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World War III, Report #10World War III Report #10 THE AFGHANISTAN FRONT
On Nov. 28, Oliver August, Mazar correspondent for the London Times, wrote that Johnny (codename 'Mike') Spann, the CIA agent killed in the uprising, "triggered" the violence with an unsubtle interrogation of Taliban "foreign legion" volunteers, the most fanatical Taliban troops. Spann and a CIA colleague, "Dave," were dressed in Afghan robes, spoke Persian and had grown beards, but apparently failed to fool the captives. When Spann asked one, "Why did you come to Afghanistan?", the captive responded, "We are here to kill you," and jumped at Spann. Spann and "Dave" both pulled their guns, shooting three prisoners dead before losing control over the situation. Spann was "kicked, beaten and bitten to death," while "Dave" fled. In a strategic blunder, Mazar's reigning Northern Alliance warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum had departed for the Kunduz front days earlier, leaving only small force in control of the prison. The guards were quickly overwhelmed by the 800 Taliban prisoners -- including many volunteers from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Chechnia -- who had turned themselves over to the Northern Alliance in a negotiated surrender at Kunduz. The prisoners then stormed the armory and seized weapons, and the siege began. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has echoed Amnesty International director Kate Allen in calling for an urgent inquiry. Amnesty says it is willing to send an observer to Afghanistan to monitor an inquiry into "the proportionality of the response by the Northern Alliance, US and UK forces." (London Times, Nov. 28; Reuters, Nov. 27)
FIRST OFFICIAL US COMBAT CASUALTIES
SUMMARY EXECUTIONS IN MAZAR AND KUNDUZ? The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has also expressed concern about the up to 600 bodies it says it has recovered in Mazar-i-Sharif, BBC reported Nov. 23. The organization could not specify whether the victims had died in the fighting or had been summarily executed after the Northern Alliance captured the town two weeks ago. "There have been stories of executions," said ICRC spokesman Bernard Barrett, noting that "summary executions are clearly prohibited under the Geneva convention."
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES MOUNT -- DESPITE US MEDIA BLACKOUT UK Independent correspondent Justin Huggler wrote from Khanabad Nov. 27: "We were picking our way through the bombed-out ruins of Khanabad when we heard the explosion. When we got there, struggling through the collapsed remains of houses, an old man sat in his blood blinking and shaking his head in bewilderment. Beside him, a 15-year-old boy lay bleeding and unconscious. They had trodden on one of the American cluster bombs that litter the fields and roadside around Khanabad... The Americans killed more than 100 unarmed civilians in Khanabad in the last two weeks, relentlessly bombing heavily populated residential areas in the town, one of the last under Taliban control. The Independent first reported allegations of civilian deaths made by fleeing refugees a week ago. Yesterday, after the Taliban left, those claims were confirmed." On Nov. 21, the AFP reported the Taliban's Mulla Fazil told Pakistan's daily Dawn by satellite phone that US airstrikes had killed some 800 people in the Kunduz area and 250 in Khanabad district. The US dismisses all Taliban casualty accounts as mere propaganda -- which they may well be. But accounts from reporters on the scene indicates civilian casualties may be much higher than most US citizens are aware. Wrote UK Telegraph correspondent Philip Smucker Nov. 21 from the village of Gluco, near Jalalabad: "Terrified Afghan villagers, in an area abandoned by the Taliban, yesterday described how Allied bombers circled their village for the third time in two days, before launching air strikes that killed seven residents. Their wooden homes looked like piles of charred matchsticks. Injured mules lay braying in the road along the mountain pass that stank of sulphur and dead animals. The strikes, which killed the seven on Monday and four on Sunday, suggest that western military intelligence on the ground...is not good as it might be."
REFUGEE CRISIS SPIRALS Those who have taken internal refuge, establishing makeshift camps within Afghanistan's borders (mostly in the west, near Iran), are in even worse shape, according to UNICEF. AP reported Nov. 26: "Diseases spreading through refugee camps in western Afghanistan, near Iran, have claimed the lives of hundreds of children in the past few weeks, the organization said." Some of these camps had been established before the bombing by refugees fleeing the Taliban -- but their situation has been seriously worsened by the bombing, which has slowed aid deliveries to a trickle.
AID WORKERDS PLEAD: STOP THE AIR-DROPS ALREADY! Reuters reported Nov. 29 that unemployed Afghan engineer Golam Sediq was woken up by a loud bang in the early hours that Tuesday when a crate full of US food aid fell through the roof of his Herat home. "With seven people, mostly women and children, asleep in the house, it was pure luck that no one was hurt, though his two-year-old son was trapped under the rubble for some time." Yellow food packages of peanut butter and poptarts -- labeled "a gift from the people of the United States of America"--littered his home and nearby gardens. Said Sediq: "They should drop smaller packages or nothing at all. We'll have to pay at least 20 times more to repair the damage than we gain from the extra food. The Americans should pay for this." AP reported Nov 29 that a civilian was killed when a heavy bundle of humanitarian supplies dropped by parachute crushed her house near Mazar-i-Sharif. The package of wheat, blankets and cold weather equipment hit the house before dawn the previous day, admitted a spokesperson for US Central Command in Florida.
