The complete, total and absolute rout of the Talibans ought to be an eye-opener for the fundamentalist mullahs and their extremist supporters in the two neighboring countries separated by the Durand Line. The jihadist culture spawned in the militant madaris has received a severe blow with many members among the dead and the dismembered in the Afghan war. The clerics must understand that an education based on rote memory is no substitute for rational thought and scientific knowledge. The military strategy employed and the weapons used against their followers clearly demonstrated the superiority of one over the other.
The lesson of intellect versus ignorance and fanaticism ought not to be forgotten. But clerics are unlikely to move beyond sloganeering and rhetorical disputations. Their medieval mind-set is not hospitable to critical thinking.
Like a house of cards the Taliban government collapsed almost overnight. Their army was in disarray as soon as the first battle began in earnest. Under the cover of darkness at night the much-touted heroic Taliban fighters turned tail and fled. They were in such a hurry to flee from the cities in the north and the east that they left most of their heavy weapons behind.
They surrendered in droves, ignominiously defeated, to the army they had derided for months. Despite their boastful, yet empty rhetoric, nowhere did they stand-up and fight. In fact, much to the amazement of the outside world, these self-styled defenders of Islam changed sides as easily as changing one’s underwear. They did not seem to have any convictions or any sense of loyalty, either to a set of principles, values, or the military organization of which they were a part.
It is difficult to believe that followers of Islam would be so fickle and so cavalier in their attachment to values and principles. But an education based on rote-memorization is likely to produce such unthinking robots. Unfortunately, such an education is the standard fare in virtually every madressah run in Pakistan.
Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, taunted the Americans to send in a hundred thousand troops to Afghanistan and “we’ll take care of them.” This poor misguided soul had to run for his own life at the end. He remains in hiding while the leaders of his erstwhile government are hunted down.
The mysterious Mullah Omar promised to “turn Afghanistan into a graveyard for Americans.” In his surrender of Kandahar he not only had to swallow those words but go down in ignoble defeat and dishonor. By his failure to make a stand he brought an incredible amount of shame and embarrassment to the Pashtun martial tradition.
Rhetoric seems to be a particular passion of the Muslims. Many Taliban promised to make Afghanistan into another Vietnam for the Americans. In the end it has turned out to be graveyard for them.
Rhetoric and reality have never matched in the Muslim world. Nasser promised to “drive the Jews into the sea” and yet Arabs were defeated in every battle against the Israelis. Even today as the Israelis crack own on the Arabs more and more ominous threats are issued which the Arabs are in no position to deliver. The classic of all was Saddam’s promise of “a mother of all battles” in Kuwait that turned into a mother of all routs.
All these irrationality have been a disgrace for the Muslims. But there never seems to be an end to such stupidity while the outside world laughs at the shrill, verbal ejaculation. The multitude of clerics who supported the Taliban regime, no doubt a result of fanaticism that only total ignorance could produce, have given Islam a black eye from which it may never recover. The defeat of the Taliban right under their noses has sent the Pakistani clerics reeling backwards. For years they have railed against modern science and technology and now they have been shown what such knowledge can do.
At this critical juncture, Muslims at last ought to wake up and smell the coffee.
There is only one form of jihad that has value for Muslims today. It is the struggle for the acquisition of knowledge, its mastery, dissemination and application. There can be no better example in that regard than America. It controls the world because it has mastered knowledge.