[iwar] [fc:Veiled.but.deadly.-.female.fighters.who.defy.Taliban]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-29 07:26:18


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<a href="mailto:AzadiAfghanRadio@aol.com?Subject=Re:%20(ai)%20[Fwd:%20Afghan%20News%2010/29/2001%20-%20#1039]%2526In-Reply-To=%2526lt;3BDD540E.FB2CCA41@speconsult.com">AzadiAfghanRadio@aol.com</a> 
wrote:

*************************************************************
A selection of news/commentary from publicly accessible sites on the
Internet. For research purposes also. AAR is not responsible for non-AAR
news/content accuracy.
**********************************************************************

Veiled but deadly - female fighters who defy Taliban
By Philip Sherwell in Qalai Khoja - news.telegraph.co.uk - Sunday 28 October
2001

ARMED with Kalashnikov assault rifles and machine guns, the women of Bagram
are ready for the Taliban. In the male-dominated Islamic territory of
northern Afghanistan, the opposition fighters have a secret weapon - their
wives.

Sharifa rarely leaves the mud-walled compound of her home on the front line,
25 miles north of Kabul. She is forbidden to socialise with men who are not
immediate relatives, and she sees the world through the mesh of a
head-to-foot burqa.

Three years ago, however, after the Taliban militia briefly stormed her
village of Qalai Khoja, her husband taught her to use an AK47. Her prowess
with a gun saved her life last year when the Taliban staged another raid on
the village while the men were away in the trenches.

From their roofs, the women of Qalai Khoja saw the intruders coming. Nine of
them, including Sharifa, grabbed the weapons their husbands had left for them
and saw off the attackers in a firefight in a cornfield.
She recounted proudly: "I fired 500 bullets and we killed 25 Taliban." Asked
what she would do if the Taliban attacked again, she said without hesitation:
"I would shoot them. I wouldn't ask questions."

Sharifa's neighbour, Parigul, a 55-year-old widow whose husband was killed
fighting the Taliban, was shot through the arm in the cornfield battle, but
vows that she will fight again if needed.

The Telegraph was given an unprecedented insight yesterday into the secret
world of the Afghan women trained by their men to defend their homes,
families and villages. Although they are not forbidden to work or study - as
they are in Taliban-ruled territory - they still have virtually no role
outside the home in the highly conservative world of Afghanistan's opposition
Northern Alliance.

Women in front-line villages have, however, been assigned a crucial but
previously unreported role in the war against the Taliban. As their husbands
are often away, working in the fields or fighting in the trenches, they act
as lookouts, guards and, in an emergency, the first line of defence.

Sharifa, 36, a mother of six who, like many Afghans, goes by only one name,
insisted: "I am ready to fight again to protect my home and to avenge our
martyrs." She added: "If the Taliban come, then all the men and women and
young and old here will fight them. It is easy and natural for us."

The villages around the ruined opposition-held air base at Bagram are a
regular target for the Taliban forces, only two miles away. Even going to the
well to fetch water entails danger. The women here have an extra incentive to
fight off the enemy. During previous raids, Taliban fighters have raped some
women and kidnapped others as sex slaves - despite their regime's official
commitment to a fanatical Islamic experiment.

Sharifa's husband, Hashim, 42, said: "All the women and children here know
how to use a gun. They can take a Kalashnikov to pieces, clean it and
reassemble it. The men teach them. If we are to die, we want to die in our
homes."

Handling weapons is a family affair. When Hashim goes out, he leaves behind
seven guns - one each for his wife and six sons. He said: "There is no school
here so the children learn to use guns instead."

Pride of place in the family photograph album goes to a picture of four of
his sons. The eldest is standing to attention, holding an assault rifle as
tall as he is, while the youngest, Abdul Hamed, then aged only two, is
clutching a pistol. Five years later, Abdul Hamed fires a Kalashnikov and
changes its magazine with the dexterity of an adult.

