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At Twin Cities Pagan Pride this Saturday, we'll be making the twelfth annual Offering to Minnehaha Falls, and praying for the well-being of pagans everywhere.

If you can't be there, I invite you to join us anyway in praying for the well-being of pagans everywhere.

In particular, I invite you to join us in praying for the well-being of the pagans of Afghanistan.

Are there pagans in Afghanistan? Well might you ask.

Truth in advertising: I don't know any Afghan pagans personally. But I feel quite confidant in declaring that yes, of course there are pagans in Afghanistan. There are pagans everywhere. Wherever (gods help us) the internet reaches, there are pagans. Wherever people are in chains, some dare dream of freedom.

There were pagans in Afghanistan—real, old-time, rifle-toting, goat-sacrificing pagans—up until the 1890s, when the emir of Kabul (of cursed memory) declared jihad against the mountain tribes of what was then called Kafiristan: “Unbeliever Land.” Those that weren't killed were forcibly converted to Islam, and their mountainous territory was officially renamed Nuristan, “Land of Light.” Light at rifle-point: welcome to Abrahamic history, boys and girls.

(Their close cousins, the Kalasha of what is now Pakistan, being on the British side of the Durand Line, were spared the genocide, and practice their ancient religion to this day, the only Indo-European-speaking people to have done so.)

So yes, Diana, there are pagans in Afghanistan. There are (gods help them) pagans even in the deepest, darkest, most repressive Muslim countries of the world, like Saudi Arabia. Wherever people are in chains, some dare dream of freedom.

Consider what life must be like for the pagans of Afghanistan. The very worst that we've seen here in the US—even in the deepest, darkest Bible Belt—pales by comparison.

Of all forms of government, theocracy has got to be the worst.

Current protestations of a kinder, gentler Terrorism to the contrary, the Taliban haven't changed, and everyone knows it: they're still the brutal, repressive monsters that they've always been.

No, the Taliban—piss be upon them—haven't changed; but the people of Afghanistan have.

It's tempting to feel that Afghanistan is only getting what it deserves. Afghanistan, always dysfunctional, has been sucking the tit of the West for the past 20 years now, and what did they do with it? They've pissed it all away.

But—misguided as it often was—the omens say that, in the long term, just maybe all that Western generosity (and—let me just ask it here—how much of the effort to rebuild Afghanistan came from the Gulf States? from the Muslim world?), all those lives and money sacrificed, may well have changed forever what comes next.

No, the Taliban hasn't changed, but an entire generation of Afghans—now the majority of the population—have tasted freedoms and hope not seen in that part of the world since pagan times. Are those tens of thousands of educated young women now going to lay down on their backs and submit without protest to the burqa and second-class citizenship? Well, we'll see.

The rolling momentum of the Taliban's rapid takeover may carry a sense of inevitability with it, but let us not be fooled.

In a foreign warzone, some of the trappings of a traditional Asatru holiday are forgone out of necessity. 

There is no alcohol available, fires become a security concern as well as a highly regulated event when they are permitted at all, and feasting is limited to carry-out plates from the chow hall if you are fortunate and Meals Ready to Eat if you are not.  Hard copies of Eddic Sagas and study materials take up too much space and weight where both are premium commodities, and the infrastructure (and safety) doesn't support portable options like smart-phones to use as the ever-present resource they have become back home.

I arrived in Afghanistan in the last week of August, just as many other members of the American armed forces do- a long flight, a refueling stop, a processing station in the former Soviet bloc, and then to one of the main airbases from which we are all parsed out to our respective assignments.  I ended up in the city of Kabul, with the mountains a short trip from the city and a lot of unpleasant flatlands in every direction.

Before I left for Afghanistan, I knew that I would want to connect with the pagan/heathen minority when I arrived- as I have said, I am not much for ceremony and ritual, but it is good to have someone to talk to when you're staring down the barrel of several months in a foreign land.  I began by reaching out to a great organization called Open Halls Project, a Facebook group owned and operated by Josh and Cat Heath with the goal of supporting heathens in the military.  The result was connection with one heathen on the exact camp I was going to- a relatively unlikely event given the size of our faith and the number of possible camps across Afghanistan.