Here is a good article originally posted to nanog which is a good write up on afganistan and the horros which await. -- The dot.GOD Registry, Limited http://www.dot-god.com/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:32:41 -0700 From: Imran Qureshi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Fwd: Great article about afghanistan/taliban/bin laden] One of our colleague posted the following article and it really shows the plight of the real afghans. Regards, Imran > > > 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 Ben 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 Nazis. 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 rats > >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 has 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, that's 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
