January 28, 2002
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Mullah Omar by day, Ziggy Stardust by Night
The following is from the New Yorker:
"Kandahar is officially Taliban-free, but it has an unreconciled atmosphere," Jon Lee Anderson writes in "After the Revolution." "The past has not quite been overcome, and the future is unresolved." In Kandahar, Anderson rides in a Toyota with Mullah Naquib, a local tribal leader who, as supreme military commander of the area, had turned the city over to the Taliban in 1994. Anderson first met Naquib during the winter of 1988-89, when Naquib commanded mujahideen who were finishing up their war with the Soviets. "The Toyota had a sunroof and a luxurious tan leather interior," Anderson writes, "and a CD player with an LCD display. It was a fine car, I said to Naquib. He chuckled. 'It was Mullah Omar's,' " he said. 'I have ten of his cars.' " Anderson reports that "many people believe that [Naquib] was also involved in the recent, unexplained disappearance of the Taliban from Kandahar, and they blame him especially for the escape of Mullah Omar." Omar's car contained a number of music CDs, which were banned by the Taliban. The one Anderson and Naquib popped into the CD player "vilified General Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord from Mazar-i-Sharif," Anderson writes. "Its chief refrain was 'O, murderer of the Afghan people.' 'What is life without music?' Mullah Naquib said." Kandahar is not what one would expect from "the austerity of the Taliban," Anderson says. "Pashtun men, Kandaharis in particular, are very conscious of their personal appearance," he reports. "Many of them line their eyes with black kohl and color their toenails, and sometimes their fingernails, with henna. Some also dye their hair. It is quite common to see otherwise sober-seeming older men with long beards that are a flaming, almost punk-like orange color."
I learned of this on an NPR interview with Anderson where he talks about the piles of photos discovered in Kandahar of Taliban with their Kalashnikovs, covered in vivid makeup. Double whammy religious offense, that.
So Omar rocked out to tunes that, by his own rules, would send ordinary folks to prison, and the Taliban like to wear makeup.
It doesn't surprise me when the most forcefully pious turn out to be raging hypocrites with identity issues. But it's funny.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at January 28, 2002 9:03 PM | Technorati inbound links"); ?>