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| Afghanistan |
| "I wanna be the next bin Laden" |
| 2001-10-10 |
His friend Hamid Noor, a wiry 19-year-old, was taking only a sleeping bag and the stained, baggy clothes and sandals he was standing in, but was confident that the Taliban and the Almighty would provide. As a stiffener before embarking on a mission to defend their homeland, they attended an anti-American rally at a mosque in Peshawar, the Pakistani border city where an estimated one million Afghans, including both men's families, live. There was no fear, no apprehension, at least not before a Western listener. Sitting in a grubby, backstreet restaurant, after the frenzy of the protest, the pair were engaging and impeccably mannered, but with an added irredeemable zeal. Hamid said: "Allah is with us. The Americans have technology but they don't have the courage to face death, which we do. I will be there until my death if need be. I know I probably won't come back." His father, a quack doctor, approves of his departure, but not his mother. Two of his brothers are already fighting with the Taliban militia. Gul was less naive. "We will be there until something big happens - a reconciliation between the Taliban and other sides, or an American ground invasion." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |