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Taliban graves are Pashtun shrines
Standing before the rows of graves, Afghan men open their hands to the sky. Their lips move in silent prayer to honor the dead. These dead are fighters of the Taliban and al-Qaida, killed in 2001 when an American bomb crushed the mosque nearby where they had mustered outside the eastern Afghan city of Khost. Since then, U.S. officials have paid for the mosque to be rebuilt. It stands freshly painted, but empty, a few hundred yards down the road.There has been building, too, at the fighters' grave site. Donations by visitors have paid for brick walls and decorative iron grates around the graves, and there are plans for a roof over the enclosure. Unlike the American-funded mosque, the shrine draws a steady stream of visitors from eastern Afghanistan and from neighboring Pakistan. Three years after America's military defeat of the Taliban and al-Qaida, graves of their dead — here and elsewhere — have become shrines for the ethnic Pashtuns who live in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The shrines underscore a reality for the U.S. effort to encourage democracy in both countries — an effort that formally defines the Taliban as an enemy. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-10-27 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=47075 |