Ramesh Thakur, this is intellectual rubbish.
"The reality of recent reversals on human rights, civil liberties and press freedoms is hard to miss."
Human rights only exist where the population honors them and where that population enshrines them in their laws.
Those conditions do not exist, and never have existed, in Afghanistan.
And to blame that fact on the Taleban shows only that you literally do not understand the place you are writing about.
The war lords of the Northern Alliance are every bit as horrible as the Taleban. You don't even mention their mass murder of 3,000 Taleban prisoners through suffocation in the desert.
You don’t mention the fact that virtually all of the women in places, places ruled by the warlords, outside Kabul – and even many there – still wear the burka.
You don’t mention the Potemkin schools that open with fanfare and close for lack of funds.
You don’t mention the immense poverty and virtually complete lack of a modern economy. You don’t mention the war lords involvement with poppies.
Afghanistan is a backward, poor, tribal society. Full stop.
Such backward places in India still burn brides. Such backward places in Africa see young girls routinely raped.
You do not advance a society with conquest and occupation, America's idea of a human-rights mission. Carpet-bombing is not a tool of democracy, no matter what your fellow institute arm-chair experts in the U.S. say.
God, they just murdered maybe a hundred people with their stupid bombing. And in Pakistan, they are pressuring the government towards collapse.
You are only defending a corrupt and murderous effort which has nothing to do with rights.
