The stench of barbarism, mediaevalism and misogyny emanating from the Taliban has recently become so pronounced that even the president of the United States felt it necessary to raise his voice and condemn the Taliban's policies as a "terrible perversion of Islam" and to add that the Taliban's treatment of women and children in Afghanistan is atrocious.
According to the NNI News Agency (April 17, 1999) the Taliban have, through their "ambassador" in Islamabad Maulavi Sayed-ur-Rahman Haqqani, countered Mr Clinton's remarks with pronouncements so utterly ridiculous and deceitful that any objective, level-headed observer who still needs to be convinced would be rewarded with a remarkable insight into the brazenness and hopeless ignorance of the fundamentalists.
The distinguished Taliban "ambassador" claims that "one hundred per cent of Afghan women are happy
with Taliban policies". The sheer shamelessness of this lie! What person in his or her right mind would be able to believe that Afghan women who
- are penned up like sheep in the recesses of their homes
- are deprived of the right to education and to work outside the house
- are barred from seeking medical attention -even if they themselves or their children perish of hunger or for want of medical care
- are compelled through extreme impoverishment to sell off their dear children
- do not have the right to use all-women public bath-houses in conditions where few homes have bathing facilities
- are insulted and humiliated and flogged for not wearing clothes in accordance with Taliban tastes
- whose only staunch and intrepid organisation (RAWA) is daily the target of blood-curdling terrorist threats
--who, in his or her right mind and living day in and day out with hundreds of such senseless infringements on individual rights and liberties under Taliban domination would still support the Taliban's trademark policy of the gallows, the whip and systematic humiliation of the population at large? Only those of Taliban moral and intellectual calibre would be capable of such an insult to humanity. If nothing else, the determined and intrepid struggle waged by RAWA and the participation of hundreds of women in RAWA-staged demonstrations and gatherings are a sufficient slap-in-the-mouth to the Taliban mouthing such painful, yet hilarious, claims.
The Taliban representative blurts without a modicum of shame, "We have given all basic rights to women." The Taliban's overall world outlook, shaped by nothing but years of rumination of decrepit madrassa subjects and totally alien to elementary history, geography, economics, physics, chemistry, etc., begs the question: What do the Taliban understand of "basic rights"? How proud Goebbels would have been of such talented followers!
The Taliban's savage treatment of women is so disastrously incredible that it has attracted world attention, and hundreds of human rights and women's rights organisations and pro-democracy entities have condemned the Taliban barbarism and the violation of women's basic rights. The Taliban's intellectual calibre understands this as "giving basic rights to women"!
The Taliban "diplomat" goes on to say, "The days are gone when Afghan women had to commit suicide to save their honour from communist Gelamjam militias in Kabul… the Afghan Islamic Emirate has ensured protection of life and honour to womenfolk in Afghanistan in accordance with Islamic principles." He only mentions the villainy committed by "Gelamjam" militias [Dostum's followers] but shamefacedly shies away from mentioning the appalling infamy perpetrated by the Taliban's brethren-in- creed, the Jihadis, after the fall of the puppet regime. He "forgets" that if his Jihadi brethren-in-creed outdid their Dostumi accomplices in savagely violating the honour of hundreds of women and girls, the complex-maddened Taliban have "legalised" rape of women by forcibly marrying second, third and fourth wives without any consent of the women involved. Even if we for a moment give them the benefit of the doubt, it is common knowledge to all Afghans and many non-Afghans that since the domination of the Taliban perverts rape of young boys has drastically increased and this wave of infamy is so widespread that not only innumerable families are sending their young sons abroad to save them from such shame, but even some time ago the Taliban chief, Mullah Omar, felt himself compelled to ask his followers to desist from keeping barefaced boys as their sex partners on the battle fronts!
