> Richard Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snippage> (And let me add - wow, on your summary.) > My take is that the radical fringe of Islam is a > sort of cargo cult.
This made me think of J. Diamond's New Guinean frind's question, wich relates to this: > This is seen most clearly in the case of the > Taliban, whose viewpoint > seems to be that the relative poverty and impotence > of Afghanistan > isn't due to the withering of trade through the > region (which once > supported some of the most magnificent and rich > cities in the world) > or other more recent but secondary historical > factors but is caused > by the people not being strict enough or literal > enough in their > interpretations of the Koran and application of the > Sharia. It's also > apparent in the web of international Islamic > terrorism, which seeks > to regain the greatness of the Islamic world through > fantasies of > recapitulating the heroic military actions of the > first armies of > Islam against the infidels. Unfortunately, although > these attitudes > are clearly idiocy of the first order to most of us, > they are pretty > seductive to certain groups of people both inside > and outside the > Islamic world. Equally unfortunately, they are > doomed to failure and > generally deleterious to the well-being both of > Islam and the dar al-Islam. I am currently reading Sarah Chayes' _The Punishment of Virtue_, about her experience as first an NPR reporter on Afghanistan post-9/11, and then as a foreigner living there, trying to jump-start local businesses (well, that latter is what she talked about to a group of Denver women; I haven't gotten halfway through the book yet). It's clear that she was/is heavily invested in the success of an Afghan nation; her outlook was somewhat bleak at the end of the talk (I was not there in person, but parts of it were broadcast on our local PBS station). The WashPost review is excerpted at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Punishment-Virtue-Inside-Afghanistan-Taliban/dp/1594200963 "...Her instrument of choice in recounting this story is the microscope, not the telescope. This is not a sweeping history. Instead, she sticks to what she sees and hears from her perch living among Afghans in Kandahar, the deeply traditional city and former Taliban stronghold that is at the heart of the country's past, present and future. But what a perch it is. Unlike many Westerners in Afghanistan, Chayes throws herself into the culture, learning Pashto, living with a family of 21 and wearing down the already rutted roads as she drives herself around town. She also confronts mysterious death threats and ends up sleeping with a Kalashnikov rifle propped beside her bed. Chayes first enters Kandahar in the days after the Taliban's fall. She does so as a journalist, having volunteered to leave her cushy job as an NPR correspondent in Paris because the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks inspired her to do more than "filing a seemingly endless series of food stories." Though Chayes had covered war before, in the Balkans, she saw her assignment to Afghanistan as something bigger -- a chance to do her part in mediating between the West and Islam even as others spoke ominously of an unavoidable clash of civilizations. What she found was a story infinitely more complex than the standard fare of American troops vs. Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. Early on, she discovers that the United States had handed over control of Kandahar to a local thug named Gul Agha Shirzai. Shirzai had been governor before -- during a period so anarchic and bloody that city residents actually welcomed the takeover by the puritanical Taliban. Now, he was governor again, despite the wishes of President Hamid Karzai, who had also been handpicked by the United States. "The Taliban have scarcely fallen," Chayes writes, "and already U.S. policy seems at cross-purposes with itself." But her NPR editors aren't interested in that story. They want "Mullah Omar sightseeing" (as she calls descriptions of the country's self-proclaimed emir's "tacky" lair) and other tales from the Taliban's awful reign. So Chayes quits journalism but not Afghanistan. She stays in Kandahar as field director for Afghans for Civil Society, a nonprofit group set up by Karzai's brother Qayum. Her first project is rebuilding a small village on Kandahar's outskirts where U.S. bombing had pulverized a third of the houses. Through her efforts, she glimpses the dysfunction of the American-led reconstruction. U.S. officials endlessly rotate in and out of the country, never staying long enough to learn their way around. Plans are made and then scrapped. Rules are unbreakable, except when they're broken. Chayes writes that the inefficiencies become even more acute after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, when Afghanistan's reconstruction falls even further down the priority list..." It is a bit of a grind to read, but is a valuable voice from the ground there; our library had a copy. Debbi Missed Opportunities Maru :( ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
