[Austin-ghetto-list] on the Taliban

[ted samsel]

Jon Ford wrote:
> 
> >Karen Willis wrote:
> > >
> > > Well, Jon, you can be cynical of anything you read on the internet.
> > > I've known those who say the same thing about television.  Where
> > > should we get our information? > As far as "crude and backward" goes,
> >they defeated the USSR.  Similar
> > > things were said about the Viet Cong.  They defeated the US.
> > >
> > > I get a lot of my news about the Middle East from BBC news online. As
> >for your assertion that the Taliban defeated the USSR, this is not true. A
> >coalition of groups known as  mujahedin defeated the USSR.  This group
> >included men like Bin Laden as well as intellectuals and college professors
> >such as my friend Sedique.  The Viet Cong leadership was a similarly
> >diverse and  talented group-- Ho Chi Minh was a sophisticated world
> >traveller who represented Vietnam at one of the first international
> >communist party conferences in  Paris.
> The following article from  the BBC News ..
> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_144000/144382.stm>
> gives some interesting information on the Taliban, a group which--with great
> brutality--  imposed order on the chaos of post-USSR war Afghanistan in the
> middle 90s. The group began began as bodyguards for mountain convoys,
> although some were war veterans:
> 
> "The world first became aware of the Taleban in 1994 when they were
> appointed by Islamabad to protect a convoy trying to open up a trade route
> between Pakistan and Central Asia.
> Years of conflict have made gun culture the norm in Kabul

They've had gun culture there since the 17th century, Jon. Just like the
US.
-- 
TBSamsel@infi.net
        http://home.infi.net/~tbsamsel/
        'Do the boogie woogie in the South American way'
                              Hank Snow  (1914-1999)
                              THE RHUMBA BOOGIE