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-Borzou Daragahi
***
THE LIBERATION OF KABUL. The Taliban has hastily evacuated Kabul just
ahead of a Northern Alliance offensive into the Afghan capital. Northern
Alliance troops who entered into the city met absolutely no resistance,
but were instead cheered on by long-suffering residents of the
once-cosmopolitan city, Associated Press Islamabad chief Kathy Gannon
reports from Kabul. Witnesses told the A.P. that the Taliban hit the
road midnight Monday. "They said they are going to Kandahar,'' Ajmal
Mir, a guard at the abandoned detention center where those eight
Christian relief workers were being held, told the A.P. Without any
resistance, the Northern Alliance also overran the liberal city of
Herat. In Mazar-e-Sharif, which the Northern Alliance took over Friday,
"men lined up at barber shops to have their Taliban-mandated beards
shaved, and music - banned by the Taliban - could be heard from stores,"
the A.P. reported. "Half the city's women had discarded the all-covering
burqas required by the Taliban. Some retained traditional scarves
covering their hair, while others went bareheaded."
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011112/ts/attacks_afghanistan.html
In Kabul, the mood was celebratory but nervous. "The scenes are
amazing," says the BBC's Kate Clark, who was granted permission by the
Northern Alliance to enter the capital. "I'm surrounded by crowds of
people coming up to me, shaking my hand and shouting 'Peace be with you'
and 'May you live long.' Everyone seems very happy, jubilant that the
Taleban have been thrown out of their city. ... But as I talk to
Afghans, as well as jubilation there is some trepidation. People are
worried about security and some say there has been looting overnight,
particularly from houses where Taleban used to live. There is a security
vacuum in Kabul - what the people most feared. It is not yet clear who
will enforce law and order in what seems to be the post-Taleban era for
the Afghan capital."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_1653000/1653253.stm
Events were taking place so fast that only a few broadcast outlets had
up-to-date coverage. Turn your radio to an NPR affiliate and listen for
reports by the BBC, which has a couple correspondents in Kabul. Even the
Northern Alliance seemed startled by the pace of events. Ahmed Rashid,
the Pakistani journalist who has been covering Afghanistan for more than
two decades, writes that the Taliban seriously miscalculated the impact
of the U.S. aerial assault, the Northern Alliance's resolve, and their
own unpopularity outside of southern Afghanistan. "The result has been a
rout rather than a tactical retreat," he writes in an expansive and
worthwhile military strategy piece in the Nov. 13 London Telegraph. The
Taliban's greatest nightmare was the prospect of a popular uprising by
"civilian populations who loathed their repressive government and viewed
them as alien occupiers from the south who had no representation from
their own minority ethnic groups."
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/13/war113.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/11/13/ixhome.html
Such lightning-quick routes are common in Afghan military history,
writes the Associated Press's Greg Myre. ``It's happened before,''
Tanvir Ahmed Khan, a political analyst and Pakistan's former foreign
secretary, tells the A.P. ``One side falters, commanders shift
loyalties, and large pieces of territory change hands overnight.''
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011112/wl/attacks_afghan_warfare_1.html
The U.S. promised Pakistan the Northern Alliance wouldn't enter Kabul.
With the Taliban out of the capital, who will govern the country? BBC
radio the night of Nov. 12 reported widespread looting and anarchy in
and around the capital. In at least one instance Northern Alliance
troops shot an unarmed and wounded Taliban soldier. "As the terrified
man begged for his life, the alliance soldiers pulled him to his feet,"
writes David Rohde in the Nov. 13 New York Times. "They searched him and
emptied his pockets. Then, one soldier fired two bursts from his rifle
into the man's chest. A second soldier beat the lifeless body with his
rifle butt. A third repeatedly smashed a rocket-propelled-grenade
launcher into the man's head. The killing occurred minutes after
Northern Alliance soldiers, advancing toward Kabul, surged deep into
Taliban territory. They chose to celebrate with executions."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13AFGH.html
Such executions likely won't make the Pashtun Afghans of the south, the
ethnic group from which the Taliban draws Afghan supporters, warm any
further toward the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, whom they already
hate. Neither will bombing civilian infrastructure such as hydroelectric
plants. The UN, in fact, has warned of a "disaster of tremendous
proportions" because of the bombing of the dam. "They fear that further
air raids risk destroying the dam itself, with catastrophic consequences
for the region," reported the Nov. 8 London Independent. "In the case of
the long-awaited rain arriving, the dam risks bursting without a proper
functioning control/regulatory mechanism in place," says a UN report.
