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Published in issues #525 on 13 May 2002 and #527 on 27
May 2002*
British commander wrong in
declaring war over, Omaid Weekly tells BBC
(Issue #525)
By Omaid Weekly staff
In a surprising announcement, this week the commander of British forces
declared that the war on al Qaida and the Taliban was "all but
won". One reason given by Brigadier Roger Lane was that they had
"not come into contact with the enemy per se" and therefore
military operations will "start coming to an end."
In light of this unexpected comment by a high ranking member of the
international force in Afghanistan, the BBC World Service interviewed the
editor in chief of Omaid Weekly, Mohammad Q. Koshan on Thursday, May 9.
The BBC remarked that in contrast to the comment by Brig. Lane "at
the same time, Pakistan and France are blaming al Qaida for the bombing
attack yesterday in Karachi that killed 15 people."
The BBC asked Mr. Koshan how the comment by Brig. Lane and the latest
charge by Pakistan and France could be reconciled. In response, Mr. Koshan
said that "Mr. Roger Lane will commit a big mistake, it shall be a
big mistake."
Mr. Koshan added that the international force should pursue al Qaida
and the Taliban "because everyone knows that there are more than
25,000 madrassahs [religious seminaries, of an extremist bent] inside
Pakistan."
Omaid Weekly's chief explained, "All al Qaida leaders are still
alive and they are living inside Afghanistan and inside Pakistan. Mr.
Haqqani is alive, Mr. Zawahiri is alive, Mowlana Fazl ur-Rahman is alive,
Sami ul-Haq is alive, Hamid Gul is alive, Naseerullah Babur, Akhtar Abd-ur-Rahman,
Moinudeen Haidar -- all of these people are responsible for the creation
of the Taliban and they also helped al Qaida. Therefore, it will be a
mistake if anybody thinks that it's over, that the operation against
terrorism is over."
Mr. Koshan said the international force against terrorism, which
throughout these months operated in concert with Afghanistan's United
Front national resistance force and now the interim government,
"should be there and they should continue their fight against
terrorism and against narcotics."
Referring to the world's concern over Afghanistan's role in the drug
trade, Mr. Koshan clarified that while the opium poppies are grown inside
Afghanistan the refinery factories that turn the poppies into heroin,
"all of them, are in Quetta, Peshawar, and [Pakistan's] tribal
areas."
The solution is not to turn a blind eye to the source of the world's
terror problems, at least as they relate to the Taliban and al Qaida, but,
Mr. Koshan said the solution is to "destroy all of the [narcotic
refineries] and they should destroy all of these madrassahs and catch
these criminals, from bin Laden to Haqqani, all of them."
The BBC inquired as to whether Omaid Weekly believes terror don Osama
bin Laden is still alive, to which the newspaper's publisher responded,
"I hope not, but if he is alive, they should capture him." Mr.
Koshan said that the international alliance should be in the region for at
least "2 or 3 years." He reiterated that the root of narcotics
and terrorism is inside of Pakistan.
Mr. Koshan said "Afghanistan lost a lot of lives because of al
Qaida and the Taliban, and if [the international alliance] ignores these
facts and withdraws this operations, it will be a big mistake."
Mr. Koshan continued, "Today, CNN broadcast that the United States
spent $12 billion from November 7 until today, and maybe around $8 billion
by the alliance, it's almost $20 billion. If they continue and they
proceed [inside Pakistan] then they will take out the root of narcotics
and terrorism. But, if they withdraw and suspend their operation, they
will pay with many, many more lives inside the United States, in Europe,
in Afghanistan, and all over the region. That is why I ask them to
continue the operation against terrorism and narcotics."
While news reports indicated that Brig. Lane was referring to the war
in its entirety, the BBC said perhaps he was referring only to his
particular operation in a particular area in Afghanistan. Mr. Koshan said
that regardless, the international alliance should pursue al Qaida and the
Taliban "not just in Khost and that area, [but] they should go from
Oruzgan, Qandahar, Nimruz [provinces in Afghanistan], to Quetta, to
Peshawar, to even Islamabad and Karachi [in Pakistan]. They are there [in
Pakistan], everybody knows that. They are inside Kashmir, they are in
Chechnya -- they have spread all over the world. And there are still more
than 25,000 madrassahs [in Pakistan] and more than a million students. All
of them are the same. There is no difference between al Qaida and the
Taliban."
