Monday, August 2, 2021

Taliban Legacy of Terror

Jihadis from Arabian Peninsula and Mujahedeen—the warlords of Afghanistan who resisted the invasion of Soviet Union in Year 1979, regrouped as Taliban in Year 1989 after the Soviets were defeated, to fight the pro-Soviet Government. The invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet Union sent ripples of shock in West and in Saudi Arabia. Both America and Saudi Arabia were anxious to supply arms to this poor nation to fight the Russians. The Muslims envisioned this fight as strengthening Islam and the West saw it as a battle to bring down communism. Money poured into Afghanistan from America in arms and armaments to strengthen the Mujahedeen, while Saudi Arabia opened its coffers of wealth along with their Jihadis to fight the infidel. Amongst those Jihadis, the most active was the citizen of Saudi Arabia by the name of Osama Bin Laden. For several years during the war between Russians and Mujahedeen, Osama was an armchair warrior, traveling to Peshawar to bring money and supplies. There was a huge weapons souk outside Peshawar, the guns hanging in there, hundreds of them. Anyone could buy any weapon they liked, the most popular amongst Jihadis, the Kalashnikov. The war still raging between the Soviets and the Afghanis, Osama in Year 1986 started building a military base to camp and to house several dozen of Arab fighters, near the Afghan village of Jaji about ten miles from Pakistani border. The following summer Soviet jets bombarded Osama’s camp with missiles that landed inside the camp, but didn’t explode. That day Mujahedeen canon brought down four Soviet planes, Osama gloated, cheering over the deaths of Russian pilots. The story was picked up by Saudi press, praising Jihadis, who were lauded as holy warriors. The Saudis had given lavishly as well as America to support this war, but for Saudis some of the payment was in blood. The bodies of the Arab dead were dispatched in cold storage, embalmed in sweet smelling scents to console the grieving parents that their sons had died as martyrs. After a decade of warfare, Russians acknowledged defeat in Year 1989 and left Afghanistan into the hands of the pro-Soviet leader Najibullah. Osama Bin Laden was ecstatic, returning to Jeddah as a war hero. He was received into the homes of the wealthy Saudis to be kissed and embraced, presiding over grand feasts with grand stories to share and exaggerate. King Fahad praised him and applauded his efforts to defeat the Russians. Back in Afghanistan civil war had broken out, Americans satisfied with Russian defeat had withdrawn their support, not concerned with the internal warfare in Afghanistan. After a decade of armed struggle, fighting had become a way of life for Afghani Mujahedeen and ethnic factions as well as well as regional lords engaged in internecine warfare and against the puppet government of Najibullah. The young students calling themselves Talibs, meaning pupils in Pashtu language styled themselves as Taliban—a group of pupils and fashioned their own laws to govern and subjugate. Most of them were orphans or belonging to poor families, the victims of Soviet aggression and taught in madrassas funded by Saudi Arabia. They were schooled to fight the infidel and brainwashed into believing the distorted version of Islam which had nothing to do with Islam. Trained to have long beards and turbaned at all times, they went from village to village, carrying a copy of Quran in one hand and Kalashnikov in the other, demanding that the chieftains put down their weapons for the sake of Quran. If anyone resisted the armed bandits styled as Taliban, those were considered as rebels and shot dead on the spot by Taliban ruthlessly. Back in Saudi Arabia, Osama was expanding his own operation of Jihadists in Yemen and Jeddah. When news of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait reached Saudi Arabia in Year 1990, Osama was concerned for the safety of the House of Al Saud. He suggested that King Fahd should move out of his palace in Jeddah, because it was too close to the sea and could be easily attacked. Further he offered his own army of Jihadis to liberate Kuwait from the clutches of Saddam. King Fahad declined Osama’s offer, instead seeking the aid of godless Americans, as Osama put it, feeling outraged and offended. Instantly he became a sworn enemy of Al Saud, starting an armed organization called Al Qaeeda in Yemen without the permission of the government. Soon he was making incendiary speeches and barbed wires appeared along the top of the high wall surrounding his Macarona street house in Jeddah. He was ordered by