Taliban Systematicly Use Torture and Children as Tools of War ( Archived) (119)

Taliban: A Terrorist
Group, Not A Political Party

By Wahid Monawar

June 11, 2011

How ironic, of all people in the world, Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary defined the goal of terrorism succinctly. Lenin said: “the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.” A century has unfolded since Lenin’s practical conclusion. In modern era, America witnessed the act of domestic terrorism by Timothy McVeigh, a United States Army veteran also known as the Oklahoma City Bomber, who sympathized with militia movement and grew tired of his federal government. McVeigh killed 168 innocent civilians, including women and children, and injured 450; his action was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

When September 11 occurred, Osama Bin Laden became the overnight poster child of terrorism. With Bin Laden now serving as organic fish food at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, his co-conspirators, the Taliban continuously terrorize freedom. The Taliban are the perfect face of the modern terrorism in all of its glorious pathology. Why anyone takes them seriously is utterly beyond me. And yet for some, including Afghanistan’s leader, their bogus moral preening continues to resonate.

While Afghanistan’s president and his family are openly advocating for the Taliban to be recognized as a legitimate political movement, the Taliban’s actions clearly classify them as a terrorist organization which desperately preys on vulnerable minds. Boys as young as 12-years-old are recruited to become suicide bombers under the false pretense of promises which will never be delivered. And in turn, the Taliban boast about using these children as human bombs to slaughter civilians in universities and hospitals across Afghanistan.

When the Pakistan-backed Taliban regime collapsed in 2001, Afghanistan’s doors were open to all Afghans, regardless of their ethnicity or political affiliation. Even those who served during the dark days of the Afghan Communist era seized this opportunity and reintegrated themselves to help in rebuilding Afghanistan. The Taliban, however, resorted to terrorism to appease their Pakistani ISI masters to incessantly inflict terror on Afghans.

Although there is no broadly accepted definition for terrorism, a terrorist group such as the Taliban commonly is defined as a set of individuals belonging to a non-state entity that uses terrorism to achieve their goal. In the Taliban’s case, their objective is for the United States to leave Afghanistan, so Pakistan ISI can conveniently move back in, as in the late-nineties. While most terrorist groups are political by nature, their aim is to target civilians as the Taliban demonstrate this on daily basis.

Unfortunately, Afghan president’s 10 infelicitous years at the helm has failed to help him to grasp the basic notion that even terrorist groups that have ended, did so by pursuing their goals through politics. There is no need to rebrand them and fabricate an identity that genuinely doesn’t fit and is seriously incongruous with Taliban’s character. Today, Taliban’s ideological motivation, to kill Americans because they are Christian, no longer resonates with Afghans, unless Mr. Karzai stokes Afghans sentiment against the United States and appeal to their emotional intelligence.