Ex-Taliban fighter joins peace forum event in Thatcham

The Peace and IntegrationForum held the event Our Response to Extremism last Wednesday, as part of the Thatcham Festival of Arts and Leisure.
The multifaith, multicultural event was aimed at highlighting extremist incidents happening in British society and the fallout from them. It included videos, group discussions and Q&A sessions.
One of the guest speakers was Reading-born Urfan Azadi – a former Taliban jihadist.
During the evening, Mr Azadi spoke of how his life was taken over by using and dealing drugs, which led to him dropping out of university, turning to crime and, at his lowest point, involvement in prostitution.
He said: “It was normal getting arrested on a daily basis; I had no respect for society.”
In desperation, his father sent him to his family’s native Pakistan in an attempt to turn his life around.
However, while there, he was exposed to religious indoctrination and paramilitary training instead, and ended up fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He said that it had appealed to him as he liked the idea of carrying weapons and being armed.
However, six months before al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks on New York, he said that he decided to turn his back on the Taliban after seeing too much death.
Following the event, PI forum spokesman Shahzad Nadeem said: “It went very well. We had a range of people, but it was not as busy as we expected.
“We also had really good feedback; I think people really enjoyed it. I think we grabbed the attention of people.”
Thanking those involved, mayor Mike Cole said that the event would be wasted if the town did not take forward any of the ideas that came from it.
He said: “I spoke to people for about an hour afterwards and the theme I got from people was about community. Most people want a sense of community and the feeling that we should be working more on understanding what people’s viewpoints were.
“I learnt a huge amount from it.”
Thames Valley Police were present outside the venue, although the event went off without incident.