AAR Note: we salute the real female freedom fighters of Afghanistan. They
deserve our attention, and the free world's helping hand and respect. Unlike
the controversial Pakistani-based RAWA group, busy collecting money (for
what?) and promoting Afghan disunity (that only serves Pakistan's strategic
goals) under the misleading slogans of  "fighting fundamentalism,"
"democracy" and "human rights", the Afghan women mentioned in the article are
at the forefront of the real struggle in Afghanistan. Under a non-Taliban
regime, women and their families have the choice to wear a burka or not as
has been the custom for many years instead of having an edict hanging over
their heads. US feminists and advocates of unpopular groups such as RAWA
should learn and draw a lesson before more dollars are wasted, and they are
duped into a conspiracy that serves the enemies of Afghan national unity,
democracy and human rights.
--------- more

Rumsfeld Puts Pressure on Central Command to Come up With Creative War Plans;
Military Proposes a 'Roll-the-Dice' Raid Against Taliban Leadership

NEW YORK, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Under pressure from Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to offer more creative war plans, Central Command -- the
Florida-based U.S. headquarters of the campaign against the Taliban -- has
proposed what one informed source characterized to Newsweek as a
"roll-the-dice" raid against the Taliban leadership.  Assuming that U.S.
special forces can find the Taliban leaders (no mean feat), the commandos may
be in for a tough fight.  Pentagon officials tell Newsweek in the November 5
issue that, contrary to earlier public reports, the initial paratroops
assault by U.S. Special Forces on October 21 met surprisingly swift and
well-organized resistance.

And the obstacles to capturing Taliban leaders or Osama bin Laden are
daunting, report Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and Beijing Bureau
Chief Melinda Liu in the current issue (on newsstands Monday, October 29).
The military must contend with the fast-approaching Afghan winter, rugged
mine-strewn battlefields, and the near impossible task of waging all-out war
against Islamic extremists without offending Islamic sensitivities.  But the
biggest trap may be dealing with Afghanistan's notoriously fickle warlords.

Buying an Afghan warlord requires a complicated courtship.  Offering a bag
full of cash is deemed to be offensive.  First must come much talking and
many cups of tea and promises of good works and, most important, some kind of
job security, like a governorship.  Yet, Gen. Hamid Gul, the retired chief of
the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, offers a more nuanced rule of
thumb: "They say you can always rent an Afghan.  But you can never be sure
you own them."

The agency in charge of lining up the right warlords is the CIA.  In an
interview with Newsweek last week, Robert C. McFarlane, the Reagan
Administration national security adviser, said the CIA "has failed miserably.
There's an appalling lack of intelligence skills.  I haven't yet found one
Dari speaker in the agency -- or anyone who speaks any other Afghan dialect,
for that matter.  Or any analyst with real knowledge of Afghanistan's
history, its tribal cultures, the networks that exists here."

But American officials are wary of former Afghanistan chieftains who suddenly
appear offering to produce miracles, for a price.  Just a month ago, a former
Afghan commander, Haji Zaman Ghamshirik, returned from exile in France and
opened a guest house in Peshawar, Pakistan.  He recently offered to play
Let's Make a Deal with U.S. officials.  "He phoned at 9:50 one night saying
he could deliver Osama bin Laden and bring down the Taliban," a knowledgeable
foreign diplomat tells Newsweek.  "He just wanted a guarantee that he would
get the $5 million reward, a satellite phone, and the governorship of
Nangarhar Province."

