New York Times should look itself in a mirror before condemning Afghans!

http://goo.gl/dkmifz

For the first time I was totally disappointed with NYT. I never thought I would live to see a day when NYT will look more like an  Indian Presstitute. (The famous word coined by our Minister and retired Army Chief Gen. V. K. SIngh who designated thus those of the Press who prostitute their pen to give a totally slanted view of the world.)

First of all the headline and absence of dateline gives an impression as though the whole incident happened yesterday! But as you read on you realize it happened a long time back, by today's time lag in forgetting news. While I was truly shocked beyond imagination while going through the first many pages describing the lynching and the many graphic videos, you would not believe, I was happy to read the last few pages and my faith in humanity was restored. I was happy for the Afghans of today, though they are living amidst their old beasts. In all other Muslim nations, especially in the violent Middle East filled with militants and terrorists, these and more cruel incidents, are everyday affair, including in the so called advanced Muslim nation Saudi Arabia. But in how many Muslim nations you will find women carrying a coffin of one of their sisters fallen to goons? Nowhere. Not even in the 'fully civilized' Western Nations where also mob killing for lesser crimes are not uncommon. NYT made a serious mistake by NOT giving even a small background of this nation Afghanistan, which had and is going through hell.

To appreciate what has happened in Afghanistan we need to understand well its history and above all what the people of this nation have gone through. The comments I read denouncing these people as totally wicked makes me feel disgusted. The same feeling when I, (who was brought up as a pious Brahmin and pure vegetarian) saw a well cooked headless chicken on a plate, being happily enjoyed by the person sitting next to me in a restaurant. It was almost equal to the revulsion I felt reading the current NYT piece we are discussing. Day in and day out we read about police killings of unarmed blacks or school children killed by those a hundred times more 'civilized' than Afghans. We are reading erudite authors  eloquently analyzing ISIS almost to the point of justifying their violence!  Please bear with me and read this paragraph to understand why Afghans, at least the poorer of them, still remain rooted to religion.

You should NOT be encouraging condemnation of anyone to hell. That is what our religions, be it Christianity or Hinduism, teach us. Everyone behaves as he has been brought up by his family, his neighbors, by his teachers and nation. His conduct conforms to the conduct of most of them. Perception of their conduct in a totally opposing manner takes a very long time. How long we took before we stopped marching along with Ku Klux Klan? In fact even after a century or more, we have many rooting for it! Let's not evaluate others by our standards, which we usually do. Not because we are more right, but because they might be laughing at us after comparing our standards with theirs!

For ages Afghanistan has been supplying opium to the 'culturally advanced nations' in bulk. Afghanistan consisted of people belonging to a very large number of tribes living in far flung hamlets spread in valleys and  mountains without much accessible road, in isolation, in total poverty, without any healthcare, education, local government, roads, electricity, drinking water, public transport, police or courts or any other civic amenities available to any of the poorest of the poor nation now. It was fully exploited by the world's wicked for its opium at the lowest possible price! In fact it was the only product which was grown in Afghanistan and which sustained its economy 100%! The ruler Zahir Shah of Afghanistan (who the world only knew as some opulrny king who lived really like a king of good old days, with huge palaces, cars and what not, spending his time in Western countries) was totally supported by the USA which did not bother a hoot about his tyranny or the poverty of that nation. Its interest in Afghanistan was limited exclusively to its extensive borders with the USSR which helped the USA to spy on it.  Then the Shah was deposed by a palace coup instigated by the then USSR and this tyrant was replaced by another, USSR. How can the US keep quiet? It had never encouraged Afghans to adopt to more civilized life leaving everything to Shah; it did not do any such thing now also. Instead it encouraged Afghans to take to arms by supplying them with a huge lot of guns and ammunition of all kinds. Besides it also instigated very effectively in the dormant uneducated poor Afghans a sense of religious fervor against a Super Power of those days, which has come to haunt them now.  It was a totally unequal fight, like the one between David and Goliath. The more the Russians suppressed the Afghan population, the more the USA fueled their religious fervor and the internal strife continued for about 10 years and Wikipedia estimates about $40 billion was spent on this small nation towards arms to dispense with the Soviet rule! Not for improvement of the lot of God forsaken Afghans! The occupation had cost the lives of about 1.5 millions of Afghans! About 7 millions left the country as refugees!

You can imagine the intensity of the fire of religious fanaticism set by the USA at such a great cost which took ten years of fierce fighting in inhospitable mountains for a  regime change! A fire that destroys does not distinguish between bad and good. It destroys everything. The same thing happened in Afghanistan. The Afghans, who had remained dormant for centuries and put up with exhausting exploitation without a murmur totally resigned and seemingly content with their fate worse than that of a street dog, had only one hope to cling to. That of their religion, the force of it was inculcated in them by the USA for a decade and then nurtured by the corrupt regimes that followed the USSR, to keep them in power. After all these for about four decades, Taliban the baby terrorist gave birth to by the USA and sustained by it, had grown into an adult and has been threatening seriously the existence of the government. Its brothers Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc. have taken roots in other countries. No wonder you see outbursts of violence of a degree, which was unheard of since WWII You reap as you sow.  If the USA took a century and more to get rid of slavery, will take probably another century before it overcomes color blindness and gender discrimination, it should not feign so much revulsion at what is going on in Afghanistan. At least not the NYT which is derisively looked down by many in the USA as championing the cause of the poor who did not deserve a decent life in a capitalistic country!