On Monday evening, Ahmadullah Azadani climbed on the roof of his house in the Western Afghan city of Herat and awaited something that would have been unthinkable in the city even a week earlier: Al-Jazeera
He waited on his roof overlooking the ancient city, until he heard a single voice calling out: “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest), over and over.
At first, it was only one voice in the distance, then suddenly the voices increased until it became an echoing cry around the city that only a few days ago was on the verge of falling to the Taliban.
Azadani, who had returned to his native Herat from the Afghan capital Kabul several months ago, said he had never witnessed anything like it before.
“I have never seen our people join in such vocal support of their troops and the people who fight alongside them,” he said, referring to the volunteer militias known as “uprising forces” that took up arms with the Afghan National Security Forces in their fight to expel the Taliban advance towards the city.
For young people like Azadani, those cries harkened back to stories their parents had told them about the communist rule and subsequent Soviet occupation of the 1980s.
