This is why I thought Sanyogeeta was right. Review on Afghanistan, General

I read this and thought Sanyogeeta was so right about her review on Afghanistan. I would like to share this with open minded MOUTHSHUT community.

This is a text of speech delivered by an Afghan leader in the US (University Of Southern California in Los Angeles, on March 10, 2001) regarding current views/issues relating to his country and the misconceptions the world has about them......

He says:

The Soviet Invasion

The recent problems in Afghanistan started in 1979. Afghanistan was a peaceful country. The Russians, along with their 140,000 troops attacked. Afghanistan in the December of 1979, just 21 years ago, stayed there for a decade, killed one and a half million people, maimed one million more people, and six million out of the eighteen million people migrated because of the Russian brutalities. Even today, our children are dying because of the landmines that they planted for us. And nobody knows about this. After the Russians left during the Russian occupation, on the other side, the American government, the British government, the French, the Chinese, and all of the rest, supported the counter-revolutionaries called the Mujahideen; there were seven parties only in Pakistan and eight parties in Iran who fought the Russian occupation. And after the Russians left, these parties went into Afghanistan. All of them had different ideologies, and a lot of weapons. And instead of having a single administration, they fought in Afghanistan. The destruction that they brought was worse than the destruction the Russians brought. 63,000 people were only killed in the capital, Kabul. Another million people migrated because of this lawlessness.

The Beginning of Taliban

Seeing this destruction and lawlessness, a group of students called the Taliban, i.e. a group of students (Taliban is the plural of student in our language; it may be two students in Arabic, but in our language it means students) started a movement called the Movement of Students. It first started in a village in the southern province of Afghanistan, called Kandahar. It happened when a warlord, or a commander abducted two minor girls and violated them. The parents of those girls went to a school and asked the teacher of the school to help them. The teacher of that school, along with his 53 students, finding only 16 guns, went and attacked the base of that commander. After releasing those two girls, they hanged that commander, and so many of his people were also hanged. This story was told everywhere. BBC also quoted this story. Hearing this story, many other students joined this movement and started disarming the rest of the warlords. This same student’s movement now controls 95% of the country including its capital. Only a bunch of those warlords are remaining in the northern corridor of Afghanistan.

Our Achievements

We have been in government for only five years, and the following things that we have done, and many of you may not know:

1.) The first thing we have done is reunifying the fragmented country. Afghanistan was formerly fragmented into five parts. We unified it when nobody else could do it.

2.) The second thing that we have done is to establish a single administration in Afghanistan, which did not exist for 10 years.

3.) You may be surprised that we have eradicated 75% of world's opium cultivation. Afghanistan produced 75% of world's opium. And last year we issued an edict asking the people to stop growing opium, and this year, the United Nations Drug Control Program, UNDCP, and their head, Mr. Barnard F. proudly announced that there was 0% of opium cultivation. Zero, zilch, none at all. Incidentally this was not good news for UN itself because many of them lost their jobs. In the UNDCP, 700 so called experts were working there and they got their salaries and they never went into Afghanistan. So when we issued this edict, I know that they were not happy. And this year they lost their

jobs.

Women's Rights

We have been criticized for violating women's rights. Do you know what happened before us? I can see some Afghans living here, and they will agree with me, that in the rural areas of Afghanistan, women were used as animals. They were sold actually. We stopped this abominable practice.

They didn't use to have any say in the selection of their husbands. First thing we have done is to let them choose their future. Another thing that used to happen in Afghanistan was women were exchanged as gifts. Of course, this was not something religious; this was something cultural. When two fighting tribes wanted reconciliation, they would exchange women. And this has been stopped. Unlike what is generally said women do work in Afghanistan. True that until 1996 when we captured the capital Kabul, we did ask women to stay home. It didn't mean that we wanted them to stay at home forever. We said that there

is no law, and there is no order, and you have to stay at home. We disarmed the people, and we established law and order, and now women are working. True, that women are not working in the ministry of defense, like here. We don't want our women to be fighter pilots, or to be used as objects of decoration for advertisements. But they do work. They work in the Ministry of Health, Interior, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Affairs, and so on. Similarly we don't have any problem with women's education. We have said that we want education, and we will have education whether or not we are under anybody's pressure, because that is part of our belief. We are ordered to do that. When we say that there should be segregated schools, it does not mean that we don't want our women to be educated. It is true that we are against co-education; but it is not true that we are against women's education.

We do have schools even now, but the problem is the resources. We cannot expand these programs. Before, our government numerous curriculums were going on. There were curriculums that preached for the kings, curriculums that preached for the communists, and curriculums from all the seven parties. So, the students were confused as to what to study. We have started to unify the curriculum and that is going on. Recently we reopened the faculty of medical science in all major cities of Afghanistan and in Kandahar. There are more girls students studying in the faculty of medical sciences than boys are. But they are segregated. And the Swedish committees have also established schools for girls. I know they are not enough, but that is what we have been able to do.

Osama bin Laden

We are also accused of sponsoring terrorism. And for Americans terrorism or terrorist means only bin Laden. Now you will not know that Afghanistan, or bin Laden was in Afghanistan for 17 years before we even existed. Bin Laden was in Afghanistan, fought the Soviet Union, and Mr. Ronald Reagan, the president of America at that time, and Mr. Dick Chaney called such people freedom fighters or the Heroes of Independence, because they were fighting for their cause. And now when the Soviet Union is fragmented, such people were not needed anymore, and they were transformed into terrorists. From heroes to terrorists. This is exactly like Mr. Yasser Arafat who was transformed from a terrorist to a hero.

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