It's difficult to pin down the reasoning here, unless perhaps the workers were foreign nationals. In any event, there is likely an element of turf control: you'll build when, where, and if the Taliban tell you. "Afghan road workers killed in Taliban ambush," from BBC News, May 19:
At least 35 construction workers have been shot dead and 20 injured by Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, an official says.
Eight insurgents were also killed as guards returned fire during Wednesday night's ambush, a Paktika provincial spokesman told the BBC.
The attack took place in a mountainous district on the highway linking Paktika and Khost provinces.
The Taliban recently declared the start of a "spring offensive" of attacks.
I keep asking the rhetoric question: what is wrong with these morons? Will they ever become civilized and behave like humans??They keep killing people who are doing something good for their society. Of course their definition of good and evil is totally reversed - good is evil and evil is good in their teachings of Mo/allah! They can never come out of this black hole that is Islam created by Mo and his figment of imagination, his alter ego allah!!!
Not as long as the Koran exists.
If we could get rid of all Korans and Hadiths the world would instantly become a better place.
'Dem trusty Talibin wid thar ''spring '' offensive. Are they not offensive for the remaining seasons?. .
"It's difficult to pin down the reasoning here". Not for me, they just had a good old time gunning somebody down, the kick of feeling like the biss, u know, nothing else.
"'s difficult to pin down the reasoning here". I don't think so, they simply had a good time gunning somebody down, feeling like a boss, nothing else.
I saw one of these suboids interviewed in a recent Panorama or Frontline about the death of Bin Laden. As he was talking about killing it was obvious that his pleasure centers were lit up like the macy's fireworks and he went into some kind of romantic, blissed out state while fondling his kalishnikov. It wasn't just a show of what they ignorantly consider strength. He had genuine romantic feelings for that weapon and the death it could bring.
Ten thousand years of human civilization has passed that guy and the rest of the Taliban Neolithics by. While our ansestors were building the first cities his were sacking them. While ancient traders were spreading wealth and culture between east and west his were raiding their trade convoys.
Even the kalashnikov he loves so intensly is testiment to what the civilized world can produce yet he conciously choses to fight for the return of the stone age. The dystopia he longs for would be incapable of creating even one part of his beloved weapon.
This really is a conflict between civilization and Barbarism.
The Taliban recently declared the start of a "spring offensive" of attacks.
..........................
Ah, spring! The melting of the stubborn snows, the thawing of the running rills, the tender shoots shyly pushing their heads up through the fallow earth...and the sight of the brave lions of the Taliban murdering road crews!
God, I hate Islam.
"Ten thousand years of human civilization has passed that guy and the rest of the Taliban Neolithics by. While our ansestors were building the first cities his were sacking them."
That's because we have ancestry, while these Moslem goons have incestry.
Ah, spring, and a young Moslem's fancy turns to thoughts of ... killing; killing "infidels", killing apostates and heretics like the Shia, the Amadi, the Ismaili, killing other Moslems who work for the "infidels", killing disobedient women and girls.
On second thought, it's not just spring; they have the same fancy in summer, fall, and winter.
On third thought, it's not just the young Moslems; the middle-aged and old have the same thoughts.
"It's difficult to pin down the reasoning here".
This seems puzzling, but in fact it isn't, particularly if you take orthodox Islamic paranoia into account. Afghanistan has always been a backward country. And some of it (if not all of it) can be attributed to the traditional clan structure of Pashtun tribes, which is generally antithetic to attempting establishment of centralized government in this country. And even the introduction of technological innovation in general. Other than two short lines across the northern borders with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, there are almost certainly no functioning railways in Afghanistan today. Now, this is indicative of how a country like Afghanistan has traditionally proved to be lagging behind just about any other country in the world since the advent of the Industrial Age.
Foreign invaders never had any firm grasp whatsoever on this particular region of the world, unless for short periods of time. History proves that many empires became bogged down in Afghanistan, like the pre-Islamic Persians (Achaemenids and Sassanids), the Muslim Persians (Safavids), the Muslim Moghul Empire, the czarist Russians, the British, and ultimately the Soviets. The Safavids and the Moghuls had even suffered Pashtun tribes invading their territory as far as Isfahan and New Delhi, establishing their own dynasties there.
1) Pashtun are a warrior tribe by nature. It is hard to cast off this traditional mentality.
2) The relative ruggedness of the terrain and the resulting isolation of Afghans and their collective identity makes up for one of the most intransigent forms of Islamic backwardness imaginable.
I can imagine the Taliban might be suspicious of just about any attempt to organize infrastructural improvements, authorized by a central government they don't trust, simply because they would want to link it to NATO's attempts to make troop movements easier.
