> ***** Afghanistan: As Bad as Its Reputation?
>
> By Michael Rubin, visiting fellow
> The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
>
> Middle East Quarterly 7, no. 3 (September 2000)
Not that it necessarily invalidates the argument, but there's a motive behind this article. The Washington Institute is a pro-Israel think tank set up as a sort of scholarly spin-off of AIPAC, the Israel lobbying group. At the time this piece was written, the Israelis were trying to polish the Taliban's human-rights image - they were promoting the oil pipeline accross Afghanistan as an alternative to the one that would go through Iran, their main regional rival. Also, Iran was supporting the Northern Alliance so, to forestall Iranian influence in Central Asia, Israel was rooting for the Taliban.
Seth