A viewer asks: “What is the origin of the Taliban, and why and how do they keep retaking power in Afghanistan, against the will of the people?”

This is a complex question that cannot be answered simply because it is a hugely karmic issue involving many lifetimes for those living in that area of the world and having experienced so many times of conflict, political discord, oppressive and harsh overseers committing many injustices and causing untold suffering, all of which adds to a complex and difficult karmic history that, quite predictively, weighs heavily on the current population to alter their culture and make it worse than ideal. That is the reason for the political instability, the ease with which large segments of the population can be manipulated to become warlike and embrace an exaggerated perspective of their role as presumed agents of the divine in carrying out what to them is a righteous jihad in throwing off oppressors or even incursions by infidels into their area of the world. Such levels of intolerance are always orchestrated to happen and are a good demonstration of the evils imparted to human beings because of the slaveholder mentality of the interlopers and their desire to create discord, warring factions, and as much human suffering as they can engineer to happen. That general picture and this agenda behind it has been enacted over many centuries of strife in the region from tribal warfare to fights among neighboring countries when territorial boundaries became more formalized. So it is nothing new, there are many age‑old grievances still alive and kicking within the karma of many people of the region, and they are easily drawn into a recapitulation of the karmic tensions, because those energies live on and will influence the present era as a consequence. Karma is inescapable except through divine grace. When people do not make connections and see interrelationships, it is difficult for them to make meaningful requests for repair and healing, and most times simply accept things at face value, to assume current animosities are fully justified and that their enemies need killing, and that is as deep as their thinking is allowed to go because it serves the interlopers for them to be agents of human annihilation.