"There are now rumors that the Taliban has been poisoning the food we have been dropping. We should make a deal with the people of Afghanistan. We'll taste your food, you check our mail." -- Jay Leno

"President Bush is encouraging children to become pen-pals with other children in the Middle East. Oh, that's a good idea. Like parents are going to want to have their children opening letters, saying 'Look what I got, a letter from Afghanistan! Let's see what's in it'" -- Jay Leno

"The big question now is who will take power in Afghanistan once the Taliban is defeated. I was thinking, how about Al Gore? He's not doing anything, he needs a job, and he's already got the beard." -- --Jay Leno

We have watched her grow up from afar, a sometimes gawky presence in her parents' turbulent life, a silent figure both famous and unknowable.

Now, finally, Chelsea Clinton speaks.

The 21-year-old University of Oxford student has written an intensely personal account of her reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks for the December issue of Talk magazine:

"I woke up that Tuesday morning feeling good about where I was in my life and happy about where I was going. Now that sense of security is gone, and since the 11th, for some moment every day, I have been scared. Not by a sense of immediate, immense danger, but by something more subtle and corrosive: an uncertainty about my place in the world -- where I am emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes even physically."

Turns out the young lady has quite a bit to say. She even mentions her former boyfriend.

Editor Tina Brown said yesterday she had approached Clinton several times before, but that after the attacks the former first daughter made the offer through her parents' agent, Robert Barnett. After an initial meeting about the focus of the piece, Clinton's draft -- written on deadline -- needed "a few tweaks and suggestions."

"It has a kind of clarity, conviction and honesty which really blew me away," said Brown. "She wasn't interested in spin or how did she look or how did she sound. She wanted to tell the emotional truth about that day. I definitely think she's a good writer."

It's hard to overstate the fervor with which Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to shield their daughter, who was 12 when they entered the White House, from the media glare. Even on overseas trips, whatever she said was declared off the record.

While the press largely played along, People published a cover story on how Chelsea was coping with the Monica Lewinsky scandal that infuriated the first couple.

"The Clintons did not want her to grow up with any of that dysfunction that comes from being a celebrity, and she didn't," says former White House spokesman Mike McCurry. "But she's a grown lady now and quite impressive, and fully capable of making her own decisions about writing an article."

Chelsea Clinton writes that on the morning of Sept. 11, she was staying with her best friend from Sidwell Friends School, Nicole Davison, at her apartment near Manhattan's Union Square -- not far from the World Trade Center.

When Davison called from work to say that a plane had crashed into the twin towers, Clinton tried to call her mother but the line went dead after an assistant answered. She "stared senselessly at the television," then headed downtown, where she heard a deafening rumble. The first tower had collapsed. On her way back to the apartment, Clinton learned that the Pentagon had been attacked.

She thought of the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme.

"I am still unsure about what Humpty Dumpty represented to me on that day, because I do not subscribe to -- and I even resent -- the theory that America's arrogance, even indirectly, led to the attacks. It just seemed as though the world were falling down, like Humpty Dumpty."

In one passage, Clinton deftly makes clear her Democratic pedigree while embracing bipartisan unity. Venturing out again with Davison, "I was expounding on the detriments of Bush's tax cut as we approached Grand Central Terminal and were met with hordes of people running out of the station," some crying "Fire!" and "Bomb!" "We all were crying. We all thought we were literally going to have fire rain down on us. . . . For a brief moment I truly thought I was going to die.

"Once we stopped running, I started praying. I prayed for my country and my city. I stopped berating the tax cut and started praying that the president would rise to lead us. And I thanked God my mother was a senator representing New York and that Rudy Giuliani was our mayor. I have never reacted more viscerally to a leader, particularly not to one I had been criticizing just the day before for some insensitivity or other. . . .

"I realized that I had become a New Yorker. I expect now that I'll always be one."

Clinton burst into tears again -- tears of relief -- when her mother finally reached her by cell phone. When her father returned from a trip to Australia, she was anxious to bring him to Manhattan, knowing "he would want to connect with everyone who was confused and suffering, including his daughter." As they worked the area near Ground Zero,she answered some questions on camera, and "the reporters were clearly a bit surprised, as I had stonewalled every question anyone in the media had ever asked me throughout my entire life."

Still, Clinton was lonely and longed for her ex-boyfriend, whom she did not name. "We had parted because of circumstance. I was going to England for two years, and he had one more year of college. It seemed to be the pragmatic and right decision for both of us at the time, and I now know that it was. But at one moment Thursday night I wanted the ease of being truly comfortable with someone, and I craved some good, long hugs. In general I am an incredibly self-reliant person. . . . He came, and that weekend I laughed for the first time since the 11th. That was the greatest gift he has ever given me."

