Another Trudeau Heard From
"Our aggressive military activities in Afghanistan are foolish and wrong", according to 34-year-old Alexandre Trudeau. "The Pashtun [people] have extremely different values than ours, values we may not agree with in any case, but it's not our business to try and teach them lessons with weapons. Because, in fact, they'll be the ones teaching us lessons." Mr. Trudeau, a film-maker of protest, left-wing accreditation, has summed up the situation to his satisfaction.
Afghans, according to Mr. Trudeau, don't share the same human emotions and aspirations as other people around the world. They don't value security, health, education, the freedom to live in a stable society, to aspire to achieve a decent life, to hope for their children's future. He must know of what he speaks. They did, after all, live under a political-religious regime that denied them all of those social attributes.
And Mr. Trudeau believes that the Taliban should be free to return so that all the advances made by the current government of Afghanistan along with the international aid groups and foreign military attempting to establish a modicum of normalcy for the country could be overturned. Turned back to the fundamentalist mullahs who deny girls an education and women a public face.
"What I want to do is to leave it to younger filmmakers to show who the Pashtun are - people we falsely call Taliban, in most cases - and why we really have no reason to tell them how to live their lives, why Afghanistan should be left to its own devices." He is 34, but feels younger filmmakers would be more suited to follow his agenda. Afghanistan, he feels, is too dangerous a place for him.
It's a dangerous place for everyone, Afghan citizens included. They, most particularly, especially the young and the vulnerable; the women, the widows who have no means of supporting themselves and whom the Taliban ruled could not work, nor be seen in public. Public flogging and executions were disciplinary tools for the Taliban. The indigenous culture of music and dance was forbidden.
Pashtun does not equate with the Taliban, nor vice-versa. Religious fundamentalists, jihadist-driven psychopathic groups whose purpose is a divinely-inspired vision of fundamentalist Islamist rule does not reflect the people of Afghanistan. It does reflect the strivings of a religious perversion of human needs, sacrificed to a warped view of Islam, one that serves the purpose of hate-driven religious ideologues.
It is no coincidence that the Taliban have allied themselves with the aspirations of al-Qaeda, for their purposeful attacks on both Muslims and non-believers, follow a like agenda, to establish Islamist rule under sharia law and to eventually replace all other forms of religion and social life and politics with a universal Islamism. Afghanistan's neighbour which had long ignored the presence of Saudi-funded madrassas on its soil, is now realizing the extent of Taliban ambition.
Radical Islamists there, their very own home-grown Taliban, allied with the fundamentalist chieftans of Pakistan's wild tribal regions are on the move, determined to bring utter chaos and political destabilization to Pakistan. While continuing their ever-more aggressive militia assaults in Afghanistan. These are not only Afghans and Pakistanis who have been radicalized, but volunteers from other Arab countries, from Central Asia.
As in Afghanistan, Taliban forces wreak havoc in wider circles now in Pakistan also. Suicide attacks and bombings are rampant, taking the lives of ever more innocent civilians whose brand of Islam enrages the Taliban mullahs. Hundreds of people killed, hundreds of thousands displaced now in Pakistan, a result of the North West Frontier Provinces acting as breeding grounds for jihadists.
The Taliban, like members of al-Qaeda, are well armed and increasingly well trained now. They carry Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, placing them in a position to meet the Pakistan army, just as they increasingly do that of Afghanistan. As in Afghanistan, schools that teach girls, or that teach secular curricula have been destroyed; some 130 girls' schools near Peshawar alone, in the last six months.
The singularly vicious attacks in that area threaten further the stability in Afghanistan, since the Taliban are trying to expand their area of control to choke off supply routes from Pakistan into Afghanistan. Almost 80% of NATO supplies in Afghanistan are driven overland through the Khyber Pass, and attacks on supply convoys are on the increase.
We have the luxury of listening to someone like Alexandre Trudeau, sitting back, tut-tutting the misery of Afghans and Pakistanis living in their horrendously troubled countries, and doing nothing. Interpreting their condition as normal, as something that they must deal with in their turbulently embattled helplessness.
