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TALIBAN: THE US CONNECTION The Taliban government in Afghanistan is widely regarded as the most oppressive regime in the world today. Their Ministry for Ordering What is Right and Forbidding What is Wrong has a long list of edicts which violates even the most basic human rights. These fundamentalist rules of behaviour include that men who trim their beards will go to jail and that women can only go outside their home in the company of a male relative, are prohibited from working outside the home and are denied any formal education. Women furthermore must be covered literally from head to toe in burkas, a tent-like garment with only a dark woven screen in front of their eyes. Women found in public alone or with a non-relative male escort may be stoned as punishment. Taliban law also prohibits movies, music and alcohol, but allows amputation of hands and beheadings. Essentially anything not approved by the Taliban is against the law subject to various forms of punishment. For example, almost all forms of art are prohibited and commonly destroyed, the best known case of which was the recent destruction of Buddha statues carved into a mountain side which stood 55 meters tall and had survived some 1,500 years of Afghan history. Paradoxically the US is primarily responsible for the Taliban rule. It all dates back to the Cold War and the Soviet presence in Afghanistan from 1979 till 1989. In 1987 the communist-backed government produced a new constitution which like the US had a Senate and a House of Representatives with 234 seats of which 50 were occupied by opposition parties. Women had basically equal rights with men and public education was mandated by the government. But the Cold War was still on and the US was willing to do almost anything to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan except commit its own troops. So it conducted, as it has so often before, a proxy-war so that no Americans would be killed in combat. To accomplish that goal the US backed and armed the mujahideen which is Afghan for 'guerrilla.' One of the many factions of the mujahideen was the Taliban movement which was created by senior mullah (Islamic priest) Mohammed Omar Akhund in August 1994. Taliban means 'student' and obviously the Taliban have a lot to learn how to conduct themselves in the 21st century. In February 1995 they reached the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul, but were ousted by communist government forces. It conquered the city in September, 1996 after converting much of the city to rubble. The last Soviet-backed president, Muhammad Najbullah and his brother Security Chief Shahpur Ahmadzai, both of whom had taken refuge in the United Nations compound in Kabul in 1992, were dragged out by Taliban soldiers and hanged in public. And how have the Taliban shown their gratitude to the US for all the military and intelligence support? It trains and exports terrorists, while it harbours the US most-wanted Islamic militant and Saudi multimillionaire, Osama Bin Laden, believed responsible for the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1998 which killed some 200 people. The blind Sheik and Muslim cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman who advised terrorists what kind of terrorist acts are permissible under his radical interpretation of Islamic law, received US support for the mujahideen during the civil war in Afghanistan, a fact rarely mentioned by the US mainstream media. Rahman is now serving a life term in a US prison after being convicted on charges of plotting various terrorist acts in the US. HOME