[The Associated Press quotes Brig. Lane as saying, "We believe
we're on the right way, that the fight against [the al-Qaida and Taliban]
in Afghanistan is all but won."] ><
Top
Afghan heroine featured in
world's most read magazine
(Issue #525)
The following is courtesy of the May 2002 issue of Reader's Digest, the
world's most read magazine. The article, written by Michael Alan Lerner,
was first published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine in its 3 February
2002 edition.
Home Again, to Afghanistan
The van bounces over potholes the size of swimming pools on its way
through Tajikistan's dusty no man's land of minefields and barbed wire.
Destination: the Afghan border. What should have been a 6-hour ride is
going on 17. The van's broken down a dozen times, and they've been stopped
at umpteen army checkpoints. Still, Suraya Sadeed is smiling. "There
it is," she says, pointing. "My country."
The landscape is scarred by tank treads made during the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan two decades ago and the civil war that followed. But just
beyond the drabness shimmers the green, fertile valley of the Amu Darya,
the river that defines the border of her homeland.
It is November 2001, and Sadeed -- the daughter of a former governor of
Kabul and now a naturalized American citizen -- is on her 18th
humanitarian mission here. Her goal is to deliver 239 tons of food and
blankets to some 150,000 displaced people on the drought-stricken plains
of northern Afghanistan. Many live "open air" -- that is,
without so much as a tent -- and are nearly starving.
This is her first trip back to her birth country since her adopted country
began bombing it.
Sadeed's van clears the final checkpoint before the border. Suddenly, two
gray-black plumes of smoke mushroom up a short distance away. Then come
two eardrum-popping kapows. A pair of American B-52s, clearly visible
against the azure Afghan sky, have just bombed Taliban positions. Though
Sadeed supports America's war on terrorism, this is her country, and it is
being pummeled. As she stands there, the planes drop a dozen bombs. Tears
run down her cheeks.
For years Sadeed ventured alone through Taliban lines, over mountains on
donkey-back, bringing food, cash and medical supplies. The founder and
life force of Help the Afghan Children, Sadeed and her bravery went pretty
much unnoticed until the onset of Operation Endurance Freedom, America's
response to the September 11 attacks.
She hadn't intended to say so involved in her homeland. She left at age 24
and stayed away for 15 years. Then in 1993 her husband had a massive heart
attack and died. "In seven minutes my life changed completely,"
Sadeed says. "The pain of losing him was so overwhelming."
It was time to return to Afghanistan. "I went to see how life was for
the millions of people who also lost their loved ones -- how they cope
with this pain?" Sadeed says. "When I got there, it wasn't the
same country."
She was in Peshawar, Pakistan, where thousands of Afghan refugees had
recently arrived, when a woman called her name. "She was wearing a
chadri," Sadeed recalls, using the Afghan term for a burka, "and
I couldn't see who she was. She said she had been in my psychology class
in college. I said, 'Who are you?' She said, 'I won't tell you, but could
you please give me fifty rupees? My child has no milk.' I gave her the
money and she ran off. This woman was like me -- educated, privileged. I
thought, I could be one of these people."
When Sadeed returned from her trip, she founded Help the Afghan Children
in a Washington, D.C., suburb. With just three staffers and a few
volunteers, she started 17 clandestine schools for girls and five medical
clinics. In 1998, Sadeed says, the Taliban overran one of her clinics.
"They burned it down -- nobody got out alive." Still, the
Taliban didn't intimidate her. Sadeed told them, "I was here before
you, and I will be here after you."
Sadeed walks through Qum Qishlaq, a tent city for some 8000 people. She
listens to tales of loss and grief. All complain of the bitter cold --
eight have frozen to death in the last two weeks, they say -- and lack of
food. Dysentery and malaria are rampant.
"Why do I do this?" asks Sadeed. "This is why I do this.
They need to tell their stories."
As relief trucks arrive, young men, old men, women and children step up to
collect their five kilos of sugar, eight kilos of cooking oil and 50 kilos
of wheat -- a bare minimum a family can survive on for a month.
