25 - 31 October 2001
Issue No.557
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 25 - 31 October 2001 Issue No.557 |
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Two deadlines
The United States could escalate the current attack on Afghanistan as Ramadan, and a deadly winter, close in
American warplanes pounded the Afghan capital, Kabul, and other major cities, around the clock, while forces opposed to the Taliban claimed their first territorial gains yesterday under US air cover.
RENDERED UNTO GOD: A protestor, clad in the garb the Taliban has imposed on Afghan women, in Italy's 40th annual peace march. This year, the assault on Palestine and the bombs raining on Afghanistan have driven home the growing importance, and urgency, of the global anti-war movement (photo: AFP)
Representatives of anti-Taliban groups also opened a meeting in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar yesterday, and more meetings are scheduled in Turkey to determine the shape of a post-Taliban government.
An opposition leader close to Afghanistan's former king, Zaher Shah, said the 86-year-old monarch wants a multi-national Muslim force to keep peace in the country once an interim government replaces the Taliban.
Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, head of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA), also urged moderate Taliban supporters to join efforts to rebuild the devastated country.
Zahir Shah has become the focus of international efforts to cobble together an alternative government representing all the disparate ethnic groups in Afghanistan should the Taliban collapse. Gailani suggested that the former king could head a collective leadership council responsible for supervising an interim government.
In Afghanistan, spokesmen for the Taliban said over 1,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in US attacks that began on 7 October. The spokesmen reported a tragedy in Chakoor Kariz village, near Kandahar, where they said at least 93 people were killed. On Tuesday, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television channel broadcast pictures of dozens of corpses, including children, lying next to each other, and said they were killed by US bombs. The Taliban said the US must have mistaken the village for a terrorist training camp.
Pentagon officials have not commented yet, but acknowledged an earlier attack on a hospital in the northern Afghan town of Herat. A Pentagon spokeswoman said a bomb went astray over the city and may have hit "an old people's home". The Taliban announced that the US had bombed a 100-bed civilian hospital in the city, as well as a military clinic.
Refugees arriving in Peshawar also recounted that 20 people, including nine children, were killed in a tractor and a trailer as they tried to flee an attack on the southern Afghan town of Tirin Kot.
On another front, anti-Taliban commander Mohamed Atta said his forces in the Dara-e-Souf valley, 70km south of the key northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, had mounted a night offensive on Keshendeh district.
He said that "wave after wave" of US air attacks on "enemy" lines had enabled his men to gain control of four villages and take 150 prisoners after a battle that left between 70 and 80 Taliban troops dead. He would not say what the advance represented in terms of distance.
"The Americans bombed them again and again. It was very helpful for us," Atta said.
A senior Pentagon official said Tuesday the campaign, which has succeeded in crippling Taliban air defences, was unlikely to be over before winter sets in around the middle of next month. British Prime Minister Tony Blair provided a similar estimate, and said he hoped the US-led coalition would "have accomplished or be accomplishing" its aims in Afghanistan by Christmas.
"If it was a perfect world, we'd like to wrap this up before the
bad weather moved in," said Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem. But he added: "We don't think that that's realistic."
Ramadan is also approaching fast. In an interview last night on CNN's Larry King Live, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf emphasised that he would like to see the US campaign wind up before Ramadan begins in mid-November. "One would hope and wish that this campaign comes to an end before the month of Ramadan, and one would hope for restraint during the month of Ramadan, because this would certainly have some negative effects in the Muslim world," he said.
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld left all options open, however, opining: "History is replete with instances where Muslim nations have fought -- among themselves or with other countries -- during various important holy days for their religion, and it has not inhibited them historically." US commentators have referred in particular to the 1973 War, when Egypt and Syria launched their sudden attack against Israel during Ramadan.
Meanwhile, the anthrax scare continues to puzzle Americans, with clear indications that US investigators are trying to pin responsibility on terrorists associated with Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden. Investigators yesterday showed several anthrax-infected letters including statements such as "death to America, death to Israel and God is most great." US President George Bush earlier said he would not be surprised if Bin Laden's group turned out to be responsible, but added that there was no evidence so far to make that connection. Some interest groups have seized the opportunity to point accusing fingers at Iraq.
Former CIA Director R James Woolsey told the National Convention of the American Jewish Congress on Monday that "if evidence continues to develop pointing to Iraqi involvement in the terrorist incidents against the United States in the 1990s, 11 September and afterwards, the American people will not only tolerate, but will demand victory over Iraq. We must wage this war quickly, powerfully and ruthlessly." Many political pundits have said that, after Afghanistan, Iraq will constitute "phase two" of the campaign.
A completely different definition of that phase came from Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa at a function in Washington: "Phase two of the international effort should focus on the root causes of terrorism. Frustration, despair and anger are sentiments which, if unchecked, can be channeled into destructive acts," he warned.
Moussa added: "Only by resolving ongoing conflicts can we effectively deprive terrorists of hiding behind legitimate causes and gaining sympathisers."
The Arab League head explained that "the anger in the Middle East, the frustration and despair, emanate chiefly from the major injustice done to the Palestinians and other Arabs and the continued occupation and seeing no light at the end of the tunnel."
Thomas Gorguissian in Washington
Absar Alam in Islamabad
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