The landlocked, war-torn country of Afghanistan lies at a geographic and cultural crossroads between East and West. Its proud Muslim people are caught between forces supported by the West, desiring to modernize their society, and the Taliban faction embracing the religious fundamentalists’ strict paternalism of the Sharia law. Tribal animosity rules as well, the Pashtun tribes (42%) and the Tajik  tribes (38%) being in an uneasy alliance presided over by local war lords and a corrupt and weak puppet government maintained by the West.

The Taliban (“students”) are Sunni Muslims, predominately Pashtuns. They were young refugees from the brutal Soviet occupation of the country, who fled to Pakistan where they studied at the local hard-line Islamic religious schools. The movement was organized by Mullah Mohammed Omar and is controlled by experienced military leaders and religious teachers.  The Taliban came to power in 1996 in the vacuum created by the removal of Soviet forces from the country.

During the 5 year Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Sharia law was implemented, harshly banning a wide range of activities including education for women and girls, television, music, dancing, and opium poppy production.  The law was brutally enforced with public beating of women and by public executions.

The Taliban were overthrown in 2001 by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force authorized by the UN Security Council. They are now making an attempt to return to power and are supported in the country by many religious Muslims who dislike the corrupt and ineffective government and the massive intrusion of foreign troops. It still operates Sharia law courts in the south of Afghanistan hearing civil lawsuits and tax disputes.

After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York , the US government moved to eradicate training camps in the country run by the militant Al-Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim organization, and to capture its leader, Osama bin Laden. The US global “War on Terrorism” acknowledged that bin Laden’s desire was to bring down all those opposed to Islam anywhere in the world, especially the USA and Israel. Although he is not a Muslim scholar or cleric, bin Laden twice issued a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, that Muslims should kill Americans and their supporters until they withdraw from Muslim countries and stop supporting Israel.

WODEN SAYS: This long ineffective war has been dragging on and on, and has only served to recruit more angry support throughout the Muslim world for al-Qaeda than there was before. While commanders on the ground may be exercised how to win a war that most people consider to be unwinnable, the rest of the world wonders how to overcome the tidal wave of hatred and threatened violence—on both sides.

The Masters of the Spirit World, however, look at the war very differently. Our guides are aware that people are willing to risk life and limb—on both sides—in support of their cause. That’s OK because, they insist, each person, each family member, belonging to every nation involved in the war chose to do so in advance. There are no accidents and no surprises on the soul level. Whether being killed by a US drone attacking al-Qaeda, or being blown up by a roadside bomb as a soldier from Belgium, Italy, France or Britain, the cause is the same: the soul involved is receiving a lesson it has already freely asked to be given,

Our eternal souls are down here on planet Earth to experience negativity and to compare the experience with what they already know as unconditional love.  We have all freely chosen lessons to suit our personal stage of spiritual development, drawing from a huge variety of options ranging from very large and bitter experiences, such as dismemberment in battle, to real but less intense physical, psychological, and spiritual challenges.

We grow by having life-lessons, learning on the physical plane as children not to take tumbles, all the way through to not taking risks in battle. We may even plan our death. Usually, when it occurs in an un-timely fashion, we have made a contract with another soul to teach them a valuable life lesson in grief. Or the survivor may have to cope alone with a family when the other parent dies on the battlefield. In all respects it is the life-lesson that is chosen, not the means by which it is actually taught. That’s left to the energetic forces of the universe to provide for us.

Are souls are actors on the big stage set by planet Earth. The spiritual Masters insist that there is no right or wrong involved—that is the necessary judgment of the human society. Such a statement may seem bizarre were it not for the fact that on our training mission we come and go from a realm of unconditional love where there is no judgment, so no right nor wrong. We need to realize that the acting metaphor is essential for our understanding.

Is there nothing positive we can do for the people of Afghanistan? Of course there is! It is the very nature of the soul to be loving and to give service, providing no pre-chosen lessons intervene. Certainly some can try to be of direct service despite the everyday challenges that a war-torn society inevitably creates. Yes, we can serve the cause of rebuilding that nation. Or, even more likely, we can arrange for their young leaders to come to where we live and receive education and practical training so that they can give the service that their nation so badly needs. Perhaps that way the Afghan people might be enabled to fend for themselves and the al-Qaeda’s perceived “need” for war would die an untimely death.

(Further details of the Masters’ teaching may be found on their weekly blog at: www.mastersofthespiritworld.com )