Now in England, Clinton seeks to be around other Americans and finds "it is very difficult to hear America criticized right now." As for her life, "sometimes I have a certain clarity of purpose; other days I don't. I do not think it is out of place to divide my life into before and after the 11th."

Brown has long enjoyed a good relationship with Hillary Rodham Clinton, who helped her launch Talk in 1999 by granting an interview in which she talked about her husband's infidelities. On election night last fall, Brown was in the Clintons' hotel suite as the former first lady celebrated her Senate victory. But Brown is on the outs with the current White House, which barred administration officials from dealing with Talk after the magazine ran a satirical photo spread about the alcohol incidents involving President Bush's daughters.

Despite Talk's journalistic coup, Chelsea Clinton doesn't get cover-girl billing. That belongs to Gwyneth Paltrow, who is shown covering her partially exposed breasts.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

This is an e-mail from a young ensign aboard USS Winston Churchill to his parents. (Churchill is an Arleigh Burke class AEGIS guided missile destroyer, commissioned March 10, 2001, and is the only active US Navy warship named after a foreign national).

"Dear Dad,

We are still at sea. The remainder of our port visits have all been canceled. We have spent every day since the attacks going back and forth within imaginary boxes drawn in the ocean, standing high-security watches, and trying to make the best of it. We have seen the articles and the photographs, and they are sickening. Being isolated, I don't think we appreciate the full scope of what is happening back home, but we are definitely feeling the effects.

About two hours ago, we were hailed by a German Navy destroyer, Lutjens, requesting permission to pass close by our port side. Strange, since we're in the middle of an empty ocean, but the captain acquiesced and we prepared to render them honors from our bridgewing. As they were making their approach, our conning officer used binoculars and announced that Lutjens was flying not the German, but the American flag. As she came alongside us, we saw the American flag flying half-mast and her entire crew topside standing at silent, rigid attention in their dress uniforms. They had made a sign that was displayed on her side that read "We Stand By You."

There was not a dry eye on the bridge as they stayed alongside us for a few minutes and saluted. It was the most powerful thing I have seen in my life. The German Navy did an incredible thing for this crew, and it has truly been the highest point in the days since the attacks. It's amazing to think that only half-century ago things were quite different.

After Lutjens pulled away, the Officer of the Deck, who had been planning to get out later this year, turned to me and said, "I'm staying Navy."

I'll write you when I know more about when I'll be home, but this is it for now.

Love you guys."

Three Taliban camel drivers from Afghanistan buy tickets to the Olympics thinking the tickets include airfare and entry to all events. When they arrive at the Olympic Stadium, they discover their tickets were for airfare only and can't get in.

The first camel driver, however, notices that all athletes are going in a side gate, so he says to the other two, "Allah be praised, I think I know how we can get in."

He strips to his shorts, grabs a manhole cover, puts it under his armpit and as he gets to the security guard at the athletes gate he says, "Omar, Afghanistan, discus thrower."

He gets in.

The second camel driver strips to his shorts, pulls out a fence post, puts it on his shoulder and as he gets to the security guard he says, "Muhammad, Afghanistan, pole vault."

He gets in.

The third Taliban camel driver strips to his shorts, runs across a field and comes up to the guard all cut up, bleeding and wrapped in barbed wire and says, "Osama, Afghanistan, fencing."

THE STUDENTS
In Sweeping Campus Canvasses, U.S. Checks on Mideast Students
November 12, 2001
By JACQUES STEINBERG

Larry Bell, director of international education at the University of Colorado, with a Saudi student who was questioned by federal investigators. Mr. Bell said that agents had interviewed at least 50 students from Arab countries but that he did not believe any had been linked to a terrorist cell.

In the two months since the attacks of Sept. 11, federal investigators have contacted administrators on more than 200 college campuses to collect information about students from Middle Eastern countries, the most sweeping canvass of the halls of academia since the cold war, the colleges say.

The agents have asked what subjects the students are studying, whether they are performing well and where they are living.

They have also questioned the students themselves, asking about their views on Osama bin Laden, the names of their favorite restaurants and their plans for after graduation.

The investigations have put the universities in a difficult position, pitting the government's interest in security against the institutions' desire to protect students' privacy and to avoid engaging in racial profiling.

But in the end, a national survey of college registrars found, nearly all the universities approached have readily supplied answers to the government's questions, largely because the law appears to be on the government's side.

