<a href="http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/30/wtal30.xml">An article</a> at <a href="http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news">news.telegraph.co.uk</a> has an extensive interview with a former Taliban enforcer. This man, with many others, formed the police force of the Taliban, charged with enforcing their ever-stricter and more oppressive rules. Their instructions were to: <span class="quote"><q>You must become so notorious for bad things that when you come into an area people will tremble in their sandals. Anyone can do beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten even crows from their nests and if the person survives he will never again have a night's sleep.</q></span> Remember, the Taliban were the part of the reason that Afghanistan managed to repulse the invading Russians. The other part of the reason was that the U.S. was providing funding and weapons to the Taliban (and training Osama Bin Laden) to rebel against the Soviet Union. Once in control, they increased their stranglehold. More recently, <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleases/Aug98/082098a.htm">pleas</a> to stop U.S. support of the Taliban in the face of all this have been <a href="http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm">ignored</a>. The situation in Afghanistan has been known <a href="http://www.oneworld.org/owe/news/owns/hz11_en.htm">for years</a>, particularly with respect to <a href="http://www.now.org/nnt/03-98/taliban.html">crimes against women</a>.