Is There A Difference Between Talibans And Afghans?

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1

I have a question: Is there a difference between the Talibans and Afghans? Let me put it another way: If we fight the Talibans are we fighting the same people the Soviets fought a few decades ago?

The reason I am asking is because I have heard on television that nobody has every conquered Afghanistan. Presumably this is because Afghanistan is in the center of the trade route in Asia and everybody wanted to own it for thousands of years. Because of this they have become natural fighters. In fact, they defeated Alexander the Great, The British twice, and the Soviet Union, among other countries and groups throughout history. I believe they defeated Genghis Khan, too. Well, I was watching CNN the other day and there was a segment called Lessons Learned, and a Russian general spoke about his days in Afghanistan, where he fought from the beginning of the war to the end. He said that Afghans were the best fighters and that even if you shot an Afghan to pieces he would fire back to the last breath. Plus, the geography is very difficult there. The general said even laser-guided missles are useless over there.

So my question is are Talibans the Afghans that have been fighting throughout history, like I have heard? Or are they invaders of Afghanistan like I have heard? Somebody give me the facts.

2

Taliban is a religious sect. They are Afghans…in fact bin Laden was one of the guys fighting the Russians if I remember correctly. So yes, these are the same Afghans that gave other people trouble. I think a few nuclear weapons would do the trick…they could starve them out after that. But that’s just me.

3

From what I’ve heard, the taliban emerged from Pakistan, took over Afghanistan, and pretty much laid out the laws for the people. But not all Talibans came from Pakistan. There were Talibans who were already Afghanis. They just called themselves Taliban because they also wanted to be a part of the regime.

Moderators, if you can please post this website, it will give our readers disturbing info about the taliban. It’s not my intent to shock anyone, I just want to let our readers know the type of people our country will be dealing with in the next several years. I hope you understand. The URL is www.rawa.org.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all the people from Afghanistan are sick and twisted as the Taliban. There are those who are just as normal as we are (or try to be). Because these people are living under the most strictest conditions we may never imagine, they are helpless and repressed. So if we do go to war with Afghanistan, we will have to kill a lot of innocent civillians just to get our hands on the taliban.

Before I leave, I want to mention just one more thing. Like a lot of you, I was shocked when reading Brock Strasser’s racist posts he made. But after reading some info about the website I mentioned above, and learning who the Taliban are, I see some validity in Brocks views.

4

As for fighting ability. I recently read that the Russia was winning the war in afghanistan using their special forces to kill the mujahdeen fighters at night and by stealth raids. The mujahdeen were leaving and going to refugee camps and then our stinger missles arrived and soviet plans, helicopters started getting shot down and they rallied and the soviets were not willing to throw more into the war. Now Im not sure how accurate all that is but maybe someone else would.

5

The Taliban took over 80% of Afghanistan in 1992. They’re a fundamentalist sect of Islam that is trying to create a society in which their extremely strict version of Islam is the rule.

The Taliban was unable to completely conquer Afghanistan. The other 20% of Afghanistan (the Northern Alliance) is still lead by the old president of Afghanistan.

It’s likely that the vast majority of Afghan’s resent the Taliban but after many wars and a 4 year drought, they were too weak to resist the Taliban takeover.

Indescriminately bombing Afghanistan to get the Taliban would probalby kill millions of innocent people who hate the Taliban as much as anyone.

6

Here is an explanation written by an Afghani-American :

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?

7

Taliban means students (Pakistani term). It is used for a mixed group of Pakistani and Afghan rebels fighting the Northern Alliance (backed by Iran). Obviously these guys must be good, else the USA would have not backed them. Also Colin Powell would have not sanctioned 43 million dollars for them in May, if the Pentagon thought that they wouldn’t last. Of course, Indians are given to thinking that the Taliban were paid the money because they killed Iranian diplomats.
Note that Afghan is a nationality, it is not a race. It comprises Uzbeks, Pathans, Mongols, Tajiks, and others. These races have been defeated in battle before several times over. Even the region of Afghanistan has been captured and held, by the Bactrians, the Kulash, the Scythians, the Turks( Mohammed Ghaznavi), the Indians (Babur), and the Iranians (Nadir Shah).
Part of the Taliban was active against the Soviets in the 1980’s. Gorbachev was withdrawing them from everywhere, so lets not think that the Soviets ran away from the battle. The Soviets also managed to kill large number of Afghan rebels. The strongest of them, backed by Iran took control of Afghanistan, until the USA, Pakistan and most of the Arab countries (except Iraq) pumped money and arms to make Taliban rulers of most of the land. Frankly I don’t why you say that Afghans have been fighting throughout history. Afghanistan has enjoyed centuries of peace. If the Soviets and the US hadn’t made it a prestige issue, Afghanistan would have not faced the problems it has.
Of course, the Russian general knows what he speaks, and is referring to the modern Afghan militiants. These guys are tough and the level of real success would be somewhat similar to what the Soviets achieved. Meaning you can grab the land, fight them, but you’ll lose soldiers and never get to sleep in the night. Use of chemical weapons will kill off the not-so-well equipped soldiers of the Northern Alliance. Bombing the routes will only make them use natural mountain trails. Plus you can’t distinguish between them and the normal Afhans. I mean does the US expect the Taliban to wear T-shirt proclaiming ‘Yes I am Taliban’? Incidentally the Afghans are not superhuman. My grandfather was from Farah, Afghanistan, and my uncle is from Ghazni. And both are quite normal people.

8

The Taliban conquered Afghanistan only a few years ago, and are deeply resented by the Afghan people as a repressive, ultra-fundamentalist cult which seized power illegitimately. But since they were fighting against communists, our country armed and supported the Taliban back in the 1980’s, and even helped train bin Ladin (yep–thats right. The CIA calls it a “Blowback” when dictators we once supported in the 980’s later turn and use their training against use. Former allies include Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, ben Ladin, etc. We supported them in the 1980’s because our fireign aid was not contingent on human rights records, but simply on whether the entities were fighting against communists). For details, search msnbc.com for the terms “bin laden cia” and read the article “Bin Laben Comes Home to Roost.”

9

Below is a portion of a petition to the UN regarding human rights in Afghanistan as it relates to the Taliban’s treatment of women. Please note this petition was initiated a while ago, but you can get an idea that things were different before the Taliban took rule.

Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is waging a war upon women. Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear
burqua and have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their eyes. One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of
fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her arm(!) while she was driving. Another was stoned to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a relative. Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male relative; professional women such as professors,
translators, doctors, lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and restricted to their homes. Homes where a woman is present must have their windows painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for the slightest misbehavior. Because they cannot work, those without male relatives or husbands are either starving to
death or begging in the street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s. Depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the suicide rate with
certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among women must be extraordinarily high: those who cannot find proper medication and treatment for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such conditions. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear. It is at the point where the term “human rights violations” has become an understatement.
Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or offending
them in the slightest way. Women enjoyed relative freedom: to work, to dress generally as they wanted, and to drive and appear in public alone until only 1996. The rapidity of this transition is the main reason for the
depression and suicide; Women who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms are now severely restricted and treated as subhuman in the name of right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their
tradition or ‘culture’, but it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo the name of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly express peaceful outrage at the oppression and murder and injustice committed
against women by the Taliban.

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Net Khan, I didn’t mean to say that Afghans have been fighting throughout history as in they never stop fighting and never have peace. What I meant was that throughout history, there have always been periods where they had to defend their country and peace.