RUSSIA STAKES CLAIM
US PLAYING BALL WITH IRAN?
PAKISTAN PISSED The Northern Alliance's disobedient march on Kabul has increased tensions between the US and Pakistan (which until recently supported the Taliban). On Nov. 25, the New York Times quoted a "senior Pakistan official" saying "I am sorry to put it in this way, but Rumsfeld's been extremely callous." But Pakistan seems more susceptible to US pressure than vice versa. In preparation for the Bonn talks on establishing a new Afghanistan government, Pakistan established its first contact with the Northern Alliance in over a year at a meeting in Abu Dubai this week, BBC reported Nov. 28.
BALKANIZATION OF AFGHANISTAN PLANNED? Particularly highlighted are the theories of Eden Naby of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, who believes Afghanistan should be broken up into several "allied independent states" -- as if this were a decision for Harvard scholars rather than the people of Afghanistan. Naby told the Middle East Studies Association last month in San Francisco: "Getting rid of the idea or concept of Afghanistan is very difficult, just as getting over the idea of Yugoslavia was difficult" -- which is hardly a brilliant argument for her concept, given the potential for a bloody Balkan-style scramble for ethnically-pure mini-states. "But in the long run no one wants a strong Afghanistan," Naby concluded. If by "no one" she means no outside powers, she is evidently right. Afghanistan is already divided by militias allied with either the US and its regional ally Pakistan (the Pashtun factions of the south) or Russia and its regional ally Iran (the Northern Alliance). The US now backs all sides against the Taliban -- but if the Taliban is defeated, or if the Bonn talks fail, the conflict could break down into a Russo-v-Anglo-American proxy war--following the pattern in Afghanistan for nearly 200 years.
"PASHTUNISTAN" NEXT? "Pakistan is a federation of four provinces, the largest of which is Punjab--home to 63% of the country's population -- with Pashtuns mainly inhabiting North West Frontier Province, NWFP. Relations between these regions have never been smooth. Habib Ullaha Khan Kundi, a former senior provincial minister in Pakistan, believes the division of Afghanistan between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns would have serious consequences for his country. 'The Pashtuns in Afghanistan may wish to join Pakistan. It would not be acceptable to Punjab,' said Kundi. "The idea of Pashtunistan has played an important role in Pakistani politics since the formation of the country in 1947. Kabul had long sought to annex NWFP, claiming it was part of Afghanistan. The influential Pakistani military -- fearing this would lead to the disintegration of the country -- countered by attempting to promote divisions between the Afghan Pashtuns. During the war against the Soviets in the '80s, Islamabad encouraged the emergence of rival political parties. It then distributed funds to them unevenly to exacerbate their mutual suspicion. Subsequently, the Pakistani authorities supported the Taliban who were mostly Pashtuns opposed to a Pastun state -- the student militia had more of a religious than a national identity which suited Islamabad's aims perfectly. But Paskistan's ability to dictate events north of the border have diminished with the military collapse of the Taliban... "If talks with the Northern Alliance next week prove to be successful, Pakistan government fears may be eased. But if the Northern Alliance continues to seek control over Afghanistan, Afghan Pashtuns may feel that their future lies with their brothers in northern Pakistan." (www.iwpr.net, Nov. 23)
AFGHAN WOMEN CENSORED AT BONN A more skeptical view was offered by Jill Colgan of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Nov. 28, who interviewed Surao Palika, onetime secretary general of the Afghan Red Crescent and currently leader of "a secret society that's only now come out of hiding, the Union of Afghan Women." Palika said all three women delegates in Bonn are ex-patriots representing foreign NGOs, and she fears they've been selected by the Afghan delegations because they'll offer no resistance to their decision making. "Afghan women will be represented," she said, "but not Afghan women from inside the country who've been directly subjected to all this injustice, discrimination, physical violence and torture. We could have represented ourselves better...than women from outside the country." Palika also pledged that hundreds of women plan to march through Kabul unveiled next week -- putting the new regime on notice. "Mehmooda," a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), responded by e-mail Nov. 30 to WW3 Report's queries about RAWA's status at the Bonn conference: "Yes, our representatives are in Bonn with the King's delegation trying to take part in the meeting, but have been refused so far. They are trying to go in but due to the presence of the people from Northern Alliance who can't obviously tolerate RAWA, the UN officials are not allowing them."
KABUL CRITICAL MASS!
DERVISHES BOOGIE
PROPAGANDISTS MAKE HAY SOUTH ASIA
PHILIPPINE FRONT OPENED
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