People in a community don’t have to necessarily be all good or all bad.
KARACHI: There are some people among us who, following the American refrain, say that there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ Taliban. The argument given is that by virtue of the fact that someone is a member of the Taliban, he must be bad. This is like saying that all Americans are bad, because some American soldiers killed innocent Afghans.
The same yardstick should apply when judging the Taliban. But Taliban-bashers — Americans as well as Pakistan’s ultra-liberals — are so biased that they ignore the basic truth that people in a community don’t have to necessarily be all good or all bad. For instance, take the case of Yvonne Ridley who was so impressed by her Taliban captors that she converted to Islam. And now, contrast her treatment with what Dr Aafia Siddiqi received from the Americans.
There is no question that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. They need to be distinguished and we should reach out to the good ones as an incentive for the bad ones to mend their ways and join the team.
SG Jilanee
Published in The Express Tribune, June 18th, 2011.