The agents, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have used those conversations as the basis for interviewing dozens of students.

One Saudi Arabian student, who attends the University of Colorado at Denver, said federal investigators closed their interview with him by saying, "Expect to see us again."

The college officials who have been sought out ? including those at Columbia University, Tufts University and San Diego State University ? said that the often unannounced visits and the urgent lines of inquiry were throwbacks to a decade or more ago, when it was not uncommon for a federal agent to ask a dean a question like "Did Vladimir show up at the lab today?"

Larry Bell, director of international education at the University of Colorado in Denver, said that federal agents had visited his office or the registrar's office five times in recent weeks.

Mr. Bell said that the agents had interviewed at least 50 students from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other Arab countries. He said he did not believe any had been arrested or linked to a terrorist cell.

"The students are not sure what the purpose of the questions are," Mr. Bell said. "But they know that the government isn't interviewing any students from Germany."

Mindful that a terrorist with a student visa participated in the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal agencies said they were seeking to mine further leads and to begin making good on the president's promise to ensure that the half-million foreign students studying here were accounted for on their campuses.

"One of the reasons they want to know where a student lives is so that they can come find them when necessary or simply watch them," said Catheryn Cotten, director of the international student office at Duke University, who has yet to receive such a visit but has been in contact with many colleges that have. "It's not that they want to arrest the students. They want to keep track of them coming and going."

Still, the sudden appearance of agents in college buildings and the government's plans to expand such surveillance have heightened the anxiety on campuses already jittery because of the terrorist attacks and the anthrax scares.

"It's just very hard to squeal on your own students," said James O. Freedman, a former president of Dartmouth College. "You don't want students to get the perception that you are in league with those who may be out to get them."

The Saudi student in Colorado, who asked not to be identified, said that two agents from the F.B.I. and another from the I.N.S. arrived at his apartment unannounced on a Wednesday evening about a month ago.

The agents said they had gotten his name from two other Saudi students who had been briefly detained after they had been observed taking photographs of the university's sports arena. The photographs were for a photography class, Mr. Bell said.

In his interview with the authorities, the student, a 26-year-old landscape architecture major, said he was asked about his classes, activities and politics. "I was afraid," he said. "I know they can do anything they want to you."

Still, he understood the situation. "I don't blame them," he said. "Thousands of innocent people were killed in a few seconds and a few hours."

In a survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, 220 colleges reported that they had been contacted at least once by the F.B.I. or the I.N.S. after Sept. 11 about the status of foreign students. Nearly a quarter of those institutions reported multiple contacts.

A federal immigration official, who insisted on anonymity, said that the colleges had been identified in the belief that foreign students there might have information that would assist the government's inquiry.

"These visits are a component of an ongoing criminal investigation," the official said.

Under federal immigration law, the government is entitled to much of the information it has sought. As a condition of most education visas, a foreign student signs a waiver permitting a college to let immigration officials know when the student arrived on campus, how many credits the student had earned and whether the student's field of study or mailing address had changed.

Though college administrators are required to collect such information, they said that the government asked them to stop sending it to Washington years ago, in part because the I.N.S. could not scale the mountain of paperwork.

But in the weeks since Sept. 11, federal officials have been aggressively gathering such records and more. The colleges comply for financial and legal reasons. By alienating the government, a school could risk losing its authority to request visas for foreign students, most of whom pay full tuition.

There is a long tradition of law enforcement watching over college campuses in times of crisis. But Sol Gittleman, provost of Tufts University and a professor there for nearly 40 years, said he could not recall when outside agencies had descended on so many campuses so quickly. "Unprecedented," Mr. Gittleman said. "We've never had a national emergency like this."

The scrutiny of students of Arab descent has so far touched off little protest, a stark contrast to the outrage when American-born students have been profiled by university or law enforcement officials. In 1992, the campus of the State University of New York College at Oneonta was riven for weeks after the college provided the state police with a list of every black and Hispanic student in an investigation of an assault on an elderly woman.

In the current investigation, federal agents have contacted Columbia University two or three times and interviewed at least one foreign student, said Virgil Renzulli, a spokesman for the school. Mr. Renzulli said he did not believe that the student was arrested.

At San Diego State University, the government has sought information about many of the 60 students from the Middle East because, university officials said, two of the hijackers lived in San Diego and had ties to the Muslim community.

University officials said that the authorities later arrested one San Diego State student and transported him to New York, where he was being held as a material witness.

