Re: Taliban hatred for women?

Mr Barendse writes:

<<Blaming colonialism for everything bad in [the south] I find highly offensive 
towards the societies concerned.... May a society with 4,000 yrs of history 
behind it, mostly consisting of endless wars and invasions,...have been able to 
produce some problem of its own?>> 

When you find the authentic 4,000 years of history for Afghanistan please 
inform us of your findings.  From your own recollection, can you please filter 
for me the true and authentic history of Afghanistan from those that you see to 
belong outside it?   Is the Afshar dynasty of the eighteenth century and the 
Nadir Shahs of Iran more authentic to the 4,000 yr history of Afghanistan than 
the British, the Communists, the United States, capitalism . . .?  

I see, if its before the twentieth century, it is authentic, belonging to 4,000 
yrs of history.  After that period we have to be more careful.  Conclusion: 
real history of Afghanistan has to be more precisely accounted for, seperated 
from "external" events.  Women were oppressed historically in Afghanistan for 
many centuries (especially in big cities) before this recent "external" 
phenomena  called colonialism showed up. The logic of this account, hence, is 
that the present status of women in Afghanistan is the continuation of some 
4,000 yr history, not simply some external thing called capitalism.  Moreover, 
this filtering out the true history of Afghanistan, the argument continues, 
will assure us of not using "yankee-centric" models in explaining the present 
status of women in Afghanistan.  

These are important claims you are making.  I want to make sure I got it right. 
 Too much rides on it, and I don't want to use "yankee" logic.  After all, the 
gravity of 4,000 yrs of history is an ever ending accumulation of events that 
consistently builds upon itself like a propelled canon ball.  The Taliban's 
murder of women in the soccer fields is simply riding this fired projectile, 
and "modernity" is only a fluffy substance that has very little physical matter 
to slow it down.  

I guess the conclusion to draw from this is to send high tech precise missiles 
like the one used in Iraq to destroy this 4,000 yr old canon ball (which the 
Taliban are hitching a ride on), and only then will the "Afghani" women be 
truly liberated.  I guess this is less offensive to the people of the south, 
less yankee-centric, and more authntically dealing with the true historical 
sources for the oppression of women in Afghanistan than would be a project that 
builds up a movement which aims to demobilize the high tech arsenal of the US.  
For you see, the latter are really unimportant to understanding the real 
sources for the suffering of the "Afghani people".  Being only a century old, 
they are less real than 4,000 years of true history.   

Thanks for those warnings.  I'll keep your comments in mind in my own effort 
not to use yankee centric analysis.  God Bless authenticity, God bless the 
patriot missile; here's one more missile for the Iraqi, the Afghani, and the 
Palestinian people.  May all their canon balls be shot down from the sky.

Khaldoun, a recovered yankee-centric addict