the government to take down the barbed wires and to stop making speeches against the house of Al Saud. He didn’t comply, so his passport was confiscated. In Year 1991, he was able to retrieve his passport and left for Afghanistan, and then to Sudan as a base for his Al Qaeeda operations. Meanwhile Taliban kept fighting the government, but they didn’t succeed until Year 1992 when they toppled the government of Najibullah. It was not until Year 1996 that Taliban kidnapped Najibullah the president of Afghanistan and his brother. They beat both Najibullah and his brother and castrated them publically, dragged their bodies behind a jeep, then hanged them by wire nooses from lampposts. After these brutal acts, the Taliban began issuing their man-made edicts of prohibitions outside the pale of Islam. No music, no pool tables, no kite flying. No nail polish, no toothpaste, no television. No beard shaving or adopting the hairstyles of the British or Americans. The women were to wear burqa, covered from head to toe and banned from working. The girl schools and colleges were closed. Back in Sudan, Osama’s business ventures as well as his Al Qaeeda camp was flourishing. He had set up a nine room office in Sudanese capital, from which he ran a trucking company, a leather tanning factory and a furniture making venture. He also owned a bakery and a sweets-producing company. His rhetoric against the House of Al Saud was getting offensive to King Fahad, so the King ordered in Year 1994 that Osama be stripped of Saudi citizenship. His Saudi assets and bank accounts were frozen. Despite all precautions against violence, Saudi Arabia became the victim of terrorist attack in Year 1995 when a bomb tore apart the National Guard training center, killing five Americans and two Indian officials. Though not privy to these bombings, Osama was under suspicion of aiding the terrorists. A year later his attempt to assassinate Egyptian president Mubarak resulted in his expulsion from Sudan. No choice was left to Osama, but to choose Afghanistan as his permanent exile in Year 1996 with the intention of launching attacks against Saudi Arabia and America, the later in his estimation for abandoning Afghanis to their own throes of conflict and warfare. Leaving Sudan and arriving in Jalalabad, Osama sought the protection of Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of Taliban. Mullah Omar welcomed him, taking an oath that he would protect him and would never give him up to anyone against any threat, reward or pressure. Being an ex-citizenship of Saudi Arabia, Osama was not shocked to witness the execution of a convicted murderer murdered by the member of his victim’s family in a football stadium, packed with men and children. He was impressed by the orthodoxy of the Taliban, feeling close at home, when he encountered a Taliban beating a taxi driver who was playing music in his cab. A year earlier, Mullah Omar told Osama, he had received Saudi envoy and had told him that Taliban would fight until there would be no blood left to be shed in Afghanistan and Islam would become the way of life for Afghanis. The Saudi envoy was pleased, that’s why new trucks and machine guns were flooding the streets of Kabul for the propagation of Islam. Mullah Omar was ready to lead the faithful to the gates of heaven. When Taliban took control of Kabul in Year 1996, Mullah Omar summoned in Kandahar more than thousand religious leaders from his newly conquered domains to proclaim himself Amir-al-Muminin—Commander of the Faithful. To invest himself with more power, he ordered the Prophet’s Cloak to be brought out from the most sacred shrine in Kandahar, to the top floor of a mosque in the center of the city. Staging a grand show for the possession of the Prophet’s cloak, he stuck his hands into the sleeves of the holy garment and proceeded to parade around the roof, wrapping and unwrapping the Cloak for half an hour as the mullahs in the courtyard threw their turbans in the air, pledging their homage to the Commander of the Faithful. By the end of the year Taliban had extended their rule to the twenty-two of the country’s thirty-one provinces. Taliban announced that their godly government would be known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Only three countries recognized this entity, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. By Year 1998 Osama had trained around eight thousand non-Afghanis in his Jihadi camps as potential fighters to wreak vengeance against all who had done wrong to Muslims around the world. He organized an International Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Christians. An