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Ahmad Rashid |
 | | Rashid shows how religion, ethnic factionalism and outside meddling combined in Afghanistan to produce a brutal sequel to the anti-Soviet war of the 1980's, bringing to power in the process the backward-looking, anti-female,drug-trading,terrorism-supporting, massacre-prone Taliban. The broader story here is powerful. |
 | | Rashid calls "the rootless and the restless, the jobless and the economically deprived with little self-knowledge." Eight of the Taliban's cabinet-level officials are from a single such madrassa, Haqqania, a "sprawling collection of buildings on the main Islamabad-Peshawar highway." Its leader, Samiul Haq, Mr. |
 | | Rashid says, is close to the Taliban's reclusive top official, known as Mullah Omar. In 1997, after the Taliban was defeated in a campaign to seize the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Mr. |
| www.ariaye.com /english/ahmadrashid.html (1028 words) |
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