Interesting item claiming USA and Taliban always secret
lovers......nothing worse than "unrequited love" and this is what
Antares means, the bright red star which burns bright throughout
September, October, and November.
And Amrericans are told we now must sacrifice? Wasn't the people in
the Twin Towers enough? Terrorism? Well, Hollywood profitted before
the fact creating the pictures designed in instill fear in the minds of
our children.
Look to Littleton for major answers as to what is sick in America - and
then look to the top not the bottom.
Oh I hated to hear Tom Sellick mourn his broadway show closed
down....and all the theaters moaning - the Mayor of New York wants the
tourists back to bring money in the economy.
Take some of this money and invest it in America - the people of
America.
Just don't hand me that crap about the Americ to sacrifice any more
while so many prosper at our expense.
Saba
Middle East News Online
By George Szamuely Antiwar.com
Posted Friday March 9, 2001 - 04:45:09 PM EST
There is something hilarious about the worldwide horror at the Taliban's
proposal to destroy Afghanistan's Buddhist statues, including the two
giant Buddhas in the central Bamiyan province.
The Bamiyan statues date back to the centuries of Buddhist rule that
preceded the arrival of Islam in the ninth century AD. Despite the
protests, the Taliban are in no mood to hang about. Using anti-aircraft
weapons, tanks and explosives, they have already destroyed large parts
of the figures. Western leaders issued statements laced with piety and
sanctimony. Up until two weeks ago none of them had even known that
there were Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. Now they are all aficionados
of museums. However, the last thing they want to be caught doing is
expressing hostility towards Islam.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the ancient statues
"an important part of the world's cultural legacy and the cultural
heritage of Afghanistan…. The United States joins...other governments
in urging a halt to the destruction by the Taliban of a significant
aspect of Afghans' cultural heritage."
Following their meeting in Trieste, Italy, the environment ministers of
the G-8 group of industrialized nations issued this gaseous statement:
"Mindful that the diversity of natural and human systems is at the core
of sustainable development, we express dismay and shock at reports of
the edict of the Taliban leadership."
"Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage," the statement went on, "is of
vital importance not only to the people of Afghanistan but also to the
world as a whole." The European Union too got into the act. In a
statement issued in Pakistan by Sweden, the EU condemned the
destruction:
"The Presidency of the European Union strongly condemns this crime
against the world's common heritage and deeply regrets that it has taken
place in the name of one of the world's important religions." German
Culture Minister Julian Nida- Ruemelin - inevitably - compared the
destruction of the statues to the burning of books by the Nazis. "This
is about a piece of global cultural heritage which the rest of the world
cannot be indifferent to" he declaimed.
UNESCO sent an emissary to Kabul to negotiate a "solution" with the
Taliban.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art offered to pay to have the giant
Buddhas removed from the country. There has also been a proposal to
build a giant wall in front of the statues so as to hide them from
Islamic eyes. But Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil
dismissed these ideas. "We have all sorts of possibilities to maintain
them or to keep them out of sight," he explained, "Our verdict wants
their annihilation." His hands were tied, he explained. Any alternative
to the destruction would fail to satisfy Islamic law: "Our decree is
based on Islamic orders and…we will spare no pre-Islamic or
post-Islamic era statues." "World's cultural legacy," "global cultural
heritage," "diversity of natural and human systems," "one of the world's
important religions"
- such grandiloquent phrases roll easily off the tongues of
the guardians of the New World Order. Or at least occasionally they do.
For the destruction of the Buddhist statues is hardly the first instance
in recent times of Islamic intolerance towards other religions. For at
least two years, Albanian Moslems have waged a systematic campaign to
annihilate the "rich cultural heritage" - to use the appropriate phrase
- of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Kosovo. This has taken place while
the province has been under military occupation by NATO and under the
nominal jurisdiction of the United Nations. Yet this destruction has
evoked very little protest and virtually no condemnation.
The Met has not offered to pony up some cash to save precious cultural
artifacts.