Newsweek also reports a denial that Abdul Haq, the scion of an Afghan ruling
class family who was killed by the Taliban last week, was not sent into
Afghanistan as a bagman for the CIA.  McFarlane, who was acting as a kind of
informal adviser to Haq, says he was not backed by the agency and that the
CIA turned down Haq's requests for weapons, helicopter airlift, and a field
radio. The agency did offer to provide the old rebel leader with a satellite
phone, but Haq dismissively replied that he already owned several.  U.S.
government sources say the CIA was wary of Haq, considering him a maverick
and a bit of a self-promoter.  Later, when Haq was surrounded by the Taliban,
McFarlane did appeal for a U.S. air mission to help him, but it arrived too
late.
---------- more

Victory may take bribes as well as bullets.
The culture of Afghanistan's fickle power brokers.
By Evan Thomas and Melinda Liu  - Newsweek

Abdul Haq was, as an earlier generation of diplomats and spy-masters might
have put it, "our kind of warlord." The scion of an Afghan upper-class
family, he organized underground resistance in Kabul against Soviet
domination during the 1980s. At a White House reception in 1985, President
Ronald Reagan toasted Haq as "one of the bravest commanders who led the
Afghan freedom fighters." After the Soviets were driven out, Haq denounced
Islamic extremism and came out in favor of educating women. He spoke perfect
English, drank Diet Cokes and could lucidly discuss strategy. Forsaking his
lucrative import-export business in Dubai, he had gone to Pakistan in
September to try to entice other warlords away from the ruling Taliban to
form a "peace coalition." On Oct. 21 he slipped across the border into
Afghanistan, reportedly with a bundle of U.S. dollars.

It took the Taliban all of five days to track down Haq, try him in a two-hour
kangaroo court and execute him as a spy. Journalists widely assumed that Haq
had been sent into Afghanistan as a bagman for the CIA. Not so, says Robert
C. (Bud) McFarlane, Reagan's former national-security adviser, who was acting
as a kind of informal adviser to Haq. Far from backing Haq, the agency had
turned down his requests for weapons, a helicopter airlift and a field radio.
The agency did offer to provide the seasoned Afghan rebel leader with a
satellite phone, but Haq dismissively replied that he already owned several.
(U.S. government sources say the CIA was wary of Haq, considering him a
maverick and a bit of a self-promoter -- one old company hand called him
"Hollywood Haq.") When Haq fell afoul of the Taliban on his secret mission
last week, McFarlane spent an agonizing two hours trying to get the United
States government to rescue him. Learning from a source in Pakistan that Haq
was being chased into the mountains by the Taliban, McFarlane urgently
appealed for help from Central Command, the Florida-based U.S. headquarters
of the campaign against the Taliban. By the time U.S. warplanes got to the
scene, Haq had been captured.

The dispiriting tale of Haq serves to illustrate some of the complexities and
pitfalls of the war in Afghanistan. After a month the fight appeared to be
going slowly and not well. U.S. officials were disappointed by the slow pace
of defections from the ruling Taliban. The battle for Afghan hearts and minds
was not made easier when carrier-based U.S. planes mistakenly bombed a Red
Cross warehouse full of food and medical supplies for starving Afghans in
Kabul. It was the second time the Navy had hit the Red Cross warehouse, and
the strike came only a couple of days after a meeting between Pentagon
officials and relief workers to identify buildings that should not be hit in
Kabul (on the same raid, another Navy plane missed the warehouse and bombed a
residential neighborhood). Meanwhile, at a Pentagon briefing, Rear Adm. John
Stufflebeem told reporters that he was "surprised" by the "doggedness" of the
Taliban. The admiral came off sounding naive: the Taliban may be wretched
rulers, but they are fight-to-the-death fanatics. Knowing American scruples
about killing civilians, the Taliban army has been parking its tanks next to
mosques and using hospitals as barracks.

