Print Essay: A Silenced Generation
The Taliban emerged in the city of Kandahar, Afghanistan in the winter of 1994. The group was comprised mostly of young Koranic students drawn from hundreds of Madrassas (Islamic theology schools) that had been set up in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. The majority of these students were from the various ethnic groups that make up more than 40 percent of Afghanistan’s population, and their leaders hailed from the poorest, most conservative and illiterate Pashtun provinces of Afghanistan. They were products of war: their version of extreme fundamentalism contradicted Islam's message of peace and tolerance of religion and ethnicity. Living in a country devastated by years of war and Soviet occupation, with more than 1.5 million dead, the Afghan people were forced to accept the Taliban's ways of justice, which included torture and murder. The Taliban’s regime was incredibly secretive regarding their leadership and political structures and had their strongest holds in the major cities of Kandahar, Herat and Kabul.
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Children in Breadline
Image attained from RAWA online.