Lets Destroy The Bamiyan Buddhas!

aicha #239,

Thanks for bursting my bubble before it got too big.

dammit :)

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/170301/detnat02.asp
Taliban’s idol-smashing edict had Pakistan’s tacit approval
HT Correspondent
(New Delhi, March 16)

TWO MEMBERS of the Taliban council that passed the edict calling for the destruction of Buddha statues in Afghanistan`s Bamiyan province were Pakistani nationals, say diplomatic sources here. Analysts say this may mean Islamabad, despite its pleas to the Taliban regime not to destroy the statues, tacitly gave a green signal to the edict.

The Taliban have two theological councils, or shura. The theological council, Dar ul Ifta, has five to seven members. It was this shura, at the instance of the hardline Taliban Justice Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, which past the edict calling for the breaking of ``all statues and idols.`` But two of the council members are Pakistanis and they each head two fundamentalist Islamic groups based in that country.

According to a diplomatic source both these Pakistani groups have “well-known links with the Pakistani establishment.” Analysts say it is unlikely that Islamabad`s military and intelligence establishment would not, therefore, have known about the vote or been in a position to influence the vote. In fact the members of the Dar ul Ifta voted unanimously in favour of the edict.

Reports of Islamabad`s links to the Taliban edict are surfacing at a time when the Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar is in Tokyo trying to persuade Japan to resume financial aid to Islamabad. It would mean Mr Sattar`s ‘regrets’ over the Taliban edict are the diplomatic equivalent of crocodile tears.

Most Japanese are Buddhists and Tokyo was at the forefront of international efforts to try and save the statues. “Incidentally Pakistan was initially reluctant to issue any statement critical of the Taliban edict,” say the diplomatic sources.

t-bhai #237,

nice article. thanks for posting it.

scout 236

It is ``Jayaprakash`` as in ``Chandrashekhar`` or ``Madhusudan``

and not ``Jaya Prakash``

Extract from a commentary in the Washington Times:

``As they confront increasing internal opposition, the Taleban zealots have managed to pull off something rather extraordinary, in geo-strategic terms. They have provided Iran, Russia, China, India and the United States with a common enemy. Iran plies the Shi`ite connection. India supports the Northern Alliance,because Pakistan supports the Taleban. China says the Taleban supports Muslim rebels in western China. Russia resents Taleban-trained terrorists who stir trouble in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.``

``The Russians also see direct links from the Taleban and Osama bin Laden to Chechen rebels. For the United States, harboring terrorist kingpin bin Laden puts the Taleban in the crosshairs.``

``The Taleban leaders can blast stone Buddhas. Confronting their own failures and the wrath of the globe`s most powerful nations is a much more difficult battle.``

Taleban a monument to Western folly

Rosie DiManno

COLUMNIST

DON`T BOTHER crying over limestone Buddha statues if you`ve no tears for living - and dying - Afghan children.

It must say something about us, both in the West and in Islamic Arab nations, that more outrage has been expressed over the demolition of two monolithic monuments - which only students of antiquity had heard of a fortnight ago - than 2 million Afghans on the verge of starvation.

It`s indeed hideous that the one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar, spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox version of Islam at the heart of the ruling Taleban movement, issued the obliteration order against the historic twin Buddhas, carved from an isolated mountainside 1,500 years ago. The Buddhas were doing no harm and had few worshippers in a country where Buddhism died out a millennium ago. Even if Afghanistan were a nation that encouraged tourism, it`s doubtful whether many would make the arduous journey to Bamiyan at the southwestern juncture of the nearly untraversable Hindu Kush.

What public indignation exists towards the Taleban, particularly in the sophisticated West, has been aimed - and with good reason, I don`t disagree - at the theocracy`s crushing decrees against its own population, specifically the denial of basic human rights to females. This is a country which, since the Taleban seized power by overrunning the capital Kabul in 1996, has forced women into a rigid form of house arrest. Females must wear the traditional burqah, the head-to-toe blue (not black) covering that hides even their eyes, whenever they step outside their homes, which they can do only in the company of male family members, a husband or a brother. Girls may not attend school, although a recent loosening of the law has permitted, or at least tolerated, girl-children attending privately run classrooms. But even boys receive an education that teaches them little beyond the recitation of the Koran and other approved Islamic texts. Women may not hold jobs, except for female doctors working in all-female hospital wings. Not that the career prospects are all that much better for male doctors, who earn about $4.50 a month working under appalling conditions in government-run hospitals.

The Taleban does not allow photographs of any human image, which they consider sinful by their reading of the Koran, just as they forbid all graven images of artwork - the basis upon which the Bamiyan Buddhas were ordered dynamited. Everyone must pray five times a day - a customary practice for Muslims, except in Afghanistan those found to be neglecting their religious duties are flayed on the spot by the roving ``soldier-monks`` of the Taleban. Music is forbidden. TV is forbidden. Videotapes and cassettes are forbidden. Only the proscription against kite-flying - an expertise elevated to an artform in Afghanistan - has been quietly dropped by the government, which is now also allowing its citizens to keep pet birds, another avid pursuit of Afghans.

What`s happened is that Afghanistan`s educated class, or at least those who can afford the $20,000 to $25,000 required for forged documents and exit papers, have fled their homeland. But what must be remembered by those of us in the West who can`t even imagine such a strict existence is this: For the majority of Afghans, having come through two decades of horrendous civil war and Russian occupation verging on genocide, the Taleban`s edicts are not so insupportable. What the Taleban gave Afghans was a measure of peace and security that many had never before known, so decimated had this country become by violence and inter-tribal warfare.

