In our ongoing effort to find the New York Times article with the most ridiculous 9/11 tie-in, we could not help but wonder at the editorial decision to run this article on the front of the automobile section last week. Excerpts below.

Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, co-equal on America's most-wanted list with Osama bin Laden, is partial to Chevrolet Suburbans with darkened windows. Mr. bin Laden, like many of the sheiks and princes of Saudi Arabia among whom he grew up, likes Toyota Land Cruisers, as did his military commander, Muhammad Atef, a former Egyptian policeman who is believed to have been killed by American bombing last week.

There is a hierarchy of vehicles among the more important lieutenants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's terrorist organization. Not for them anything discreet and durable, to go with the austerity of their faith: nothing but a Land Cruiser will serve. For ordinary fighters, men with long beards and longer barrels on their ubiquitous Kalashnikovs, the vehicle of choice is the Toyota Hilux, a compact pickup truck popular throughout the developing world.

Mullah Omar, a man so elusive that he has not been photographed in years, and has only granted one interview, was spotted in early October in his Suburban, a white vehicle with no outside embellishments. This was according to villagers outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, who reported seeing him stepping out of the vehicle, accompanied by Mr. bin Laden, in an area near an Al Qaeda training camp two days after the American bombing began on Oct. 7.

. . . .

Other extras visible on the tape, made earlier this year, were the smokestack-like air inductors running up the windshield pillars; Toyota distributes these on vehicles that operate mostly in the sand-choked air of desert regions. The Al Qaeda leaders' vehicles appeared to be free of the side-door graphics favored by many of their followers, whose tastes run to trucks in flame red or electric blue with words like "Rodeo" or "Pick Up" lettered on the sides, with fancy wheels and chromed roll bars.

The article takes issue with the Taliban's use of such trucks when they are "at odds with the rulers' theological commitment to a no-tech world." I haven't read anything in the Times that suggests that the Taliban's use of modern weapons, for instance, is similarly incongruous.

M E-L posted this on November 29, 2001
It is filed under Culture

It is also indexed with the following tags: 9/11 | New York Times | Taliban | Cars | Afghanistan |