Taliban!!

[Zari]

okkk...soooo im really really really confused rite nw....

which taliban are the good ones and which ones are the bad ones?....
are there even good talibs and bad talibs??..or are they all the same??

allot of u guys have different point of views on this....and i wanna hear frm u guys if y'all dunt mind...

i personally adore the taliban...but after reading some of the posts..ive gotten extremly conffused......

[Roshina]

I think we sometimes confuse the Taliban with Mujahideen.
I'm gonna paste below an excerpt of mine from a paper I wrote last semester on the impact of Talibanization on Pashtun Culture, but the crux of the matter--and the answer to your question, I hope--is:
The Taliban = children of the Mujahideen. Mujahideen were the folks who fought against the Soviets. You see, when the Soviets were kicked out of Afghanistan, the U.S. (creator of the Mujahideen) abandoned Afghanistan just like that, leaving the country in the clutches of the Mujahideen, the soon-to-be Monster they had just created. Because the mujahideen (and later, the Taliban) were 'schooled' by Pakistan in certain madrasas, they grew to value an extremely strict, literalist, and orthodox interpretation of Islam, so much so that women weren't allowed to do many things that Islam actually allows them, and violence became the only method of conveying a message to innocent (and mostly uneducated) people.

I can't think of anything GOOD that the Taliban have done, so I don't know what's "Good" Taliban and what's bad. As far as I'm concerned, it was the Taliban--with the help of Pakistan--who destroyed my people and planted seeds of terror in the hearts and minds of a people who had done them no harm.

To those who love to pick on Pashtuns for having supported the Taliban initially, umm... we had no choice. If you were as uneducated, as illiterate, as unaware of Islam as the average Pashtun is, YOU, too, would've supported them. Besides, the Pashtuns of our areas (e.g., Swat) have no real connection with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan. Here, I'm talking of the people who have no access to news/media. So they didn't know what the Taliban were going to do eventually. No one could predict that they were gong to be violent beasts and kill people and force people out of their homes. When Mullah Fazlullah first initiated his campaign, he was very good and wily about it: He didn't tell them right away that "Support me, give me money to build madrasas and mosques, and in a couple of years, I'll be forcing you to take your daughters out of school!" I'm 100% sure that if he'd done that, most Pashtuns would NOT have supported him, since the literacy rate for females in Swat was on the rise until he started his movement.

Anyway, I don't support the Taliban at all. They've destroyed our sense of culture, thought, religion, humanity, and everything that could potentially be good for us. The Pakistani army and the U.S. (both directly and indirectly) played a vital role in their formation, nurturing, and usurpation, but it's still the Taliban who actually carried out the direct beheading of some of the most intelligent people our land had created, brutally killing future engineers, doctors, and other professors.

It's still the Taliban who issued verdicts against education for females in our areas, and it's still they who bombed our schools, libraries, museums, tombs, and, most importantly, HOMES.

[Roshina]

Oh, sorry. Here's the promised excerpt. The actual paper is 20 pages long.

May I request... ANY mistakes I've made in it should be brought to my attention.
Manana.
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The Taliban as we know them today are a product of the battle-hardened Muslim fighters who fought the Soviet military incursion into Afghanistan in the 1980s and were then known as the mujahideen. The mujahideen were supported by the United States and Pakistan through their intelligence agencies CIA and ISI respectively when the Soviets intruded into Afghanistan in 1980 as political rivals of the bipolar world in the cold war era. Selig Harrison – who is an expert on Afghanistan, a former South Asia bureau chief of the Washington Post, and the author of Out of Afghanistan and In Afghanistan's Shadow – reveals that he “warned [the U.S.] that we were creating a monster."[1] The U.S., because of its imperialist designs, had concerns about the military presence of Soviets in Afghanistan and hence cornered its opponents using Afghan fighters and Pakistani agencies. After the defeat of the Soviets at the hands of the Afghans in 1989, the U.S. abandoned the region and left it without any political setup to the mujahideen who afterward started a civil war in 1994 to take the reigns of power. Pakistan, which has been receiving arms from the U.S. since 1954,[2] sent its disguised army personnel to Afghanistan to get the reigns of power by exploiting the disunity of Afghans among themselves and to take an edge in strategic depth against India in Afghanistan. This disguised army, which was under the control of Pakistani agencies and was later coined by the local Afghans due to their love for their religion, later came to be known as Taliban. Thus, “the Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan."[3] Backed by the Pakistani army and intelligence agencies as well as by Saudi Arabia, the Taliban took the control of Kabul and established their style of Islamic government by renaming Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also encouraged militants from elsewhere around the Muslim world to “come and fight with the Mujahideen,” and, “in 1986 … the CIA lent substantial support to this activity.” [4] According to the same source, as a result of this strong support from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, at least as many as 35,000 Arab-Afghans have received militant training in Pakistan. The Taliban introduced their version of Sharia taught to them by their Pakistani teachers in the army who did everything to destroy all signs of culture and civilization in Afghanistan and welcomed all Islamic radical elements from all across the globe and tried to strengthen their rule using the petrol dollars of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.[5]

The U.S. claimed the Taliban and Al-Qaeda responsible[6] for the attacks of September 11th, which proved to be a milestone for the international relations in the 21st century. Consequently, using the political notion of proactive defense, the U.S. justified its invasion of Afghanistan after these attacks. Afghanistan was thus carpet-bombed, the Taliban government was ousted, and a hunt for the Taliban as well as Al-Qaeda was started by the American forces. The movement was obtaining its strength from the Tribal areas of Pakistan, which have been under the rule of government of Pakistan.