Better-aimed smart bombs may not suffice to overcome such devilishness. Under
pressure from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to offer more-creative war
plans, Central Command has proposed what one informed source characterized to
Newsweek as a "roll the dice" raid against the Taliban leadership. Assuming
that U.S. Special Forces can find the Taliban leaders (no mean feat), the
commandos may be in for a tough fight. Administration sources told Newsweek
that, contrary to earlier public reports, the Special Forces raid on Oct. 21
met surprisingly swift and well-organized resistance. As for the ultimate
target -- Osama bin Laden -- Rumsfeld last week told USA Today that the
terror mastermind may never be found. The next day the secretary felt obliged
to sound more upbeat. "I think we're going to get him," he told reporters --
but he did not predict when. The obstacles ahead are daunting: the Afghan
winter, rugged mine-strewn battlefields, the near-impossible task of waging
all-out war against Islamic extremists without offending Islamic
sensitivities. But the biggest trap may be dealing with Afghanistan's
notoriously fickle warlords.

It has become a cliche that beating the Taliban would be easier with bribes
than bullets. "Afghan commanders naturally respond to money," said retired
U.S. diplomat and Afghan expert Edmund McWilliams. "They can be bought off.
That's the way things work in Afghanistan." Maybe so, yet Gen. Hamid Gul, the
retired chief of the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, offers a more
nuanced rule of thumb: "They say you can always rent an Afghan. But you can
never be sure you own them." During the long struggle against the Soviets and
the ensuing civil wars, some warlords survived by transferring their
allegiances to whichever side was winning -- at that moment. One commander
switched sides no fewer than six times; another was jokingly said to practice
a kind of seasonal loyalty: in the brutal summers he escaped Kandahar in the
south, while in the equally rugged winters he defected from Kabul in the
north.

Buying an Afghan warlord requires a complicated courtship. Offering a bag
full of cash is deemed to be offensive. First must come much talking and many
cups of tea and promises of good works and, most important, some kind of job
security, like the governorship of a province. Often, go-betweens are
required. Various shadowy middlemen have cropped up in Peshawar and Quetta,
cities of intrigue and rumor on the Pakistan-Afghan border, offering to help
broker deals. One such would-be fixer, an Afghan-American businessman named
Kabir Mohabbat, proposed to turn over no less a prize than bin Laden himself,
according to U.S. government sources. Mohabbat told CBS News that he had met
secretly with U.S. and Taliban officials at a hotel in Quetta, Pakistan.
State Department officials denied any such meeting and, in any case, bin
Laden is still in his cave, and the middleman has returned home -- to Texas.

The agency in charge of lining up the right warlords is the CIA. Talking with
Newsweek last week after his friend Haq perished, McFarlane was biting. The
CIA, he says, "has failed miserably. There's an appalling lack of
intelligence skills. I haven't yet found one Dari speaker in the agency -- or
anyone who speaks any other Afghan dialect, for that matter. Or any analyst
with real knowledge of Afghanistan's history, its tribal cultures, the
networks that exist there." (Acknowledging a dearth of language skills and
regional experts, the CIA is now busily recruiting.)

The CIA has been counting on Pakistani intelligence to lure some Taliban
defectors. But the ISI, which helped create the Taliban to bring stability to
civil-war-torn Afghanistan, cannot be easily spun around to subvert its old
clients. The CIA is understandably suspicious of ISI agents playing a double
game. Indeed, some U.S. intelligence officials suspect that Taliban
sympathizers in the ISI tipped off the Taliban to Haq's ill-fated mission to
Afghanistan. American officials are also wary of former Afghanistan
chieftains who suddenly appear offering to produce miracles, for a price.
Just a month ago a former Afghan commander, Haji Zaman Ghamshirik, returned
from exile in Dijon, France, where he had been cooling his heels for four
years. He spruced up his guesthouse in Peshawar where turbaned Pashtuns crowd
the shady lawn, bodyguards with assault rifles lurk by the gate and large
locked trunks-stuffed with arms? -- can be seen stacked in a corner.
Ghamshirik recently offered to play "Let's Make a Deal" with U.S. officials.
"He phoned at 9:50 one night saying he could deliver Osama bin Laden and
bring down the Taliban," a knowledgeable foreign diplomat told Newsweek. "He
just wanted a guarantee that he would get the $5 million reward, a satellite
phone and the governorship of Nangarhar province."

