Children Playing in the Ruins, Seville, 1933. 6 5/8 x 9 5/8" silver print. Circa, 1947 © Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Taliban Prisoners, Afghanistan, 2001. © Alan Chin

I have it on good authority that Alan Chin is one of the hardest working and spontaneous photojournalists in the business. He also caught this gem of a shot which for me sums up the shell-shock of war. These men may have been fighters, then prisoners,  but they were/are also naive protectors of a regional social-order based upon the most closed of religious dogmas.

For all America’s imperialist crimes over the past decade, let’s not forget that the Taliban were brutal abusers of human rights, particularly women’s rights.

Is it not the case that the vast majority of men who fight do so because they are followers and not leaders? Heroism is passe; we are all victims of circumstance, not agents of change.

Image Sources; Chin, Cartier Bresson