This assertion, which does not rest on any demonstration, does not fit at all to my own observations. May be the most astonishing thing for me in crossing the different countries on the road to India was to state that people are the same everywhere : you can communicate basically with people everywhere, and observe in them the same feelings as you feel yourself. This was the big discovery.

Even the barrier of language can be broken : in Rishikesh (India) we used to meet everyday two saddhus (Hindu holy men) on the bank of Ganga; they did not speak any English and we did not speak Hindi except some basic words. They used to talk to us, to explain things quietly, and we did understand them well. Same in the south of Iran, at a train stop, where the locals did not want to let us drink, because there was only one glass for the whole group: people did not drink directly from the glass, but used to pour the water from the glass to the mouth without touching it, and they thought we could not make it. I got on my nerves and explained in French that we had done the whole journey and needed to drink. Everybody understood perfectly, and the next second, we could get water. We drank the same way as they did, which was appreciated.

What do you expect for the people to do here ? They are living in a state of permanent war since 1979, just because of the interference of countries like Russia which invaded them, then US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia who created the Talibans for their own interests; they lack of everything, the kids die from hunger and cold in general indifference, Massoud comes back with empty hands from his trip to Europe where he had come to ask for help, and they should thank you to deserve the privilege to get your UN food ?

I'd suggest that rather than maintaining some countries in war and poverty while sending humanitarian help and "peace corps", the rich countries just stops to parasite them: they won't be anymore need of humanitarian help then.

Hum ! Buzkashi can only be dangerous for spectators if people go too close to the players, but it's not a fatality. :). Now, as far as games are concerned, do you think the Western ones are a model of civilization ? No buzkashi leads to consequences like violent and drunk hooligans breaking everything in the cities, nor catastrophes like the one of the Hezel in Belgium in June1985. What about the car races, the drivers burning in their smashed cars in front of the cameras ? Which basic difference with the Roman games of gladiators in the arenas ?

As far as I have seen myself, no suicide epidemy is in question here: the problems of the rulers generally come from countries which want to get the hand on the country : this was the case of Zaher Shah: after him, it was under American influence. Then the Russians invaded it . Since, US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia write the scenario of the events. And today, American troops are on the Afghan soil. Very frankly, when a country is invaded, who is responsible for it ? The people of this country, or the invaders ?

* Women are property, as observed in this Afghani joke.

Afghani joke really ? Or more likely American joke on the Afghans. In France we have the same with the so- called "Belgian jokes" : the French make the fun of the Belgians through jokes they invent on them, and through which they make them appear ridiculous. Actually, the Belgians are not involved there, only the contents of the state of mind of the French who use them.

It seems very shocking in the West that in some countries, one man may have several wives. Now what's reality like in the West ? Some men have only one wife, some have a wife and one or several lovers (unofficial) altogether; some have several wives the ones after the others, making kids here and there. The official rules as far as marriage is concerned do not represent the actual life of people anymore.

Certainly the situation of women in Afghanistan is one of the worst in the world, since the Talibans have taken the country. Now when I was there, women were not obliged to be veiled, Pachtoun women were, not the ones from other tribes. In Kaboul, some Afghan girls were dressed Western style, there were feminine students at university. As for the education, I had the opportunity to see in Herat the exercise book of a 13 y.o. schoolboy : his math program was quite similar to the one I studied in France at the same age. Then the Russians pretended they had invaded Afghanistan to bring them education, saying they were illiterate: this was not true at all !

Now it would be a mistake to consider the status of women in the East as inferior to the one of men at all levels : Indira Gandhi in India and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan ran those countries. When did you see a women as a president in US ? In France ? As for the condition of women, the other day I went to the police station for identity card : I found there a paper with advises and help for the women beaten up by their husband: one on 5 in Belgium ! Now Belgium is honest enough to talk about it and consider this as a national problem, but I doubt that other European countries are more civilized. So, as far as women rights are concerned all over the world, men should rather start to behave correctly towards their own wives in their own country instead of taking the defense of women of other places while keeping on treating theirs badly.

This joke is in complete contradiction with the first assertion " There is no altruism in Afghani culture". So the Afghans would have the ability to be at the same time one thing and its opposite ? Hmmmmm ! This reminds me Gregory Bateson's double enforcement which the schizophrenics are submitted to in their family : their surrounding gives them contradictory orders or solicitations, so whatever they do, they are always wrong. All the choices are "bad". They get trapped into an impossible and hopeless situation without any livable solution, which drives them crazy. Now the craziness does not come from them, but from the surrounding.