Islamic logic says
Muslims collaborating with infidels and their armies are Hypocrites and thus have to be punished.
history has it that
Afghanistan is inherently averse to any outside influences.
To me it makes perfect sense.
C'mon, dhimmis! Don't you realize that roads are haram! The prophet (BBOH) never built roads! Do you see any of the "rightly-guided caliphs" building roads? Don't be silly. If there was a good road system, the faithful could escape from the ummah.
Islam is always thinking about..............................oppression.
"Build it, and they will come..." That troglodyte Taliban, that is, who will come to destroy it and kill all people there. The 'dark side' of Islam, was there anything but?.. Welcome to Allah Hell™.
the Taliban are doing exactly what their father Satan has instructed them to do: that is to rob kill and destroy.
those douches blew up an 1800 year old Budah. you think they give a Sh... about roads, construction or workers?
No their mission: destruction and murder!!!
"This really is a conflict between Civilization and Barbarism"
No doubt about it. We have got to stop the over-procreating mass-murdering Mohammedans.
I have put this in the latest of the e-clippings files that I keep for stories from Afghanistan.
But I could also have put it in a different e-clippings file, that I have labelled "religion of ruin".
For another description of Mohammedans mindlessly and viciously delighting in destruction for destruction's sake - even when it would have made more sense to simply take possession of and then use an asset built by non-Muslims - here is John Roy Carlson, in his 1951 book 'Cairo to Damascus'.
Here is his description of what the Arab Muslims, in a fiendish ecstasy of vindictive stupidity, did to a fully-functioning fertilizer factory that fell into their hands because it was within territory seized by Muslim Jordan. Rather than simply take it over and use it to make fertilizer to use on farmers' fields, or to sell, they *smashed* it.
Chapter 20, 'Philadelphia is in Jordan'.
"When I arrived at the marketplace [of Jericho] it was already teeming with traffic...Trucks were arriving with scrap lumber, metal, pipes, and assorted machinery from the direction of the Dead Sea. I decided to investigate.
"In an Armenian barbershop on Jericho's main street, I met a young refugee from Jerusalem named Torkom. Together we got into a bus going in the direction of the Dead Sea, then walked the remaining distance over the semi-arid baked earth.
"Vast brine evaporation beds...met the eye in all directions, connected by miles of pipelines. Beyond them was the huge plant of Palestine Potash Ltd (a once highly profitable British corporation owned jointly by British and Jewish capital) which converted the fabulous mineral wealth of the Dead Sea into common salt, bromides, and chlorides of magnesium, potassium, and calcium.
"Photographing as I went along, I saw, with Torkom, a sight that sickened me.
"The huge plant, stretching over many acres, with its generators, transformers, pumps, and a thousand and one irreplaceable items of machinery - transported at tremendous cost from England and the United States - **was systematically being looted and destroyed: building by building, machine by machine, board by board** {my emphasis - dda}.
"Hundreds of Arab [sic: Arab MUSLIM - dda} scavengers, working with teams of donkeys, mules, and trucks, had already stripped away most of the vital working parts, and were now tearing at the corrugated tin, pipes, wire, boards, and small machines. **What they could not take apart they smashed with sledge hammers** {my emphasis - dda}.
"Instead of utilizing the giant plant, or at least expropriating some of the equipment for constructive purposes - in a land so desperately in need of lumber, glass, ironwork and all else that was in such abundance here - **they were destroying everything, ruthlessly, cold-bloodedly, insanely** {my emphasis - dda}.
"The plant already looked like a miniature Hiroshima, minus the ravages of fire. And this wanton destruction was more or less officially sanctioned by Trans-Jordan officials. A dozen Arab Legion guards were on hand to keep law and order among the looters." END.
I guarantee that once the Americans and every other non-Muslim leaves Iraq and Afghanistan, every single thing that they tried to build there for the common good - schools, bridges, roads, hospitals, you-name- it - will be obsessively *smashed*.
Carlson continues:
‘Further on, I saw the remains of Hotel Kallia, a noted winter resort on the shores of the Dead Sea. Near by were the ruins of the cottages built by the Palestine Potash Corporation to house not only officials engineers and labourers, but scientists and archaeologists. About a mile away, I saw what was left of Beit Harava, a settlement founded by the Jews, who had brought water there to make the desert bloom, so that trees and flowers grew 1,300 feet below sea level.
When the war broke out the isolated colonists packed away their belongings, automobiles and all, and set sail during the night for the southern shore, site of a smaller potash concession.
“I found their homes stripped to the ground, with only the framework of a few houses remaining. I walked through one ruined home, where sash, doors, and flooring were all gone. Unable to rip off the toilet bowl, the Arabs had broken it in half.
