ON MONDAY the Northern Alliance took the small town of Taliqan from the Taliban. The people of this valley town in northeast Aghanistan deserve more than cursory notice, for they are compelling witnesses to what the war on terrorism is about. According to Dexter Filkins’s account in the New York Times, the Taliban imposed restrictions “that burrowed into the most intimate aspects” of personal life. Men had to wear beards at least four inches long. Women couldn’t work or go to school or leave the house alone. Television and music were outlawed. So were photos of people. “Violators were beaten, jailed, mutilated, or killed.” Thus did the Taliban rule Taliqan. The Taliban’s approach to governing isn’t secular. It’s grounded in religion, specifically an extreme brand of Islam, one that, as the restrictions listed above suggest, is totalitarian. Filkins was told by townspeople about “turbaned religious police” who brandished “rubber whips” as they patrolled streets “in search of the most minor infractions.” Those are the kind of police you get with this radical version of Islam. Fortunately, the people of Taliqan didn’t really agree with the way they were forced to live. Indeed, Filkins’s story shows how resistant they were. When the Taliban took over and began smashing television sets, one shopkeeper grabbed his 17-inch television and VCR and carried it to his backyard, where he buried it! Nor was he the only one to find such a storage space for a TV and VCR. Thanks to the liberation of Taliqan, a lot of TVs and VCRs have been dug up and plugged back in. In this and other ways, liberty is stirring in Taliqan. The people, reports Filkins, are “joyous” about their new circumstance–men have tossed their turbans into gutters, restaurants are turning on their music, and women are walking by themselves, no longer clad in head-to-toe burquas. It was in his joint session speech seven weeks ago that President Bush explained why we are fighting the war on terrorism. The terrorists are “enemies of freedom,” he said, and it is freedom for which we now must fight. Of course, Bush had in mind our own freedom. “We are a country awakened to danger [by the attacks of September 11] and called to defend freedom,” he said. But Bush also pointed out that liberty everywhere it exists or might exist is at stake in this war. “The advance of human freedom is the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time.” Reading the stories this week about the liberation of Taliqan, I’d say it’s been the hope there. The people of Taliqan endured “enemies of freedom.” And while they’re a long way away from devising the kind of politics that can secure liberty, now they at least have a better chance of getting there than they did last week. Terry Eastland is publisher of The Weekly Standard.
