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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lola who wrote (8685)	10/26/2001 6:30:29 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 27666

Neighborhood politics: "God-willing we will remove Musharraf from power and drag him on to the streets." Pakistani Islamists ask army to topple Musharraf Friday October 26, 10:40 PM By Raja Asghar QUETTA, Pakistani (Reuters) - Pakistan's largest Islamic party called on Friday for the army to topple military ruler General Pervez Musharraf for backing U.S.-led military strikes on neighbouring Afghanistan. "God-willing we will remove Musharraf from power and drag him on to the streets," the deputy head of Jamaat-i-Islami, Liaquat Baluch, told thousands of people at a rally in support of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. "We also ask the Pakistan army, its corps commanders and staff officers to take a decision according to their conscience and rid the nation of Musharraf to save the country's future from deterioration, because he is now a risk for the country's security," he said. The call was the first direct appeal for the army to act against Musharraf since the start of protests over the Afghan policy, which have so far failed to make much impact on the streets of Pakistan. Baluch deputised for Jamaat's leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, who was barred by authorities from reaching Quetta, capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Speeches following Friday prayers have become a weekly fixture and this rally attracted several thousand people to a sports stadium. "Pakistani people are against Musharraf's policy and his cowardness," Baluch said. "Now he is ineligible to be head of the country and he cannot remain the commander of the Pakistani army." MUSHARRAF FIRM Musharraf has offered the United States intelligence information, the use of Pakistan's airspace and logistical support for the U.S. campaign against the Taliban and Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, who is accused of planning the September 11 attacks on the United States. This month Musharraf removed or sidelined key army generals seen as holding hardline Islamic or pro-Taliban views, including three involved in the bloodless 1999 coup that put him in power. The acting leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) party, Maulana Abdul Ghani, told the rally that Islamic parties would launch "direct action" if Musharraf did not change his pro-American policy. With rallies so far proving smaller than predicted, Musharraf says most Pakistanis support the country's withdrawal of support for the Taliban and its revived friendship with America. "Whoever is a friend of America is a traitor," chanted protesters at the rally in Quetta, where hospitals receive Afghans injured by U.S. bombing. The crowd burned effigies of both Musharraf and U.S. President George W. Bush at the rally, from which organisers barred foreign women journalists.

To: Lola who wrote (8685)	10/26/2001 6:37:01 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 27666

More neighborhood politics: washingtonpost.com Report: 130 Afghan People Executed By Priscilla Cheung Associated Press Writer Friday, Oct. 26, 2001; 6:20 p.m. EDT UNITED NATIONS –– Taliban soldiers executed Afghan civilians indiscriminately after taking over the strategic Yakoalong district this year, according to a U.N. report released Friday. Kamal Hossain, author of the report, said about 130 civilians were executed – most of them by firing squad – during three days of carnage after the Taliban took over Yakoalong from opposition forces in January. Hossain's report is one of the most detailed accounts yet of alleged Taliban atrocities. He is investigating rights abuses in Afghanistan for the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Fifty more people were reported killed later in January. "Most of the killing at this stage seems to have been indiscriminate, in the sense that all adult males in areas searched were rounded up and taken for execution," Hossain said. The district has changed hands several times since last December. The Taliban retook Yakoalong from allied opposition forces in May, leading to the massacre of 180 more people in the region, Hossain reported. Hossain, who visited Pakistan in March to investigate reports of the killings, found "a substantial body of evidence gathered from reliable sources." His report also details developments in Afghanistan between March-August 2001, before the Sept. 11 terror attacks on America brought world attention to the war-ravaged nation. U.S.-led troops have been bombing targets in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban are fighting opposition forces based in the north. Yakoalong is in Bamiyan province, where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in February ordered the destruction of all statues of Buddha, including two mammoth carvings in a Bamiyan mountainside made in the 3rd and 5th centuries. The district links central Bamiyan to northern regions. Between Jan. 8-13, Taliban commanders sent out search parties to villages in the area to round up male civilians, including some prominent local figures. Some were killed on the spot, while others were taken away to face the firing squad. "The old were detained for one or two days; the young were sentenced to death by firing squad," the report said. Some victims "were tortured prior to execution, particularly through bayoneting and mutilation by knives," it said. At least one firing squad victim was skinned, it said. A number of execution sites and mass graves have been identified, as have some of the commanders, the report said. While some victims were combatants, "the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the target of the attacks was the civilian population," it said. The soldiers also broke into homes, "where women and children were terrorized and in many cases food stocks and valuables were looted," the report said. "Evidence of the scale and method of execution suggests that it could not have been done without the knowledge of the Taliban commanders," it said.