Fiercely factional gun fights between power contenders are not perhaps where Afghanistan’s present woes lie. Rather it is the Taliban Islamic militia's thoughtless imposition of its obscurantist will on women in particular and social life in general that is the country's prime anguish at the moment. From a footfall the menace of orthodoxy is assuming critical proportions threatening to spread tentacles. For, the Taliban military control might Just extend over to the north. Although in a last ditch move the opposition commanders are regrouping after the fall of the northern Faryab province for a showdown in Mazar-e-Sharif under the leadership of former defence minister Shah Masood, military initiative is largely in the hands of the Talibans.

With that kind of a political spectre rising across Afghanistan we must be seized of the problem of Taliban's denigration of Islam in the name of Islam. They have closed down the Kabul Television Centre and atrociously executed a ban on the use of television sets by the Afghans. Girls' schools were shut down some time ago on a vindictive plea that a respite was needed to change the curricular in accord with their ideas. And, in a latest tale of where forced bigotry has lauded the people, a poor pregnant Afghan woman failing to buy burkha could not Just hazard a trip to a clinic with the result that she had to die. If television and normal schools were regarded un-Islamlc these would have been tabooed in many an Islamic country. But they really are not. So?

The Talibans must be made to see the point by the OIC in particular that with a military and not an electoral claim to power, they cannot do as they Elease. Power may originate in the barrel of gun ut it cannot be sustained through anti-life measures.