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=103784
Another thought for the U.S. to keep in mind: No one has ever said that
Afghanistan was impossible to invade. Both the Soviets and the Brits did
just that. What neither could do - thanks to a topography that invited
lightning guerrilla attacks on supply lines and ruthless, constantly
shifting ethnic alliances, and fearless warriors who fought to the death
- was to conquer the country. ``War in Afghanistan is always fought when
the country is run over," retired Pakistani secret service leader
General Hamid Gul, a Taliban supporter, told Reuters Nov. 12. "The
Americans are making a serious mistake thinking that the Taliban alone
are against them.''
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011112/wl/attack_afghan_kabul_dc_1.html
Certainly the next goal for the U.S.-British-Northern Alliance coalition
is to get Pashtun chiefs in the south to turn against the Taliban. They
have to: the U.S. promised Pakistani President Pervez Musharaf as
recently as this weekend that a post-Taliban government would include
Pashtun representatives. But getting Pashtuns aboard will be difficult.
"With no organized anti-Taliban movement in the south, the Pentagon
lacks the proxy ground force there it has found in the Northern
Alliance," reports the Nov. 13 Washington Post. "U.S. efforts in the
south, orchestrated largely by the CIA, have been directed at keeping
Pashtun tribal leaders from backing the Taliban and producing a critical
mass of opposition."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18391-2001Nov12.html
The Taliban can always draw on recruits from across the border. In
Pakistan, the Pashtun's tribal cousins have set up an infrastructure for
sending fresh soldiers to fight alongside the Taliban. Thousands of
militants "await their turn to enter Afghanistan," reports the Egyptian
Al-Ahram. "A cautious Taliban regime is reluctant to let all eager
militants in," the weekly reports in its Nov. 14 issue. "Screening
processes have reportedly been put in place by the Taliban regime amid
fears that US spies might slip into Afghanistan. Only those aged between
25-50 years, who are in good health, and can carry heavy weapons and
know how to use them are welcomed."
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/559/fr2.htm
As predicted by many astute military strategists, the military victories
have outpaced the essential political milepost of creating a
post-Taliban government amenable to both the internal groupings and
external interests. To the latter end, representatives of the Six plus
Two working group on Afghanistan - which includes neighbors Pakistan,
Iran, China, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as Russia
and the U.S. - met this morning to hammer out a future government
amenable to all parties. Getting the outside parties to agree on a
solution is tantamount to any stability in Afghanistan, as Anne
Applebaum notes in the Nov. 12 Slate. "It is they who have provoked and
sustained much of the fighting there over the past 20 years," she
writes. "Perhaps only the Israelis, or maybe the Kurds, can claim to
have a more unstable and unfriendly group of neighbors. Worse, each of
these countries has a different set of interests in Afghanistan, and
each has different views of what the 'Broadly Based Government' should
be trying to achieve."
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058560
As far as the Afghans themselves, after 22 years of war, over a million
dead, and the largest refugee crisis in modern history, Afghans may have
been bled dry. And perhaps military victories on the ground will force
the political factions into line. "The recent Northern Alliance gains,
more than a military victory, give a political advantage to Washington
and a wake-up call to Pakistan's government and Afghanistan's Pushtun
population," says a password-protected article on the website of
Strategic Forecasting, a military and intelligence consulting firm based
in Austin, Texas. "The opposition has shown its military mettle, and
while it cannot occupy the entire country, it can credibly threaten the
southern half of Afghanistan. This provides a huge incentive for
Pakistan and moderate Pushtun tribes to dislodge the Taliban themselves
in order to present Washington with an acceptable alternative to
Northern Alliance rule."
http://www.stratfor.com
***
IN SEARCH OF OSAMA. So much energy devoted to toppling the Taliban, so
little to the main attraction: Osama bin Laden, who apparently feels
secure enough to grant an exclusive to the editor of Pakistan's largest
English-language daily, Dawn. Most western news outlets focused on
Osama's dubious claim in the interview that he possessed nuclear
weapons. Another interesting aspect was just how tapped in he is to
global media. Asked whether a French newspaper's claim that he had a
kidney problem and secretly went to Dubai for treatment last year, he
responded like a Manhattan PR maestro. "My kidneys are all right," he
said in the Dawn interview. "I did not go to Dubai last year. One
British newspaper has published an imaginary interview with one of my
sons who lives in Saudi Arabia with an Islamabad dateline . All this is
false."
