I hate to tear you away from all the attention that's going to that current national crisis - are Nick and Jessica really going to divorce!?! - but since we at Bloodless Coup think matters of international politics and war are equally relevant to your lives, I thought I'd pass along this link:
Mawlawi Mohammed Islam Mohammadi, who was the Taliban's governor of Bamiyan province when the fifth-century Buddha statues were blown up with dynamite and artillery in March 2001, was chosen to represent the neighboring province of Samangan.
Yet more evidence to support the fact that (wildly expensive) elections are not, in and of themselves, the answer to removing nasty and destructive extremists from power.
Posted by armand at October 23, 2005 12:44 PM | TrackBack | Posted to International AffairsDid they also get something like fifty percent of the legislature too (Taliban and other hyper conservatives?
Posted by: binky at October 24, 2005 06:13 AM | PERMALINKMore of less. Since the US press has done a horrible job covering this story I looked over at the Financial Times today and found a story on how women were doing in the vote count. I thought the following 3 paragraphs were especially interesting:
"Women fared unexpectedly well in Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections since 1969, but will be heavily out numbered in an assembly dominated by warlords, druglords and socially conservative religious leaders ..."
"Afghanistan’s 249-member parliament will have a higher percentage of women representatives – 27.3 per cent – than many western ones, including the UK (19.7 per cent) and the US (15.2 per cent), according to Inter-Parliamentary Union data.
Former mujahideen fighters, ex-Taliban and others with a conservative agenda won over half the seats. Analysts say this will increase disillusionment with democracy evident in the fall in turnout since last year’s presidential election."