ABSTRACT
In the afternoon of September 3, 2009, Taliban fi ghters ambushed and abducted two drivers of trucks loaded with fuel for NATO coalition forces near Kunduz, Afghanistan. Most reports on this incident mention that the trucks, not the drivers, were the victims of the abduction. 1 This displacement of victimhood from Afghan humans to NATO property is emblematic of dominant modes of understanding violence in Afghanistan. The abductors directed the drivers to steer the trucks through a sandbank across the Kunduz River. The trucks got stuck. The Taliban went to surrounding villages to ask for-or demand-help to pull the trucks out with tractors. When these efforts did not yield any results, they asked villagers to come with containers and get fuel. According to most accounts, the villagers were told that they could keep the fuel (see Deutscher Bundestag 2011: 1; Amnesty International 2009c).
