Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 22, 2001
In yet another outrageous act, Afghanistan's
fundamentalist Islamic regime has prescribed measures that would further
isolate the country's Hindu minority and severely restrict their rights.
Hindus will now have to wear a yellow cloth to identify themselves and
also follow the Islamic shariat code.
Each Hindu household has to display
a two-metre long yellow cloth to distinguish itself. Hindus and Muslims
cannot live in the same house. Dress codes have been prescribed for Hindu
men and women to make them stand apart from the rest of the population.
Hindus cannot keep arms; nor can they rebuild their destroyed places of
worship. These measures, which tend to reduce Hindus to the status of second
class citizens, do not, however, come as a surprise. One could hardly have
expected anything else from a militia of near savages who have reduced
women to domestic slavery and destroyed Buddha statues which constitute
a priceless part of the world's artistic and cultural heritage. What is
surprising is that the entire civilised world has watched in utter helplessness
as a few thousand armed fanatics and their utterly perverse and warped
mentors have continued to trample upon everything that a modern civilised
order stands for. Nor has it been able to curb the drug trafficking they
have been carrying on to fill their coffers and undermine the mental and
physical health of western countries, including the United States.
The world has been equally powerless
in the matter of compelling the Taliban regime to hand over the notorious
terrorist, Osama bin Laden, who lives in Aghanistan as the government's
guest, to stand trial. It is not that the West has done nothing. Bomb explosions
in front of US embassies in Dar-e-Salam in Tanzania and Nairobi in Kenya
on August 7, 1998, were followed by US cruise missile attacks on terrorist
bases and training camps in Afghanistan later that month. Refusal to hand
over Osama bin Laden has prompted the United Nations to impose tough sanctions.
These, a severe drought and continued warfare, have shattered Afghanistan's
economy leading to the continued migration of hundreds of thousands of
people to Pakistan, Iran and central Asian countries. Notwithstanding all
this, the Taliban continue in power because they have absolutely no concern
for the plight of the people whom they are supposed to govern and continue
to receive critical military and financial support from Pakistan without
which they cannot exist.
Until now, the West has been handling
Pakistan with kid gloves. The time has come to act tough with both Pakistan
and Afghanistan. It is not just a question of coming to the rescue of the
people of the latter, including Hindus, who are suffering unmitigated misery.
It is a question of the threat that militant and violent fundamentalist
Islam, of which the Taliban constitute the vanguard, poses to Central and
South Asia and the world. It makes no secret of its resolve to spread its
variety of Islam throughout the world by the force of arms and destroy
countries like the US and India. Its appeal among the uneducated and disprivileged
in Islamic countries the world over is growing. Unless strong steps are
taken immediately to squelch it, civilised world may have to pay a very
heavy price in future.