official manifesto was written and signed by militant leaders from Egypt, Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh and Taliban were given the first privilege to declare war on America to civilians. His threat, indirectly, was against Al Saud, who even after the end of Gulf War were permitting US Air Force bases in the Land of the Two Holy Places. Taliban were organizing their own jihad against Shias in Afghanistan. In the middle of Year 1998, Taliban using their new trucks and machine guns supplied by Saudi Arabia were able to capture the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif. On a spree of blood-thirsty rampage, they slaughtered about six to eight thousands of Shia men, women and children. Not satisfied with mass murder, they ploughed their way into people’s homes, raping, murdering and slitting the throats of all they could find, regardless of their age, gender or ethnicity. Pressed by the fever of madness, they packed hundreds of victims into shipping containers without water to be baked alive in the desert sun. Movie theatres were closed and music was banned. Taliban stopped all women from working in schools or hospitals, and if they deviated from their edict of complete covering from head to toe, they were publicly beaten. Local festivities of New Year celebrations were banned, as well as festivities of two Eids, and Ashura—Shia’s Islamic month of mourning. Portraits and photography too were banned. At the end of the same year Al Qaeeda’s suicide bombers had launched assaults against America’s embassies in Kenya, Nairobi, Tanzania and Dar es Salaam. Their coordinated attacks within eight minutes of each other resulted in deaths of two hundred and twenty-four people and forty-five hundred were injured. In retaliation America’s Operation Infinite Reach launched Tomahawk missiles against a suspected chemical weapons factory in Sudan which turned out to be a pharmaceutical plant. Seventy-five cruise missiles were also fired from US warships in the Indian Ocean in the direction of the recently built terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. The missiles didn’t reach their intended target and the next day Osama exulted. By the grace of God, I am alive. Osama was rewarded by Taliban with a code name Taqwa, meaning reverence for God. In Year 1999 UN imposed an air embargo and froze Taliban assets in an attempt to force them to hand over Osama for trial. A year later UN also imposed an arms embargo against the Taliban. In March of Year 2001, Taliban blew up two thousand-year old statues of two Buddhas in the cliffs above Bamiyan. Taliban began enforcing more of their man-made laws on the populace of Afghanistan. Religious minorities were ordered to wear tags beginning May in Year 2001, identifying them as non-Muslims. Hindu women were required to veil themselves in the manner of Afghani women. More edicts were enforced in July 2001, banning the game of playing cards. The use of TV, movies, satellite, computers disks, chessboards and musical instruments were prohibited, labeled as unIslamic. In August of the same year eight Christian foreign aid workers were arrested by Taliban on the charges of preaching, two of them were Americans. A month later Northern Alliance Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud was wounded in a suicide attack, dying of wounds a few days later. The most vicious of attacks landed on American soil on September 11 Year 2001 by Osama, Taliban, Al Qaeeda? The World Trade Center’s twin towers were hit by hijacked planes, killing thousands of Americans in New York. Also Pentagon in Washington was attacked. US and British forces attacked Taliban’s air defense installations and air based command centers in Afghanistan in October of Year 2001 and in November the same year Taliban forces abandoned the capital Kabul and Northern Alliance forces took control of the city. In December of the same year an Afghan tribal leader in exile by the name of Hamid Karzai was chosen to head the interim government in Afghanistan by the delegates in Bonn, Germany. In January Year 2002 Taliban capitulated and two years later Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga—decision making assembly adopted a new constitution, granting equality to men and women and proclaiming Afghanistan as an Islamic Republic. In November 2004 Hamid Karzai was elected president of Afghanistan. Taliban began regrouping to fight back and a year later started a string of suicide bombings. Despite unrest in Afghanistan and terrorist attacks by Taliban, Hamid Karzai was reelected in Year 2009 the president of Afghanistan. Two years later on May 