“Overwhelmed by this destruction all about us, Torkom and I walked on to the shores of the Dead Sea itself…I found wrecked boats; pilfered wreckage dotted the shore as far as the eye could reach.
“Torkom and I silently hitch-hiked back to Jericho on a large truck laden with plunder. Our scavenger friends drove straight to the bazaar and began to sell their loot as junk – which was what they had made out of the once valuable machinery and equipment”.
Islam among the Arabs is exactly the same as Islam among the Pashtun.
Dumbledore's Army, thanks for reposting that passage from Roy Carlson's book—instructive and very, very disturbing.
You wrote:
I guarantee that once the Americans and every other non-Muslim leaves Iraq and Afghanistan, every single thing that they tried to build there for the common good - schools, bridges, roads, hospitals, you-name- it - will be obsessively *smashed*.
..........................
I absolutely agree.
And with Israel so threatened—more than before with the "reconciliation" of Hamas and Fatah, and the ugly foolishness of the American president, and the changes wrought by the "Arab Spring", and on and on—one cannot help but think of what these Muslim barbarians would make of modern, vibrant, advanced Israel.
Just look at the destruction of Gaza's greenhouses and Jewish towns, and think of that writ large.
If—God forbid—they ever take Israel, I imagine they will largely ruin her fine infrastructure within a year or two, and then spend the next several centuries complaining about it...
Short memories...
Some of us thought that the reason for going into Afghanistan was not only to eliminate OBL himself, but also to eliminate the Taliban as a viable political and military force. Instead, the US has set up a government in Afghanistan under shari'a law, and is evidently getting ready to hand it over to the Taliban.
"Islam among the Arabs is exactly the same as Islam among the Pashtun."
I wasn't going to elaborate on all Muslim-dominated regimes. Staying on topic, I decided to lay out the self-explanatory (at least to me, that is) with regards to Afghanistan in particular. I always thought of the invasion of this country as blatantly ill-conceived from the start. There's no way of sugarcoating the issue, no way of pussyfooting, regardless of all our intentions, trying to ameliorate the situation for the general populace in Afghanistan, and history is our best witness. Think about it, and you'll draw the conclusion that our leaders are not half as intelligent as they want to be perceived. If only they had been reading history instead of being PC/MC, they wouldn't have bothered with helping a country that is chock-full of ingrates, getting bogged down in the process, which was to be expected.
Coincidentally, another country that suffers from the same level of Islamic barbarism would be Somalia. And again, such a thing originates exactly in the clan structure of Somali tribes. Both countries have a parallel history: after the central government collapsed, Somali/Pashtun sub tribes battled with one another in their respective countries, and as a consequence got pacified by an Islamic orthodox movement in the end.
Here's the thing: the West decided to leave Somalia to its own devices, letting al Shahab take over. We decided Somalia wasn't worth the bother. But on the other hand, our leaders stuck their oar in where it's not wanted in Afghanistan, and somehow the idea would viable to stay there ??? Makes no sense to me.
Leave this country to its own devices.
Islam fosters the love of power and male supremacy, and that appeals to anarchists (i.e., those who want to be gods) and domestic violence abusers. Islamic leaders fight to the top of their respective Muslim kingdoms, even if that kingdom is just the head of a clan, and they fight to preserve their "way of life" of domination and control over women and the weak and non-Muslims. Any advance into those kingdoms and privilege (promised by Islam) is easily seen as a threat to be fought in "defense" of Islamic principles. Such defense is called jihad. However, as the original (not rewritten by Muhammad 600 years after Jesus) Bible says, ". . . that they might recognize that a man is punished by the very things through which he sins." Wisdom 11:16. That explains why the "Muslim world" holds onto their power and privilege (to plunder) and male supremacy at their own expense. They are so busy fighting for power and control (even amongst themselves) that they are held captive by the fight and thus prevented from pursuing other goals, like raising the standard of living, etc. Global jihad leaders call the U.S. the "great satan" because our way of life draws people away from submission to Islam and jihad and gives them hope for a better standard of living.
If only we could save the women and non-Muslims and those unwilling Muslims held captive in Islam, at least by preserving and shoring up our own established society of freedom of conscience and equality and the standard of law of reasonableness. Let Muslims come to the U.S. and other Western countries under the (national security) condition that they agree to abide by the laws of those countries. Sharia (which merely enforces Islamic principles) claims worldwide jurisdiction, but that does not mean it has to be recognized by non-Muslim countries. It does not mean that we should allow Muslims to enforce Sharia law themselves (on each other and on non-Muslims) in every country. Let the U.S. and the West be Sharia-free countries where "apostates" from Islam can be free of the threat of death required by Islam.