CB: Are you saying _Parenti_ is saying Afghanistan is something other
> than a theocracy ?
>
That's what Parenti says concerning occupied Afghanistan (which is as much a question of geography as chronology) or - at the very least - implies in such a way that most reasonable people reading him will assume that's his intent:
"But unlike the Christianists who await their return to state power, the Islamists can already boast of existing bona fide theocracies such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan (*under the Taliban*), and Kuwait."
I suppose one might argue that his inclusion of the phrase "under the Taliban" does not, as a matter of pure logic, mean that Afghanistan, in those times and places it is not "under the Taliban," is not also and independently theocratic - but such an argument is too awful and embarrassing to contemplate, absent its actual existence.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."