To: Mohan Marette who wrote (1254 ) 3/18/2000 2:43:00 PM From: Mohan Marette Read Replies (1) | Respond to
**OT** Clinton mania rules the roost - "A nice little 'tamasha' (Comedy)"her many chins quivering with amazement . No, not to the American Ambassador's dinner or for that matter any other, I replied but she had already turned away to talk to someone who clearly had. In the drawing rooms of Delhi and Mumbai, in the private clubs at the Taj and Oberoi, over glasses of chilled wine and cups of fragrant coffee almost all small talk for weeks has been only of Clinton. These are not ladies or gentlemen who have any interest at all in politics but they have devoured every detail of the visit that appears in the press and measured status by whether you have an invitation to meet the American President personally or not.Personally, I have found all this excitement slightly distasteful. This may be the first visit by an American President to our humble land in twenty years but do we need to go so completely overboard? Do we need to go gaga over a man whose policies have been largely responsible for turning the subcontinent into what he himself has described as one of the most dangerous places in the world? 'Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia' by a Pakistani journalist called Ahmed Rashid . The book provides fascinating details of how America's foreign policy makers have virtually supported the Taliban in Afghanistan purely because American oil companies are interested in exploiting the vast reserves of oil and gas that lie hidden under the ground of Central Asia. They have done this knowing that Afghanistan's economy today is fuelled almost entirely by drug money that is used to train Islamic terrorists for export to various so-called jehads, including in Kashmir. Afghanistan today produces three times more heroin than the rest of the world put together and this has been allowed to happen because the United States initially backed the Taliban in the hope that if they brought peace to Afghanistan it would lay the ground for American companies to build pipelines to transport oil and gas. amazon.com After the end of the cold war he writes " Washington's policy to the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran-Central Asia region was stymied by the lack of strategic framework. The USA dealt with issues as they came up in a haphazard, piecemeal fashion, rather than applying a coherent, strategic vision to the region'. "In 1999 'getting Bin Laden' was Washington's primary policy objective, even as it ignored the new Islamic radicalism Afghanistan was fostering, which would in time only throw up dozens more Bin Ladens....US policy has been too preoccupied with wrong assumptions....some US diplomats saw them (the Taliban) as messianic do-gooders - like born-again Christians from the American Bible belt. US diplomats believed that the Taliban would meet essential US aims in Afghanistan - 'eliminating drugs and thugs' , one diplomat said. It was a patently naive hope given the Taliban's social base and because they themselves did not know what they represented nor whether they wanted state power". Madeleine Albright, the American Secretary of State, likes boasting about how America believes in spreading its values by backing democratic regimes and fighting corrupt and dictatorial ones so how does she explain this support for the Taliban? You do not need to be an expert on Afghanistan to know that the Taliban's version of Islam is a dangerous blend of extreme ignorance and brutal intolerance. Women have been forbidden education, jobs and even ordered to wear shoes that do not make a noise as this is also interpreted as an attempt to attract male attention. Religious police patrol the streets ensuring that women are covered from head to toe and that men do not cut their beards. Homosexuality is punished by burying suspects alive and public executions are so routine as to have become unremarkable. From the moment that the Taliban took power in Kabul they have worked towards taking Afghanistan back into the dark ages in the name of some twisted, bizarre interpretation of Islam. They have also openly encouraged people like Bin Laden to set up training camps for terrorists. These terrorists find their way into the Kashmir Valley in such large numbers that it is mainly foreign militants who now fight for Kashmir's cause. Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in India have spread their activities so far outside Kashmir that support for those who hijacked the Indian Airlines plane last December appears to have come from a group in Mumbai. Signs of Islamic terrorism can, in fact, be found as far down south as Coimbatore. He forgets that American policy in the region is largely responsible for laying the ground for such a war if it ever happens . Will things change after Mr Clinton's visit? Unlikely, so let us treat the arrival of the most powerful man in the world as what it really is - a nice, little tamasha to distract us at a time when political entertainment (now that the Bihar drama is over) is in slightly short supply. tribuneindia.com
