Hopeless

Barbaric and primitive to the point of surrealism.

There is a new weapon in Afghanistan's dog-eat-dog war. It is invisible and omnipresent. The Afghan intelligence service, NDS, has authorized the use of firearms against the force of this weapon, but this has already led to deaths. In their Friday sermons, the imams condemn it as a diabolical instrument of infidels.

It is the number 39.

From Herat in the west, through Kabul and all the way to Kunduz in the north, it is a number associated with prostitution and evil. Car dealers, who always sell vehicles complete with license plates, must give customers large discounts if the number 39 appears on the plate number. Mullah Tarakhel, a Pashtun member of parliament listed as member No. 39, ordered his bodyguards to open fire when Tajik colleagues scoffed at him. Two men were killed in the gunfire. At the grand council, or loya jirga, held in mid-November, the delegates argued less passionately over a strategic agreement with the United States than over who was to be appointed to the 39th of 40 committees -- until they decided to simply skip the number. "In Afghanistan, the number 39 has a very strange meaning which it is not fair for me to tell you," said jirga spokeswoman Safia Sediqi.

The NDS announced that insulting someone by referring to them as a "39" is such a serious crime that the injured party is entitled to defend his honor with a weapon. The clergy sees the devil at work and surah 39 of the Koran in danger.

The belief in the evil significance of the number 39 reportedly began in Herat at the beginning of the year and spread around the country from there. As the story goes, there is a pimp living in Herat whose address begins with 39, and the loathsome digits also appear in his telephone number and on his license plate.

No one knows this pimp. And no one really cares whether the legend is even true. But almost everyone fears this unlucky number. As a result, a country that is being plagued by the Taliban and robbed by its politicians is also being held hostage by another calamity, one for which there appears to be no antidote. This begs the question of whether such cabbalistic nonsense can reveal the core of Afghanistan's plight.

HT: Blazing Cat Fur