in shock. American President, Joe Biden said that pulling the troops out of Afghanistan is the right course of action as “it would make no difference whether we stay another year, five years, or ten years.” He pointed out that it served no national interest whatsoever. If your family member died fighting in Afghanistan or came back alive but psychologically suffered from the effects of the war, what would you make of this pullout? What was all that sacrifice about? The US and the international community will suffer from this war in the years to come, especially if the Taliban-led Afghanistan harbours terrorists again.
Some blame the incompetence and corruption of the Afghan government leaders for the defeat. The former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, who cowardly fled to the United Arab Emirates with large sums of money before the Taliban arrived in the capital, is at the center of this controversy. He evaded his responsibility of putting his country and people first. From this example, no government soldier would risk his own life to save the country. The problem will only get worse from now on. Even though the Taliban authorities assure us that they will give women full rights within the limits of the Islamic law, we know how cruel their interpretations of the Koran are. Most likely, we are turning back the clock twenty years to when Afghan women were confined to their homes and lived like slaves.
Do you remember the infamous killing of a Korean pastor and his church member by the Taliban in 2007? Pastor Bae led a summer mission team when the whole team was kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip. We saw how brutal the Taliban could be. Let us not kid ourselves. The Taliban has not changed a bit. If anything, they have become more hardened in their ideology. The hard-fought victory of twenty years has given them all sorts of confidence in pushing forward their belief in the extreme form of Islamic rule. Afghanistan is just as difficult as North Korea when it comes to sharing the Gospel. We must not forget to pray for countries like Afghanistan, where extreme forms of Islamic ideologies rule.
May the LORD bless you.
Pastor Minho Song
