Erm, i didn't claim it wasn't the Taliban. I simply think we should wait to see who it was. The insurgency is a patchwork of interests many of whom coalesce and use the Taliban 'franchise'. The area where the attack took place is outside of the traditional Taliban strongholds. The Taliban usually claim responsibility for their attacks. Is there any evidence in that article that it was Taliban, apart from the say so of a police chief who probably doesn't have the identity of the bomber, never mind carrying out any type of investigation? Like I said, irrespective of who did it, the action is vile and despicable.
I know we have discussed the reactions to the cartoons and that dumb movie, this to me is a far worse crime given that it was in a mosque, or just outside of it not sure of that detail, happened on one of the holiest days, and killed innocent women, children and men just after they finished prayers. I would think an event such as this would like a fire under people to mass up and protest these radicals and demand calls for action. I mean is this no less an offense against Islam then those silly cartoons and movie? Help me understand Umar why there is such a difference in reaction to these events? Hell the burning of a koran caused more heartache and reaction. I honestly don't understand the mindset here that somehow inanimate objects and drawings mean more than an actual life.
I don't know. Probably the same reason there was more heartache and reaction in America over the building of a community centre in New York than there was over the deaths of US servicemen killed by a guy wearing Afghan police uniform yesterday. Please try and help me understand that mindset.
I see, instead of talking about the issue I raised you would rather deflect away from the topic and try to excuse by changing the topic to the US.
I answered your question ("i dont know") and gave you an example from your own country to show you why a question like that is so difficult to answer. The analogy is very precise, the situations are very similar. If you think you have an answer I'd be delighted to hear it.
They are hardly comparable. I don't recall the US citizens attacking embassies, burning any flags, chanting death to Afghanistan etc... Over the building of a community center. In fact did anyone die over the planned center? Yet over the cartoons and movies people did die, damage was done to buildings etc... So I reject your analogy being anywhere near precise. It is a half assed attempt to equivocate 2 separate situations. You can bet there will be far more outcry over drone strikes then this outrageous bombing at a mosque on one of the holiest days by a group that claims it lives by the law of Islam.
Afghanistan has had a current of internal civil war along ethnic lines for decades. Ethnic wars are generally the most barbaric because they're not uniform vs. uniform and civilians are often victimized. The Taliban is just one element in this. The deeper elements are ethnic divisions. Once the war is in effect there's no unbiased innocent 3rd party to protest the war. The very definition of ethnic war means that people take sides along ethnic lines, even the civilians. Any protest that happens would generally be one side protesting the other. I'm sure there will be protests in Mazar i Sharif against whomever they view as responsible.
I understand this, however where are the protests in other parts of the Muslim world? Why are we not seeing protests against the taliban in Egypt, Tunisa, etc....like we did over the danish cartoon or the silly movie? You would think an attack on a mosque on such a holy day would result in some form of protest against the taliban? Or perhaps those types of protests are reserved for use against non-muslims
Unfortunately we live in a world where people focus on internal issues. People become desensithized to news of casualties in some far away land ... sometimes even not that far away. For example you don't see people in the US protesting the Mexican drug cartels even though thousands of innocent people are being killed just across the border. Of course this doesn't explain why people would get so worked up over a cartoon or a movie. That to me is inexcusable. The people mobilizing these protests are the vilest type of fanatical instigators. I think they very much resemble some of the extreme right wing marches we've seen in Europe in recent years and frankly even some of the Tea Party marches in the US. Glenn Beck is not that different from those fanatical instigators in Cairo and Pakistan. With that said we should try to remember that the numbers on all sides for these fanatical protests tend to be small. Most of the recent movie protests in the ME were in the hundreds and maybe thousands, but definitely not tens of thousands. That's a drop in a bucket in a city like Cairo with 20 million people. Us Westerners should not be paying so much attention to these fringe protesters because that's exactly what they want. They want those images broadcast in the Western media to fuel outrage. And the Western media just laps it up ... they just love showing images of some uneducated unemployed kid burning a US flag.
