Political and Social Views
While Dostum was ruling northern Afghanistan before the Taliban took over in 1998, women were able to go about unveiled, girls were allowed to go to school and study at the University of Balkh in Mazar-i Sharif, cinemas showed Indian films and music played on television, activities which were all banned by the Taliban.
He views the NATO attempt to crush the Taliban as ineffective and has gone on record saying that he could mop up the Taliban "in six months" if allowed to raise a 10,000 strong army of Afghan veterans. Senior Afghan government officials do not trust Dostum as they are concerned that he might be secretly rearming his forces.
Some human rights groups have accused his troops of human rights violations of the Taliban prisoners, charges which he denies.
Read more about this topic: Abdul Rashid Dostum
Famous quotes containing the words political and, political, social and/or views:
“Currently, U.S. society has been encouraged by its political and subsidized mass-media intelligentsia to view U.S. life as a continual “morning in America” paradise, where the only social problems occur in the inner cities. Psychologists call this denial.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Persons grouped around a fire or candle for warmth or light are less able to pursue independent thoughts, or even tasks, than people supplied with electric light. In the same way, the social and educational patterns latent in automation are those of self- employment and artistic autonomy.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)