FROM THE LA TIMES:
>>Los Angeles Times
>>September 17, 2001 Monday Home Edition
>>Afghans Teeter on Edge; Aid workers fear a major U.S. offensive
>>could trigger mass starvation in a land where millions are already
>>suffering.
>>BYLINE: TYLER MARSHALL, PAUL WATSON, TIMES STAFF
>>WRITERS
>>
>>With hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees already on the
>>move, food supplies in their nation running out and winter just
>>weeks away, U.S. military action against Afghanistan could lead to
>>mass starvation, aid agencies warned Sunday.
>>
>>The U.N. refugee agency estimated that by Saturday as many as
>>300,000 Afghans had fled the southeastern city of Kandahar, the
>>ruling Taliban movement's spiritual capital and a presumed target of
>>any airstrikes in retaliation for last week's terrorist attacks in the
>>United States.
>>
>>"That means up to half the city's population has already left, more
>>are following, and the mass exodus is spreading across the
>>country as refugees head toward Iran and Pakistan," said Yousaf
>>Hassan, a senior official in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, with
>>the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
>>
>>Even before last week's attacks in the United States, conditions in
>>the Central Asian nation were severe. A recent U.N. report declared
>>that 6 million Afghans--one in every four citizens--is at risk of death
>>because of armed conflict, drought or chronic poverty. "We're
>>talking about a huge catastrophe in the making," said Andrew
>>Wilder, field office director of the nonprofit agency Save the
>>Children's $6-million aid program for Afghans.
>>
>>Afghanistan has become the focus of a possible U.S. reprisal
>>because it has provided shelter since 1996 for Osama bin Laden,
>>seen by American officials as a prime suspect in last week's
>>events in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania.
>>
>>Witnesses reported today that Taliban officials have begun to flee
>>Kabul, the capital, in anticipation of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan,
>>Reuters reported. Junior Taliban commanders and their families
>>were seen heading out of the city for the countryside.
>>
>>Just how Afghanistan has fallen from a model developing country to
>>the brink of chaos over the space of three decades is a depressing
>>story of intrigue, invasion, civil war, international isolation and
>>neglect on the part of its inexperienced leaders. A three-year
>>drought--the worst in living memory--and the country's link to Bin
>>Laden threaten to push a once-proud people over the edge.
>>
>>As the U.S. embarks on its global hunt for terrorists, Afghanistan
>>looms as a crucial early test of whether America will be able to
>>defeat elusive enemies without declaring war on an entire people.
>>
>>Westerners who worked in Afghanistan until recently claim that
>>despite the Taliban's virulent anti-Americanism, many Afghans have
>>a positive view of the United States. Although probably more a
>>measure of their current despair than political sympathies, some
>>are even said to view the idea of U.S. intervention as a potential
>>glimmer of hope for a better future.
>>
>>But as talk grows of possible U.S. strikes, security specialists
>>warn that attacks launched to create a short-term "feel-good factor"
>>at home could undercut U.S. efforts in the long run if they inflict
>>heavy civilian casualties.
>>
>>"The question is how to protect innocent civilians, who are probably
>>the only people to suffer more at the hands of the Taliban than
>>Americans," said an international aid worker who declined to be
>>identified by name or organization. "There is a real danger that
>>once the United States takes an active [military] role, it will be
>>seen as responsible for what happens there."
>>
>>At present, the plight of ordinary Afghans is desperate.
>>
>>At Jalozai refugee camp in western Pakistan, at least 80,000
>>Afghans have made it to relative safety and live amid the haze of
>>sun-blasted dust. They are housed in canvas tents and makeshift
>>shelters of old sacks or carpets propped up on bamboo poles and
>>anchored with stones. Even as summer gives way to fall, the
>>midday heat is blinding.
>>
>>A group of about 100 refugees took eight days to reach Pakistan
>>from Nehreen district in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan.
>>The group arrived in Jalozai on Tuesday.
>>
>>Jura Baz Mohammed, who guesses his own age to be about 50,
>>fled with his wife and their seven children, ages 1 to 15. Their
>>house was destroyed in shelling across the front line between the
>>Taliban regime, which controls 95% of Afghanistan, and opposition
>>forces, which hold a sliver of territory.
>>
>>"In our village, six or seven people were killed and about 12
>>injured," Gul Mohammed, 36, said through an interpreter. "So we
>>had to leave."
>>
>>The Jalozai camp has no electricity, so the refugees haven't seen
>>the horrifying videotaped images of airliners crashing into the World
>>Trade Center's twin towers. But they have stayed close to their
>>radios and know what is likely to come next and why.
>>
>>In the camps here and in Afghanistan, conditions are likely to get
>>worse.
>>
>>The abject failure of the Taliban government to ensure the
>>availability of food and basic health services has left millions of
>>Afghans dependent on international aid for their survival.
>>
>>Ironically, the U.S. is the biggest single donor, providing $80 million
>>of the $140 million in annual U.N. humanitarian assistance.
>>
>>International aid workers, as many as 300 strong before last
>>Tuesday, are gone. After a Taliban announcement that it could not
>>guarantee the safety of foreigners in the event of any U.S.
>>retaliatory attack, the last relief workers departed Sunday for
>>Islamabad. Eight Westerners jailed last month for allegedly
>>seeking to convert Muslims to Christianity remain.