But the investigation on the San Diego campus continues. On Wednesday, immigration officials delivered a written request to the university seeking information about the locations and studies of 40 students from Arab nations, a request that the university intends to honor.

"It's upsetting," said Jane Kalionzes, associate director of the international student center. "Even though we've always known that reporting is a part of our job, we haven't done it in so long."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Q: What do Osama bin Laden and General Custer have in common?
A: They both want to know where the hell those Tomahawks are coming from!

Q: How many Talibans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. All their light sockets have been converted to candles.

Q: How many Americans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one, but he does it from 30 miles away using laser targeting, and at a cost of $800,000.

Q: "How many members of the Delta Force Special Ops does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
A: "We are not prepared to comment on specific numbers at this time."

Q: Did you hear that it is twice as easy to train Taliban fighter pilots?
A: You only have to teach them to take off.

Q: How do you play Iraqi bingo?
A: A-10...F-18...F-16...F-15...B-52!

Q: How is bin Laden like Fred Flintstone?
A: Both can look out of their caves and see Rubble.

Q: Did you hear that Osama bin Laden won the toss?
A: He elected to receive.

Date: Monday, October 22, 2001, 8:17 AM
From: bin Laden, Osama
To: Cavemates
Re: The Cave

Hi guys. We've all been putting in long hours but we've really come together as a group and I love that. Big thanks to Omar for putting up the poster that says "There is no 'I' in Team" as well as the one that says "Hang In There!" That cat is hilarious.

However, while we are fighting a jihad, we can't forget to take care of the cave. And frankly, I have a few concerns.

First of all, while it's good to be concerned about cruise missiles, we should be even more concerned about the scorpions in our cave. Hey, you don't want to be stung and neither do I, so we need to sweep the cave daily. I've posted a sign-up sheet near the main cave opening.

Second, it's not often I make a video address but when I do, I'm trying to scare the most powerful country on earth, okay? That means that while we're taping, please do not ride your razor scooter in the background. Just while we're taping. Thanks.

Third point, and this is a touchy one. As you know, by edict, we're not supposed to shave our beards. But I need everyone to just think hygiene, especially after mealtime. We're all in this together.

Fourth: food. I bought a box of Cheez-Its recently, clearly wrote "Osama" on the front, and put it on the top shelf. Today, my Cheez-Its were gone. Consideration. That's all I'm saying.

Finally, we've heard that there may be American soldiers in disguise trying to infiltrate our ranks. I want to set up patrols to look for them. First patrol will be Omar, Muhammad, Abdul, Akbar, and Richard.

Love you lots.
Osama

PLEASE NOTE - This message is a hoax. I am leaving it on here so you can see refer to it.

I was at a UNC lecture the other day where they played a video of Oliver North during the Iran-Contra deals during the Reagan Administration. I was only 14 back then but was surprised by this particular clip.

There was Ollie in front of God and Country getting the third degree. But what he said stunned me. He was being grilled by some senator I didn't recognize who asked him, "Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?"

Oliver replied, "Yes I did, Sir."

The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, "Isn't this just a little excessive?"

"No sir," continued Oliver.

"No. And why not?"

"Because the life of my family and I were threatened."

"Threatened? By who."

"By a terrorist, sir."

"Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?"

"His name is Osama bin Laden."

At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn't pronounce it. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued.

"Why are you so afraid of this man?"

"Because sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of."

"And what do you recommend we do about him?"

"If it were me I would recommend an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth."

The senator disagreed with this approach and that was all they showed of the clip.

It's scary when you think 15 years ago the government was aware of bin Laden and his potential threat to the security of the world. I guess like all great tyrants they start small but if left untended spread like the virus they truly are.

'Twas the night before Payback and all through the Land,
They're running like rabbits in Afghanistan,

Osama's been praying, he's down on his Knees,
He's hoping that Allah will hear all his Pleas.

He thought if he killed us, That we'd fall and Shatter,
But all that he's done is just make us Madder.

We haven't forgotten our Marines in Beirut,
And we'll kick your GM*, with one heavy Boot.

And yes we remember the USS Cole,
And the lives of our sailors that you dirty bums Stole

You think you can rule us and cause us to Fear,
You'll soon get the answer if you live to Hear.

And we haven't forgotten your buddy Saddam,
And he hasn't forgotten the sound of our Bombs.

You think that those mountains are somewhere to Hide.
They'll go down in history as the place where you Died.

Remember Khadhafi and his Line of Death?
He came very close, to his final Breath.

So come out and prove it, that you are a Man,
Cause our boys are coming and they have a Plan.

