By Norm Dixon
10 October 2001 -- Since the appalling acts of mass
murder in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, US President George
Bush has at times sounded like a fire-and-brimstone preacher.
With
home-spun, Bible-inspired homilies, Bush has warned that the
“evil-doers” — Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
that shelters him — will pay for their sins. However, Bush has avoided
the most pertinent and illuminating Biblical phrase to explain those
terrible events: “You reap what you sow”.
The seeds of what became the Taliban were sown by Washington
itself in the rugged mountains and deep valleys of Afghanistan and the
badlands of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
In 1978, the left-wing, secular Peoples Democratic Party
(PDPA) took power in Afghanistan. Fearing the radical reforms being
implemented there would inspire similar demands from the peoples of the
region, Washington immediately moved to arm and train
counter-revolutionaries — the mujaheddin — organised by Afghanistan's wealthy landlords and its Muslim religious establishment.