Kabul

This was never more true than when I looked out at the crowd assembled for the conference,

students and women in business, many of them entrepreneurs.  I told them how many in America thought I was brave to go to Kabul during such a turbulent time.  But the truth is the real courage was within that room.  Those women not only had the tenacity to earn a higher education, but to start businesses and to dream of an Afghanistan that they may one day run themselves.

 It struck me then what it really means to have a “war on women.”  If it exists anywhere, it is certainly there. Both ISIS and the Taliban despise everything that the women I spoke to represent: strong, educated women whose achievements and ambition are not limited to the circumstances in which they were born.

In the Middle East and Southeast Asia, our 16+ year fight against  Al Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban can be complex and sometimes confusing, and to those of us in the field of counterterrorism it can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. 

Hashtags and platitudes will not stop the enemies of freedom. We’ve seen how ineffective they are. And while the might and power of the American and coalition forces cannot be underestimated, neither should the quiet determination of the women of Afghanistan, who I truly believe will be major contributors to winning the long war.  For these women,  it is not a question of debating foreign policy themes of intervention, realism, globalism, or nation building.  For them it is a very basic question of  their binary fate: defeat the extremists or go back to an Afghanistan where they are faceless and nameless.