They are our fathers and they are our Sons,
And they sure do carry some mighty big Guns.

They would have stayed home with children and Wives,
But you rejects came here and took all these Lives.

Osama I wrote this especially for You,
For air mail delivery by B-52.

You soon will be hearing a thud and a whistle,
Old Glory is coming, attached to a Missile.

I will not be sorry to see you creeps Go.
It's Red, White, and Blue that is running this Show.

*GM = Gluteus Maximus

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Although it was never his intention, Osama bin Laden has triggered the most serious debate in years, among Muslims, about Islam's ability to adapt to modernity. In Arab states this debate is still muted. But in Pakistan and other Muslim countries with a relatively free press, writers are raising it openly and bluntly. Nothing could be more important.

Here's why: Many Arab-Muslim states today share the same rigid political structure. Think of it as two islands: one island is occupied by the secular autocratic regimes and the business class around them. On the other island are the mullahs, imams and religious authorities who dominate Islamic practice and education, which is still based largely on traditional Koranic interpretations that are not embracing of modernity, pluralism or the equality of women. The governing bargain is that the regimes get to stay in power forever and the mullahs get a monopoly on religious practice and education forever.

This bargain lasted all these years because oil money, or U.S. or Soviet aid, enabled many Arab-Muslim countries to survive without opening their economies or modernizing their education systems. But as oil revenues have declined and the population of young people seeking jobs has exploded, this bargain can't hold much longer. These countries can't survive without opening up to global investment, the Internet, modern education and emancipation of their women so that they will not be competing with just half of their populations. But the more they do that, the more threatened the religious authorities feel.

Bin Laden's challenge was an attempt by the extreme Islamists to break out of their island and seize control of the secular state island. The states responded by crushing or expelling the Islamists, but without ever trying to reform the Islamic schools - called madrasas - or the political conditions that keep producing angry Islamist waves. So the deadly circle that produced bin Ladenism - poverty, dictatorship and religious anti- modernism, each reinforcing the other - just gets perpetuated.

Some are now demanding the circle be broken. Consider this remarkable open letter to bin Laden that a Pakistani writer and businessman, Izzat Majeed, wrote in last Friday's popular Pakistani daily The Nation:

"We Muslims cannot keep blaming the West for all our ills. . . . The embarrassment of wretchedness among us is beyond repair. It is not just the poverty, the illiteracy and the absence of any commonly accepted social contract that define our sense of wretchedness; it is, rather, the increasing awareness among us that we have failed as a civil society by not confronting the historical, social and political demons within us. . . . Without a reformation in the practice of Islam that makes it move forward and not backward, there is no hope for us Muslims anywhere. We have reduced Islam to the organized hypocrisy of state-sponsored mullahism. For more than a thousand years Islam has stood still because the mullahs, who became de facto clergy instead of genuine scholars, closed the door on `ijtehad' [reinterpreting Islam in light of modernity] and no one came forward with an evolving application of the message of the Holy Quran. All that the mullahs tell you today is how to go back a millennium. We have not been able to evolve a dynamic practice to bring Islam to the people in the language of their own specific era. . . . Oxford and Cambridge were the `madrasas' of Christendom in the 13th century. Look where they are today - among the leading institutions of education in the world. Where are our institutions of learning?"

The Protestant Reformation, melding Christianity with modernity, happened only when wealthy princes came along ready to finance and protect the breakaway reformers. But in the Muslim world today, the wealthiest princes, like Saudi Arabia's, are funding anti-modern schools from Pakistan to Bosnia, while the dictators pay off the anti-modern mullahs (or use them to whack the liberals) rather than reform them. This keeps the soil for bin Ladenism ever fertile.

Addressing bin Laden, Mr. Majeed concluded, "The last thing [Muslims] need is the growing darkness in your caves. . . . Holy Prophet Muhammad, on returning from a battle, said: `We return from little Jihad to greater Jihad.' True Jihad today is not in the hijacking of planes, but in the manufacturing of them."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Saida Oranos Al Ghazal was so elated Monday night when the Taliban fled Kabul, "I couldn't stand up," she says.

But the real test came the next morning. She gingerly walked the few blocks from her home to Radio Afghanistan to reclaim her old job - her face bare, and without the all-encompassing burqa.

"I was afraid, and I regret not wearing a burqa on the way, because everyone was looking at me," she says. "Today was better than yesterday. More and more women are doing it every day. You will see."

Now, with the Taliban on the run, the word "freedom" is breathed repeatedly through the mesh shrouds of head-to-toe burqas - required dress here until just days ago. The change for Afghanistan's women is not just a revolution - it is an emancipation.

