I’ve been wondering this for a while, even before the WTC disaster. It seems to me that most (intelligent) people wouldn’t want to live in a country that seriously restricts their rights (at least, restricts what Americans consider rights), metes out harsh punishment for what most people would consider trivial crimes (or not crimes at all) and gives women no rights at all. So are the residents of Afghanistan really in favor of this form of government? I remember reading a New York Times article a couple of weeks ago (sorry, no link, and it’s probably a paid article now anyway) about how Afghanistan residents regularly flouted the laws (such as no TV), risking imprisonment.
By the way, this question is not meant to imply that they had a choice…
Here’s a good news article on the subject:
Interesting article, although it doesn’t really answer the question.
I could probably generalize this question a bit more, to ask if citizens (other than those in power) of any country governed by the strict rules of Islam are in favor of this form of government.
I do not believe Afghans are for this type of gouvernement. They are under dictatorship… and they are so poor, hungry and destroyed by war that the Talibans (most of them are not Afghans) took advantage of this weak country who could not fight back anymore… The Afghans are terrorized everyday by the Talibans.
Actually, I think this is a somewhat unanswerable question. Most of Afghanistan’s population being rural and illiterate, it’s rather difficult to gauge popular opinion ( especially in a theocratic dictatorship ).
It is a fact that some parts of Afhanistan’s population, especially various minority groups like the Shi’ites that are oppressed by the Taliban, are demonstrably opposed to them. For example, much of the Northen Alliance, the group fighting the Taliban, is drawn from minority groups ( of which there are quite a few - I don’t have current census data, but in the late seventies Afghanistan was one of those countries like Yugoslavia or Burma where minority groups made up close to 50% of the population ). And certainly their are many women ( and a handful of surviving educated folk ) who are strongly opposed to the Taliban’s barbarity.
It is also a fact that some segments of the population DO support the Taliban. Their traditional recruiting area were the radicalized refugee camps in Pakistan that had ( and still do ) a population in the millions. And frankly their version of Islam, though technically imported from Saudi Arabia, is in its particulars very heavily influenced by the reactionary cultural mores of the rural Pashtun population ( Afghanistan’s majority group, also present in large numbers in Pakistan ) of the Hindu Kush mountains.
Further, the Taliban was able to impose some measure of peace and stability on large sections of the countryside, something their predecessors in the Northern Alliance were never able to do. For a country convulsed by a quarter-century of civil war, that’s going to count for something, even if it came at a frightful cost to personal liberty and religious tolerance. Also, some of those opposed may just be tepidly so, since some of the populace living out in the sticks may not have the concrete experience with Taliban repression, that the residents of Kabul or Kandahar face on a daily basis.
Still, my gut feeling is that most Afghans are probably not huge Taliban supporters. I’ll note that they were a “stealth” dictatorship - Their most repressive policies only began to appear gradually after they had solidified their control. But as has been pointed out, that doesn’t mean the opposition can do much about their disgruntlement.
Regardless, as I said, I doubt anybody can really quantify the numbers right now. There just isn’t enough accurate information.
- Tamerlane
Actually, i believe the Pashtun are only 40% of the population.
Several million have already “voted with their feet” by moving to Pakistan, etc. over the last few years.
Arjuna34
I took a course entitled Women, Religion, and Society in '98, and a very vocal participant in the class was a deeply religious (but in a modern sort of way) Afghani-American guy. When this question came up in class, he told us that he had had friends and relatives visit Afghanistan within the last few months, and they had said that the Western press had really exaggerated the extent of the Taliban’s badness and to take all the stories of lack of rights with a grain of salt. So who knows? The Afghanis might have really liked the Taliban leadership. This was, of course, three years ago now, and lots of things have happened since.
Would the US and our friends (particularly Muslims in other nations) have any chance of undermining or overthrowing the Taliban in a peaceful manner? Say- go in (“invite” ourselves), build some hospitals, schools, mosques, pass out food, whatever the people want. Then, kick out the bad guys - by force, if necessary? Any chance that would work? Or are the people so much against the West that nobody’d go along?
To shed some light on kellymccauley’s question, this is Paddy Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK, and a former SAS officer, writing in yesterday’s Times:
'Contrary to Western received wisdom, fundamemtalism of the sort practised by the Taleban is rather alien to the majority of ordinary Afghans, who wear their attachment to Isdlam lightly, enjoying music, dancing, radio and sports.
But if the ordinary Afghan has mixed feelings about the Taleban, he will feel even more ambivalent about bin Laden’s private army, who are mostly foreign Arabs. If there is one thing an Afghan dislikes more than being told what to do by another Afghan, it is being told what to do by another foreigner, even if he is a fellow Muslim. This, and a growing rivalry with the Taleban, are bin Laden’s Achilles’ heels.
So, if we have to act militarily against bin Laden (and I suspect that we now do), then we should a) make it big enough to satisfy the desire for retribution which has been generated in the US, but b) make it limited enough to prevent further destabilisation and, most important of all, c) make it in a way which widens the fissures between bin Laden and his Afghan hosts (including the Taleban) rather than welding these over in a common front against an external enemy.’
I hope this opinion is of use.
And of course Isdlam is by no means a new religious movement, it is Islam embracing a rogue letter.
The Chicago Sun-Times did an excellent article. It says basically the people do support it because it brought stability.
The wealthy have left already. There is a severe brain drain do to war and the fact almost all teachers were woman.
Now they can’t teach or go to school. The boys go to religious schools that don’t teach much else.
Industry isn’t. The few good hotels or resturaunts left are way out of the price range of anyone but the very top elite. And the only crop that made money was poppy farms. Now banned by the Taliban.
It went on to say that this generation of kids is most likely lost and the once cosmopolitan cities like Kabul are bombed out and there is no structure to begin to rebuild nor a will to.
It is all about religion and forcing others to tow the line to their version of it.
It quoted on Afghan as saying there isn’t much to live for in Afghanistan. Makes you kind of understand why the suicidal bombers.