Genocide

I've been reading "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright. Its an excellent book, and best read with a laptop handy to Google for details on the many historical events which are referenced in passing in the text. Today I read the brief paragraphs describing the massacre of ethnic Hazaras at Mazar-I-Sharif in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

According to Wright, the Saudis provided trucks, military equipment, and cash to the Taliban as a down payment on a deal for the Taliban to hand over Bin Laden, who was at the time in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Taliban. The Taliban in turn used this booty to attack and over-run the city of Mazar, slaughtering thousands of Hazara civilians over a period of several days.

While Wright reports this matter of factly and in the context of the Bin Laden story, the horrific nature of the slaughter serves as a stark reminder of the importance of current events in Afghanistan.