Taliban are human too
Posted: Sunday, December 2, 2001

By: Adrian Geoffrey

It is unbelievable how an entire world turns a blind eye to the post-Taliban atrocities being perpetrated by America and its allies under the banner of "War Against Terror".

While, on one hand, it is okay for USA to haul former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosovich before a UN tribunal for war crimes (defending his country, is what he claims), they are leading the massacre of unarmed men in Afghanistan.

In a fair world, they, too, would be chastised for infringing Geneva Convention guidelines on the treatment of Prisoners of War. I don't think these guidelines are solely for the protection of American and British troops. Why then is there no outcry against the heinous slaying of men who have surrendered their cause, are imprisoned and unarmed?
Is the propaganda so good as to fool us all into believing that America dropped bombs on a prison of unarmed, chained and guarded men to stop "a prison riot?"

Really! Remember what many felt should have been the fate of insurgents on the way to prison in Chaguaramas in 1990? Propaganda, then, would have been simple; but in Mazar-e-Sharif on bloody November 26 they have to convince us that there was a battle so fierce that both prisoners and guards alike had to be bombed (all killing 700 to 900 Taliban men) to quell it.

Not convincing enough? So, then, we are to be told, it still took "another day of fighting" to justifiably kill all of these "terrorists".
Where are the "journalists" who felt compelled to toe the line and write glowing praises of Americans (most of them merely regurgitating most of what they were fed through the many means of American re-education).
Where were they when this action was threatened by Donald Rumsfeld (USA's Defence Secretary) who, at the height of the Taliban's negotiations to surrender, said foreign Taliban troops "must either be killed or jailed for life".

And is that so different from any other lunatic saying "let's crash a plane into WTC to protest US foreign policy (or whatever crazy idea they really had).

Where were these "journalists" when rebel forces, while urging Afghans to lay down their arms were vowing vengeance on foreign fugitives. Where were they when Rumsfeld, buoyed by these slayings by the Northern Alliance and the success of US bomb raids, said fleeing Taliban troops "will be hunted down wherever they hide." Geeze! Fleeing, man.
Where were they when over 100 young Taliban recruits (unarmed boys; perhaps forced by the Taliban) were executed while hiding in a Mazar school. Was it, to you, as simple as UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker put it: "Punitive action." And how do you see the Great Anthrax Hoax - the feeding frenzy for a population eager for the smell of blood?
Doesn't it tell you something when at the UN conference on Banning Germ Warfare earlier this month, the Federation of American Scientists told 144 nations in Geneva that US Anthrax attacks were developed from a US Government Lab?

Think of this, then: Just a week or so before September 11, Americans were dubbing George Bush as "President with the lowest IQ ever."
Once the foolish attacks on WTC came and he promises to "hunt them down" (which is all he has kept saying in many different words ever since) suddenly, he's the icon of American might and the "Leader of the free world"?

Do you realise that as long as he can keep his people's blood running hot, even if that means frightening them now and again, he remains popular. And his policy of slaughter (or that of those for whom he is fronting) stays acceptable?

Some may consider it farfetched but, think: Why does each new American administration have to bomb some common enemy, if not to show its might? There are many examples since Kennedy, but what was Bush's reason for attacking Baghdad in January? Anyway, I'm no supporter of the Taliban. But, tell me, aren't Taliban human beings too? I know they have been called terrorists, targets and rioting prisoners. But if they are indeed human, why is it just to slaughter them by the hundreds?

Printer friendly version
Send page by E-Mail