The tragedy in Afghanistan

 As a humble Italian private investigator of the detective agency Octopus, I would have prepared a list of all my local associates at risk and I would have arranged for their evacuation.

As a humble Italian private investigator of the detective agency Octopus, I would have prepared a list of all my local associates at risk and I would have arranged for their evacuation.

One of the things that most embarrass about the tragedy in Afghanistan is the hypocrite attitude of our Italian politicians and of some officials who just come back from the catastrophic mission.

Now politicians are blabbering about humanitarian corridor and President Draghi (apparently ruined by these few months in charge) shot it big with the statement “Now we need to protect who collaborated and who worked with us”.

Our officials, fortunately reentered uninjured in Italy, in between a greeting and the next one, have shed a crocodile tear, thinking about how many local collaborators they had to leave behind, probably doomed to die killed or to be imprisoned by the taliban. Some of them blamed the rush of the events as an excuse for their betray, forgetting that even rocks in the Dasht-e Margoh desert knew that this tragic day would have come.

Me, that I’m not an intelligence officer but the simple owner of the Italian detective agency Octopus in Milan, I would have prepared a list of all my local collaborators at risk and I would have arranged for them and for their families the evacuation. If the heads of the mission would have made it difficult, I would have reported them to the public opinion as a sever act of institutional cowardice.

When my Italian investigative agency Octopus is dealing with the exfiltration of Italian children abducted and taken abroad by the foreign parent (usually of middle eastern, north African or south American origins) I take care of my local collaborators, setting for them a safety plan in case they will end up convicted while operating on the recovery of the children. It’s more a matter of “functional loyalty” rather than ethical: if you betray your collaborators how could you expect integrity and respect from them the next time?

Another thing that really bothered me is the free criticism towards American that would have left the Afghan people to their own devices. However, rightful are the words said by the President Joe Biden: “American soldiers cannot and must not fight and die in a war that Afghan troops do not want to tackle”. As the Italian private detective of the investigative agency Octopus in Milan that sometimes have worked in Middle East and more generally near the Equator, I know the truth behind Biden’s statement. Whilst our executives in Afghanistan didn’t care for the future of their local collaborators, the Afghan progressive people had at their disposal lots of years to train an efficient army and to equip it properly. Why didn’t they manage that? I believe that it depends on many, too many factors, nevertheless the Italian private detectives of my investigative agency Octopus experience the same problem when working abroad: the more they are close to the Equator the more they struggle in training the local resources that are useful for the good outcome of the mission. On that note, a missionary friend of mine confided to me that it often happened to him to succeed with difficulty in building wells and facilities in extremely poor zones, managing to give back a little bit of safety, health and dignity to the residents. But then, years later, when he came back he found the wells clogged and the buildings inaccessible simply due to bad maintenance. As they say: heaven help that helps.

The only thing left to do is hoping that Taliban let themselves be bought by Chinese people and that these last ones save the Afghan women from their outrageous destiny.