http://www.dawn.com/2001/11/10/top1.htm
Regardless of whether Osama has nukes, Kim in Los Angeles sent along a
link to a "horrifically frightening" Nov. 11 Los Angeles Times article
detailing the lack of safeguards placed on the former Soviet Unions
nuclear stockpile since the end of the Cold War. Yeah, the experts
acknowledge, nukes are probably floating around. But they always figured
terrorists would be reluctant to use a portable nuclear weapon out of
fear for their own lives. In the post Sept. 11 world, you can throw that
theory in the same garbage bin with the notion of a deregulated airline
industry. "Absent a major new initiative, we have every reason to expect
there will be an act of nuclear terrorism in the next decade, maybe
sooner," Graham T. Allison, an assistant secretary of Defense under
President Clinton, told the Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-111101nukes.story
London-based Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih says his sources inform him
that al Qa'ida plans to launch an attack inside Saudi Arabia. ``Bin
Laden has thousands of supporters in Saudi Arabia who look upon him as a
national hero," Faqih tells Reuters. "A number of his circle speak very
confidently about something happening there soon."
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011112/ts/attack_saudi_threat_dc.html
***
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND. For the umpteenth time in two months, my morning
routine was interrupted by radio reports of nearby calamity and panic -
this time the crash of American Airlines flight 587 into a sleepy
residential neighborhood on the city's outskirts where I've gone
bicycle-riding. After 60-odd days of funerals, National Guardsman,
countless subway closures, nightmarish traffic, Anthrax scares real and
imagined, multiple security checks and impossibly frayed nerves, many
people were too numb to absorb the Nov. 12 crash, which killed at least
260. "For a city and a region, yesterday's plane crash was the deadly
car accident that derails the funeral procession," Dan Barry writes in
the Nov. 13 New York Times. "Just when a city and region was returning
to what passes these days as normality, bang: hundreds more dead, the
Rockaways ablaze, tons of debris falling from the heavens, and a
community in panic."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/nyregion/13MOOD.html
"I looked out my bedroom window thinking the Concorde was coming
through, and a huge piece of what I thought was a re-entry coming from
outer space flew past my bedroom window," one woman told New York 1
television. "And then I saw another piece, which apparently was the
engine, and I just started to shake and I said, 'My God, we're being
bombed.' I didn't know what to do. I looked down the street and the
block was on fire. And my niece's house is there and I don't think she
got out."
http://www.ny1.com/ny/TopStories/SubTopic/index.html?topicintid=1&subtopicintid=1&contentintid=17159
Knowing of al Qa'ida's penchant for dramatic, multi-pronged attacks,
authorities put the region on the highest state of alert, despite no
evidence that the Airbus A300 - which crashed a couple minutes after
departing JFK for the Dominican Republic - was targeted by terrorists.
"Immediately following the crash, all four main airports as well as all
bridges and tunnels in the New York metropolitan area were closed, and
F-15 fighter aircraft could be seen circling the city's airspace,"
reports Jane's.
http://janes.com/aerospace/civil/news/misc/janes011112_1_n.shtml
***
MAILBAG
Ted in Chicago sends a link to an article in the Revolutionary worker
about Arab and Muslim men who have simply disappeared after they were
called into interviews with federal authorities. "We have Arab men
disappearing from the neighborhoods of Brooklyn," says Samia Halaby,
from a Palestinian rights group. "No one hears from them. No one hears
about them. They're arrested and they disappear. Is it secret evidence?
Whose secret is this? Why? What's going on? We'd like to know."
http://rwor.org/a/v23/1120-29/1126/disappeared.htm
Richard in Manhattan liked Zora's use of the term "war porn" in New War
#19. "She has added to my vocabulary in an immeasurable way."
***
ENDNOTE. Here's one to get the kids for Christmas: Operation Enduring
Freedom trading cards, made by Topps, the same company that makes
baseball cards. Yes, there's an Osama bin Laden card, but none for the
Taliban. There are however, dozens of celebrating various military
hardware, such as the B-2 Spirit Bomber, the F-16C Fighting Falcon, the
B-1B, the B-52 Bomber and MC-130H Refueling Aircraft. Curiously, there's
not a single card with a reference to Afghans or Afghanistan. So, no,
there's no starving Afghan refugee card.
http://www.topps.com/enduringfreedom.html
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