UNESCO has not rushed an emissary over to Pristina to undertake urgent
negotiations with the KLA. The loss of Europe's Christian heritage
clearly is a matter of very little importance. Here is a tiny sample of
the devastation wrought by this reign of Islamic terror (rather nearer
to home than Afghanistan): The Monastery of the Holy Trinity, built in
the 14th century, housed a valuable collection of manuscripts from 14th
to 18th centuries. It was plundered, burnt and then leveled to the
ground by explosives.
The medieval Monastery of St. Mark of Korisa, built in 1467 with a
single-nave, a rectangular foundation and a preserved fragment of the
original, ancient fresco, housed a major book collection. It was robbed
and burnt prior to having been completely destroyed by explosives.
The Monastery of St. Archangel Gabriel, built in the 14th century, had a
rectangular foundation, a semi-round apse and a semi-cylindrical vault.
A number of the 14th century liturgical vessels were kept in the church.
The monastery was first looted and then set on fire. Finally, it was
completely destroyed by explosive.
The Monastery of St. Uros, with the Church of the Ascension of The Holy
Virgin, built by the Empress Helen at the end of the 14th century. In
1647-49 Patriarch Paisios bequeathed the manuscript of the hagiography
of the Emperor Uros to the monastery. The monastery was mined and
destroyed The Monastery and the Church of St. Archangels, in Gornje
Nerodimlje, were built in the 14th century and renewed in the year 1700.
The monastery was burnt and looted.
For a comprehensive list, click here.
This rampant vandalism came as no surprise to NATO, and particularly not
to the United States. For decades the US Government has promoted Islamic
fundamentalism as a tool to ensure its global hegemony. The policy long
predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
It was no accident that the US Government chose to back the most extreme
of the Islamic fundamentalist groups that were fighting the Russians.
This was not because US policymakers were naive about the true
intentions of their clients. To the contrary, as early as the 1960s they
had realized the usefulness of Islamic fundamentalism.
First, it would act as a bulwark against Arab radicalism of the kind
espoused by Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser. It was preferable to have Arabs
worrying about proper religious observance and correct dress code,
rather than why a small group of emirs continues to control fabulous
wealth while the rest of the populace lives in abject poverty. Moreover,
Islam came to be seen in Washington as a powerful weapon in the global
struggle with the Soviet Union. The largely Moslem Central Asian
republics were seen as restive.
Spreading the Islamic message to them would help weaken Moscow's rule.
Through the agencies like Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, the US
Government spread a message of Islamic fundamentalism and ethnic
nationalism to Central Asia.
The CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI)
created the Taliban. The idea was to encourage a specifically Sunni
radicalism, which would content itself with imposing the sharia while
avoiding grappling with pressing social and economic concerns. This
suited Saudi Arabia perfectly, partly because it was anxious to
strengthen its Islamic credentials as against the newly-triumphant
Shiite rivals in Iran.
In addition, the Saudi rulers, presiding over the world's largest oil
exporter, were terrified of political radicalism. Not surprisingly so.
A tiny group of people, along with their large families, retainers and
hangers-on live in luxury and do very little in the way of work all day.
The Saudis' vast oil wealth is spent on the purchase of ever- more
sophisticated weaponry from the Pentagon, which its feeble military
would almost certainly have no idea how to use. Meanwhile, the people
who do the work have very little in the way of political rights. What
the Saudi rulers do have is Mecca, Medina and a US guarantee to step in
to bail them out if they are ever threatened.
So the United States, along with its Saudi and Pakistani clients, began
to finance, train and arm the mujahedeen of Afghanistan. Altogether,
about $40 billion in cash went to the mujahedeen. Then, starting in late
1984, thousands of militant Islamic radicals from the Middle East made
their way to Afghanistan. Their recruitment was organized by the Saudi
businessman, Osama bin Laden. In camps set up in the Afghan tribal
areas, these volunteers underwent military training, political education
and Islamic consciousness- raising. The ISI - effectively the CIA -
supervised this indoctrination into the ant- Soviet jihad.
The withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989 did not lead
to the lead to the closing down of the camps, any more than it led to
the dissolution of NATO. To the contrary, the camps continued to
flourish training recruits for one jihad after another.
