It took me a while to decide whether to post this here. Time’s circulation is huge but I wanted to add my own small contribution.
And I remember this barbaric law being passed when I was in Afghanistan last year:
So even with a government installed by the US-lead coalition, there was still pressure enough for this law to be passed. That must tell you something about the overall state of society in Afghanistan.
It doesn’t look good, does it?
I really don’t know what the solutions are. You could keep pounding the Taliban but their adherence, interpretation and practice of a strict form of Islam is attractive to some despite its barbarity. It helps to instil fear. It helps to indoctrinate. It keeps those people in power, tightening their stranglehold on the people. That’s going to be a long war.
In addition to all these atrocities, the Taliban have destroyed a large part of Afghanistan’s cultural past. In particular, the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan in early 2001. An except from my travel journal from last year:
The complex of caves and grottoes in the cliff-face was amazing. I hadn’t realised how big this was. There are interconnected walkways, stairs and caverns hidden behind the cliff-face walls. We made our way up inside the cave complex and ended up in the niche where the Large Buddha once stood. Wow. That statue was a giant. It was sad to see this empty space where the Buddha statues had stood for 1,500 years and I had missed out seeing them by 8.5 years. It was the criminal destruction of the Buddha statues by the Taliban in March 2001 that had first brought this region, and the word “Taliban”, to my notice. I felt an anger and a sadness back in 2001, and I never did imagine that one day I would be here at Bamiyan. Today, I just felt a sadness. The statues were gone. And I could never forgive the Taliban for these actions and for their other crimes against humanity. A backwards people in all regards.
Seeing the Afghan government eager to include the Taliban in the future of running the country fills me with dread. But perhaps I’m wrong? Perhaps the Taliban are not a homogenous group? Perhaps there are moderate, non-violent elements of the Taliban? Perhaps. But there is something in the philosophy of the Taliban, something in its very fabric, that has allowed itself to reach the levels of atrocities that make the news. So I am suspicious.
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2010