And the only reason the Taleban was able to assume power is because the West permitted it.

It was the West, specifically the United States, that propelled the Taleban to ascendancy in the first place. Only a decade ago, the U.S. funnelled arms and military expertise to the mujahideen guerrillas because it was strategically imperative to thwart Russian imperialism and Moscow`s lust for the rugged jewel that is Afghanistan, with all its economic riches and its geographic situation in the heart of Central Asia.

The mujahideen, in rather spectacular fashion, pushed the Russians back over the border. When the Russians turned tail, the Americans lost their keen interest in Afghanistan and the glorious mujahideen fell into a decade of factional, tribal and ethnic warfare, Sunni versus Shiite, fundamentalist versus secular. Now the most fierce of all the mujahideen military commanders, Ahmad Shah Massoud, is isolated in a small corner of Afghanistan while the Taleban, enjoying the endless military and political succour of Pakistan, controls 90 per cent of the country and official recognition from only two other nations.

The Americans, who had encouraged Islamic militancy when it meant thwarting Russia, allowed Pakistan to take the lead of political influence in Afghanistan. Strategically, the U.S. is more preoccupied with bringing oil out of neighbouring Turkmenistan via a pipeline that would go through Afghanistan and Pakistan, but at all costs not Iran. Meanwhile, the Taleban - which cannot feed its own people - reaps the stupendous profit from its newfound distinction as the world`s largest producer and exporter of opium poppies and heroin.

For those of us who love Afghanistan - a magnificent nation that gets in your blood, with a proud people whose likes may never be seen again - there is an abiding faith that the country will endure and survive the ravages of the Taleban, if merely by its sheer obstinacy, just as it has always endured and survived - on its own. Politically, the Taleban will go into eclipse, eventually. There are many who believe if foreign aid was shut off, the Taleban would be ousted from power by an enraged citizenry, most of whom practise a form of Islam that takes its lifeblood from tribal and regional cultural affiliations.

But three consecutive years of devastating drought have left the Afghan citizenry weak and dying. Hundreds of thousands are starving and freezing in camps. Foreign aid is a slim lifeline, but all they`ve got. I`ve no idea what`s to be done, except that the West, the U.S., should hold itself accountable for what it has wrought.

By comparison, why all the wailing about two stone Buddhas reduced to rubble?

jay is a girl?

woohoo

Rajanjua, sigalph & others re. asif n

I really wish the guy doesn`t stop. It always gives me a perverse kick from peeping into his mind through his posts - a bit like watching a freak show.

Free entertainment is otherwise hard to come by nowadays.....

Asif Nasqbandi

I will miss you very much, if you cut down the interactions on the chowk. You are a true pakistani who believes in the islamic republic and not an accidental theorist. You represent the views of the majority of pakistanis, who unfortunately cannot articulate the vuews as good as you have done so far.

Now we are left with the psuedo pakistanis, trying to be the liberal whiteman, trying out the industrial grade bleach to change thye skin colour, b8ut still relapses into urdu inanities when confronted with unpalatable truth.

Asif, stay on, let the world see the true pakistan.

regards and best wishes.

jay.

Instead of the kashmir border, if you choose to take the sea route, pl do drop in at Calicut, and ask for Jayaprakash, they will guide you on.

``...as i am cutting down severely interactions on chowk.``

Thank you. Who needs a nutcase like Solitude with people like you and Mullah Omar around. And if you are aware of the history (which I seriously doubt) then learn from it.

re rdesikan advise to asif n and cohorts

``Heck, aren`t you better off immigrating to heaven aka afghanistan where you can live the life you`ve always wanted to--instead of living with infidels and kafirs of all hues.``

No. That`d involve actually making the hard sacrifices that these people are incapable. As long as the shari`a is something they can preach to others, they are lions. WHen it comes to putting roots where your mouth is, these folks are AWOL. Remember Khomeini who lived in heathen Paris most of his active life?

Re Asif 217

Dude, go ahead and pray 24/7/365 and give my regards to the man above if one really exists in the first place. Heck, aren`t you better off immigrating to heaven aka afghanistan where you can live the life you`ve always wanted to--instead of living with infidels and kafirs of all hues.

Cheers

re: Naqshbandi

That gentle soul, Ibn Affan who had to suffer so much at that late age was also accused of biddat by jahils like you. Its time you start thinking some original thoughts.

sigalph/janjua/krashid...

When it comes to islam, i don`t have any original ideas--alhamdulillah. And janjua, yes i am aware of the history you refer to. Why don`t you learn some respect for the islamic savants? Please don`t bother replying that was a rhetorical q.

Dear Bilal,

Please email me on naqshbandijamaati@yahoo.com and we can continue our discussion there if u like. i would prefer that. thank you. as i am cutting down severely interactions on chowk.

:-)

Ras Siddiqui#

Probably the writer is unaware of the history of peaceful CO-Existence of Afghans/Central Asians.

Or anybody with a pen is writing these days.

I think all the males are writing these days.

re harish 216

Right on brother! The Democratic Leadership is scared of any tax cuts for one simple reason: it goes to benefit the most working poor and wean them away from the all encompassing welfare state created by LBJ. And any ``Republican`` plan that helps the working poor chips away at the Democratic plantation system of identity based politics. The Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Clinons thrive on the plantation system where a bonded class of second class citizens delivers their votes to the massa`! Once these citizens can help themselves and get rid of the `helpful` civil servant, they will not need the Dems any more. That thought is life threatning to the Democrats and their closet friends-the liberal Republicans (whatever these things are).