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Peshawar: With their harsh edicts, the Taliban are known as women-haters. However, there is a little-known soft side to the Taliban, filled with the romance and passion of a cheap novel.
There is the rumour about Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar - that they're related by marriage. Two years ago, the rumour was Osama had married Mullah Omar's daughter. And when the current crisis broke, it was said Mullah Omar had married Osama's daughter. So did this mean that each of the girls concerned went to bed with her grandfather-in-law? Or that each was the stepdaughter of her stepdaughter (and so on)?
The Taliban said this was malicious propaganda. They do not deny, however, that the 41-year-old, one-eyed Mullah Omar's second wife is a teenager (a euphemism for a 13-year-old). There is little conjugal bliss nowadays, what with the bombing around the star-crossed couple - they are having sleepless nights of a different kind altogether.
Mullah Omar is not the only Taliban leader with sex appeal: one of the oldest members of his Cabinet, Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, recently had a love marriage. Haqqani, 50, fought the Soviets, and is now being wooed by the ISI.
An Arab girl watched Haqqani, a tall fellow with a long beard to which he regularly applies henna, being interviewed by Al-Jazeera, and she fell in love (sigh!). A marriage was arranged, and before the war broke out Haqqani was a frequent visitor to his Arabian sasuraal. Sadly, he now only visits his house in Miranshah in the NWFP (across the border from his stronghold in Afghanistan's Paktia province) where the ISI treats him a little less than a son-in-law.
Then there is the Jamaat-Ulema-e-Islam's chief, Maulana Samiul Haq, in whose madrassas many a Talib was created. He is known as Maulana Sandwich, after being caught in a famous Islamabad brothel by the vice-squad. Maulana Sandwich was said to be in the middle, but if you're thinking that there were two women, guess again - only one of his partners was reportedly of the fairer sex.
There are also rumours about General
Pervez Musharraf, but it would be irresponsible, unethical and cheap
to report salacious gossip just for the heck of it.
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