Chapter Forty-Two
Although the guerrillas did eventually retreat in the first Batken war, they still felt as if they had won their jihad. Something that had been postponed for years had finally happened. They had gone to war for their own land. Yosir remembered that during that spring in Kabul the Afghanis and the Arabs and, especially, the Chechens had accused the Uzbeks of indecision, he himself had been present at several such discussions, when even the demoniacal Tahir Yuldash had tried to make them see reason, pointing out that the Chechens were fighting for their freedom against the Russians, just as the Afghanis were, whereas he would have to go against his own people. But they kept insisting that kafirs were all the same, no matter whether they were Russians, Jews or Uzbeks, and s
