On Oct. 19, 2001, as I drove to a prayer breakfast in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, the radio crackled with news of U.S. special forces on the ground in Afghanistan.
This was not a particularly shocking development since air and missile strikes in retaliation for 9/11 had started 12 days earlier.
Then religion editor for The Oklahoman, I quoted the breakfast’s keynote speaker — Steve Largent, a Pro Football Hall of Fame member then serving in Congress — in the story I wrote.
“We have been sent a very important wake-up call," Largent said that Friday morning. "Let's not go back to sleep."
All of us — at that point — felt an urgency about the war in Afghanistan and the effort to destroy Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
Nearly 20 years later, my attention had diverted elsewhere until Afghanistan burst back into the headlines — in a major way — this past week.
It’s impossible to keep up with all the rapid-fire developments, but these stories delve into compelling religion angles:
• Young Afghans speak out about rapidly changing life under the Taliban (by Meagan Clark, ReligionUnplugged)
• Refugee aid groups criticize Biden for stumbles in evacuating ‘desperate’ Afghans (by Emily McFarlan Miller and Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service)
• Taliban begins targeting Christians while cementing control over desperate Afghans (by Mindy Belz, World)
• Afghan-American scholar agonizes over homeland, lashes out at Taliban, U.S. (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)
• Afghanistan’s Christians, small in number, have gone underground, expert says (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)