Some warlords hope to start a bidding war. Jalaludin Haqqani, a former
mujahedin commander who is the Taliban's minister for frontier and tribal
relations, may be for sale. Haqqani is a brutal fighter -- known for his
"ethnic cleansing" campaign against northern tribesmen -- but his Islamic
extremism is more opportunistic than sincere, say U.S. intelligence
officials. Haqqani was recently named the Taliban's southern regional
military commander (giving him control over lucrative drug- and
people-smuggling networks). Coming on Oct. 1, the same day the American
bombing began, his promotion was widely seen as a move to cement Haqqani's
loyalty with a reward of spoils. And yet Haqqani was recently spotted across
the border in Pakistan. Was he there to drum up support among fundamentalist
hard-liners? Or to sell out the Taliban? "Probably, he was working both sides
of the street," said a U.N. analyst who knows him. "That's the Afghan way."

Taliban leaders looking to switch sides are faced with a basic problem: there
is no one to defect to. No Taliban leader can afford to be seen openly
handing his sword to the Americans, and in any case U.S. officials do not
want to be in the position of openly favoring one set of warlords over
another. Before the bombing began on Oct. 1, various national-security
officials in the Bush administration -- and many outside experts -- argued
that it would be a mistake to launch the war before setting up a political
alternative to the Taliban. These concerns were pushed aside by George W.
Bush and his top advisers, who wanted to bomb before international support
ebbed and the terrorists hit again. As a result, many potential defectors
have rallied to the Taliban against the outside "invaders."

Early attempts to patch together some kind of opposition government have
bordered on the farcical. Last week Pir Sayyid Ahmad Gailani, known as the
leader of the "Gucci Mooj" for his $1,500 suits, organized a "peace and
unity" conference in Peshawar. To make the auditorium look full he had to
pack it with various camp followers and entrepreneurial middlemen. The main
attraction -- envoys of Afghanistan's 87-year-old former king, King Mohamad
Zahir Shah, who lives in Rome -- was a no-show. The king and his court are a
"disaster," one diplomatic source told Newsweek. "There are incredibly
important issues at stake and the people around the king are squabbling over
who gets to sit where at the Pavarotti concert -- literally."

On the only real "front" of the war, the battleline between the Taliban and
the forces of the Northern Alliance outside Kabul, progress is slow, and
sometimes backward. America's important new ally, Pakistan, bitterly opposes
allowing the Northern Alliance to seize control of Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Pakistan wants an Afghan government run by Pashtuns, the ethnic group that
dominates in the south. The Northern Alliance is stitched together from
different tribes -- Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmens and assorted others. Some of the
Northern Alliance warlords are serious-minded military commanders. Ismail
Khan, self-possessed and charismatic in his flowing white robes, managed to
keep a semblance of order in his province during the Afghan civil wars of the
early '90s. But then there is Rashid Dostum, a vain and sadistic monster out
of a novel by Graham Greene or Joseph Conrad. In the '80s Dostum ran the
vicious secret police in the pro-Soviet puppet government in Kabul. Then,
when he sensed the Soviets collapsing, he switched sides and became a
predator in the civil war. An Afghan surgeon then living in Kabul remembers
soldiers from Dostum's militia storming the wealthy Microrayon neighborhood
looking for women to rape. "They were violating women and girls, then some
women and girls jumped from the fifth floor of apartment buildings." Dostum's
marauders chopped off breasts and tied the toes of women behind their heads,
said the doctor, who now lives in the Netherlands. No wonder that no one
wants Dostum to win the race for Kabul.