The Talib-cubs believe that by amputating hands and feet of alleged thieves, qasas [religiously sanctioned slitting of human throats] of alleged murderers, stoning to death of sex offenders and other savagely criminal punishments they are able to "ensure the life, honour and security of women" and cure society of all social ills. Little do they realise that social evils have deep social roots and that it is beyond the mental capability of rotten-to-the-core mediaevalist Taliban and their like to remedy such social evils with sublime ignorance. At this writing, hundreds of reports of rape and murder and various forms of infamy committed by the Taliban are pouring in. Few such reports from the graveyard that our beloved Afghanistan has become are published in the media. What RAWA manages to publish to the world can only be considered as small examples of what is really going on.
The learned Maulavi asserts: "Clinton has no right to interpret Islam as he has no knowledge about our religion." It would come as no surprise if this avowed enemy of freedom, democracy and women were to have the impertinence to assert that RAWA and other anti-fundamentalist organisations in our country and our freedom-loving people in general had no right to interpret their crimes as being not only against Islam but against any religion under the sun! Would the learned Maulavi condescend to accept the scathing criticism levelled against the Taliban's savagery by their brother regime -the Iranian theocracy- who have called the Taliban record of infamy "the shame of Islam"? Would the hundreds of thousands of men and women compatriots who seethe with hatred of the Taliban's crass ignorance, backwardness and cruelty all be considered outside the fold of Islam?
The Taliban spokesman protests, "Why were human rights groups silent when sixty thousand people were killed in Kabul due to fighting among Afghan groups?" What the learned Maulavi means by 'human rights groups' is governments whose interests are in one way or another furthered by support to fundamentalists and who were silent over the massacres perpetrated by the Taliban's brethren-in-creed. What the Taliban really protest is why they do not enjoy the privilege of having their crimes overlooked when the Jihadi criminals were favoured by such oversight by their common sponsors and patrons. It may be that such governments and circles are somehow ashamed of their immoral silence over the massacre of some 60,000 Kabul citizens and wish to redress the wrong by not keeping silent over Taliban atrocities. This is a positive attitude, and it doubtless is a source of disappointment for the Taliban that their heinous crimes are too glaring to admit negligence.
But as a general rule, the moral attitude of a nation, of the people themselves, is quite apart and distinct from that of the governments that govern them. Freedom-loving peoples and organisations standing up for human rights denounced the atrocities of the Taliban's Jihadi brethren-in-creed at the time and now expose and condemn the Taliban's barbarism and especially their savage misogyny. In fact it was the protest of American public opinion that prompted President Clinton to voice the American people's condemnation of the Taliban, despite the fact that American allies in the region continue to support the selfsame Taliban criminals with cash and armaments.
There is no great difference between the Taliban and their Jihadi brethren-in-creed. The Jihadis perpetrated their heinous crimes through crude use of arms and wanton carnage and looting. The Taliban do not desist from such a style; they have only complemented it with a subtler form of criminality. The Taliban pound the heads of the people of Afghanistan with the Koran and with their Sharia Law. The Jihadis specialised in physical devastation of our people; the Taliban are experts in spiritual and psychological devastation. The Taliban's strategy is to utterly beat the female half of the Afghan population into traumatised autism so that they would have nothing to fear from at least half the population.
But holding the Kalashnikov in one hand and the Koran in the other will not spare the Taliban from inevitable military and political death. Neither will these latest lies and shameless deceptions save them from the reckoning and trial of our insulted and humiliated people.
It is superfluous to comment any further on the hilarious buffoonery mouthed by ignoramuses who as yet do not know whether the United States has a king or a president. Yet quoting what the Taliban "ambassador" has retorted to insult the intelligence of the world community may perhaps serve to bring a smile of disgust on the lips of Afghans, the most agonised people on Earth. For this reason we conclude with these bitter jokes:
"One hundred per cent of Afghan women are happy with Taliban policies… We have given all basic rights to women… The days are gone when Afghan women had to commit suicide to save their honour from communist Gelamjam militias in Kabul…"!!!
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
April 19, 1999
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