-Caveat Lector-
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- Hello,
Sorry I've been remiss. The last few months have been very, very busy, centered around two trips to Afghanistan -- a trip to Herat and the western parts of the country in early April, and a longer trip to Kabul and eastern Afghanistan in May. I'm working on something substantial about my five weeks or so in Afghanistan. In the meantime here's a piece I wrote that was published today. Below the story are links to some of the articles I worked on while in Afghanistan.
Hope to talk to everyone soon.
Warm regards,
Borzou
Mending Afghanistan: With the fall of the Taliban, it's time to fix the roads
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2002/as-insight-0616-0-2f12u2446.htm
By Borzou Daragahi
Special to The Star
SAFFEH-CHIR, Afghanistan
They play homemade instruments and use old buckets of yogurt for drums. They sing terribly and can't keep a beat. Plus, they're not very bright.
"The neighbors don't like our music," says Aziz Khan, an 18-year-old would-be flute player. "We play loud anyway."
Call them the punks of the Panshir Valley.
Following a grueling seven-hour drive along the dusty, bumpy unpaved road from Kabul, these youngsters' music is grating on the ears. But the bad tunes are important for the future of Afghanistan. The traditional folk music they play (badly) had been fading from the Panshir Valley until recently. Most serious musicians have long since fled abroad.
And the people who remained had more urgent matters to attend to, like dodging Russian carpet bombings. Or fighting off Taliban putsches from the south.
"We've known nothing but war," said Saifudin, a 21-year-old who plays a homemade tambura, a traditional string instrument somewhat like a guitar. "To the north of us there's been war. To the south of us there's been war."
Before its troubles began in the late 1970s, Afghanistan was an impoverished, politically unstable Third World country. But at least ordinary Afghans had their own traditional lives, culture and language. The last 23 years of war have so devastated this country that even the millennia-old music must be rebuilt from scratch.
A pair of trips to western and eastern Afghanistan over the last two months revealed a nation of shards, rubble and broken off pieces: shattered lives, amputated limbs, dilapidated roads, abandoned villages and war-ravaged city neighborhoods. The Loya Jirga - the grand council designated to create an 18-month government for Afghanistan - got under way this week. But rebuilding the country's political structure may be the easy part. The real challenge for Afghanistan is the massive social, economic and cultural reconstruction project at hand.
The roads must be rebuilt. A 60-mile trip on Afghanistan's roads can take five hours.
The schools must be resupplied. Though Afghans in the west are among the most educated of immigrants, Afghanistan suffers an estimated 90 percent illiteracy rate.
Communications networks must be restored. There are no telephone land lines between cities.
Basic municipal services must be restarted. Kabul residents currently toss their trash into streets.
Most importantly and challenging, relations between Afghanistan's four major ethnic groups - Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks - must be patched up. The Pakistani-supported Taliban, overthrown with the help of a U.S.-led bombing campaign late last year, were largely Pashto. The hated rule of the Taliban and ethnic reprisals against other groups have led to a severe backlash against Pashtuns. Mistrust and hatred between the Pashtuns and all else abounds. A Tajik friend in Herat called all Pashtuns Taliban. A Hazara friend in Kabul insisted on referring to all Pashtuns as al Qaeda, the mostly Arab andPakistani terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden.
The wounds run deeply. Successive waves of worsening violence and calamity have scarred and re-scarred the country. And then scarred it again.
First came the Russians, who in their frustrated efforts to control Afghanistan, wound up inspiring an Islam-fueled and CIA-funded war of resistance. They resorted to merciless aerial bombardments of the Panshir Valley and other strongholds of Mujahedeen warriors. Driving along the road from Kabul through the Panshir Valley or from the Iranian border to Herat are the remains of villages long since depopulated.
Thanks to bombings, sabotage and lack of maintenance, paved roads, some built by the Russians, others in previous eras, have become nonexistent in the Afghan countryside, making intercity travel a torturous, backbreaking process.
