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2001-11-15

On Friday, November 16 at 12 noon-1 pm on WORT's
A Public Affair, Zoltan Grossman will again have as
his guest Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of
The Independent (London).  Fisk's war dispatches from
Islamabad, Pakistan , can be seen at
http://www.independent.co.uk . The interview
will take place live from Beirut.

Robert Fisk was the first western journalist to
interview Osama Bin Laden, and one of the first to warn of
the consequences of the West's tilt toward Islamist
militants in the region.  Fisk's harsh assessment
of the new/old rulers of Kabul, the Northern Alliance,
can be seen below, as can a similar new statement from
the Revolutionary Association of Women of
Afghanistan (RAWA).

Tune in to 89.9fm, and call 256-2001 on Friday to
ask questions.

++++++++++++++++

Published on Tuesday, November 13, 2001 in the Independent/UK

No Surprise at Rumors of New Atrocities by Our 'Foot-Soldiers'

by Robert Fisk

The Northern Alliance's sudden victories in Afghanistan may be good news

for the West but the bad news is not far behind. The Uzbek, Tadjik and
Hazara gunmen who make up this rag-tag army have a bloody reputation for

torturing and executing prisoners which ? if resumed in the coming days
? will
plunge America and Britain into a moral abyss.

Chilling stories of more than 100 pro-Taliban Pakistani fighters shot
dead after their surrender in Mazar-i-Sharif ? and of Alliance gunmen
"roaming the streets'' of the abandoned city ? will not come as a
surprise to
those who are aware of the atrocities committed by America's new allies
during
the 1992-96 fighting in Kabul.

For the Americans ? and for the minuscule British component of the
West's military forces inside Afghanistan ? the behavior of the Northern

Alliance presents a grave problem. As our "foot-soldiers" are in
Afghanistan, we
cannot disclaim responsibility for human rights abuses by the Alliance's

gunmen; yet neither the Americans nor the British appear to have tried
to control the army they are now helping. Indeed, it seems they may not
even be able to prevent the Alliance from entering Kabul.

The massacres committed by malicious fighting in the name of outside
powers have regularly brought shame upon their more powerful allies. The

Contras in Nicaragua and the Phalangist militiamen in Lebanon
contaminated their
respective American and Israeli masters ? the latter in the notorious
Palestinian camp massacres of Sabra and Chatila in 1982. A glance at the

Alliance's track record of rape, pillage and street executions in Kabul
between 1992 and 1996 suggests that the so-called Allies ? America,
Britain and just about anyone else who wants to join in ? have good
reason to
exert their influence over the newly victorious militiamen from the
north of
Afghanistan.

In Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat there are comparatively few Pashtun
communities, which traditionally favor the Taliban.
A bit further south the Alliance will find itself among its ethnic
enemies. In 1997, Mazar's Hazara defenders killed more than 600 Taliban
militiamen who had taken over the city and then massacred dozens of
Pakistani
students who had accompanied the Taliban into the region. In later
bloodbaths,
thousands of Taliban prisoners were shot into mass graves, with dozens
more Pakistanis. A Northern Alliance turncoat, General Pahlawan Malik,
subsequently executed 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war who had been
tortured and starved before being put to death.

Many were drowned in wells. Others met a more carefully planned death.
One of General Malik's generals recalled: "At night when it was quiet
and
dark we took about 150 Taliban prisoners, blindfolded them, tied their
hands
behind their backs and drove them in truck containers out to the desert.

We lined them up 10 at a time, in front of holes in the ground, and
opened
fire. It took about six nights.''

On other occasions Taliban prisoners were locked inside containers in
mid-summer; 1,250 were deliberately asphyxiated in this way, their
corpses dragged from the containers, blackened by the heat.

Could it happen again? There is no reason to believe the Alliance has
been taking lessons in human rights. It has been receiving ammunition
from
Russia and logistics from the United States. Photographs in yesterday's
Pakistani papers showed Alliance gunmen leading a small party of Western
troops
through the terrain of northern Afghanistan. But our soldiers are highly

unlikely to have been distributing copies of the Geneva Convention to
their new friends.

++++++++++


Robert Fisk: Our friends are killers, crooks and torturers

07 October 2001
The Independent (London)
www.independent.co.uk

Almost four weeks after the crimes against humanity in New
York and Washington, we are playing politics on the hoof and
allying ourselves to some of the nastiest butchers around.

Mr Blair may believe that "the values we believe in should shine
through what we do in Afghanistan" but few of our "friends" in
the region have many values, and some of them have a lot of
blood on their hands. For as we search for facilities and
jumping-off points and air space and access -- and we are now
creating policies by the day -- we are being asked to forget a
lot of recent history.

First out of the memory goes Chechnya. The savage
repression of this Muslim republic -- complete with mass
executions, mass rape and mass graves -- was the brainchild
of Vladimir Putin, the former serving KGB officer into whose
soul Mr Bush believes he peered in Slovenia.

Mr Putin's assault on Grozny was timed to bring him the
Russian presidency, and within weeks his indisciplined troops
had turned the rubble of Chechnya into something approaching
Afghanistan. Mr Putin now seems our strongest ally in the "war
against terror". And why not, when he is himself such a master
of terror?

