What They Said ...

John Simpson

BBC correspondent

AFGHANISTAN has been dragged forcibly backwards in time, in the first place by three decades of constant war and upheaval, and now by the strangest manifestation of political and religious fundamentalism anywhere on earth: the rule of the Taliban.

The Taliban themselves are not a terrorist outfit as such. They show no great interest in the outside world. Contrary to what you hear from Western politicians, military analysts and journalists, it is not true that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden are jointly part of some big international terrorist consortium.

Bin Laden is the guest of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and their leader, the reclusive one-eyed Mullah Omar, approves of him and is his personal friend. Hence the scope bin Laden has to pursue his terrorist activities.

If anything, the news of the terrible attacks in America will have alarmed them. No doubt plenty of them will have felt that it served the Great Satan right, but I think we can be pretty sure that their first and overriding reaction was one of anxiety.

Even now, at this late stage, I think it is probably true to say that if the United States were prepared to put aside a tenth of the amount that President Clinton spent on firing cruise missiles at Afghanistan three years ago, and devoted it instead to food aid and help for the collapsed infrastructure of Afghanistan, that would be enough to win the Taliban over.

Copyright 2001
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