What are they so afraid of?

USA1: who or what are you referring to?

Angela you are right about different ways of operating, governments etc. all of the language of "freedom" and "democracy" are just words, an excuse really. If not then we should go and "free" the Chinese or North Koreans.  

Th Amish are a very fascinting group of people. Whereas I cannot profess  or beleive what they do, I admire that they really do seek to live their values. They walk the walk so to speak.

And they bake the most amazing Shoo-fly pie I have EVER had.

You are a fundamentalist Muslim. Not everyone feels the way you do.

You are entitled to your feelings but for you live as you wish, you will have to stay in Iran. The rest of the globe may not feel the way you do about such things and you have no right to tell others what to feel or how to pray. You can't tell me how to live my life, you can you tell me how to pray. This is tolerance with choice.

There are many driving forces they push and pull people in different directions. There are several levels

-those women who work must work to survive and feed their families. Either they are on their own or their husband's income is not enough.

-those women who choose to work and end up neglecting their familiy's needs.

I am sure we meet all meet both of these women. In the first case the woman or family is doing so the basic needs are met, a place to live, food to eat, etc. The second is more of a product of the 'me' and 'I' generation we now live in. This culture affects both men and women with terribly consequences. (Though it is not as prevalent in small towns.)

I recently watched a very good Frontline piece on PBS about the current situation with the Taliban. What I concluded is

1. The west has no clue what it is doing, in a sense they don't know the culture, the way people operate, the values. etc.

2. Whereas there may be deliberate actions to de-stabalize, destroy etc., it is clear to me that what the US and west is doing there is producing more harm then good. Not because people hated the west, but that people don't like being bombed or attacked (quite normal) and it forces people to focus precious resources to fight rather then build and grow. Frankly no one gets educated in a time of war.

I was reading a travel forum and it was a topic about traveling to Afghanistan. This 21 year from UK old wrote in asking if it was safe to go there. She really wants to go. sHe was invited to be on this library project and to "help Afghani women learn their rights under the new constitution."  Never mind she spoke no languages of that region. And that is the issue to me by the "do gooders" is there is often a type of arrogance and superiority that comes into the equation. That somehow she could 1. really do any good 2. She knew and could explain the rights better then Afghani women themselves. It was a terribly paternalistic view.

Candid wrote: �But apprehensions of people (and I mean, both men
and women, here) who oppose adoption of the Western culture are
not unfounded. I don't want Islamic societies to be affected with
decadent and immoral Western culture.�

Neither do I, candid, neither do I. And I agree, as do most of us here
that any change should come from within Afghan society, but I
personally feel angry when the change is IMPOSED and not the result
of free will. Obviously free will is not something all societies can
afford, and Afghan society has not had much opportunity to mature,
develop and discover the advantages of permitting free will.
     As Afghan writer Tamim Ansary writes: �Rural Afghans really do
need literacy, more than they know. But schools as stand-alone
projects, separate from more palpable aid -- fruit trees, seed for
next year's crop, herds, water, medicine -- present easy targets for
Islamist propaganda. Certainly, in southern Afghanistan, unknown
parties are distributing anonymous documents ("night letters")
characterizing schools as the sharp tip of the Western knife coming
in to kill the one thing rural Afghans proudly feel they do possess --
their religion.�

You wrote: �In fact, whether you like it or not, Taliban is supported
by people in large parts of Afghanistan.�
I wonder what the several thousand Afghan refugees currently lining
up at Quetta and Peshawar would say about supporting the Taliban?
The vast majority of villagers all over Afghanistan have been literally
FORCED to show support for the Taliban, just as they were forced to
submit to whoever had the biggest gun before them.

I do not believe the news reports about large numbers of Taliban
fighters, I don�t believe the Taliban exists as a large well organised
force, just as I don�t believe Al Qaida exists as a structured
organisation. The media needs to visualise and compartmentalise
everything for its own comprehension, thus everything has to be
portrayed in familiar terms. It�s uncomfortable to know the �enemy�
is nebulous, fluid, unpredictable, with an intuitive structure rather
than a formal one.

