In the Land of the Taliban

NYT Magazine ^ | October 22, 2006 | Elizabeth Rubin

[Ready4Freddy]

One afternoon this past summer, I shared a picnic of fresh mangos and plums with Abdul Baqi, an Afghan Taliban fighter in his 20’s fresh from the front in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. We spent hours on a grassy slope under the tall pines of Murree, a former colonial hill station that is now a popular resort just outside Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. All around us was a Pakistani rendition of Georges Seurat’s “Sunday on La Grande Jatte” — middle-class families setting up grills for barbecue, a girl and two boys chasing their errant cow with a stick, two men hunting fowl, boys flying a kite. Much of the time, Abdul Baqi was engrossed in the flight pattern of a Himalayan bird. It must have been a welcome distraction. He had just lost five friends fighting British troops and had seen many others killed or wounded by bombs as they sheltered inside a mosque.

He was now looking forward to taking a logic course at a madrasa, or religious school, near Peshawar during his holiday. Pakistan’s religious parties, he told me through an interpreter, would lodge him, as they did other Afghan Taliban fighters, and keep him safe. With us was Abdul Baqi’s mentor, Mullah Sadiq, a diabetic Helmandi who was shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan auditing Taliban finances and arranging logistics. He had just dispatched nine fighters to Afghanistan and had taken wounded men to a hospital in Islamabad. “I just tell the border guards that they were wounded in a tribal dispute and need treatment,” he told me.

And though Mullah Sadiq said they had lost many commanders in battles around Kandahar, he and Abdul Baqi appeared to be in good spirits, laughing and chatting loudly on a cellphone to Taliban friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan....

[Ready4Freddy]

Very long read, ~10 pages, but interesting...

[MNJohnnie]

Interesting? If you like puff piece pro terrorist propaganda pretending to be "news".

[Ready4Freddy]

Wow, speed reader?

[2ndDivisionVet]

Interesting that they would spill their guts to a Western woman, unles they were sure she is on their side. Being that she is with the NY Times, I assume that they are dead-on correct.

[vbmoneyspender]

I'm guessing that Ms. Rubin fancies men who like to kill people who disagree with them.

[proxy_user]

This is from the magazine. They don't claim to be news.

[I see my hands]

"I shared a picnic of fresh mangos and plums with Abdul.."

The fiction and fantasies of a deluded, hormonal female.

[REDWOOD99]

Hothead.

[MNJohnnie]

Did you bother to pick up on the fact that in one breath they are talking about the many commanders they have all ready lost then in the next talking about how they are starting to taste victory? Or did you just suspend all critical facilities because the article validated what you hope is true?

[MNJohnnie]

No, just not a rabid Neo Isolationist Know Nothing.

[REDWOOD99]

Hothead types quicker.

[nino7]

"...while taking refuge in a mosque"!?! If there's one reason why I, and probably most americans, are angry with the White House is that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS THESE MUSLIM RATS HIDE AND CONDUCT OPERATIONS FROM THEIR MOSQUES! and we won't attack them. Why hasn't America started a world wide expose of this fact, followed by blowing up any mosque which terrorist are in?

[Ready4Freddy]

Yeah, I was gratified to see that the muzzies had been killed while hiding in a mosque. I did note that it was apparently Brit soldiers involved, but I gotta believe that the US & the Brits operate under the same ROE...

Now if we'll just start loosing missiles at Taliban forces lined up at funerals, huh?

[gotribe]

...We spent hours on a grassy slope under the tall pines...p

I bet she was sharing more than just mangos and plums.

Then the Helmandi asked, with genuine confusion: “Why are Muslims being tortured everywhere in the world, and no one is there to stand up for them? But if you touch one Westerner, the sky is on your head?”

Because, muzzi, when you mess with us, we burn your sorry **s.

[Ready4Freddy]

'Genuine confusion' indeed, the guy has it ass-backwards. Goes to show the effect of the brainwashing these illiterates undertake from childhood, doesn't it?

Then the Helmandi asked, with genuine confusion: “Why are Muslims being tortured everywhere in the world, and no one is there to stand up for them?

[the anti-mahdi]

If they were not Taliban "fighters", thugs and bullies who take what they want from Afghans who are afraid of their night letters and are routinely kidnapped and forced to contribute food, water, and money to these wretches--including their own sons, this asshat would be on the stupid end of plow behind an oxen or driving a 20 year old corolla cab, or diggin out the open sewer trenches that line every street in Kabul for about a dollar a day.

It is just a lot more "fun" to be a terrorist. People fear you and will do what you demand.

I think the bitch that spent a pleasant afternoon with this sociopath should have capped her perfect day by being gang-raped by the the whole entourage and then beheaded on video for Al Jazeera.

[gonzo]

Just can't help myself, Freddy:

There! I feel better now...............FRegards