Is your co-worker seriously assuming that Bush is structuring his action and strategy on the ground of American jokes ? My God ! What kind of a president is this ? You guys should be more careful about your rulers' mental level.

One thing about terrorism : in Algeria, fundamentalists from GIA have been killing people in the villages since years : they come by night and kill everybody, included old people and babies, chopping them in pieces. Who cares ? Which limits have those guys been given ?

One remark if I may : ben Laden and the Talibans are not Afghans, they do not come from Afghanistan, they are creations of US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The secret services of those countries have light the fire, and now they get burnt , call for help, and want to involve the whole planet with this, opposing people through patterns of "the free world" against "Islam" and doing a so-called remake of the crusades. Just because the weapons have been made, one cannot loose money not using them, and one has to try them to see the efficiency.

Now, very frankly, what do Americans, Saudi Arabians and Pakistani know about the crusades ? You guys identify your ben Laden, a creation of CIA, to the image of the Old Man Mountain. Huh! As far as FACTS are concerned, the Old man was not an enemy of the crusaders, but their ALLY against the Mongols invaders (who ended to take Alamut in 1258.) See Joinville's account of the meeting of his men and St Louis. Joinville was St Louis' biographer, and our "man" at the crusades. :)

So rather than reproducing obsolete scenarios which rested on a set of misunderstandings and on which you obviously are not really aware of, you guys should rather stop a minute and think. Is this what you call "evolution" ? One thousand years later, the same ones, with the same old patterns!

What is meant here is that the Afghans can be compared to animals and are not worthy of respect. If your co-worker starts from the postulate that someone belonging to another culture is basically different from him, is an alien, he erects a mental barrier between him and the guy. He concentrates on what seems to him incomprehensible, assuming that his conception of reality is the only "good", "right", "true" and conceivable one, and that universe is limited to what he knows about it. He jump to the conclusion that a vision of the world different from his is "false", "bad", "wrong", and the people from this culture are barbaric. Then he puts on them an image of inferior which exists only in his own mind, and rejects him for this : he then feels authorized to fall upon him, take his land and wealth, and tear him in pieces. Well, great program ! Congratulations ! What about democracy ? About the universal declarations of human rights ? Unless those declarations start from the postulate that mankind worthy of the name is limited to the WASP elite ?

Here we talk about cultures, but the mechanisms are the same, in the society your co-worker belongs to (and in the whole West as well), towards all excluded categories of people: addicts, gays, women, black people, Indians, poor people, etc. This is the ground of exclusion, the base of the behavior of the cops you described in previous mails: creating differences and depriving the other one from his humanity, what Daryush Shayegan describes as the " hallucinating praise of oneself and negation of the other one." Burroughs has written a lot on this: he was at the first rank to observe such mechanisms, was not he ? If we reject this behaviour when we are victims of it but accept them for other people, then we have not learnt anything; the problem is not to be Afghan or gay, or addict, or whatever; the problem is the mecchanisms which lead to exclusion, whatever the categories of the victims may be. And as long as we do not understand them, nor get rid of them, we condemn ourselves to undergo them.

As a conclusion, as a woman, one request, if I may : could you, guys do us a favour ? Just stop your domination/submission relations, your wars, your stupid macho male/female oppositions. Otherwise, if you are not able to do it, we should ask UN to takes some urgent measures :

1. Confront personally the leaders of this world to the consequences of their decisions and acts in making them undergo them , instead of remaining safe while sending to death people who have nothing to do with their delirium. "You guys want to fight ? OK, you go !" : Gulf war : George Bush against Saddam Hussein. Two dead ! Ahhhhhhhhh ! What a relief !!!!!!!

2. Determine a desert place in the world, where the conflict makers from all nations can go and have fun fighting and killing one another and leave the rest in peace.

3. Transfer all the monetary funds of all nations involved in war to health, education, and the needs of the peoples.

4. Require from leaders to be able to fulfill the needs of the people they are responsible for, to be correctly informed about the world they live in, to be aware of their inner reactions and able to control them.

Now the institutions being what they are, as one is never so well served than by oneself, peaceful people can start from their actual means and get organized at their scale to solve, in human terms, human problems which cannot be solved at the political level. This is our aim in the Zone and we have succeeded in some measure.

To A Thanksgiving Prayer

by William S. Burroughs