Islamic Revolution

[mini]

<p>And didn’t much like their resistance to the pipeline, and their restrictions on the opium crop were “problematic”.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>

But even under Taliban, the “country” was a collection of warlords as opposed to a single entity.

</p>

<p>Which is a state of affairs in Afghanistan not likely to change anytime soon – as in centuries, not decades.</p>

<p>The notion of building a functioning nation-state in Afghanistan applies, at best, to Kabul and maybe one or two other cities.</p>

<p>Mini: when I refer to “no particular interest” I mean a level of interest insufficient to take action. I’m sure that the US had some mild passing interest in the Taliban, but that level of interest fell far short of actually doing anything – until the attack on New York City.</p>

[cheers]

<p>To avoid casting Blair in the poodle role, Bush has refused any suggestion of quid pro quo regarding his new found discovery: There is Global Warming! Still, I heard that bell for Blair, didn’t you?</p>

<p>With respect, Dad, our cold war partners were not ‘cajoled’ by notions of virtue, they were bought and traded for, in one way or another. </p>

<p>Self-interest is the primary motivator for all nations. Sometimes those interests collide with greater good. Sometimes they don’t.</p>

[Enjoi]

<p>Everybody hates America in foreign countries :(</p>

[patuxent]

<p>Yes this will turn out like all the other wars - we win the battle and loose the peace. Look at WWII. We liberate france only to have it fall into the hands of a crapweasel like Chirac :-)</p>

<p>Maybe we could surrender to Zarqawi. I wonder how many heads he would demand? Might be worth it just to see some our militantly secular compatriots have to choose between kissing a carpet five times a day facing Mecca or donating their heads to the Beelzabub of Bagdahd.</p>

[patuxent]

<p>SMmom - the Taliban only came on the scene after the Soviet withdrawal. It grew up in the civil war that followed the Soviet defeat.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>The united states supported the muhjadeen with weapons and training that led to the Russians withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1989 but Russia still maintained a presence and interest in the region.Once the Taliban began to take over in 1994, Russia supported anti- Taliban forces most notably teh Northern alliance.</p>

<p>Where we get teh US support for Taliban seems to come from US supporting the muhjaideen and a splinter group from them forming the Taliban</p>

[SBmom]

<p>patuxent–</p>

<p>Additionally, a delegation of Taliban visited Texas when GW Bush was governor.</p>

[digmedia]

<p>An excellent history of the Taliban in a nutshell by Dr. Saleem Qureshi (“A Brief History of the Taliban”):

Taliban is the plural of talib, literally meaning seeker, in context, a seeker of knowledge, i.e., talib-e-ilm, or a student. The Taliban were the children of Afghan refugees who fled their country in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that started on December 25, 1979. The refugees were housed on the Pakistan side of the frontier where relief and education were provided by religious organizations in Pakistan, funding and organizational facilities by Saudi Arabia and the CIA.</p>

<p>The schooling was provided by religious parties, particularly the Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Islam, a fundamentalist part that espouses the most puritanical, restrictive and harsh interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence, variously called Deobandi (in India and Pakistan), Wahabi (in Saudi Arabia), and Hanbali (one of the recognized four schools of Sunni fiqh-jurisprudence). The Taliban thus represent the least progressive or moderate interpretation of Sunni Islam and along with Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan under Taliban rule was the only country to be so closed off from the rest of the world. Prior to the Taliban, the majority of Afghans, like the majority of Indian-Pakistani Muslims, Turks, Central Asians and Caucasians, belonged to the most tolerant and eclectic interpretation of Islamic Law, i.e., Hanafi.</p>

<p>Starting with the communist coup of April 20, 1978, and exacerbated by the Soviet invasion of December 25, 1979, the ‘reforms’ that were introduced so conflicted with the Afghan values that they were identified as anti-Islamic, making it incumbent on every Afghan to oppose those ‘reforms’ and the advocates of those ‘reforms’–that is, the Afghan communist rulers and their patrons, the Soviets. The Americans, who saw the opportunity to humiliate the Soviets, enthusiastically encouraged the Islamic dimension of the Afghan nationalist war against foreign occupation, hence the rise of Jihad and the Mujahideen, who were then the darlings of the CIA. Osama bin Laden was a Mujahid who developed a mind of his own, independent of his CIA creators…

</p>

<p>The rest can be found here: <a href=“http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=1517[/url]”>http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=1517&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>-dig</p>

[patuxent]

<p>SBmom - I guess you could have just as accurately said, “A delegation of Taliban visited the United States while Bill Clinton was President”</p>

<p>But why quibble. As for our support of the resistence in Afghanistan most of it went to the guys in the Panjeer valley - the same guys who were the primary opposition to the Taliban but lets not quibble.</p>

[patuxent]

<p>Yeah digmedia jihad and Muslim fundamentalism were concocyed out of whole cloth in Langley along with AIDS, global warming, Zionism, and bad breath. No doubt the entire region would be full of secular socialist humanists yearning to subsidize French agriculture and join the EU if the Agency hadn’t interfered.</p>

<p>Lets all hold hand in a circle and sing whatever the secular version of kumbaya is while we dream of the world that might have been.</p>

[SBmom]

<p>patuxent has read the Fox memo! :)</p>

[kluge]

<p>'tux has <strong>memorized</strong> the Fox memo!</p>

[digmedia]

<p>I’m shocked, SHOCKED to find that the CIA is responsible for bad breath!</p>

<p>::said as he reaches for his Breath Strips::</p>

<p>I’m not sure why my reference to the article brought the reaction it did.</p>

[SBmom]

<p>Yeah, but he forgot to mention how we’d really like the Taliban to all have a little therapy… when they get out of the hot tub.</p>

[patuxent]

<p>A little therapy and maybe one of them could marry a couple of your daughters.</p>

<p>Happy 7/7 and hopefully we will never wake up in Dar Al-Harb.</p>

[driver]

<p>LOL! Oh, at least a couple of them.</p>