Sadeed smiles as the procession continues. For 12 days in seven locations,
she bears witness to the distribution of her food. That, indeed, is
something she can smile about.
Her next focus: building schools for Afghan children. "Taking
emergency aid might save kids' lives from this war," Sadeed says.
"Given them education will prevent the next one." n
><
Top
U.S. bombs Afghanistan, while
Al Qaida and Taliban relax in Pakistan
(Issue #527)
Editorial
With the help of airpower from the international anti-terror alliance,
Afghanistan's national resistance force toppled the Taliban and routed al
Qaida in Afghanistan. However, the majority of the Taliban and al Qaida
survived, and by all accounts -- Afghan, Western, independent, and
eye-witness -- fled to their breeding ground, Pakistan. So why does the
United States continue to insist on bombing the already devastated plains
and mountains of Afghanistan, while it leaves untouched the terrorists'
nest inside Pakistan?
It is astonishing that respected U.S. newspapers, such as the New York
Times and Washington Post, and other news organizations have in recent
weeks provided a steady stream of news and analysis about the failures of
Tora Bora and similar U.S. battles. And they have all pointed out the fact
that most al Qaida and Taliban militants were given shelter in Pakistan's
North West Frontier province (NWFP) while the U.S. wasted millions of
American taxpayer dollars bombarding their former, long abandoned abodes
in eastern and southern parts of Afghanistan. There are still thousands of
extremist madrassahs (seminaries) in the NWFP, which churns out Taliban
style terrorists on a daily basis, and their leaders -- the likes of Mulla
Fazl ur-Rahman, Qazi Hussein, and former head of Pakistan's ISI
intelligence agency, Hamid Gul -- roam free, building ever more terrorist
factories. Yet, these prominent newspapers and news sources have failed to
ask why the U.S. and its allies are not fighting the terrorist at their
source of origin.
Still more astonishing is what is being said by U.S. defense honchos
Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks, and predictably State Department chief
Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who are
bowing to Pakistani dictator and opportunist Pervez Musharraf to direct
his army -- which played a crucial role in the rise and sustenance of the
Taliban -- to force al Qaida and Taliban militants back into Afghanistan
where they could be annihilated by U.S. B-52 bombers and any new military
technology the Pentagon wants to test in Afghanistan. It seems they are
pursuing an ideal format for target practice for U.S. troops, who are also
dying needlessly in Afghanistan, rather than a logical next step in the
war on terrorism.
However, ignoring the obvious that it is simpler to kill these murderers
on the open landscape of Pakistan's NWFP instead of mountainous
Afghanistan, U.S. military and civilian decision makers should not ignore
the fact that its not only al Qaida and the Taliban who are responsible
for terrorism in the region and throughout the world. Rather, their seeds
were planted by entities in the NWFP, in Islamabad, in Quetta, and in
Karachi. And their planters are still there, relaxing and watching the
fireworks in Afghanistan from a safe distance, reassured by U.S. inaction
against their bases in Pakistan.
Why must we be forced to ask these decision makers to bomb the terrorist
and their progenitors in Pakistan? Was it not enough that our warnings --
that their blind acceptance of Pakistani policy in Afghanistan and
therefore their indirect backing of the Taliban in Afghanistan would blow
back -- turned out so horribly true in the form of September 11?
A similar situation exists with regard to the drug trade. Certainly, there
are still thousands of acres of poppy fields in Afghanistan, and they must
be wiped out. But, with the retreat of al Qaida and the Taliban to
Pakistan, the narcotics laboratories that turn the opium poppies into
heroine have also gone across the border. And similar to our questioning
of the intent of the international alliance in their war on terrorism, do
they wish to truly address the drug problem by destroying the laboratories
inside Pakistan? Or, would they rather see the continued flow of heroine
throughout the world, particularly the West, in order to prolong it as an
issue? Moreover, the drug kingpins who have been running the show since
the early 1990s are the very same Pakistani Army generals and ISI officers
who created and nurtured the Taliban.
If the White House and Pentagon, as well as Tony Blair and other members
of the international alliance, truly want to extinguish the scourge of
terrorism and narcotics, then it is best not to encourage Pakistani
generals from sending Taliban and al Qaida militants back to Afghanistan.
This tactic failed the first time it was employed in 1995.