The Russians fled in the late 1980s, installing the government of Mohammed Najibullah as they departed. Soon came the Mujahedeen wars, for parts of eastern Afghanistan perhaps the most devastating chapter in the nation's history. The same warlords who had finished off the Russians, finished off Najibullah and then began finishing off each other.
At one point, the once-cosmopolitan capital city of Kabul was subjected to 1,000 rockets in one day. More than 60 percent of Kabul continues to lie in ruin. Think post-World War II Berlin. Think billions of dollars to rebuild.
"After all is said and done, maybe we should have just accepted Najibullah," said Hamed, a former Mujahedeen warrior who laid down his arms after the fall of the Taliban.
The instability, violence and civil war under the rule of the Mujahedeen warlords laid the groundwork for the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban militia. In their zeal to Islamicize the country, the Taliban turned the ancient buddhas of Bamiyan, giant statutes that were once Afghanistan's greatest tourist draw, to rubble.
That's not to downplay what the Taliban did to Afghanistan's people. The Taliban's underreported practice of ethnic cleansing against Hazaras in the center of the country sent an estimated 95 percent of the people of Bamiyan province out of their homes and villages and into exile, refugee camps and the mountains. Only recently have they begun returning to their destroyed towns: the Taliban systematically destroyed every building it could get its hands on.
In the cities, the Taliban concentrated their fundamentalist fury on women, forcing all to abide by bizarre social restrictions: don't leave the house without an all-covering Burqa; don't leave the house without a male relative.
The Taliban are gone now, but most women - even modern, educated women - continue to wear the Burqa when in the streets or the bazaar. Many of them say it's out of fear.
"We've suffered unimaginable cruelty and humiliation under the Taliban," said Shafiqa Moaber, director of the Ariana Women's Vocational Center, which gives job skills to women. "It'll be a long time before we can feel normal again."
In the final years of the Taliban came a severe regional drought that caused thousands of villagers to starve or flee from their centuries-old lives. The result has been places like Maslakh near Herat, at its peak population of 135,000 one of the largest such camps in the world.
The migrants have begun heading back to their homes. But according to aid officials, they've picked up a bad habit along the way: they've gotten used to handouts from aid agencies. The drought has ended, but many farmers in Western Afghanistan didn't plant seeds this year, waiting instead for free bags of grain and cans of food.
"This culture of dependence is the biggest obstacle to rebuilding the countryside," said Robert Robillard, Herat director of the International Organization for Migrants, which administers Maslakh and other camps.
Finally, came the U.S. led-bombing campaign, which for all its successes still managed to damage much of the important infrastructure of the country, such as the radio and television transmitters. It also damaged an unknown number of lives. In a tiny hamlet just outside Herat, a woman described the day a U.S. cluster bomb inadvertently struck her town.
"This village gave up three martyrs so that the rest of us could be free of the Taliban," said Olafzala, in her 70s.
Indeed, despite their lack of education, typical Afghans display a sometimes awe-inspiring political savvy and nuanced understanding of the forces at play in their country. For example, though many Afghans revere Iranian people, culture and especially music, they pause at the mention of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Though they appreciate the help of the United States in ousting the Taliban, they're mortified at the idea of a long-term foreign presence here.
"We love Iran. We're grateful to the Americans," said Gholamnavi Taji, the proprietor of a shop renting America video CDs and Iranian and Indian music cassettes in Obee, a farming town three hours west of Herat "But we want our freedom more than anything. And we don't want to be ruled by the clerics or the foreigners."
Such subtle political thinking - distinguishing between a people and its government, a temporary military presence and a long-term occupation, a political group and its ethnic base - may be the key to a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.
* Other recent Afghanistan articles on the web:
http://marketplace.org/shows/2002/06/10_mpp.html#Rundown
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0524/p07s02-wosc.html
http://marketplace.org/shows/2002/05/16_mpp.html#rundown
http://www.borzou.com/scmp/afghanmedia.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020513-19744900.htm
http://www.msnbc.com/news/742157.asp
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020413-96350032.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020410-47767976.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020404-77356222.htm
*****
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