More civlians killed by militants... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20248632 These people live in fear daily due to the indiscrimante roadside bombs that end up killing or wounding more innocent civlians than anyone else. These illegal roadside bombs need to be stopped.
It is always the civilians that get the worst, killed in the ground by Road side bombs or other terrorist attacks, killed from the air by our air Strikes.
Civil wars are terrible. One thing that we've learned is that 30 years of US intervention in Afghanistan is not stopping their civil war. We need to focus on countries that are stable enough and receptive enough to benefit from our involvement. The more successful countries there are in the world the more likely it will be that Afghanistan would take that path one day by their own will
Good help is hard to get: http://abcnews.go.com/International...tities-mailing-list-members/story?id=17737950 Will the Taliban be signing with the William Morris Agency?
Instead of being lauded for its assistance, which is quite generous considering the sanctions and other efforts that are hurting Iran's own economy, we see a constant effort to paint Iran's assistance in various places including Afghanistan as somehow being sinister. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204076204578078564022815472.html
The guy is being modest. Forget about Iran, Googoosh alone can mobilize 1 million Afghans with a snap of her finger. And I'm not joking. It's said that Karzai was once asked by a reporter that what he'd do if Googoosh had Afghan citizenship and could run against him for Afghan presidency, to which he replied that "I'd resign, and vote for Googoosh myself". They actually celebrate her birthday in Afghanistan. I'm not kidding you.
Good, more reason for the US to leave and soon. I am sure Iran and the Taliban will get along splendidly.
Iran doesn't need to get along with the Taliban. There are plenty of other folks in Afghanistan to get along with. Ultimately, my own view is that Afghanistan should at some point be partitioned. There should be a northern part controlled by Tajiks and Hazaras and a southern part for the Pashtuns. The northern part would be allied to Iran and the southern part, where the Taliban are influential, would be allied to Pakistan.
As long as we're partitioning countries in the region: http://www.parstimes.com/images/iran_ethnoreligious_distribution_2004.jpg http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/06/iran_maps/img/iran_ethnic_groups_629.gif http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ykHCG-4HYgs/SpXm6KRJsKI/AAAAAAAAAkM/NtndQ7UZ9aY/s400/Iran_Ethnic_Map2[1].jpg
At least the Kurds, the Zoroastrian (religion not an ethnic group) and the Baluchistan people should get their own state. This one could also work, maybe after Israel bombs the country.
No. That has no shot at working. Azerbaijanis (Turks) consider themselves Iranians. The Supreme Leader is an Azerbaijani. There are small Kurdish separatist groups. The Arabs (in Khuzestan) also consider themselves Iranians. The Baluchis are more Pakistani. Loris also consider themselves Iranians. Lurs are also very Iranian as well (their dialect is very close to Farsi..it's like a Boston/Northeastern accent in the states). Iran is one of the few countries in the Middle East with a very strong and continuous national identity so there never will be an indigenous movement to partition the country.
The difference between Afghanistan (and pretty much all of the region) and Iran, is the fact that Iran has been a nation with a strong continuous national identity for almost 2500 years. The only countries in the world that are comparable to Iran in that department, are China and Greece. Iran is also 90% Shia, and the Iranian Shia identity is much more stronger than sub-regional ethnic identities. The only viable separatist movement in Iran, is the one in Balochistan, and that's because Balochistan was basically divided by the British, and artificially attached to India/Pakistan in the last century. (see the map below) Otherwise, even the separatist Kurds in Iran do not have that viable of a movement as they do in Turkey for example, since the majority of the Sunni Kurds have a degree of ethnic and cultural affiliations with Iran that they do not have with Sunni Arabs and Turks, as the Kurds are to Persians, what Serbians are to Russians, and Kurds are actually an Iranic people.
Jalalabad airfield currently under a sustained assault: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20571640