Page "Taliban" Paragraph 32

Afghan traditions would need a generation or more to overcome and could only be challenged by education, he said.

Humayun Tandar, who took part as an Afghan diplomat in the 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, said that " strictures of language, ethnicity, region were stifling for Massoud.

That is why ... he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day.

" This applied also to strictures of religion.

Jean-José Puig describes how Massoud often led prayers before a meal or at times asked his fellow Muslims to lead the prayer but also did not hesitate to ask a Christian friend Jean-José Puig or the Jewish Princeton University Professor Michael Barry: " Jean-José, we believe in the same God.

Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language.