At a wedding yesterday, women danced and listened to music and forsook their burqas - a scene impossible under the Taliban. Listeners of Radio Afghanistan woke yesterday morning to a woman's voice presenting the news. Men ogle at a shop hung with new posters of beautiful Indian "Bollywood" movie stars, in revealing clothes and lurid poses.

Ghazal's quest to work again (she will be back on the air, reading her beloved Afghan poetry and radio announcements by early next week), is an example of how quickly Afghan women are seizing a new life.

"The five years of the Taliban regime is the darkest period in the history of Afghanistan, especially for its women," says Ghazal, in a fluid, angelic voice. Today, she wears a simple black scarf that covers only her head - not her face - a long, black, shapeless dress, and white leather pumps."In the end, God pushed them out."

The way the Taliban saw it, the tight restrictions were a way that its hard-line brand of Islam - as a "rescuing religion," it said - respected women and protected them from the lust of men.

"Women, you should not step outside your residence," read one 1996 Taliban decree. If women go outside with "fashionable, ornamental, tight, and charming clothes to show themselves, they will be cursed ... and should never expect to go to heaven."

Women could not work, they could not be educated, and they were required to adhere to Draconian rules of dress and behavior. Punishment was often public beating with a length of cable.

Ghazal, of course, is on the cutting edge. Not all women yet feel free enough to shed the head-to-toe coverings on the street. But they love the freedom of choice the new changes bring.

On a Kabul street, now, a woman wearing a blue burqa says she has no qualms about speaking to a Western man. "We are feeling free; we are not afraid," Farishtah says. "Even with the burqa before, sometimes they punished us anyway. It was tedious, boring, and difficult."

She says the biggest change in her life is the ability to choose. "I will decide what to do with my life," Farishtah says emphatically, despite the mesh facemask of the burqa. "For the first time in five years, I will decide."

Throughout Afghan history, Kabul has been a source of cultural liberalism that often grated against the poor countryside. As such, it was the subject of some of the harshest enforcement of Taliban rules by the Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

What that meant for young women like Ghazal - who had to quit her literature studies at Kabul University with just one year of studies left before graduation - was a descent into hopelessness. One of the toughest memories of Taliban rule she carries occurred in the first days they came to Kabul: The sleeves of a woman in the bazaar were deemed too short by a Taliban enforcer. She was beaten so severely with a cable that she collapsed and was rushed to a hospital.

Ghazal says she rarely left home after that. For work, she could only teach young children in her own home.

A bright spirit with an easy smile, she nevertheless sent poetry to local newspapers. But her feminine voice was forbidden for broadcast. She thought her two-year-old radio career - reading poetry for all of Radio Afghanistan's programs that included poems - was over.

"We had a lot of educated women, but the majority have left Kabul. They weren't able to suffer through the Taliban," she says. Her friends wanted her to go, too, but she couldn't bring herself to leave. "I love my country. I wouldn't leave it," she says.

The Northern Alliance rebels who have taken control of Kabul and all of northern Afghanistan in the past week do not restrict women by enforcing rules, though they can be as "protective" as any Taliban official of women in their own families, and burqas are common in alliance territory.

They recognize the denigrate role women played under the Taliban, though. One rebel commander even jokes that if his forces didn't topple the Taliban, "I'm sure the women will kill the Taliban themselves."

Playing on that image, propaganda leaflets dropped into Afghanistan by American psychological operations teams from planes show a photograph of a turbaned Taliban "Virtue" enforcer, beating a row of women in burqas with a truncheon. The words read: "Do you want such a life for your wife and children?"

Many Afghan women say "no." "We weren't able to walk down the road," complains Qandigul, as she waits in line for a meal ticket, wearing a burqa. "We couldn't send our girls to school. Our children were in the dark."

While mothers say they have already been asking the new authorities to begin admitting girls to schools, for budding professionals like Ghazal, the harm has already been done by five fallow years. "Many women lost much in their minds, because they were forced to stay home," she says, tapping a white leather shoe on the floor at the memory of the anxiety. "We want to be in sophisticated positions. But women have been so damaged. If they were allowed, they would now be doctors, engineers, and professors. Now there are hardly any."

She can't wait to renew her studies for her diploma, but also recognizes that Taliban rules do fit for some. "There are many women who want to wear a burqa, for religious and cultural reasons," Ghazal says.

But for her, the choice is clear. "My burqa is at home," she says. When asked if she will ever wear it again, she answers with a smile on her face, before she gives voice to the word: "Never!"

