Getting facts right about Afstan

Further to the Update here, the Vancouver Sun does eventually print Brian Platt's letter:

Re: Why we can't win in Afghanistan, Soundoff, Sept. 16

Contrary to what Tony Smith wrote, the Taliban did not rule Afghanistan for 11 years until Sept. 11, 2001. They captured Kabul in September 1996 and ruled for the next five years. It is not true that the Russians fought the Taliban for 10 years during their invasion. The Taliban only formed as a movement in 1994. To take power, they themselves had to fight many of the mujahedeen who fought the Russians -- including the most successful anti-Soviet fighter of them all, Shah Ahmed Massoud, who was the defence minister of the government that the Taliban toppled.

Nor is the statement that the Pashtuns became "fanatics" when the Russians invaded true. Two of the most powerful anti-Soviet mujahedeen organizations in the 1980s were Pashtun royalists who favoured the return of the exiled king. They were pious in their religion, as most Afghans are, but not "fanatics." The current president, Hamid Karzai, was a member of a Pashtun royalist organization.

But the most egregious error is the statement that the Taliban are an "Afghani version of Wahhabism." They follow a version of Deobandism, developed in India primarily as a reaction to British rule. The author seems to have invented his own theory of the religious lineage of the Taliban.

We can't even begin the discussion about Canada's role in Afghanistan if we don't have the basic facts right.

Brian Platt

Vancouver

Keep up the good work, Brian.