This essay has been long in the making. I started writing before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on 15 August 2021, set it aside as it felt a reflection out of place and then decided to pick it up again after unexpected disclosures on the personal background of an Indian anthropologist writing about Indian controlled Kashmir sparked a debate on ethics, trust and positionality. Starting from the premise that researchers inevitably occupy a position of power, in what follows, I look at the role of the researcher from two different, but interconnected points of view: the narcissism that often transforms the research about conflict into a self-referential mirroring of an inflated self and the wider implications of what we, as researchers, are prepared to sacrifice to obtain what we are after. Seemingly different, these approaches are both crafty as they pretend innocence and appropriate the language of…

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