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This post will give you some background information about the Taliban so that you can understand their significance in The Kite Runner.

The Taliban emerged in 1995. They were thought to come from Sunni Muslim Pashtun students, intellectuals and disaffected mujaheddin (holy warriors). They were trained in madrasses (conservative Koranic schools) in Pakistan and eager recruits were found among the refugee camps on the Pakistani border. The Taliban is committed to fundamentalism, to implementing Sharia law and preaches basic Koranic values. When they took Kabul, strict Islamic law was immediately imposed, girls’ schools were closed and women ordered to cease working. The sixteen decrees broadcast on Radio Sharia in September 1996 outlying the prohibitions of the Taliban included female exposure, playing music, shaving, kite-fighting, gambling, dancing at weddings, playing drums and having British or American hairstyles.

In 1997 a Taliban offensive aimed at capturing the north of the country failed and anti-Taliban counterattacks on Kabul intensified. A civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance continued, but by the end of that year the Taliban controlled 90% of the country. They killed 4000 Shi’a Hazaras at Mazar-i-Sharif following its capture on 8 Aug 1998. In Jan 2001 Taliban officials cracked down severely on dress codes for women and imposed regulations which forced men to wear beards. The Taliban also virtually eliminated the huge production of opium. Despite worldwide protests, the Taliban forces destroyed unique historical statues, including the world’s largest standing Buddha in Bamiyan, some 135km west of Kabul, because they had been decreed idolatrous by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Read more -Taliban

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The poem describes a gas attack on a trench in World War One. The poem reveals to the reader the terrible consequences of a gas attack: ‘the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs’. It also presents the unglamorous reality of trench life, with the soldiers described as being ‘like old beggars’.

The Latin used at the end of the poem means ‘It is sweet and honourable to die for your country’, a concept Owen is strongly denying.

There is not a clearly defined structure to the poem, although Owen does make use of rhyme, mostly on alternate line endings.

The poem opens with a description of trench life and the conditions faced by the soldiers. Then comes the gas attack, and the poem offers a graphic description of the effects of such an attack.

The opening of the poem suggests Owen pities the state to which the soldiers have fallen. Instead of youthful, strong fighters they are ‘Bent double’, ‘Knock-kneed, coughing like hags’. Owen’s imagery presents the men as prematurely old and weakened. War has broken these men, and they are described in the most unglamorous, inglorious manner. Owen’s bitterness at this transformation is obvious.

Owen’s disillusionment with war is also clear from the closing lines of the poem. After describing the horrifying effects of the gas attack he addresses the reader:

‘My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie’

He is rejecting the accepted attitude back at home that serving your country in war is glorious. He is critical of the ‘high zest’, or great enthusiasm, used to convince men to go to war. He sees war as brutal and wasteful of young lives. His choice of the word ‘children’ is also significant; impressionable young men are almost lured to war by the promise of ‘desperate glory’.

I have put together this simple slideshow to give you some more information about the setting and the author Khaled Hosseini so that you will find it easier to understand the novel.

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon

A little animation for the Year 11 students who studied this poem. The music is from Pete Doherty.

It is Anzac Day today and I have added this video of an interpretation of Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth as it is a very strong reading of the poem.

I have added this to see if I could embed flickr videos but it is an amusing little clip.

“Have you news of my boy Jack? Not this tide.”
- Rudyard Kipling, My Boy Jack

Here is some homework for the Year 11 students studying Wilfred Owen. This Sunday on TV1 at 8.30 is ‘My Boy Jack’ which is the story of writer Rudyard Kipling’s search for his missing 17-year-old son during World War One. The video above features Daniel Radcliffe discussing his role and it shows clips from the film.

In 1914 England, patriotism is high in the early days of WWI, and writer Rudyard Kipling (David Haigh, Four Weddings and a Funeral) is one of its most eloquent and passionate voices. John “Jack,” (Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter films), Kipling’s only son, is underage, hopelessly myopic, and eager to join the war effort. Kipling’s outspoken American wife Carrie (Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City) remains more sanguine on the course of the war, and the fate of her family. My Boy Jack, based on a true story, tells of a nation at war, and offers an intimate portrait of one family’s complex and divided experience in it.

In September 1915, Jack Kipling was killed in action after being in France for only three weeks. Jack remained on the list of soldiers “missing believed wounded” for two years. The Kiplings were devastated; the effect of losing another child was incalculable. In 1916, Kipling’s Sea Warfare was published, which contained an emotional poem about his son Jack.

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he didn’t shame his kind
Not even with that wind blowing and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide,
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

To follow on from my last post I have put together a clip of images of Afghanistan which highlight elements of its landscape, culture and recent history.