Second out of the memory goes the nasty little dictatorship run
by the Saudi royal family whose religious "mouttawa" police
taught the Taliban how to run their Ministry for the Prevention of
Vice and Promotion of Virtue.

We should forget that women are not even allowed to drive a
car in Saudi Arabia, we must ignore the weekly
head-choppings outside mosques, the country's disgraceful
and unfair judicial system -- everything, in fact, which might
remind us of Saudi Arabia's carbon copy, the Taliban, whose
destruction we are now seeking.

Then we must turn our attention away from the not terribly
democratic regime of General Pervez Musharraf. Only a little
while ago, the general was the Pakistani army commander who
overthrew the democratically elected -- though corrupt --
government of Nawaz Sharif. Indeed, General Musharraf was
rather keen to hang Mr Sharif until President Clinton dropped
by Islamabad early last year to condemn Osama bin Laden
and appeal for Sharif's life.

Only a few weeks ago, the general appointed himself president.
And while the world tut-tutted then, it now respectfully accords
General Musharraf the title of "president" too.

Fourth down the memory hole goes our new friend Uzbekistan
whose President Islam Karimov currently holds 7,000 political
prisoners in his jails. There is no free press, no political
opposition.

Mikhail Ardzinov, one of the few human rights activists in
Uzbekistan -- who was brutally beaten by Karimov's secret
police two years ago -- now says that although America had
promised not to sell out human rights to get Karimov's
friendship, "We know that the tone will change now". Too true.
Karimov has promised that his air space can be "used in the
fight against terrorism for humanitarian and security aims".

And this is not the moment to remind anyone that Uzbekistan
has its own reasons to destroy the Taliban -- not just because
the Taliban has been exporting its revolution over the
Afghan-Uzbek border, but because President Karimov wants to
run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to a Pakistani port, a
project that will help to fund his bankrupt police state (as well
as a few American oil companies).

One of Karimov's allies is the anti-Taliban war criminal Abdul
Rashid Dustum whose men went on a rampage of rape in
Kabul in the early Nineties and who, for several months, went
to fight for the Taliban after receiving a massive bribe for his
change of allegiance. So it's amnesia too for the anarchy and
mass human rights abuses perpetrated when the Northern
Alliance -- our friends in northern Afghanistan -- ruled Kabul.
We must remember with sorrow its former leader, Ahmed Shah
Massoud, a genuine patriot murdered by Arab suicide bombers
on 9 September, but we must forget his colleague Rasoul
Sayaf whose men used Shia women as sex slaves in the early
Nineties.

Now it's true that Churchill, when told in 1941 that Germany
had invaded the Soviet Union and that Stalin was now his ally,
announced that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would at least make "a
favourable reference" to the Devil in the House of Commons.
But we're not making any references at all to our "friends" in
the region. We have drawn the shining bright sword and have
no time to worry if the hands we shake are covered in blood.

This is a war of democracy versus evil, according to President
Bush. It's just that there's not an awful lot of democracy
around.

+++++++++++


>Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

>RAWA's appeal to the UN and World community
>
>The people of Afghanistan do not accept domination of the Northern
>Alliance!
>
>Now it is confirmed that the Taliban have left Kabul and the Northern
>Alliance has entered the city.
>
>The world should understand that the Northern Alliance is composed of
some
>bands who did show their real criminal and inhuman nature when they
were
>ruling Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996.
>
>The retreat of the terrorist Taliban from Kabul is a positive
development,
>but entering of the rapist and looter NA in the city is nothing but a
>dreadful and shocking news for about 2 million residents of Kabul whose

>wounds of the years 1992-96 have not healed yet.
>
>Thousands of people who fled Kabul during the past two months were
saying
>that they feared coming to power of the NA in Kabul much more than
being
>scared by the US bombing.
>
>The Taliban and Al-Qaeda will be eliminated, but the existence of the
NA as
>a military force would shatter the joyful dream of the majority for an
>Afghanistan free from the odious chains of barbaric Taliban. The NA
will
>horribly intensify the ethnic and religious conflicts and will never
>refrain
>to fan the fire of another brutal and endless civil war in order to
retain
>in power. The terrible news of looting and inhuman massacre of the
captured
>Taliban or their foreign accomplices in Mazar-e-Sharif in past few days

>speaks for itself.
>
>Though the NA has learned how to pose sometimes before the West as
>"democratic" and even supporter of women's rights, but in fact they
have
>not
>at all changed, as a leopard cannot change its spots.
>
>RAWA has already documented heinous crimes of the NA. Time is running
out.
>RAWA on its own part appeals to the UN and world community as a whole
to
>pay >urgent and considerable heed to the recent developments in our
ill-fated
>Afghanistan before it is too late.
>
>We would like to emphatically ask the UN to send its effective
>peace-keeping >force into the country before the NA can repeat the
unforgettable crimes
>they committed in the said years.
>
>The UN should withdraw its recognition to the so-called Islamic
government
>headed by Rabbani and help the establishment of a broad-based
government
>based on the democratic values.
>
>RAWA's call stems from the aspirations of the vast majority of the
people
>of >Afghanistan.
>
>Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
>


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Thursday, November 15, 2001 11:20 AM

[MAPC-discuss] WORT Fri. noon: X on the continuing