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A Different Spin

Entry 199, on 2005-07-25 at 15:09:49 (Rating 4, Politics)

I listened to an interview this morning with Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Taleban in Afghanistan. A condition of her release was that she study the Koran, which she did and then converted to Islam. I am not a supporter of any organised religion, and I don't believe the Muslim faith is any more valid than Christianity, but it is a surprising story to many supporters of the western world's orthodoxy.

The first suggestion many people make is that she is a victim of the famous Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages take the side of the hostage-takers. She denies this and says that she was the worst prisoner imaginable and they were pleased to get rid of her. Of course, the western world finds it easier to imagine she is suffering from a psychiatric condition instead of having to come to terms with her conversion.

She says the Taleban have been given a very bad reputation through the spin of western media and politicians. I'm sure this is true, but I also doubt that they are quite as free from guilt as she makes out. In these things the truth is inevitably somewhere between the two extremes.

She claims Afghanistan is a lot worse off now than before the American invasion. Most of the country, outside Kabul, isn't under any sort of control, and problems such as illegal drug production are becoming significantly worse. Of course, we only see the happy results of the war in our media, but again the truth is probably somewhere between the two extreme views.

Ridley is currently working on a biography of Osama bin Laden, and she is the only person I have heard who is brave enough to defend him in public. She says any action by al Qaeda is in retaliation to western interference in Islamic countries. She does have a point there. America has been interfering in many countries such as Palestine for years, and they support some atrocious regimes, such as the current leadership of Uzbekistan.

There is absolutely no way I believe that anything justifies killing innocent civilians through acts of terrorism, but we have to recognise that more death and destruction has been caused by America and its allies than any terrorist organisation. Its time that one side took the initiative and used more peaceful and tolerant tactics in this global conflict.

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