The Chain Gang

Taliban Fighters Are Unimpressed With McDonald’s Food

Meh.
Meh. Photo: Javed Tanveer/AFP/Getty Images

Some common ground you might have with the Taliban: McDonald’s just opened up its first location in the Pakistani city of Quetta, reputedly home base for the Taliban’s ruling council, and a spokesperson for the militant group told NBC that the food is terrible. Here’s the gem of a quote senior militant commander Ehsanullah Ehsan gave two reporters — he managed to get ha printed back-to-back four times, possibly a first for a network news article:

“Hahahaha, so you are asking me about McDonald’s food,” the TTP-JA fighter said. “Yes, I know McDonald’s and its food but we will never eat it. We don’t even consider it as a food.”

He added that because they’re fighters who live in “rough, tough mountainous areas,” they need energy and power “to fight against the enemy.” McDonald’s does not provide the energy or the power necessary for such a struggle, so they’ll just be sticking with their mutton and rice, thank you very much. The Taliban apparently couldn’t care less that everything on the Quetta menu is halal, or that in addition to Big Macs and McNuggets, there’s also some kind of shawarma wrap called the McArabia. Another senior Taliban member admitted he sees himself stopping by the restaurant in Quetta’s big Millennium Mall sometime to just hang out, but he has no plans of ordering anything. He recalled trying McDonald’s food once when he was in the Pakistani city of Karachi and said the stuff was tasteless and “too expensive.”

[NBC]

Taliban Is Unimpressed With McDonald’s Food