Decline and Death
Rabbani died in a military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, of liver cancer on 16 April 2001. According to a press release in Islamabad:
- Mullah Mohammad Rabbani was one of the main founders of the Movement and greatly contributed to peace and security in our country. His service to Islam is unforgettable. His demise is an irreparable loss.
Rabbani's body was repatriated to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar by a UN plane, permitted to operate on humanitarian grounds despite the air embargo against the Taliban Movement. he was buried in the Taliban's Martyr's Cemetery in Kandahar.
Regarding him as somewhat of a moderate, members of the opposition voiced fears that hardliners within the Taliban would strengthen their hold on power following Rabbani's death.
Read more about this topic: Mohammad Rabbani
Famous quotes containing the words decline and, decline and/or death:
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)