"My family have been singing here for generations," he told me. "But now these Arab madrasa students come here and create trouble. They tell us that what we do is wrong. Sometimes arguments break out - even fist fights and brawls.
"Before the Afghan war there was nothing like this. It only began when Reagan and the Saudis starting sending jihadis to Peshawar. Before that the Pushtuns here loved Sufism. Now trouble happens more and more frequently."
"What do you do?" I asked.
"What can we do?" he replied. "We pray that right will overpower wrong. But our way is pacifist. We love. We never fight. When these Arabs come here I don't know what to do."
I thought of the shrine over the weekend as further violence shook Saudi Arabia. Following on from the kidnapping and murder last month of 22 expatriates in Khobar, gun battles in the streets of Jeddah and the murder in broad daylight of a BBC cameraman, this weekend has bought further violence to the kingdom. One American has been kidnapped and another murdered. The Foreign Office has begun the process of pulling out non-essential staff.
Things are clearly coming to a head in Saudi Arabia. It is not yet exactly falling apart, but we are close to seeing the mass exodus of the expatriate community that runs its oil business, with a disastrous effect on oil prices.
On the BBC's Today programme last week, the Saudi ambassador, Prince Turki al Faisal, expressed his grief at the death of the cameraman and swore that the authorities were doing everything to arrest the culprits - despite growing evidence of collusion between the Saudi national guard and the militants. But at no point did the interviewer ask Turki about his role in supporting jihadi groups while head of Saudi intelligence, nor was it mentioned that Turki has admitted having had five meetings with Osama bin Laden in the past. Indeed, al-Qaida was in some respects a creation of Saudi intelligence during the Afghan jihad against the Soviets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/saudi/story/0,11599,1238198,00.html
In the US, there have been no 9-11 related convictions.
Some say the Taliban were mysoginists. Will the real mysoginists, please stand up:
Women are victims...
One out of every six American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime (14.8% completed rape;2.8% attempted rape). A total of 17.7 million women have been victims of these crimes.[Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey, National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1998.]
In 2002, seven out of every eight rape victims were female. [NCVS 2002]
While about 80% of all victims are white, minorities are somewhat more likely to be attacked:
Lifetime rate of rape/attempted rape (women):
[NVAWS 1998]
All:
17.6%
White:
17.7%
Black:
18.8%
Asian/Pacific Islander:
6.8%
Am. Indian/Alaskan:
34.1%
Mixed race:
24.4%
Men, too...
About three percent of American men --- a total of 2.78 million men--have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. [Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women 1998.]
In 2002, one in every eight rape victims were male. [NCVS 2002]
And, of course, kids...
About 44% of rape victims are under age 18. Three out of every twenty victims (15%) are under age 12. [Sex Offenses and Offenders. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1997.]
Seven percent of girls in grades five to eight and twelve percent of girls in grades nine through twelve and said they had been sexually abused. [Commonwealth Fund Survey of the Health of Adolescent Girls, 1998.]
Three percent of boys in grades five through eight and five percent of boys in grades nine through twelve said they had been sexually abused. [Commonwealth Fund Survey of the Health of Adolescent Boys, 1998.]
93% of juvenile sexual assault victims knew their attacker; 34.2% were family members and 58.7% acquaintances. Only seven percent of the perpetrators were strangers to the victim. [Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2000]
In 1995, local child protective service agencies identified 126,000 children who were victims of either substantiated or indicated sexual abuse; of these, 75% were girls. Nearly 30% of child victims were between the ages of 4 and 7. [US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Maltreatment, 1995.]
http://www.rainn.org/statistics.html
More women have been raped in America then there are women in Afhanistan. Shall we bomb ourselves?
However, he never mentions that the "tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists" the CIA armed are some of the same people who in 1996 killed 19 American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; blew a hole in the side of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden harbor in 2000; and on Sept. 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, the world awaits what is almost certain to happen soon at some airport -- a terrorist firing a U.S. Stinger low-level surface-to-air missile (manufactured at one time by General Dynamics in Rancho Cucamonga) into an American jumbo jet. The CIA supplied thousands of them to the moujahedeen and trained them to be experts in their use. If the CIA's activities in Afghanistan are a "success story," then Enron should be considered a model of corporate behavior.
Nonetheless, Crile's account is important, if appalling, precisely because it details how a ruthless ignoramus congressman and a high-ranking CIA thug managed to hijack American foreign policy. From 1973 to 1996, Charlie Wilson represented the 2nd District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives. His constituency was in the heart of the East Texas Bible Belt and was the long-held fiefdom of his fellow Democrat, Martin Dies, the first chairman of the House Un-American Affairs Committee. Wilson is 6 feet, 4 inches tall and "handsome, with one of those classic outdoor faces that tobacco companies bet millions on." He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1956, eighth from the bottom of his class and with more demerits than any other cadet in Annapolis history.
http://hnn.us/articles/1491.html
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