A husband and wife were watching the devastation on TV of the World Trade Center; the videos of different countries around the world; crying with Americans over the events of the past few weeks; reporters updating and attempting to analyze political strategy; President Bush making speeches.

The wife turns to the husband and says, "I'm so thankful that Bush is our President. He is doing such a wonderful job."

The husband turns to the wife and says, "Shut up, Tipper!"

First of all I am posting the original message that was sent. Second I thought it this person's response was an important reminder that Afg. is not the world's only problem.

Once upon a time, there were four people;
Their names were Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody.
Whenever there was an important job to be done,
Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
When Nobody did it, Everybody got angry because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought that Somebody would do it, but
Nobody realized that Nobody would do it.
So consequently Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done in the first place.

Once upon a time I lived in a great and powerful kingdom, a real kingdom run by the son of our former somebody King who got rid of another somebody king by bombing his hideaway to pieces, and who attempted to bomb another king into pieces but was unable to do so. But that doesn't really matter, because somebody I know got on a bus to Columbus, Georgia, with 39 nobodies at 5:30 AM on Thursday.

Anybody could have got on the bus, but almost Nobody did. The bus traveled 36 hours, stopping at the Museum for Civil Rights in Selma, Alabama, a place where Somebody denied the rights of anybody who believed in democracy for Black people in the 1960's. Memories of a fallen black civil rights advocate , Medger Evers , two Jewish youth organizers, and a black student killed at Jackson State University during that time (my apologies for not remembering their names) rest there. Everybody now knows why they were killed, but Somebody didn't support them at the time, though Everybody could have. Tomorrow, thousands of Somebodies will meet to protest the Teaching of Latin American Officers, many who subsequently lead in the torture, disappearance, and assassination of their own countrymen in the name of their own national security , at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Nobody in the Department of Defense wanted the protestors to succeed, that is why they filed an injunction to stop their right to peaceful protest; as they have protested now for more than ten years. A judge, the same one who previously sentenced protestors to six months of federal prison for incursions onto the base , ruled today against the military's injunction.

Nobody expected this, but somebody is very happy, because I don't want to visit my wife in a federal prison. A powerful 70 year old woman and member of our humanitarian aid organization for health care in Guatemala, is already serving six months. I will visit her tomorrow. Her husband, another nobody, is one of 39 on the same bus with my nobody wife. Guatemala, land of many nobodies, is a country that disappeared 200,000 of its nobody people at the hands of Graduates from the School of the Americas; people who make Pinochet look like a rookie in the World Series of Despots.

Somebody else serving six months prison time is on a hunger strike in other prisons around the USA is solidarity with the thousands of protestors in Columbus, Georgia. Nobody, undoubtedly, will hear this on national television, because everybody knows that change in this country happens this way, and rarely at the election box. At first, the serious advocates of change are denounced as traitors, then they loose their jobs, and even worse, often their own families to fear and isolation, but eventually, after somebody's sacrifices, and usually after the murders of people like those at Selma, Nobody decides to become Somebody, and Everybody starts to notice that Nobody is no longer in control, Everybody is.

The other night in Tucson, Arizona, somebody from the Afro-Colombian Association for the Disappeared, told everybody about how his coastal community of Rio Sucio in the Municipality of Rio Socio, State of El Chocó, Colombia won, on December 13th, 1996, a decades long legislative and legal battle for indigenous and Afro-Colombian land rights and how his community began on that day to repossess lands long ago taken by local Strongmen in cahoots with Natural Resource Companies.

At dawn, seven days later on December 20th, paramilitary troops quietly arrived by speed boat to the police station standing at village's entry accessible only by the river they traveled on. A massacre ensued with troops opening their machine gun fire on villagers asleep in their beds, irregardless of their age or gender, as many ran in the thin light into a swamp to survive. Merino, a leader of the Land Rights struggle, survived three days in the swamp, and later escaped to the capital to denounce the atrocity. In February of 1997, other communities, many which gave refuge to escaped survivors of the first massacre, were attacked in a like fashion. During the attack at El Rio Sucio, the Colombian Army flew in Helicopter gunships to fire at fleeing villagers.

Those are US issued helicopters. Nobody thinks that terrorists are somebody they know, but now everybody reading this knows who creates terror in Colombia and who pays for it. And no, those villagers don't grow coca or aid the guerillas.

