-- On 22 Oct 2004 at 11:12, Bill Stewart wrote:
James - Many, perhaps most, of the POWs at Gitmo weren't foreigners, they were Afghans. Many of the POWs at Gitmo probably were Al-Qaeda or other organized paramilitary groups. But many of them were described by the US propagandists as "Taliban fighters" - the military arm of the local central government who were "legitimate" to the extent that any group of warlords who are the current king of the hill are legitimate,
Firstly, much of the Taliban is Pakistani, not Afghan. Secondly, if the Taliban were legitimate, their enemies may lock them up for the duration of the war as POWs, Since some elements of the Taliban have not laid down their arms, Taliban prisoners may held for the duration, as POWs, even if they fought in a manner equivalent to fighting in uniform. The Taliban were illegitimate, not on legal grounds, but because they were evil. If someone was in the Taliban, then those threatened by the Taliban have a strong case for locking him up, just as we locked up nazis. Thirdly a government that systematically depopulates large areas of the territory it supposedly rules is not as legitimate as warlords with genuine local roots and traditional authority, who for the most part came to power through religious or military leadership in a spontaneous revolution against tyranny. No one in the Northern alliance ever controlled territory though ethnic cleansing. I can easily imagine circumstances where ethnic cleansing is a legitimate response to an intransigent enemy with strong roots in the local population - but the fact that the Taliban used such measures shows they did not have strong roots in the local population. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG CDUSjXr1dmDzlVeda1332HqM96GZ31CTX2n8IhAm 4Cc7h7PYP1ZhoxEDC8UNo32CFcXQrpBdEEegTPYZ1