The name Taliban means "seekers of knowledge." Since they seized control of most of Afghanistan in 1996, the clique of fundamentalist zealots who go by that name have eliminated virtually all human rights within their reach. Their proscriptions run from the hideous to the farcically pious--though farce itself, in today's Afghanistan, can and does kill. At one extreme, most girls are denied any education: Afghanistan is the most misogynistic country in the world. At another, a man who trims his beard commits a jailable crime.
Civil war, drought, famine, invasion and tyranny have been tramping back and forth across the weary...