Patriotism and Empty Slogans

Homeland has a high place in official literature of countries and is defined with very strong epic and emotional words. Homeland is referred to as “mother” and “honor” and adjectives such as “pure” and “holy” are given to it. They raise the attachment to the homeland to the point where they consider it synonymous with worship and express the sense of loving homeland with the word “patriotism”.

The written and spoken literature of Afghanistan is also full of strong and heavy words that show the highest degree of feeling and affection towards the homeland. Defending the land is considered to be the defense of honor, and encroachment on the country’s geography is interpreted as an encroachment on the honor of “Afghans”.

In the field of action, however, it seems that the concept of “patriotism”, like many other areas of life, is full of slogans and has a huge difference with what is going on in the hearts and minds of many citizens.

What is happening in the actions of millions of people who live under the name of “Afghan” national identity in a land called Afghanistan, is miles away from what is seen in the sloganeering literature.

There have been many politicians and rulers who have raised the biggest slogans about defending the homeland, safeguarding national values ​​and maintaining territorial integrity, and as the famous saying has always said “either the homeland or the shroud” on their lips, but in the end they quietly have turned their backs on the homeland and started to escape.

The situation is the same in the lower layers of society. In a situation where everyone is trying to get asylum from another country and is looking for a way to escape from their homeland, but there are many who, upon reaching the new land that they have dreamed of for years and see it as the promised land, they used to chant slogans of longing for the homeland and mention the good things of the homeland.

Another very clear example is a song sung by one of the country’s famous singers. While she herself preferred another country to her own land many years ago and followed her dreams there, and lived a life full of prosperity and comfort for herself, in order to deceive the public, she reads as follows:

My sweet compatriot, why are you leaving your homeland?

You are the flower of the homeland’s garden, why are leaving the arbor?

Among such a great contradiction, if someone asks this honorable singer that:

Why did you leave your homeland?

You are the flower of the homeland’s garden; why did you leave the arbor?

What will be the answer? Why does a cursed homeland called Afghanistan have the status of “grass” for others, but it herself hates it?

The result is that, contrary to the slogans that we sing, homeland have no value and importance for us, otherwise “our homeland” would not be caught in such a situation.