Such positions may put Omar's Taliban at odds with al-Qaeda's extremist Sunni agenda of overthrowing what it sees as corrupt Muslim governments and targeting Shiites. Analysts said that Omar, who leads a council of Taliban commanders based in or around the Pakistani city of Quetta, wants such countries as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government if it regains power and that he has little interest in fomenting war elsewhere.This ain't a revolution.
"We assure all countries that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others," Omar said in a written statement in September.
The messages from the Taliban leadership since the spring amount to something of a "revolution," said Wahid Mujda, a political analyst who was a Foreign Ministry official under the Taliban government. "Al-Qaeda's path is now different from the Taliban's path, and they are growing more separated."
Al Qaeda was never particularly popular in Afghanistan, where the people are, after all not Arabs, and they have about as much love for rich Arabs as we in the United States do.
Bin Laden was there because the Taliban wanted his money, not him.
When they were in control of Afghanistan, not only were they not fierce protectors of him, but they were trying to find a way for help the US make him dead in a way that gave them some plausible deniability.
3 comments :
> they have about as much love for rich Arabs as we in the United States do
It is a testament to the malleability of standards for decency that you can write something like that while you would surely be appalled if someone wrote a similar statement replacing "Arabs" with, say, "Blacks", "gays" or "Jews".
My statement is that the Afghans generally, and the Taliban in particular, had no great love for either bin Laden or Arabs beyond their money.
I would make a similar statement (ex bin Laden) for most of the west too.
I did not phrase it well, but it is clear to me that the rest of the world's interest in Arabs and the Arab World is driven by oil and money, rather than any real concern for Arabs as a people.
I don't disagree with the points you made in your reply. I hope and believe we agree that people should be regarded based on their activities rather than based on their ethnicity, race, etc.
The point is that in our society cavalier statements involving dislike of Arabs are thrown around where similar statements about other groups would be considered indecent (and appropriately so). When it comes to dislike of Arabs, apparently, there is no need to make it quite clear whether this is right or wrong and who exactly is disliked and why.
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