>>
>>"Now is the time they should be preparing for winter," said Wilder,
>>the Save the Children director, about relief efforts. "Either food gets
>>into remote areas now or internal refugees face starvation."
>>
>>Although local Afghan staff from international aid groups can keep
>>feeding the roughly 3 million people who depend on handouts for
>>daily meals, supplies will run out quickly.
>>
>>"There isn't more than three weeks of food left in the stockpiles,"
>>Hassan, the U.N. official, said in an interview. "It's just
>>nightmarish."
>>
>>The prospect of a tidal wave of refugees pouring through
>>Afghanistan's eastern mountains into Pakistan, joining Afghans
>>already languishing in camps along the frontier, is highly unsettling
>>to local authorities here.
>>
>>"They will be tired, hungry, angry and armed," summed up Rifaat
>>Hussain, chairman of the Department of Defense and Strategic
>>Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "A situation like
>>that would be seriously destabilizing.'
>>
>>The agony and isolation that mark today's Afghanistan are far
>>removed from the nation that seemed such a promising target for
>>international aid in the early 1970s.
>>
>>"A model for development," recalled Amir Usman, a retired
>>Pakistani diplomat who served in Kabul at the time and returned as
>>ambassador a decade later. "The Americans built the Kabul-
>>Torkham road [leading east to Pakistan] and the Russians built the
>>road to the Amu Darya [leading north to the then-Soviet Union]. It
>>was a happy coexistence."
>>
>>Although historically a land riven by ethnic and tribal divisions and
>>foreign interference--the British and Russian empires jostled for
>>control in a series of intrigues that became known as the Great
>>Game, only to be defeated by both stubborn resistance and the
>>country's rugged terrain--Afghanistan had achieved a certain
>>stability under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, who ruled from 1933 to
>>1973.
>>
>>But when a series of coups brought a Marxist leadership to power
>>in 1978, it sparked armed resistance from within the staunchly
>>conservative Muslim society. The Soviet Union invaded the country
>>at Christmastime the following year to prop up its client regime,
>>and Afghanistan descended into a decade-long war of national
>>resistance.
>>
>>Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, leaving most of the country's
>>institutions in shambles and heavily armed factions of the victorious
>>resistance fighting each other for power.
>>
>>"I'm a political scientist and I read about anarchy, but in 1992 I saw
>>it in reality," said Usman of the civil war that preceded the
>>emergence of the Taliban. "The destruction these groups brought to
>>Kabul was far greater than what the Russians did."
>>
>>By early 1994, tens of thousands had died and Kabul had been
>>reduced to rubble. Much of the firepower used in the fighting had
>>been provided by the United States, which spent more than $2
>>billion during the 1980s to keep Moscow's forces bogged down.
>>
>>Although the American-supplied weapons remained, the Soviet
>>departure and the end of the Cold War led the U.S. to lose interest
>>in Afghanistan--only adding to the sense of despair that gripped the
>>country.
>>
>>For a group of devout young Afghans studying at fundamentalist
>>schools in neighboring Pakistan, the final straw came in November
>>1994 when warlords hijacked a large convoy of Pakistani trucks as
>>it passed through Kandahar on its way across Central Asia.
>>
>>Enraged at the seemingly endless anarchy, a few hundred
>>students--or taliban, in Arabic--left their schools and began
>>marching west to the scene. Accounts of their success evoked the
>>campaigns of Joan of Arc.
>>
>>"Word went before them that they were soldiers of God and people
>>either ran or joined them," recalled Usman. "From a few hundred,
>>they became thousands. Within six months the anarchy was
>>finished."
>>
>>Although the Taliban movement took power in Kabul, it failed to
>>subdue armed resistance groups in the north and its inexperience
>>in the affairs of state made it inept at running a government.
>>
>>Its strict fundamentalist Islamic beliefs also alienated rich Western
>>nations that could have provided greater aid.
>>
>>The Clinton administration, which initially backed the Taliban
>>because of the stability it seemed to promise, reversed course, in
>>part under pressure from feminist groups upset at the regime's
>>restrictive policies toward women.
>>
>>Bin Laden's arrival in the country from Sudan in 1996 increased
>>U.S. resolve to isolate the regime.
>>
>>Today, the Taliban maintains formal diplomatic ties with only three
>>countries--Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.
>>On Saturday, it threatened Pakistan with a de facto declaration of
>>war.
>>
>>The movement's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, 43, told his
>>people last week that he is not afraid to die.
>>
>>With existing political forces in the country discredited, some
>>Afghans dream of restoring Zahir Shah, the 84-year-old former king,
>>to power.
>>
>>He resides in Rome and is still widely respected in his homeland,
>>reportedly has consulted with Western governments about the idea
>>and has met with some Afghan tribal leaders. But the idea is
>>widely seen at best as a longshot.
>>
>>At the Jalozai camp, refugees focused on the more immediate
>>future and repeated the Taliban's assertion that Bin Laden was
>>incapable of such a complex terrorist attack as occurred last week
>>in the U.S.
>>
>>But when asked what the Taliban should do with Bin Laden, they talked among
>>themselves for a couple of minutes and then asked Gul
>>Mohammed to speak for the group.
>>
>>"Osama bin Laden is just a refugee with no relation to
>>Afghanistan," he said, squatting in the dust, with a piece of plaid
>>cloth draped over his head against the sun.
>>
>>"He is Arab. And he is a guest, but if due to Osama the Americans
>>attack, then they should expel Osama."
>>>
Namaste!
Jim |
