-Caveat Lector- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/02/22/wafg22.xml&sSh
eet=/news/2002/02/22/ixworld.html WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! CIA warns on seeds of new Afghan civil war By Ben Fenton in Washington (Filed: 22/02/2002) THE seeds of renewed civil war in Afghanistan have already been planted, the CIA said in a report made public yesterday. The analysis of an increasingly lawless situation backs Britain's view that more needs to be done to prop up the infant regime of Hamid Karzai as he tries to stabilise his country. With the CIA and the State Department both urging a greater effort by America and its allies to maintain peace, the White House is coming under pressure to launch a fresh peacekeeping initiative. The rest of the Bush administration, and in particular the Pentagon, has been reluctant to do anything more than it is already doing, except in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, his al-Qa'eda terrorist network and the Taliban. Intelligence analysis suggests that a return to the civil war that wracked the country after Soviet invaders were driven out in 1989 is not imminent. But the CIA has identified rising tensions between the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups in Afghanistan and areas of lawlessness where the influence of the central government has not been extended. The report says the agency is alarmed at how slowly progress is being made in setting up the national army and police force for Afghanistan. "Civil war is not imminent but the seeds are there," a senior official of the intelligence agency said in an interview with the New York Times. The question that the CIA was facing was: "What do we do in the meantime to deter war among the warlords?" Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, said he did not know how the situation would develop, but was not obviously enthusiastic for an increase in peacekeeping forces beyond the 4,500-strong existing force, half of which is British and which is under British command. The Pentagon is known to have argued that it is not necessary to enlarge the peacekeeping force and would stretch already thin resources at a time when America is trying to fight terrorism on a global front. Mr Rumsfeld said it was a waste of time, money and effort to build up the International Security Assistance Force to 5,000 or even 20,000 when the same resources could be devoted to training and equipping an Afghan army. The State Department told the newspaper it was suggesting only that areas outside Kabul could be protected by an expanded international force, as Mr Karzai proposed to President Bush in a meeting in Washington last month. The Foreign Office supports this idea although the Ministry of Defence is far less enthusiastic, a division mirroring the current differences of opinion in the Bush administration. Britain's Armed Forces commanders are also concerned that they are being overstretched and do not want to be committed to sending more troops to Afghanistan. Mr Rumsfeld admitted that between 10 and 15 people killed in an American commando raid on Jan 23 were not al-Qa'eda or Taliban, as the Pentagon had claimed since the attack. But he defended the raid on the two compounds at Hazar Qadam, because he said all the deaths occurred after American special forces troops were fired on. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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