It's a very slow race in any case. The bombing campaign has picked up in
recent days with the use of cluster bombs, a particularly lethal munition
that spews little man-killing bomblets. But the United States has held off
from staging the sort of mammoth B-52 raids that rained iron and terror on
dug-in forces in Vietnam and during the gulf war. For the most part the
Americans are still using precision weapons to take out individual targets.
(Some bombs are not so precise; on Saturday an errant airstrike killed at
least 10 civilians and wounded 20 in Northern Alliance territory.) During the
gulf war, U.S. pilots talked of "tank plinking" with their laser-guided
bombs. Now they are reduced to "pickup plinking." Indeed, while America was
reluctant to hit the Taliban forward positions outside Kabul for fear of
appearing to favor the Northern Alliance, Taliban terrorists intentionally
parked their souped-up pickups along the front line, figuring they'd be safe
there. The "front" remains extremely fluid. Abdul (who asked that his real
name not be used, to protect against Taliban reprisals), a portly middle-aged
Afghan interviewed by Newsweek, commutes between his job in Kabul and his
family in Jabal os Saraj, 35 miles away on the other side of the Northern
Alliance lines. "I just came from Kabul a week ago," said Abdul, "and I'll go
back there in a week to get my salary." Abdul joins a procession of
businessmen, spies and war profiteers routinely passing between the lines.
Ask a Jabal shopkeeper where he gets his cans of Iranian Pepsi, and he'll
answer, "From Kabul, of course. Where else?" Most Afghans still feel they
have more in common with each other than they do with the infidel foreigners.
"A guy lets his beard grow out, he's a Talib. He trims it, he's a friend,"
says a Northern Alliance official. "Either you foreigners finally solve this
mess or we'll get together again and send you all to hell."

No one is putting a timetable on "solving this mess." In Pakistan, President
Gen. Pervez Musharraf has beseeched the Americans to end the bombing campaign
by the beginning of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, in mid-November. In an
interview with Newsweek and other publications, he warned that a drawn-out
air war could breed more civil unrest in Pakistan -- threatening his own
regime and raising the specter of a takeover by Islamic extremists. Yet
British defense officials have been forthrightly predicting that the war
could easily drag on into next summer and beyond. President Bush has talked
about using the United Nations to rebuild Afghanistan, but it's unlikely that
many, if any, member nations will be willing to send troops to keep order in
the volatile country. That could mean that American soldiers will have to do
the job.

They would be entering a hellish world. First, there are the mines that
already claim several Afghans a day: the "bounding frag" that jumps up and
spits fragments, waist high, and the "butterfly," which floats to the ground
and looks like a toy, often drawing the attention of children who pick them
up and get their hands blown off. Then there are the diseases: dengue,
cholera, sand-fly fever, amebic dysentery and even a rare Ebola-like killer
called Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. The snakes and spiders in Afghanistan
are said to be especially virulent, but the most lethal threat is the people.
Newsweek interviewed several Uzbek veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
"You will never feel safe. You can be ambushed at any time," said Daniyar
Guliamov, a sergeant in a security unit based in Kabul. "The people in
Afghanistan are quite dangerous because during the day they are kind,
hospitable, friendly. At night they sneak out, pick up their weapons and
attack you." After losing an army in the 19th century, the British learned
that the best way to run Afghanistan is from a distance, through surrogate
rulers. In the 21st century the United States may need to heed the lessons of
the past. But that means finding warlords that America can trust -- and
helping them stay alive.
With Christian Caryl in Jabal os Saraj, Donatella Lorch, John Barry and Roy
Gutman in Washington, Owen Matthews in Istanbul, Rod Nordland and William
Underhill in London, Ron Moreau and Tony Clifton in Islamabad, Ian MacKinnon
in Peshawar, Colin Soloway in Tashkent and Gretel C. Kovach in New York
-------- more

Simpson on Sunday: The Taliban are a ragbag of deluded opportunists
By John Simpson Telegraph (Filed: 28/10/2001)

HAVING watched the American bombing of Taliban positions from the Northern
Alliance front line every day for a week now, it is clear to me that the
tactics and even the weapons being used are having precisely the opposite
effect on the Taliban from the one intended.

