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Assalamu'alaikum,
No surprise at rumours of new atrocities by our 'foot-soldiers'
War on terrorism
By Robert Fisk
13 November 2001
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=104632
The Northern Alliance's sudden victories in Afghanistan may be good news for
the West but the bad news is not far behind. The Uzbek, Tadjik and Hazara
gunmen who make up this rag-tag army have a bloody reputation for torturing
and executing prisoners which if resumed in the coming days will plunge
America and Britain into a moral abyss.
Chilling stories of more than 100 pro-Taliban Pakistani fighters shot dead
after their surrender in Mazar-i-Sharif and of Alliance gunmen "roaming
the streets'' of the abandoned city will not come as a surprise to those
who are aware of the atrocities committed by America's new allies during the
1992-96 fighting in Kabul.
For the Americans and for the minuscule British component of the West's
military forces inside Afghanistan the behaviour of the Northern Alliance
presents a grave problem. As our "foot-soldiers" are in Afghanistan, we
cannot disclaim responsibility for human rights abuses by the Alliance's
gunmen; yet neither the Americans nor the British appear to have tried to
control the army they are now helping. Indeed, it seems they may not even be
able to prevent the Alliance from entering Kabul.
The massacres committed by malicious fighting in the name of outside powers
have regularly brought shame upon their more powerful allies. The Contras in
Nicaragua and the Phalangist militiamen in Lebanon contaminated their
respective American and Israeli masters the latter in the notorious
Palestinian camp massacres of Sabra and Chatila in 1982. A glance at the
Alliance's track record of rape, pillage and street executions in Kabul
between 1992 and 1996 suggests that the so-called Allies America, Britain
and just about anyone else who wants to join in have good reason to exert
their influence over the newly victorious militiamen from the north of
Afghanistan.
In Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat there are comparatively few Pashtun communities,
which traditionally favour the Taliban.
A bit further south the Alliance will find itself among its ethnic enemies.
In 1997, Mazar's Hazara defenders killed more than 600 Taliban militiamen
who had taken over the city and then massacred dozens of Pakistani students
who had accompanied the Taliban into the region. In later bloodbaths,
thousands of Taliban prisoners were shot into mass graves, with dozens more
Pakistanis. A Northern Alliance turncoat, General Pahlawan Malik,
subsequently executed 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war who had been tortured
and starved before being put to death.
Many were drowned in wells. Others met a more carefully planned death. One
of General Malik's generals recalled: "At night when it was quiet and dark
we took about 150 Taliban prisoners, blindfolded them, tied their hands
behind their backs and drove them in truck containers out to the desert. We
lined them up 10 at a time, in front of holes in the ground, and opened
fire. It took about six nights.''
On other occasions Taliban prisoners were locked inside containers in
mid-summer; 1,250 were deliberately asphyxiated in this way, their corpses
dragged from the containers, blackened by the heat.
Could it happen again? There is no reason to believe the Alliance has been
taking lessons in human rights. It has been receiving ammunition from Russia
and logistics from the United States. Photographs in yesterday's Pakistani
papers showed Alliance gunmen leading a small party of Western troops
through the terrain of northern Afghan-istan. But our soldiers are highly
unlikely to have been distributing copies of the Geneva Convention to their
new friends.
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