In today’s Christian Science Monitor, a story about how some Taliban — even foreigners — are being treated with surprising mercy by Northern Alliance fighters. While there have been some scattered reports of massacres and other war atrocities, there are also indications that there is an awareness of human rights — for practical or ethical reasons, regardless — on the part of NA commanders, and that’s having an effect.
The NA are being seen as true liberators. And maybe that’s part of it, too.
Interestingly, at least one writer I’ve run across in the few days reminded his readers that, following the liberation of Paris by Allied troops, quite a number of Nazi sympathizers (and probably a few Nazis, too) were summarily executed by the citizenry, much to everyone’s approval. Have we come so far?