1, 2011 US President Barack Obama announced that Osama was killed by US Navy seals in a covert operation in Abbottabad. Taliban in stark contrast to Islam’s message of peace and reconciliation promoted conflict and warfare, committing the most inexpiable of atrocities and they continue to do so ruthlessly and shamelessly. No man, but only a madman would preach hatred, violence and destruction in the name of religion, turning a blind eye to the evil of bloodshed and suffering. By training orphans and poor students in becoming murderers and hatemonger, Taliban are not worthy of the name Islam, and in utter ignorance of the true precepts of Islam they have no claim in being called Muslims. Only the godless, heartless and conscienceless men could devise such brutal means to oppress women in a manner so savagely barbaric that while raping, beating and torturing women, they would justify their actions as Islamic. Taliban are not Muslims, but bigots, zealots and blasphemers as is obvious from their vile acts during their course of occupation in Afghanistan and even in this new millennium they desist not from their vices of suicide bombing and aggression. Taliban’s network of human trafficking, in addition to raping the women, abducted them from all walks of life and sold them into sex slavery in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their harsh edicts forbade women from getting educated. Girl schools and colleges were closed. Women were not allowed to leave home without a male chaperon. They were required to wear a burqa—covering from head to toe and if any part of their body was revealed, they were publicly beaten. One young woman by the name of Sohaila was convicted of walking with a man who was not her relative and charged with adultery. Her body was lacerated by hundred lashes as she was flogged publicly in Ghazi Stadium. More than six hundred Somali women were abducted, the desirable ones selected for the leaders of Taliban and the rest carted away in trucks to Peshawar where they were kept in private homes as slaves or sold into brothels. Women were not allowed to work except in medical profession since no male doctor was allowed to examine a woman. Malala Yousufzai a teenage girl in the district of Swat in Pakistan was shot in the head by Taliban October 2012 for her courage to speak against Taliban and to promote education for girls worldwide. In the town of Bamiyan alone hundreds of men, women and children were executed. Most of the houses were razed to the ground and some used as bases for forced labor. The religious police of Taliban scouted everywhere to tyrannize women if they dared go out of their homes to work secretly in schools or operate their beauty parlors, and if caught they were flogged mercilessly. To raise funds for their hateful enterprises, the religious police began charging tolls from the trucking companies, including the heroin merchants who were transporting their share of opium to foreign markets. The war on Afghanistan and on Iraq had compelled Taliban to leave their safe haven and infiltrate the entire world. Nothing is sacred to Taliban, but their ideology to create disorder on earth in violent contrast to the teachings of Quran and Prophet Muhammad. The blood of the so-called infidels—who don’t conform to their own man-made laws, is holy to Taliban, which they can’t stop spilling to appease the hate-fire at the altar of their soul burning with the fever of zeal and ignorance.

Sunday, August 1, 2021

Tokyo Olympics, Vaccinations, Mask Mandates

“It is a shame to let ignorance and complacency be stronger than wisdom.” Marcus Aurelius/ Major health risk is not the fear or rejection of vaccine, but the barrage of misinformation. /Tokyo Olympics, vaccinations, mask mandates are keeping social media abuzz with analysis and anticipation./ Though insurrection-in-chief tries to steal into mainstream media with his usual insulting comments./ “Wokeism makes you lose./ You become warped, you become demented./ The US soccer team is a good example of what’s going on.”/ Wokeism is not the reason US women soccer team loss in Olympics, Big Loser. /This is the dynamics of sports, one team wins and the other loses, that’s natural./ What’s the reason behind your Big Lie loss, Mr. Loser, of becoming “warped, demented?” /Blame-game is on, anyone, or anything. Sarah Sanders is another sample of stupidity aligned to the clownish circle of GOPQ./ Coming out of the shadows of her past lies and lying again. /She emerges from her stinking vault of silliness, saying. /“If President Biden, Vice President Harris and others on the Left truly care about increasing the vaccination rate and saving lives, they should admit they were wrong to cast doubt on Operation Warp Speed and give Trump and his team the credit they are due for the development of safe and effective vaccine in record time.”