Requiem for Burnahuddin Rabbani
Today I read in the Wall Street Journal that Burhanuddin Rabbani, a negotiator for Hamid Karzai, was killed by a suicide bomber, a Taliban, who carried a bomb in his turban. He was allowed into Rabbani’s presence under the guise of peacemaker, a Taliban working on reconciliation. He greeted Rabbani in Allah’s name, shook his hand, set off the bomb and blew up himself, and the man who believed he was an instrument of conciliation for his war-torn country. But you cannot reconcile with the devil—for the devil only loves destruction.
Of course you would not know who Rabbani was. I, however, knew him. Not well, I met him only once, cursory. We talked through an interpreter, and most of the conversation was with my husband. That event took place in 1983. My husband I were in Pakistan, representing American Aid for Afghans, carrying humanitarian supplies. He represented the Northern Alliance, for which his son-in-law Massoud, “the lion of the Panshier,” was fighting the Russians. Most of what I know about Rabbani I heard from others. They say he was decent man that he cared about Afghanistan. He fought against the Russians, was an ally of Mojaddedi’s, and early on, was president of Afghanistan. His presidency lasted only a few months and was destroyed by the Taliban. The Taliban and Alkaida do not operate under any honor systems evolved in modern society. No, to the contrary, their belief and honor system is set in the old cultural norms and societal mores dating back to 700 BC. They believe that treachery and deceit is honorable if it furthers your cause.
Having killed Rabbani the Taliban has accomplished one their greater goals, which are to make it impossible for any government other than a Taliban government based wholly on Sharia law to govern Afghanistan. The idea that women can play any role in society is abhorrent to those Muslims, for their total domination over all things female is uppermost on their slate. A thinking, educated woman working in society would preclude that she can be enslaved as these men want her to be.
Burhanuddin Rabbani is the fourth important, moderate Muslim person in Afghanistan that I personally knew, or had indirectly worked with, who was assassinated through treachery. Massoud, was killed by two thugs working for Osama bin Laden, posing as photographers for a large newspaper. Mr. Hashmatullah Mojaddedi, first president of Afghanistan, was almost killed with his entire family, by a stinger missel taking off the cone of the airplane, as the plane came in for a landing at Kabul airport. The editor of the Kabul Free Press, who had relocated in Peshawar after the Russian invasion, was assassinated at his desk one day after my husband I had visited the delightful, urbane man. I was young and cried. His crime: he had written about the wish, voiced by the populace, for the king to return and assume leadership.
We should sing requiem for Rabbani and all the moderate Muslims, for they will need our support and good will in the brutal world of psychopaths they must survive in.
