The Taliban and music

[Pete]

The Taliban and music

By Zubeida Mustafa
Wednesday, 05 Aug, 2009 | 09:22 AM PST |

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...nd-music-zj-03

An interesting piece on the Taliban and music.

[dividebyzero]

In Jon Lee Anderson's "The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan" he describes an encounter with a man who ended up with several of Mullah Omar's Land Cruisers after he fled into the mountains. He opened up a center console and took out a bunch of secular music cds, and then claimed that they had been in the car when he got them. Apparently, despite beating, torturing and imprisoning people for the high crime of listening to music, Mullah Omar himself liked to kick back with some tunes every now and then.

Relevant passage in the book can be found here.

http://books.google.com/books?id=4A2...age&q=&f=false

[TOMAHAWK9521]

Sounds familiar. Granted, this came from disgruntled Afghanis, but back during our tour in '02 some of our translators told my team of Omar and the Taliban elite living very western lifestyles while persecuting, torturing and butchering the common folk for doing anything divergent from the teachings of the Koran. We heard stories of rock music (probably Maria Carey), harems, alcohol, all kinds of western technology, vehicles, and drug use. (Note: I always found it amusing to see the "NO DRUGS ALLOWED HERE" written in white English lettering on the mountain side outside of Kandahar as we drove from Kandahar Airfield enroute to Camp Gecko located on the far side of Kandahar.)