/ Yes, silly Sarah, denier-in-chief surely should get credit for COVID hoax, for his quackeries in ingesting bleach, for killing thousands of American for promoting anti-mask, anti-vaccine rallies. /For unleashing reek of misinformation. /“Just like a flue, will disappear, we will have raring church services on Easter.”/ Since Delta variant is threatening US health, Nancy Pelosi is suggesting mask mandates on Capitol Hill to prevent lawmakers from getting infections./ Mean McCarthy in response chirps. “Make no mistake./ The threat of bringing masks back is not a decision based on science, but a decision conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue in a perpetual pandemic state.”/ Staunch denier of science, McCarthy is not only ignorant, but deliberately carving health risks for his unvaccinated Trumplicans./ He should realize that unlike radicalized GOPQ who want to live under the umbrella of perpetual Big Lie and let Americans die, liberals want to save American lives by trusting science and taking precautions./ McCarthy Moron continues. /“It will be hard not to hit Pelosi with speaker’s gavel if Republicans take control of Chamber 2022./ I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel./ It will be hard not to hit her with it.”/ Dream on Mendacious McCarthy, GOPQ would be hit with tsunami of defeat so “hard” that they won’t have strength to wake up from that trauma for decades./ Craven, avaricious, radicalized GOPQ know only how to hit and fight, not ever think of helping the suffered and suffering Americans./ It’s in their DNA to win by deceit, voter suppression laws are their tickets to steal election from Democrats./ As to Delta variant, another major health risk is rude and rowdy Rand Paul accusing Fauci of lying about COVID. “Do you know it’s a crime to lie to Congress?”/ Fauci responded calmly. /“If anyone is lying here, Senator, it is you./ You don’t know what you are talking about.” /Lying is the legacy of the Trumplicans, radicalized Rand should know, still carrying Big Lie on his shoulders./ Lying Lauren Boebert tweets after Biden urges all Americans to get vaccinated./ “Don’t come knocking on my door with Fauci ouchi./ You leave us the hell alone.”/ Hell is already allotted to the unvaccinated ones victimized by misinformation by GOPQ and QAnon queens./Delta variant would be the only one invading your privacy if you leave the door open with anti-vaxxer welcome flag./ It would make you squirm in agony if you don’t take precautions. /You, Ouchi queen of ignorance, are hurling your base to the door of death with your lunacy and falsehood./ Boebert also deriding Biden’s effort to vaccinate as “Needle Nazis”./ QAnon queen Greene equating vaccine mandates to “Holocaust” just short of labelling Biden, Hitler./ Tragedy of our times is that intellect is missing in our modern day struggles for sanity, serenity, serendipity./ Instead what we get is showers of stupidity, obscenity, ignorance. /The acid-rain of levity and nonsense from the radio-mouths of GOPQ, trying to block government efforts of vaccination by saying, /“It’s none of your damn business.”/It will be everyone’s “damn” business if you get infected to infect others. /Suffering tortures of the damned in the hospital, for sure, if there are any beds left there for unvaccinated victims of COVID./ The curse of stupidity is high in the ranks of GOPQ as Wendy Rogers tweets. /“I like Indians and I like Redskins. I like Aunt Jemima and I like Uncle Ben./ I like Robert Lee and I like Stonewall Jackson./ I don’t like traitors who hate America. /Stand up for our culture.” /She only likes traitors like Lee and Jackson. /Does that mean she hates insurrection-in-chief the Big Lie traitor of nascent America?/ Mind can never get the answers it seeks./ To stop its gymnastics of madness, I wave my broom of silence with as much energy as witch’s spell, and then let it go whirling like a dervish./ Reaching out to the heavens and grounded to earth, no desire to ask for anything, but to luxuriate in absolute stillness./ “But that shadow has been serving you/ What hurts you, blesses you/ Darkness is your candle/ Your boundaries are your quest/ You must have shadow and light source both/ Listen and lay your head under the tree of awe” / Rumi/ “To look for the impossible is folly and it is impossible that bad man should not do bad deeds.”/ Marcus Aurelius/ Wishing whole world wisdom, health, harmony