Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 22, 2001
India and Russia have done well
to make it clear that they did not agree with the United States and Pakistan
on the issue of a future political dispensation for Afghanistan, and that
there was no place for the Taliban in the latter.
It had become necessary for the
India-Russia Joint Working Group (JWG), which had its third meeting in
Delhi last Friday, to issue such a categorical statement after the US Secretary
of State Colin Powell's statement in Islamabad on Tuesday that there would
be a place for 'moderate' Taliban in Afghanistan's future, and last Friday's
report that exiled-King Zaheer Shah was agreeable to the inclusion of such
elements in a future Afghan government. It is easy to understand the causes
of Moscow and Delhi's strong opposition to any such development. The sudden
discovery that the Taliban, reviled till recently as a collection of bigoted
thugs, had a 'moderate' section, appears, to say the least, strange, and
makes one wonder as to the sense in which they can be thus designated.
They certainly cannot be considered 'moderate' in a social sense. No section
of the Taliban uttered a squeak in protest when the militia's regime perpetrated
a monstrous crime against Afghan women by severely restricting their working,
banning them from studying even in schools, and by making it compulsory
for them to wear the burkha, and be accompanied by their husbands or brothers,
in public. Nor did it protest when these inhuman edicts were enforced through
savage punishments like public lashings and executions-though it was no
secret that all this made life a nightmare for Afghan women who had earlier
lived under a far more liberal dispensation which allowed them to work,
study and move about wearing normal dress. It was, however, not just women
who suffered. The Taliban made life hell for men as well by banning the
cinema, the playing of music, enforcing a severe dress code and interfering
in personal life even to the extent of forcing men not to trim their beards.
Nor has any section of the Taliban
ever protested against their sheltering of Osama bin Laden, his fundamentalist
Islamic terrorist militia, Al Qaida, and their training and export of Islamic
terrorists worldwide. If any section of the Taliban is now projecting itself
as 'moderate', it is purely because it fears that the militia's days are
numbered and it will find a place in the dispensation replacing it only
if it presents itself as such. Equally, if Pakistan is now endorsing their
claim, it is because it abhors he northern alliance which continues to
fight the Taliban, and knows that it will be able to manipulate the new
government only if it has a section of the Taliban in it. After all, it
was Pakistan's ISI and the US' CIA which had together set up the Taliban
in May, 1994; even after the grotesque of its regime had become manifest,
there was no dearth of apologists in the US lauding its role in re-establishing
law and order and curbing banditry. Induction of 'moderate' Taliban in
the new regime will not only threaten to push Afganistan again into the
medieval age but also enable Pakistan to use them to replace it by one
of its choice. It will do so the same way it had set up and used the Taliban
to overthrow the regime of Burhanuddin Rabbani. It would be naive of the
US not to realise this.
