Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Switchboard >

Vollman on Afghanistan

08:17 / 02.10.01

William Vollman, a fantastic writer and serious world-traveller, wrote this article published in the LA Weekly. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/01/45/9-11-vollmann.shtml

he shows more depth of understanding about that place than anything else i've read, and has an absolutely new perspective on the Taliban

[ 02-10-2001: Message edited by: Mystery Gypt ]

13:28 / 02.10.01

quote: Don’t hate the Taliban, that government of fanatics and semiliterate dogmatists; so many educated people have died or fled since the Soviets came in 1979! Taught in the madrassahs, the religious schools, these men do the best they can, operating by the only law they know, the Qur’an.

Oh, I don’t hate them. But I’ll be pleased to see their horribly repressive government consigned to the dustbin of history. May a democracy take root instead!

quote: Their policy toward urban educated women is brutal. So is their treatment of Shias, Tajiks and other minorities. But in their favor it must be said that rural women, who make up most of the female population, were never really educated and now they are much, much safer from rape and theft. Believe it or not, many of them adore the Taliban.

"Other minorities"include homosexuals, who are regularly put to death under their religious law. Of course, I haven't traveled to Afghanistan with the CIA, so I can't attest to how homosexuals in Afghanistan feel about the Taliban. Perhaps many of them adore them!

19:27 / 02.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Chuckling Duck:
Oh, I don’t hate them. But I’ll be pleased to see their horribly repressive government consigned to the dustbin of history. May a democracy take root instead!

but given what vollman reports, how on earth would you propose this happens?

00:37 / 03.10.01

Mystery, fucking properly thank you 4 posting this... Vollman is one of my favourite authors / journalists anyway... so any new text is welcome, besides the fact that it's about the current brouhaha.

I was literally thinking about Vollman today... reading an article in the Guardian about the change in fortunes for foreign correspondents... suddenly a lucrative position to be in.. how horrible fortuitious. Anyway, thanks again

00:50 / 03.10.01

Hmmm. that fact that the Taliban brought a welcome amount of stability to Afghanistan is fucking undeniable. That's not to condone some of their rather horribly extremist acts since obviously.... but then... noone should have to choose between survival and a fanatic government.

Who thinks its likely that the west will maintain a sustained aid programme and helps install more democratic govt in Afghanistan?

hmm.

04:58 / 03.10.01

hey man yr welcome; glad to find other vollman fans. vollman's journalism and entire lifestyle is so precious right now, as he understands the value of personal EXPERIENCE over theorization or received information. in today's landscape of millions of armchair secretaries of state, we need his words badly.

18:55 / 19.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Mystery Gypt:
but given what vollman reports, how on earth would you propose this happens?

I have no idea. It’s hard to say how it happened anywhere, when you look closely enough at history.

My recommendation would be for the US to use whatever pull it has with the ruling coalition that results from the carnage to demand that women be enfranchised in the emerging state. Also, the new state should take steps to ensure that the military are wholly subordinate to the civilian government, perhaps by requiring officers over a certain rank to make their homes with their families in an area policed by a civilian force.

If you have any suggestions on how we might have removed the Taliban from power in a peaceful fashion, I'm eager to hear.

07:15 / 20.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Chuckling Duck:
It’s hard to say how it happened anywhere, when you look closely enough at history.

well, it normally involved people taking control of their own country and applying the intellectual philosophies to the conscious formation of government. ain't gonna happen when you storm a country and set up your own government for them.

in fact, the taliban arose as the first gasp of people trying to take control of their own country and shape it according to the only philosophy they had. if the west hadnt spent the past century making democracy seem like a synoynm for slavery, they might have gone a different route.

quote:If you have any suggestions on how we might have removed the Taliban from power in a peaceful fashion, I'm eager to hear.

yeah well we should have sat down and created a coalition of people interested in discussing the goal of the fundamental islamic movement, the goals of the people who legitimately want the US out of the middle east, the people who want a palestinian state, and the people who would like to create a fair and caring government based on islamic law. i'd love to see that happen. instead, we have a bozo president saying that we were attacked because we love freedom. christ!

you can't just machine gun people into being democratic. not ever.

08:42 / 20.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Mystery Gypt:
you can't just machine gun people into being democratic. not ever.

Wait, my failure-of-democracy sense... it's tingling!

What we have here is a situation which is largely fucked up, incredibly complex and basically the fault of our elected officials. To my mind, that makes it tantamount to our fault, since we permit these goons to conduct this nonsense in our name. Yet at the same time the situation is wholly intractable, primarily because we are not permitted an accurate enough knowledge of its details to be able to make a realistic assessment of what could reasonably be done to improve matters.

This state of affairs is grim, but worse still is that only a small minority of the population really see this picture. Or, at least, most people are to some extent aware of it but basically rationalise it in some way.

Is there any democracy left and, if so, how can I get my hands on some of it? Any help here...?