As a former student who once lived in and studied Colombia, I can tell you that a long road of fifty one years to such reforms is strewn with the bloody corpses of those who dared to fight for democracy. As an American student, I recall that colonists in the original 13 colonies of England on the American soil, rebelled against their government for much less. And now for Colombians, America is King George, and instructors at the School of the Americas, Cornwallis. Some of the last words of Merino, the Lands Rights advocate, were that the School the Americas have trained some 5,000 Colombian Military Officers. Last month, the paramilitaries killed over a thousand civilians. Last week, two students were killed in Bogotá protesting the 1.3 billion US financed Plan Colombia. In Colombia, protesting is often a fatal exercise of democratic rights. Merino is somebody who can be made into nobody very quickly in Colombian upon his return; he has been lucky to survive three attempts on his life already.

I hope somebody understands why nobody wants to get on the bus to protest at the School of the Americas, but everybody must live with what happens if nobody does while Mississippi is still burning in Colombia.

All Empires and court jesters come to ruin, but those who live tell us what its people are made of.

sincerely,

nobody (but husband to a somebody)

WASHINGTON-It is hard to fathom how a part of the world that produced Cleopatra - who perfumed the sails of her boat so men would know she was coming and ruled with elegant authority, signing one tax decree "Make it happen" - could two millenniums later produce societies where women are swaddled breeders under house arrest.

When civilization rose in the East, it was scientific and sensual, embracing the possibilities and pleasures of life from mathematics to literature, art and fashion.

There have been many repressive regimes throughout history. But the Taliban were obsessively focused on denying gender, sexuality and the forces at the very gut of life.

When the barbarian puritans running Afghanistan began to scurry away last week, men raced to buy pin- ups of beautiful girls. And, in a moving and amazing tableau, some women unwrapped themselves, letting the sun shine on their faces as they smiled shyly and delightedly. A few dared to show a little ankle or put on high heels.

"Your head hurts and your eyes hurt from the limited vision," one young woman in Kabul told a reporter, discarding her despised burka. "It was very difficult to walk without falling over." (Most have held off burning burkas because, as one woman put it, "They say the Taliban beat first and asked questions afterward. They say the Northern Alliance asks questions first and beats afterward.")

In a real version of Margaret Atwood's creepy "Handmaid's Tale," the Taliban reduced women to vessels designed to serve the needs and bolster the status of men.

"I agree that a kind of religion motivates the Taliban, but the religion in question, I'd say, is not Islam," Robert McElvaine, a history professor, wrote in The Washington Post. It is "insecure masculinity. These men are terrified of women."

Afghan warlords have long used castration to torture foes. The hijackers were haywire about women. Some draped towels over the prints of 20's bathing beauties in pantaloons in a Florida motel room; others indulged in lap dances, strip clubs and prostitutes, keeping busy until they got their bounty of 70 virgins.

Mohamed Atta's will had loopy, misogynistic instructions: "I don't want a pregnant woman or a person who is not clean to come and say goodbye to me" and "I don't want any women to go to my grave."

The White House, suddenly shocked by five-year-old Taliban excesses, began a campaign against their treatment of women. "Only the terrorists and the Taliban threaten to pull out women's fingernails for wearing nail polish," Laura Bush said, taking over her husband's weekly radio address.

Bush aides say the campaign will try to influence the Northern Alliance to restore women's rights and press for women in the Afghan government. Of course, they also want to impress U.S. women, who preferred Gore to Bush by 11 points. It's a freebie, an easy way to please feminists who got mad when the administration ended financing for international family- planning groups that support abortion.

This belated promotion of women as a moderating, modernizing force in the Islamic world sounds hollow.

Bush senior went to war to liberate Kuwait, yet America has not made a fuss over the fact that Kuwaiti women still can't vote or initiate divorce proceedings. We also turn a blind eye to Saudi Arabia's treating women like chattel. There are 5,000 Saudi princes, but where are the princesses?

The Saudi religious police, the matawain, use sticks to make sure women hide beneath their abayas, the long black cloaks.

Besides having to put up with polygamy, Saudi women cannot marry outside Islam, while men can. Or divorce without cause, as men can. Women also have to use separate banks and schools and obtain written permission from a male relative before traveling alone or going to a hospital. They must sit in the back seats of the cars they are not allowed to drive. (American military women stationed there are angry that they have to wear abayas and sit in the back seat when they leave the base.)

But the Bushes love that royal family and its oil. What does it matter if Saudi women can drive, as long as American women can keep driving their S.U.V.'s?

Millions of Muslim women are still considered property. The first lady might think about extending her campaign beyond Afghanistan.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

When we invade Afgjanistan and kill all the Taliban, will we be forever known as................

Tali-Whackers? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

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