Bin Laden: Yes, I did it
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/11/wbin11.xml
The family killed would not have been harmed if it was known they were just a family. Would anyone here want to argue that the Taliban did no harm to any Afghanistan families on purpose? Or that the people of Afghanistan would even want the Taliban back into power? Just in case people forgot how wonderful they were -
August 1998:
After capturing Mazar-i Sharif on August 8, Taliban troops killed scores of civilians in indiscriminate attacks, shooting noncombatants and suspected combatants in residential areas, city streets, and markets. In the days that followed, Taliban forces carried out a systematic search for male members of the ethnic Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek communities. Scores and perhaps hundreds of Hazara men and boys were summarily executed, while thousands of men from various ethnic communities were detained first in the city jail and then transported to other cities. Altogether, at least 2,000 civilians may have been deliberately killed in the city. Many others were killed in aerial bombardments and rocket attacks as they fled south of the city. There were reports that women and girls, particularly in certain Hazara neighborhoods, were raped and abducted during the Taliban takeover.
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/afghanistan/mazar.htm
The Taliban's War Against Women
The day was much like any other. For the young Afghan mother, the only difference was that her child was feverish and had been for some time and needed to see a doctor. But simple tasks in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan today are not that easy.
The mother was alone and the doctor was across town. She had no male relative to escort her. To ask another man to do so would be to risk severe punishment. To go on her own meant that she would risk flogging.
Because she loved her child, she had no choice. Donning the tent-like burqa as Taliban law required, she set out, cradling her child in her arms. She shouldn't have.
As they approached the market, she was spotted by a teenage Taliban guard who tried to stop her. Intent on saving her child, the mother ignored him, hoping that he would ignore her. He didn't. Instead he raised his weapon and shot her repeatedly. Both mother and child fell to the ground. They survived because bystanders in the market intervened to save them. The young Taliban guard was unrepentent -- fully supported by the regime. The woman should not have been out alone.
This mother was just another casualty in the Taliban war on Afghanistan's women, a war that began 5 years ago when the Taliban seized control of Kabul.
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/6185.htm
