In a message dated 10/4/01 9:58:15 PM, miriam@werple.net.au writes:
>I am a little worried by something a friend said to me recently that the
>Northern Afgani rebels who are being backed by the West are actually worse
>than the Taliban, in that they use murder, rape, and pillage in the normal
>course of war (the Taliban though wicked, cruel, and murderous had some
>restraint at least). I have no idea if what he said is true, but if he
>is
>then hold onto your hats everybody -- here we go again... prepare for worse
>killers being equipped by the "goodies" again.
It's hard to rank these degrees of "worse", but the Northern "alliance" is
a coalition of Shite fundamentalists, ex-communists, and mostly just plain
warlord thugs who engaged in an extended, bloody and brutal civil war
after the Soviets left. If we support them back into power on anything but
an extremely short leash, we'll regret it. At present, I don't think we're
actually supporting them. Although our government seems to have a fetish
for supporting local rebels, even unsavory ones, they're actually pretty
weak and we don't really need them.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:12 MDT