To quote Tamim Ansary once more:
�The United States drove the Taliban out of Kabul with a brief, tightly
targeted military campaign that entrusted most of the fighting to the
long-standing Afghan resistance and made artful use of diplomatic
pressure on the Taliban's Pakistani sponsors. The dreaded shock-
and-awe bombardment and eviscerating invasion -- later visited
upon Iraq -- did not materialize in Afghanistan. Once the fighting
ended, room for hope opened up.
At that moment, however, a race broke out between chaos and order.
That contest is still on and its outcome remains unknown. On one
side are people who have no skills except the arts of violence, trying
to reignite a war of all against all, because in that environment their
kind can thrive. Their hope lies in sowing enough anxiety to make a
critical mass of people pick up guns again for self-protection.
On the other side, modernists, technocrats, returning exiles, the old
aristocracy and countless war-weary others seek to restore the
peaceful order of a remembered Afghanistan. Their hope lies in
getting enough normalcy going -- enough fruit and meat in the
bazaars, enough traffic flowing normally, enough consecutive days
without bloodshed -- to make a critical mass of people say, "This is
working, I better get on board so I'll get my share."
After the Taliban fled, most Afghans simply wanted to start
rebuilding. When I went to Kabul in June 2002, I found what should
have been a scene of despair: a city teeming with amputees and
burka-clad widows begging for money, about one-quarter of it
reduced to rubble. Instead, Kabul felt as luminously euphoric as any
place I've ever set foot. Why?
Because everyone thought the 23-year nightmare was finally over.
Kabul belonged to Afghans again.�

I have an Australian friend currently writing a book on the Afghan
refugees. She recently visited some families now settled in Australia
and the story she told me is worth reading, since it is unfiltered by
the media:
�Last Thursday I did another extraordinary interview with an Afghan
family, Hazaras from a village between Ghazni and Kandahar. When I
first met this family the mother, Miriam, believed her husband,
Mahammed, had been killed by the Taliban. She arrived in Australia
in 2001 having paid �people smugglers� to get her and her four
children to Christmas Island via Malaysia and Indonesia, but still
clung to the hope that Mahammed might be alive. Once she gained
permanent residency in Australia she went to Iran to search the
refugee camps there. She returned to Melbourne without finding him,
but she sent a cousin into Pakistan to search the camps near the
Afghan border just in case he was there. And he was. The cousin
found him in Peshawar. He too had thought his family was dead. Her
husband told me his story in Dari (Australia) and his 17 year old son,
Bashir, translated. He was driving to Kandahar on business when the
Taliban stopped him, knocked him around and threw him into a local
prison before taking him to a larger prison, I think in Kandahar, for
an indefinite stay. Of course he couldn't get a message out to his
family and as he grew weaker from lack of food he grew more
hopeless. The Taliban counted the prisoners every day - but one day,
after some ten
months, they didn't arrive for the morning count. Someone rushed in
and said the Taliban had gone, that the prisoners must all escape.
Mahammed was very weak but somehow (I've forgotten the details)
he got back to his village and found it completely destroyed and
abandoned. You should have seen his face as he was telling me this
through his son. He kept saying he was going mad, insane, that in
desperation he went to a place were human bones had been found, a
massacre site, and thought these were the bones of his wife and
children. Like so many others he fled to Pakistan and found a job in
Peshawar. And then the phone call or visit from his wife's cousin ...
imagine! Miriam and the kids established email contact with him and
sent photos, and soon they were able to sponsor him to Australia.
When he arrived the family talked for 48 hours straight, they all told
me and laughed at the memory!�

The problem with the whole support/denial of Taliban has no
balance nor contrast, due to the mixed news coming out of the
country. Western oriented reports are filled with summary killings of
teachers in front of children, and similar stories; of Taliban
ambushing NGO workers who have been rebuilding wells and other
basic infrastructure in remote villages, and stories of the imminent
risk of starvation during the winter months in places where these
NGOs were providing basic supplies, and have been forced to leave.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) pulled out of
Afghanistan because of the risks to the lives of their doctors and
nurses. It is the only country in the world, in conflict, which Medecins
Sans Frontiers have felt forced to pull out of. The Taliban and
insurgency who have indiscriminately killed any and all foreign
volunteer workers within Afghanistan are doing nothing to help the
Afghan population and what is going on there is nothing but a war to
secure power bases, it has nothing to do with Islam nor even with the
original American invasion.