The ISI and the CIA, of course, continued to finance and supervise their
proteges. The jihads were largely directed at perceived foes or rivals
of the United States.
Fundamentalist volunteers would be sent to Xinjiang province in China,
with a view to trying to detach an Islamic republic out of China.
Volunteers would turn up in Chechnya and Daghestan helping to mobilize
anti-Russian feeling there. Or they would make their way to Bosnia,
seeking to establish the first Islamic republic in Europe.
In each of these cases, the goals of the Islamic fundamentalists and of
the United States Government were the same. The United States did not
give a damn about the sharia.
But they saw in Moslem Bosnia and Moslem Albania potentially useful
clients.
They would join an informal grouping of Moslem countries stretching from
the Persian Gulf into the Balkans. This would include Turkey,
Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It would be led by the United
States and aligned closely with Israel. Moslem Albania would be groomed
to replace Greece as NATO's base in the Eastern Mediterranean. This bloc
of Moslem states would act as the staging ground for US expansion into
Moslem Central Asia, there to appropriate the oil and gas riches of the
Caspian Sea.
In the case of Bosnia, the United States encouraged the Sarajevo
Government not to limit itself to recruiting the Aghani crowd, who were
mainly Sunni, but to cultivate the Shiite Iranians as well. In May 1991,
almost a year before the war broke out in Bosnia, President Alija
Izetbegovic paid an official visit to Teheran. He expressed his desire
to expand ties with Iran. The Iranian mullahs were impressed by
Izetbegovic, seeing in him "a Moslem believer whose party is the
strongest political organization in Bosnia- Herzegovina and [which will
rally] Yugoslav Moslems." In May 1991, Iran dispatched 65 mujahedeen
fighters to Bosnia. Iranian-run training camps for terrorists opened for
business in Bosnia in the summer of 1991. Then the Hizbollah guerrillas
showed up, led by Brigadier General Bakri Hassan Salili, Chief of
Security and Intelligence in the Sudanese Army.
The goal of the Islamic fundamentalists is creation of an Islamic state
and the imposition of the sharia. The fundamentalists' outlook is
extremely religious but politically non-threatening.
This is not surprising. The militants are trained in the private
religious schools, known as madrasas, that today flourish in a number of
Moslem countries, thanks in large part to Saudi funds. These madrasas
therefore follow the basic Saudi agenda: sharia, sharia and yet more
sharia. The creation of a cadre of non- political Islamic rulers is
clearly the goal of both the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Nonpolitical Islamic rulers are more likely to sign deals with US
corporations, play along with NATO's maneuvers or follow an
IMF-prescribed program than truly nationalist leaders like Slobodan
Milosevic or even Franjo Tudjman.
The alleged rift between the United States and the Taliban has always
been a sham.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Taliban work in tandem. According to the
Woodrow Wilson Center's Selig Harrison, "The Taliban are not just
recruits from 'madrassas' but are on the payroll of the [Pakistani]
ISI." Moreover, the old associations between the intelligence agencies
continue: "The CIA still has close links with the ISI." And the United
States is not even pushing sanctions against the Taliban. Harrison
points out that UN Security Council Resolution 1333 calls for an embargo
on arms to the Taliban because they refuse to hand over Osama bin Laden.
"But it is a Resolution without teeth because it does not provide
sanctions for non-compliance," he argues,
"The US is not backing the Russians who want to give more teeth to the
Resolution." Let us be done then with the pleasing notion that the
United States is in hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden. He is very useful to
Washington just where he is - making trouble for the Chinese, the
Indians and, above all, the Russians. As for the giant Buddhas, we
really could not care less about them. But Buddhism is rather
fashionable today, particularly among the Hollywood crowd. So some vague
protests have to be mounted. The Serbian monasteries did not even get
that.
© 2001 Middle East News Online. This news item is distributed via
Middle East News Online (MiddleEastWire.com). For information about the
content or for permission to redistribute, publish or use for broadcast,
contact our syndication department.
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