“I’m embittered, disappointed, angry, my son died for nothing”: Rosa Papagna answers the phone from Foggia, the city where Francesco Saverio Positano also lived, who fell on June 23, 2010 in that Afghanistan that now suffers under the new dictatorship of the Taliban. The corporal major of the Alpini lost his life, so the fellow soldiers said, falling from an armored vehicle. But “Mum courage” and her husband Gino managed to get the dossier of their son’s death reopened and in October eight people, former colleagues of Francesco, will be on trial. But this story has nothing to do with the trials, if anything about the vain loss of a life.
Because the withdrawal of the contingents, Rosa, has brought Afghanistan back twenty years.
“But I’m not angry with the Armed Forces. I have it with the governments of the time and with all those who decided to start them. We have lost 53 lives. Does this seem normal to you? Do you see what we face now? For a mother who has been mourning a child who died in the war for eleven years, it is not easy to accept. When they told me we were withdrawing from Afghanistan my heart filled with joy. And then”.
And then?
“Besides, there was no one to welcome them. I saw the Thunderbolt return to absolute silence. Nice thanks for giving so many lives. They could have called us relatives of the fallen. We would have embraced them ».
With the announcement that the Taliban had regained space, how did you feel?
“How do you want me to have heard. They wasted twenty years of work, of blood. My son’s sacrifice was thrown into the trash. Only we are left with pain and despair. Who do they want to tell it to? That is a war that begins ».
How do you think it will end?
“I’m afraid our military will soon have to go back there. Others would fall and for me it would be like seeing Francis die again. I think of those poor people, those women, those children. Even though we Italians never really wanted us, despite praising what we did. We were guests in someone else’s house ».
Do you think there will ever be peace?
«I do not conceive war and I have never conceived it. It all started from 11 September, it’s all a matter of interests. Our folks shouldn’t have gone there. Italy repudiates war, it is foreseen in the Constitution ».
How do you feel 11 years after Francesco’s death?
“My pain is worse than the first day. I suffer to death and my husband too, the whole family suffers to death. I wonder every single day how can this be stopped. But I can’t find an answer. I believe that it will always be like this there ».
Are the state and institutions still close to you?
“The state? The institutions? Who hears them and who sees them? Do you know that Francis is not yet a victim of duty despite eight people on trial? My son died in the war. Nobody will give it back to me. They just have to be ashamed ».
–
