JALALABAD, Afghanistan--- Word of the outrage reached Muhammad Omar, a village mullah who ran a small Islamic school nearby. He collected a few dozen taliban, or religious students, and came to the rescue. Continuing pleas for similar assistance heartened the pious students, but their major encouragement came from neighboring Pakistan, eager to finance a controllable ally. The Taliban clique soon became an armed militia, and it had no shortage of logistical help as it marched from victory to victory across this ruggedly beautiful country. Local warlords succumbed either to the young army's godly mystique or to its ample weaponry. When those failed, bribes proved sufficient. The Taliban entered Kabul, the capital, on Sept. 27, 1996. Their fifth anniversary there is coming up, but instead of readying a celebration, they await a U.S. attack. Up to now, because of the Taliban's fitful attempts to bring change to Afghanistan, the world has chosen to isolate them rather than engage them. The United Nations has imposed sanctions, most recently in December. Isolating the Taliban has been easy because they insulate themselves. Television is banned. Few telephones exist. Use of the Internet is forbidden. The average talib, educated in a religious school, can quote passages from the Quran, but it is a good bet he does not know which countries fought in World War II, that man has landed on the moon, that not all Jews live in Israel. Mullah Omar, the man who started the movement, is now known as Amir-ul-Momineen, the commander of the faithful. He lives in Kandahar, in the south, and through he rules the nation, he is said to have visited Kabul, the capital, only once. He is deeply devout. He sits on the floor, in the Afghan way. He speaks in a near whisper. He is not quite the malleable fellow his Pakistani sponsors hoped for. Only those who have met Mullah Omar know what he looks like. He has never been photographed, as far as anyone knows. By the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic law, pictures of living things are forbidden. Mullah Omar is friends with Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is valued for his advice and military assistance. Between 5,000 and 10,000 Arabs are in Afghanistan, and many fight for the Taliban against the diminishing but still stubborn opposition. The non-Afghans are the most dependable troops on the front line, military observers say. Time and again, America and other nations have accused bin Laden of terrorism and demanded his surrender to stand trial. Mullah Omar has refused. One can speculate about the reasons. They might include the Afghan consecration of hospitality, the need the Taliban have for the Saudi multimillionaire's support and a belief in his innocence. Whatever means the United States chooses to go after bin Laden, it seems certain the puritanical Islamic movement that protects him will find itself at the heart of a new international war against global terrorism. How did it happen? It is said the United States gave a friendly wink, and perhaps more, to the incipient Taliban, but Washington's great impact was more likely its indifference. The neglect of Afghanistan since 1996 was a turnabout in policy. Just a few years before, this nation seemed vital to American concerns as the United States tried to dislodge the Soviet Union from Afghanistan by backing holy warriors, or mujahedeen. Then America lost interest, and the influence it might have exerted was wielded instead by others, including bin Laden.
To: Frank Laughter From: Pat Nelson
The Taliban -- Tue, 18 Sep 2001 Dear Friends, The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people I know in this life. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I listen. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in. -- Gary T. ================================ Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread: I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and, even though I've lived here for 35 years, I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing. I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazi SS. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rat's nest of international thugs holed up in their country. Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban have been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban. We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time. So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the West. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose; even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?~ Tamim Ansary |