A Turning Point?

While his fate was still unknown, an Afghan newspaper , via Reuters, called for Abdul Rahman's release:

"At this moment when Afghanistan needs the support of the international community to fight terrorism and carry on the rebuilding process of a ruined country, is it wise to confront the whole international community?" the newspaper asked. "Afghanistan cannot live in isolation anymore," it said in the editorial, which carried a headline calling for Rahman's freedom. The newspaper is funded by a member of parliament who used to lead a faction during civil war in the 1990s.

It does sometimes seem like we Americans are naive fools to believe that our democratic ideals can come to fruition anywhere anytime soon, but then brave people speak up in countries like Afghanistan. Via Michelle Malkin, neo-neocon:

Courts--even sharia-based courts, it seems--have myriad ways of avoiding coming to certain verdicts that they wish to circumvent. In this case, the ostensible reason for the dropped case was lack of evidence. But the truth is probably that the pressure brought to bear by the West was too great, and that a guilty verdict would have damaged the fragile Karzai government.

But there's no way to know to what extent this result also reflects moderate forces within the nation and Islam itself--because such a war is going on, and has been going on for a very long time. It's very hard to gauge the actual numbers of the forces on each side, but it seems fairly clear that, since the Iranian revolution of the late 70s, the forces of repression have been in the ascendance. Whether or not this case represents a turning point in that process remains to be seen. But allowing for and encouraging such a turning point was one of the goals of the Afghan War.