--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> The short answer is No. But I thought Musharraf was
> playing both sides
> of the fence on this one.
> That's why, it seems like the assassination attempts
> are more about
> reassuring his US supporters that
> he's still the man...
>
> But, you know, if they're real, they're real.
>
Who knows? But my opinion is that the left is chronically in denial about Islamism in this region.
News from my Uzbek contact, i.e., my local waitress. I was talking to her about what's going on in Uzbekistan. As it turns out she is from where everything is taking place, her parents living about 20 minutes from it. This is, she says, a really poor, really horrible, really backward part of Uzbekistan, where Islamism is supported by 80-85% of the population. She says she's seen gangs of Wahhabis, as she calls them, running around spitting on women without headscarves and got out to Tashkent as quickly as she could. She says Tashkent is the only "civilized" part of Uzbekistan, because there are "lots of Russians and Jews there." (At this point the other, Russian members of the waitstaff nod knowingly and add their two cents' worth -- "umm-hmmm, that's why it's the only civilized part of Uzbekistan, because of the Russians.')
She says that the protests were motivated by economic despair, but led by Wahhabis because they are the only real opposition force. She says of the 4000 people they freed from the jail (her number), 2000 were Wahhabis.
She also says one of her neighbors back in Uzbekistan was a multiple rapist who went to Afghanistan to fight in the jihad in the 1990s. He came back a few years later even more fucked-up and with a big beard.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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