We of the West were invited to enter Afghanistan by their current government, to assist it in battling the Taliban, to re-build destroyed civic infrastructure, to give hope to the population, to accomplish some semblance of normalcy for the Pashtun people whom Mr. Trudeau feels are capable of fending for themselves.
Afghans, according to Mr. Trudeau, don't share the same human emotions and aspirations as other people around the world. They don't value security, health, education, the freedom to live in a stable society, to aspire to achieve a decent life, to hope for their children's future. He must know of what he speaks. They did, after all, live under a political-religious regime that denied them all of those social attributes.
And Mr. Trudeau believes that the Taliban should be free to return so that all the advances made by the current government of Afghanistan along with the international aid groups and foreign military attempting to establish a modicum of normalcy for the country could be overturned. Turned back to the fundamentalist mullahs who deny girls an education and women a public face.
"What I want to do is to leave it to younger filmmakers to show who the Pashtun are - people we falsely call Taliban, in most cases - and why we really have no reason to tell them how to live their lives, why Afghanistan should be left to its own devices." He is 34, but feels younger filmmakers would be more suited to follow his agenda. Afghanistan, he feels, is too dangerous a place for him.
It's a dangerous place for everyone, Afghan citizens included. They, most particularly, especially the young and the vulnerable; the women, the widows who have no means of supporting themselves and whom the Taliban ruled could not work, nor be seen in public. Public flogging and executions were disciplinary tools for the Taliban. The indigenous culture of music and dance was forbidden.
Pashtun does not equate with the Taliban, nor vice-versa. Religious fundamentalists, jihadist-driven psychopathic groups whose purpose is a divinely-inspired vision of fundamentalist Islamist rule does not reflect the people of Afghanistan. It does reflect the strivings of a religious perversion of human needs, sacrificed to a warped view of Islam, one that serves the purpose of hate-driven religious ideologues.
It is no coincidence that the Taliban have allied themselves with the aspirations of al-Qaeda, for their purposeful attacks on both Muslims and non-believers, follow a like agenda, to establish Islamist rule under sharia law and to eventually replace all other forms of religion and social life and politics with a universal Islamism. Afghanistan's neighbour which had long ignored the presence of Saudi-funded madrassas on its soil, is now realizing the extent of Taliban ambition.
Radical Islamists there, their very own home-grown Taliban, allied with the fundamentalist chieftans of Pakistan's wild tribal regions are on the move, determined to bring utter chaos and political destabilization to Pakistan. While continuing their ever-more aggressive militia assaults in Afghanistan. These are not only Afghans and Pakistanis who have been radicalized, but volunteers from other Arab countries, from Central Asia.
As in Afghanistan, Taliban forces wreak havoc in wider circles now in Pakistan also. Suicide attacks and bombings are rampant, taking the lives of ever more innocent civilians whose brand of Islam enrages the Taliban mullahs. Hundreds of people killed, hundreds of thousands displaced now in Pakistan, a result of the North West Frontier Provinces acting as breeding grounds for jihadists.
The Taliban, like members of al-Qaeda, are well armed and increasingly well trained now. They carry Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, placing them in a position to meet the Pakistan army, just as they increasingly do that of Afghanistan. As in Afghanistan, schools that teach girls, or that teach secular curricula have been destroyed; some 130 girls' schools near Peshawar alone, in the last six months.
The singularly vicious attacks in that area threaten further the stability in Afghanistan, since the Taliban are trying to expand their area of control to choke off supply routes from Pakistan into Afghanistan. Almost 80% of NATO supplies in Afghanistan are driven overland through the Khyber Pass, and attacks on supply convoys are on the increase.
We have the luxury of listening to someone like Alexandre Trudeau, sitting back, tut-tutting the misery of Afghans and Pakistanis living in their horrendously troubled countries, and doing nothing. Interpreting their condition as normal, as something that they must deal with in their turbulently embattled helplessness.
We of the West were invited to enter Afghanistan by their current government, to assist it in battling the Taliban, to re-build destroyed civic infrastructure, to give hope to the population, to accomplish some semblance of normalcy for the Pashtun people whom Mr. Trudeau feels are capable of fending for themselves.
Labels: Realities, Religion, Traditions
posted by Pieface | 7:13 PM
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