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, social and/or views:
“The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into the heritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony—unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe’s declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“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)