Instead of demonstrating the awesome might of the world's greatest military
power, the bombing is convincing the Taliban that the Americans are
inadequate and effete; and the baffled, discouraged statements coming out of
Washington during the past week have led them to believe that the Bush
administration is losing heart.

As for the betrayal and capture of the resistance leader Abdul Haq on
Thursday night, Afghans on both sides are interpreting it as evidence that
the Americans are incapable of protecting their friends, and that the Taliban
are more effective than everyone expected.

Not a single one of these things is true. But in the strange, shut-in world
of the Taliban, appearance counts for everything; and so far appearances have
been against the United States. Every Afghan who has fought here during the
past 21 years knows what aerial bombardment is like: a terrifying ordeal that
can go on for hours and seems to wrench your heart out.

The Soviet pilots who bombed the mujahideen throughout the 1980s cared
nothing for civilian casualties; they blasted entire areas with impunity,
each aircraft flying low, attacking again and again. All last week I stood on
the Northern Alliance line, watching the languid approach of American
aircraft in ones or twos, so high in the sky that it required the sharp eyes
of an 18-year-old volunteer to spot them.

The bombs fall extraordinary distances; the other day my cameraman filmed one
at the moment it was dropped, and followed it to the ground. When we timed
the video we found it took a full 26 seconds to reach its target: a Taliban
tank opposite us.

The entire operation was a miracle of 21st-century technological achievement,
perhaps costing millions of dollars; and having delivered his single bomb
from the safety of the stratosphere, the pilot flew hundreds of miles back to
his base in Uzbekistan.

That constituted an air raid. I have watched American bombing of ground
targets three times in the past decade, in Baghdad, in Belgrade, and now in
Afghanistan. I know how it feels.

You have a strange sense of invulnerability, because you quickly realise how
accurate these smart bombs are. Of course they sometimes hit the wrong
things, either because someone has programmed them wrongly or because the
pilot makes a mistake. But for the most part you are as safe from being
bombed as a front-row spectator at a boxing match is from getting punched.

The Taliban troops opposite us probably understood this as early as last
Monday - the second day the Americans bombed their positions. Now they
scarcely bother when the tiny silver crosses appear far up in the blue sky.

On Friday, a friend of mine watched a group of Taliban soldiers praying on a
flat roof opposite, careless that other Taliban positions nearby were
exploding in jets of flame and clouds of dark brown smoke. They knew they
were safe.

From the statements being made in Washington and London, it sounds as though
the Americans, and perhaps the British too, are in danger of accepting the
Taliban's own estimate of themselves: tenacious fighters whose religious
faith enables them to face the fiercest assault in history with equanimity.

That is not how the Northern Alliance, who know them better, see the Taliban.
They realise instead that the Taliban are a ragbag of opportunists headed by
a few religious extremists, who have had the immense benefit of logistical,
political and intelligence support from Pakistan for a number of years
(someone, after all, tipped off the Taliban that Haq was coming), and who now
lack any serious base of popular support within Afghanistan.

They also know, however, that the Americans are relying far too much on the
safe, remote-controlled technology of a new millennium to fight effectively
against an enemy whose notions of warfare derive from the distant past.

No wonder the Northern Alliance commanders I speak to are gloomy. It never
occurred to them that 21st century warfare could be so disengaged, so
unthreatening, so apparently feeble. These wildly expensive bombs, the cost
of any one of which, adroitly used, could buy the defection of every single
Afghan commander on the Taliban front line opposite us, are working against
the Americans.

If Washington and London are not careful, there's a danger that the superb
display of technological achievement we see every day could end up handing
the Taliban an undeserved victory on a plate.
·   John Simpson is the BBC world affairs editor
=======
email: <a href="mailto:mail@afghanradio.com?Subject=Re:%20(ai)%20[Fwd:%20Afghan%20News%2010/29/2001%20-%20#1039]%2526In-Reply-To=%2526lt;3BDD540E.FB2CCA41@speconsult.com">mail@afghanradio.com</a>

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