Rather, the U.S. and its allies must pursue the terrorists and drug
kingpins into Pakistan, and apply the same relentless, and at times
ruthless, bombing campaign that helped to drive them out of Afghanistan.
Otherwise, perhaps it is not outlandish for some to ask whether the U.S.
war is to root out terrorism or a cover to extend its reach into Central
and South Asia and insure the continued flow of its bloodstream, cheap
oil? ><
Top
U.S. to help rebuild
Afghanistan's police force Paki POWs to be exchanged for innocent
Afghans
Following is Omaid Weekly's May 19th interview with Mr. Mohammad
Yonnous Qanooni, Afghanistan's Minister for Interior Affairs. Minister
Qanooni was on his first official trip to the United States, during which
he held talks with high level U.S. officials, including U.S. National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney.
Omaid Weekly: Mr. Qanooni, this is your first trip to the United
States. Please tell us about your talks during the past two days with
senior U.S. government officials.
 Minister
Qanooni: This is my first trip to the United States. It is an official
trip at the invitation of U.S. Attorney General [John] Ashcroft.
[Thus far] we have met with the narcotics division of the U.S. Justice
Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and various other
U.S. government organs.
Our negotiations generally focused on strengthening relations between our
countries. In my capacity as the executive of the Interior Ministry, the
talks more specifically focused on cooperation for the reconstruction of
Afghanistan, particularly in the restoration of the police force and other
security apparatuses.
Our negotiations were positive and took place in a sincere environment.
And we are scheduled to have further talks with other U.S. officials,
tomorrow.
OW: What sort of assistance and in what specific arena has the United
States pledged?
MQ: The United States gave promises of aid in the general
reconstruction of Afghanistan. With regard to the instruction, training,
and mobilization of Afghanistan's police force, the FBI said it was ready
to accept a number of our people into a U.S. police academy.
They were also ready to provide us with various other sorts of assistance
in equipping and mobilizing the police force.
OW: [During your visit to Washington, D.C.] you have met several times
with Afghans, and yesterday you spoke with a large Afghan gathering. What
was your impression of the attitude of Afghans toward the interim
government and the current situation?
MQ: It was most fortunate that we were able to meet with regional
Afghans, either individually, in groups, or in a large gathering.
The new situation in Afghanistan, the end of fighting, the return of peace
and stability, and its administration by the Interim Authority, under the
supervision of my dear brother Mr. Karzai, was wholeheartedly welcomed by
the Afghans. They are hopeful for the future. The return of Afghan
refugees from various countries has begun, which itself attests to the
people's optimism about the future of Afghanistan.
I am very satisfied at our meeting with Afghans. I sensed in every one of
them their firm belief in the future of Afghanistan, and their readiness
to return and take part in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
OW: Afghans have seriously questioned the wiseness of releasing
Pakistani prisoners from several parts of Afghanistan, especially after
[Pakistani dictator] Musharraf's visit to Kabul. The complaint of the
people is that there are innocent, non-combatant Afghans being held in
Pakistan who were captured from even off the street. The Pakistani
prisoners in Afghanistan, however, are invaders and our nation's
murderers. Has or will there be an agreement whereby there will be at
least an exchange of these prisoners [eds: as opposed to the wholesale
release of Pakistani terrorists from Afghan POW prisons]?
MQ: Indeed, a number of [Pakistani POWs] have been released, due to
different reasons and motives.
It was recently debated and decided that we do not plan to indefinitely
keep the prisoners. Not one of these Pakistanis were captured in Islamabad
or Peshawar or another country. These prisoners were caught inside
Afghanistan, while fighting [against the people of Afghanistan], and they
are treated as prisoners of war by the Interim Authority. Even so, because
of humanitarian and Islamic sympathy, the Interim Authority decided
against their indefinite detention. It has decided that the POWs will, in
a timely manner, be exchanged. We, too, have poor Afghan refugees in
Pakistani prisons who were captured for suspicious reasons, and others who
during the Taliban's reign in Afghanistan were arrested inside the country
without provocation and taken to foreign prisons.
Currently, the Interim Authority has decided that we are committed to the
release of the POWs, but only in exchange for our dear compatriots being
held in Pakistani prisons. ><
Top
*From this week's English-language page
of the hard-copy edition of
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