From Fireblowers to Firefighters:  The War On Terror 

The world community condemns terrorism with loud voices, but rarely with clean hands. It mourns the victims, organizes conferences, and funds counter-terrorism projects, yet it refuses to trace terror to its roots. The reason is simple and shameful: those roots were cultivated by  themselves to harm or influence others. What the world calls a “war on terror” is often a war for hidden agendas, a campaign designed to treat symptoms while hiding the disease.

Terrorism did not originate from the world’s poor villages or barren deserts by accident. It grew from the soil of injustice, exploitation, and geopolitical ambition. Behind every militant group and every violent ideology, there are histories of invasion, manipulation, and neglect. During the Cold War, the world’s superpowers armed extremists to fight their rival blocs. Ideologies were weaponized, poverty was politicized, and chaos was treated as a strategy. When those creations turned uncontrollable, the same powers rebranded them as global threats, pretending to be saviors while continuing to profit from the destruction.

The roots of terror are not mystical; they are painfully human and political. Invasions that humiliate nations, wars that threaten people’s beliefs, deprivation that denies them dignity, and policies that impose foreign cultures without understanding local values, all of these plant the seeds of resentment. When opportunities are monopolized by a few and hope becomes a privilege of the powerful, anger turns into ideology and frustration becomes faith. Extremism feeds on injustice; it grows wherever people feel excluded from the social, political, or economic order. Terror, therefore, is not born in the mind of a fanatic, it is born in the failure of fairness.

Across continents, from the Middle East to Africa and South Asia, the fingerprints of the powerful can be found in every conflict later labeled as “terrorism.” Billions of dollars were poured into arming non-state actors, building intelligence networks, and manipulating religious and ethnic divisions. Once the desired political outcome was achieved, those regions were abandoned to their own wounds. When violence resurfaced, it was portrayed as a local problem, detached from the global games that created it. The narrative became one of civilized powers combating barbaric forces, erasing the uncomfortable truth that those so-called barbarians were once trained, funded, and celebrated by the same so called civilized powers.

Afghanistan stands as the most tragic and enduring example of this hypocrisy. For more than four decades, the Afghan people have lived in the debris of wars they neither designed nor desired. Foreign powers turned Afghanistan into a battlefield for ideological experiments, first against the Soviets, later against terrorism itself. They built proxies, trained militias, and funded factions, each claiming to represent freedom or faith. In reality, they represented the interests of their sponsors.

When the Cold War ended, Afghanistan was left shattered. The world walked away, leaving behind millions of landmines, weapons, and unhealed wounds. Instead of rebuilding the country they had destroyed, those same powers returned years later, this time to bomb it again in the name of counter-terrorism. They toppled governments, installed new ones, and spoke of democracy as if it could be air-dropped from the sky. And when their experiments failed, they blamed Afghans for the chaos.

To this day, Afghanistan is accused of “exporting instability,” yet history reveals the opposite: instability was imported into Afghanistan by outsiders who weaponized faith, ethnicity, and poverty. Those who once trained fighters in refugee camps, financed propaganda, and supplied weapons now either lecture Afghans on peace and moderation or threaten them, warning and dictating what to do and what not to do. The moral inversion is staggering, the very arsonists have now become the fire fighters

But Afghanistan is not alone in this experience. Many nations across the Global South have felt the same pattern: exploitation disguised as partnership, intervention justified as protection, and destruction explained as reform. Each time, the world condemns the effects of terror while ignoring its spiritual, political and economic roots. Each time, the victims are blamed for the crimes committed against them.

The truth is uncomfortable: terrorism survives not because the poor are violent, but because the powerful are unaccountable. It thrives in spaces where occupation replaces justice, where manipulation replaces dialogue, and where the world’s attention is guided by interest, not conscience. The global order that claims to fight terror has often depended on it, to sell weapons, to justify surveillance, to divide nations, and to maintain control over the powerless.

If the international community truly seeks peace, it must begin by facing its own reflection. The fight against terror cannot succeed while the same policies that feed despair, injustice, and humiliation continue. Peace cannot be achieved by drones and declarations; it requires moral courage and political honesty. Until the architects of global power admit their share of guilt, terrorism will remain a convenient enemy, one that justifies intervention abroad and repression at home.

Afghanistan’s story is not merely a national tragedy; it is a mirror held before the world. It shows what happens when great powers play with human lives for temporary gain and then disown the consequences. If the world had the courage to look beyond the explosions and into the causes, it would see its own fingerprints on the ruins. The roots of terror are not hidden; they are simply ignored.

Those who cultivated them cannot claim to be its victims. The only way to end terror is to uproot the arrogance, greed, and hypocrisy that nourished it. Until then, humanity will continue to mourn the harvest of the very seeds its powerful members have sown.