Return-Path: <sentto-279987-3589-1004369160-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 [204.181.12.215] by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.7.4) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:27:08 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 4749 invoked by uid 510); 29 Oct 2001 15:25:19 -0000 Received: from n6.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.56) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 29 Oct 2001 15:25:19 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-3589-1004369160-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.52] by n6.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 29 Oct 2001 15:26:00 -0000 X-Sender: fc@red.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 29 Oct 2001 15:25:59 -0000 Received: (qmail 72834 invoked from network); 29 Oct 2001 15:25:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 29 Oct 2001 15:25:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO red.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta3 with SMTP; 29 Oct 2001 15:25:57 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by red.all.net (8.11.2/8.11.2) id f9TFQJx14673 for iwar@onelist.com; Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:26:19 -0800 Message-Id: <200110291526.f9TFQJx14673@red.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> X-Yahoo-Profile: fcallnet Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:26:18 -0800 (PST) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:Veiled.but.deadly.-.female.fighters.who.defy.Taliban] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit <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> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get your FREE VeriSign guide to security solutions for your web site: encrypting transactions, securing intranets, and more! http://us.click.yahoo.com/UnN2wB/m5_CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ------------------ http://all.net/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-12-31 20:59:58 PST