The Taliban network, later dismantled by the US and the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), dispersed, and most of the Taliban fled to Pakistan where they were given shelter by the Pakistani army and secret agencies along with the leaders of Al-Qaeda.[7] With the spread over of the Taliban into Pakistan, they began their influence in the Northern areas of Pakistan, starting with Swat, which is a hill-station, a tourist resort, and a former independent Pashtun state that emerged with Pakistan under the influence of the Pakistani forces

[1] <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/fu...nus091401.html> Retrieved November 26th 2009.

[2] Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics, Martin Ewans, p. 153.

[3] “Who are the Taliban?” BBC. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1549285.stm> Retrieved 10th November 2009.

[4] Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics, Martin Ewans, p. 280.

[5] Ibid.

[6] The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, edited by Paul Zarembka, p. 22

[7] Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics, Martin Ewans, p. 180

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And here's the matter in Swat (I'm from Swat, you see! :D)

In 2007, Mullah Fazlullah, the current Taliban leader from Swat, initiated a campaign towards bringing the “right” Islam into Swat, starting with intensely emotional speeches throughout the valley. He attracted particularly females with these speeches and lectures, persuading them to support him by enthusiastically donating to him their jewelries. Within months, he had gathered enough funding to head a radio station that now sends chills of terror down every Swati’s spine: Mullah Fazlullah’s FM Radio. Although the government declared his radio illegal, it never took any actions against the Mullah’s teachings or the fatwas that he issued against everyone who did not follow his commands. Once he saw how successful he had become, he started criticizing government policies, female education, music, and everything that seemed to be inspired by Western thought. Convinced, the average Swati stopped sending his daughters to school and ordered for all the televisions and photographs in his home to be burned. In fact, many people took their TVs, VCRs, and CD players to a designated area and burnt them while Fazlullah’s group watched; these volunteers were highly praised by Fazlullah, who announced their names publicly on his FM radio. By November 2007, clinics in which female patients were treated by male doctors were threatened, if not destroyed; music shops were bombed, and singers and other musicians were forced to flee the country, if they could afford it; fathers who had not stopped sending their daughters to schools were killed; and girls’ schools were being bombed everywhere in Swat, causing the destruction of over 200 schools by the end of 2008 alone.[1] The females who voluntarily gave up their education were praised along with their families, and special prayers were offered for them by Mullah Fazlullah on his radio show. Soon, he started preaching the importance of beards and of not allowing females outside the confines of their houses as well as of being treated by male doctors. While he succeeded in influencing many Swatis, he started threatening those who went against his “teachings,” which became orders in no time. In the beginning of 2009, a new dictum had been issued: Girls were not to be sent to schools at all any longer starting January 15th, 2009.[2]
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[1] BBC News, "Children in Swat face bleak future." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7855198.stm> Retrieved November 10th 2009.

[2] Times Online, “Taleban Threaten to Blow up Girls’ Schools” by Zahid Hussain <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5397901.ece> Retrieved November 9th 2009

[Roshina]

^I think Pakistan purposely taught them a hard line version of Islam so they can remain backwards and be their allies for there interests.

Taliban for Pakistan is a No,No.
But then the same Pakistan wants Taliban for us?

What on earth?


Thanks to Pakistan, they ruined the paradise of Swat.

I totally agreeeee!

[afghan]

Death to Pak army for destructing my land.

They try to make us happy with electricity. Anyone who is from Swat should go back to my Mingora and take a look.

They did bad things with our women. The media is in their hands so thy do not show it.


Taliban is not gone at all. the majority they killed were civilians. ever Pukhtun with a beard they shoot and say its insurgent. no man its civilian.

grana wrora i have heard many stories, during the curfews pakistan army would clear the way for insurgents, so they move to a safer location, would kill those who oppsed the **** army. feel sorry for the people of the region.

[Zari]

awwwwwwww......thats depressing....

well thanks guysssss.....

ur posts helped..:D

[imb706]

Why did the Taliban ban weather science?

[MazloomyarMaseed]

Why did the Taliban ban weather science?

why did America ban cannabis?

[imb706]

Lol, that's not an answer. Stop your tard raging and cool off :p