Monday, October 20, 2008

A funny thing happened on the way to Kabul..

That's a lie. Nothing funny ever happens on the way to Kabul.

Kabul was captured by the Red Army on Christmas Eve, 1979 and became the nerve center for all Russian military activity against the Mujahideen for the next decade. Barely nine years after that, even those democracy lovin' Americans abandoned its Embassy there. Mohammod Najibullah's government fell in '92 and even though there was intense friction as to the rights of arms smuggling and the narcotics trade, a Sharia-based state was unanimously created. In 1996 the Taliban seized Kabul, publicly lynching Najibullah and his brother, and soon after the measure of offenses that needed to go punished for the love of Allah was severely amplified. A month after 9/11, America democratized Afghanistan in the name of freedom.. and justice.. and Dick Cheney who installed Hamid Karzai as the face of the new puppet government. But the Taliban still rules much of Afghanistan. I only mention this because I am truly trying to understand how we (or Sarah Palin) can ever get to a point of reason with these people. I just posted days ago on the "well timed" visit of Saudi King Abdullah to discuss peace and the Taliban's breaking away from al Qaeda. Since then, they seized a bus and executed a couple dozen people and killed a foreign aid worker for preaching. What is wrong with these people? (aside from being psychologically tormented for a generation or two) Apparently not enough because now the US military wants to get involved. Stay tuned. And it's never a bad time to remind people to visit http://www.rawa.org/ where they can learn about womens' rights in Afghanistan and choose their favorite restriction for women. I'm still stuck between the ban on hearing a woman's footsteps and the ban on women riding bicycles. And Kabul is not so bad today. There the women can actually attend University so long as they don't mind the risk of being beaten or raped without reprisal. For more on Kabul, you can read The Kite Runner, but bring a box of tissues.

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