interesting and different view point of the Taliban
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interesting and different view point of the Taliban
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From: Sydney
"What are the big powers trying to defend by attacking this ailing, tiny country?" It's a good question.
Has he forgotten how we got to this point.
There was a massive terrorist attack. The top suspect is a guest of the Taliban. He was requested for trial. The Taliban wouldn't hand him over. That puts them on the side of terrorism.
This is not a war against the people of Afghanistan, it is a war against terrorists and those who support them.
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From: Phoenix
Apparently, different people have different views of the Taliban's actions. Here is what a member of their secret police said after defecting to Pakistan (from the London Telegraph):
Instead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or, bizarrely, keeping caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any woman who dared venture outside her house. Even owning a kite became a criminal offence.
The state of terror spread by the Taliban was so pervasive that it began to seem as if the whole country was spying on each other. "As we drove around at night with our guns, local people would come to us and say there's someone watching a video in this house or some men playing cards in that house," he said.
"Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed," Mr Hassani said, "and if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water - like a knife cutting through meat - until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped. Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with insects until they died.
"We always tried to do different things: we would put some of them standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down with their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others and nail them to posts like crucifixions.
"Sometimes we would throw bread to them to make them crawl. Then I would write the report to our commanding officer so he could see how innovative we had been."
It was his experience of that cruelty that made Mr Hassani determined to let the world know what was happening in Afghanistan. "Maybe the worst thing I saw," he said, "was a man beaten so much, such a pulp of skin and blood, that it was impossible to tell whether he had clothes on or not. Every time he fell unconscious, we rubbed salt into his wounds to make him scream."
Maybe the doctor in that article didn't know anyone who played cards, watched television or trimmed his beard...I think that it is safe to say that Taliban attrocities have been documented by dozens of different groups, ranging from mass slaughters of thousands of women and children in cities that they conquered, to the slaughter of Iranian diplomats.
I wonder how any reputable news organization could post claims like the doctor's and still look at themselves in the mirror the next day.
Tanq
Instead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or, bizarrely, keeping caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any woman who dared venture outside her house. Even owning a kite became a criminal offence.
The state of terror spread by the Taliban was so pervasive that it began to seem as if the whole country was spying on each other. "As we drove around at night with our guns, local people would come to us and say there's someone watching a video in this house or some men playing cards in that house," he said.
"Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed," Mr Hassani said, "and if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water - like a knife cutting through meat - until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped. Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with insects until they died.
"We always tried to do different things: we would put some of them standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down with their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others and nail them to posts like crucifixions.
"Sometimes we would throw bread to them to make them crawl. Then I would write the report to our commanding officer so he could see how innovative we had been."
It was his experience of that cruelty that made Mr Hassani determined to let the world know what was happening in Afghanistan. "Maybe the worst thing I saw," he said, "was a man beaten so much, such a pulp of skin and blood, that it was impossible to tell whether he had clothes on or not. Every time he fell unconscious, we rubbed salt into his wounds to make him scream."
Maybe the doctor in that article didn't know anyone who played cards, watched television or trimmed his beard...I think that it is safe to say that Taliban attrocities have been documented by dozens of different groups, ranging from mass slaughters of thousands of women and children in cities that they conquered, to the slaughter of Iranian diplomats.
I wonder how any reputable news organization could post claims like the doctor's and still look at themselves in the mirror the next day.
Tanq
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From: Brisbane
Now you know the kind of people they are.
We've been reading about this for a long time in Oz and yet, it appears it took the tragedy in NY for Americans to become aware of this.
Don't be so insular! There is another world out there and a lot of it isn't real pretty
We've been reading about this for a long time in Oz and yet, it appears it took the tragedy in NY for Americans to become aware of this.
Don't be so insular! There is another world out there and a lot of it isn't real pretty
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From: Defiance
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From: Phoenix
Robert Conquest wrote a book about the 1932-33 famine in the Soviet Union, in which between 10 and 20 million Ukrainian peasants died because the Communists stole all of the food from the countryside to feed the cities ("Harvest of Sorrow", I believe).
During that time, there is the famous case of the senior NY Times writer who continued writing nothing but glowing accounts of how wonderful the Soviet Union was, and how happy the people were, etc., etc. ad infinitum. It is still argued whether he was simply blind, or blinded by his own pro-Communist biases.
P.S. -- I looked up the NYT reporter: his name was Duranty, and he won a Pullitzer Prize for his 14 years of Moscow reporting. He denied the famine until he died; too bad Russia and Ukraine admit that it DID happen.
During that time, there is the famous case of the senior NY Times writer who continued writing nothing but glowing accounts of how wonderful the Soviet Union was, and how happy the people were, etc., etc. ad infinitum. It is still argued whether he was simply blind, or blinded by his own pro-Communist biases.
P.S. -- I looked up the NYT reporter: his name was Duranty, and he won a Pullitzer Prize for his 14 years of Moscow reporting. He denied the famine until he died; too bad Russia and Ukraine admit that it DID happen.