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Taliban likely to wage guerrilla war WASHINGTON, Nov 19: The Taliban’s withdrawal from major Afghan cities is simply an abandonment of frontal.....more China
to beef up public BEIJING, Nov 19: With China acknowledging the spread of Al Qaeda network in the country, the Government......more In
a Vietnam backwater, SONLA PROVINCE (VIETNAM), Nov 19: A river runs through it in Muong La, an idyllic mountainous district lightyears away from Vietnam’s Communist ......more Uzbek
Islamist guerrilla TASHKENT, Nov 19: Uzbek pro-Taliban Islamist guerrilla chief Djuma Namangani has been killed in Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan, Northern Alliance Commander, General Abdul .....more |
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Woman’s murder highlights deep-rooted superstitions KATHMANDU, Nov 19: A 60-year-old woman taking a late afternoon siesta in her house is dragged outside and, as neighbours look on, she is beaten up and left to die. ....more S
Africa policemen on PRETORIA, Nov 19: The trial opened in pretoria today of six white South African policemen who allegedly set police dogs on three black immigrants .......more Alcohol,
fatty foods HAMBURG, Nov 19: Too much alcohol and fatty foods can make for an uncomfortable night. As health insurers dak here recently reported,.........more Afghans,
leaders divided HERAT (AFGHANISTAN), Nov 19: While anti-Taliban Afghan warlords reject foreign troops in their country, ordinary........more |
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Taliban likely to wage guerrilla war WASHINGTON, Nov 19: The Taliban’s withdrawal from major Afghan cities is simply an abandonment of frontal warfare to the guerilla tactics that is more suited to their numbers and resources, said Strategic Forecast (Stratfor), a well-reputed US-based firm that provides consultation and analysis on geopolitics. The Taliban was far from defeated by the recent reverses, it said. Even though the fall of Kandahar appeared to give the Taliban a crushing blow with thousands of Taliban fighters switching sides or being captured, the remainder melted into the hills having put up almost no fight, it said. As multinational peacekeeping forces prepare to enter Afghanistan, they would face a low-grade guerilla war that is likely to last for years and extend into neighbouring countries, it said. Earlier, in Northern Afghanistan, the Taliban was forced to deploy its limited troops in fixed garrisons and to defend supply lines, and were easily targeted by the US air strikes and outmaneuvered by the Northern Alliance. With US pressure, constricting the sources of supplies originating in Pakistan, "the Taliban could not count on maintaining the level of supply necessary to hold their positions," Stratfor said. The Taliban, to bolster its forces, had to side with the locals, who were fundamentally hostile and unreliable, and could, in this volatile set-up, become the enemy within. Stratfor said, "the Taliban were in the same position as the British in the late 19th century and the Soviets 100 years later. They controlled the cities, but that is not where war is fought and won in Afghanistan." The Taliban, therefore, decided to "turn the tables". Their systematic withdrawal has allowed them to save their core troops, leaving behind mostly marginal and untrustworthy allies. Even before the their withdrawal from Mazar-e-Sharif, and while still under heavy US bombardment, they had no trouble repulsing Northern Alliance offensives. A guerilla strategy would further allow the Taliban to control the tempo of the war and "interdict the supply lines". By handing over the cities to the Northern Alliance, the Taliban has also generated an immediate crisis in relations between the US and Pakistan. Islamabad invested both financial and political capital to secure control of Afghanistan via the Taliban. Pakistan now fears that the primarily Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara Northern Alliance will marginalise the role of Pushtuns, Pakistan’s allies, in the new Afghan Government, Stratfor said. Stratfor said the United States needed Islamabad not only as a base of operations and to influence the Pushtun tribes but also to cut off sources of Taliban support inside Pakistan. Thus, Washington’s first priority has now become to hammer out a deal between the Northern Alliance and Pakistan instead of mopping up Al Qaeda. Apart from the US-Islamabad crisis, the Northern Alliance is itself another problem. The alliance is anything but allied and encompasses the oft-conflicting interests and egos of several ethnically and regionally distinct armies. With the Taliban out of the way, the alliance’s factions are once again focused on dividing the spoils, Stratfor said. Furthermore, alliance squabbling will complicate the US mission in Afghanistan, it said. "It will saddle washington with the burden of nation-building and relief operations and thus tie up assets and troops. It will also render the Afghan border with Pakistan harder to secure from the Afghan side." (UNI) |
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China to beef up public security to stamp out terrorism BEIJING, Nov 19: With China acknowledging the spread of Al Qaeda network in the country, the Government has decided to adopt a "comprehensive approach" to stamp out foreign and domestic "hostile forces" and cult groups to improve public security. "The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council (China’s Cabinet) have called for enhanced efforts to improve public security through a comprehensive approach," Xinhua news agency said last night. A joint circular listed the major threats to social security in China as "infiltration and sabotage by hostile overseas forces, disturbance by nationalist splittism forces at home and abroad, religious extremists and terrorists through their collusion, as well as by evil cults and criminal gangs." The circular urges party and Government officials to assume "more responsibility" for public security in their areas, and for the first time warned that performance in this regard will be an "important" factor in deciding their promotions. It underscores the importance of crime prevention, including through the establishment of a responsible complaint-addressing mechanism, effective control of weapons, explosives and poisonous substances, and better management of the transient population. The circular stresses the strengthening of crime-prevention networks at grassroots level. For example, retirees and other volunteers may be mobilised to help maintain security in their neighbourhoods, the report said. (PTI) |
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In a Vietnam backwater, it’s sink or swim SONLA PROVINCE (VIETNAM), Nov 19: A river runs through it in Muong La, an idyllic mountainous district lightyears away from Vietnam’s Communist Party cadres and bureaucrats in Hanoi. Here, within earshot of the gurgling water which sustains several communities, village chief Lo Van Phuong sweeps his arm over the land before him and speaks of the future. "Here, these stilt houses, and over there beyond the hill," the ethnic thai chief says, pointing to parts of it ong commune that will disappear like magical brigadoon from Son La’s Sublime Landscape. This Vietnamese Paradise of Sorts, where ethnic minority farmers have tilled the soil for centuries, is one of several communities set to be flooded under by what could be Southeast Asia’s biggest power plant, the massive son la hydroelectric dam. Of Phuong’s 21 hamlets, he says eight would be underwater. So would dozens more in Son La as well as Lai Chau upriver, where the provincial capital would be submerged by a reservoir covering 440 square kilometres and stretching to the Chinese border. "If the party and state decide to build the plant here, near this village, the people would be happy and support the great policies of the people and the state," Phuong claims with robotic socialist fervor as a team of Government minders listens in. Son La province is one of Vietnam’s poorest, where tourists are rare and foreign investors even rarer. It needs a radical and necessary economic revolution, its leaders argue. "Our biggest resource is the potential for hydropower," son La’s provincial Chairman, Le Binh Thanh, says in the first official visit by a foreign journalist in over five years. Such potential is keenly monitored in Hanoi, where for the past dozen years scientists, party cadres and bureaucrats have tussled over the fate of the dam and the thousands it will displace. Insiders say the Government and party are leaning towards "high" son La, a 265-metre-tall dam that would submerge 44,700 hectares and require resettlement of 100,000 people, mostly ethnic minorities. Such a monolith would generate up to 4,000 megawatts - 80 per cent of Vietnam’s current capacity - once the turbines start churning a decade from now. Vietnam’s energy consumption remains among the lowest of its regional neighbours, at roughly 26 billion kilowatt hours per year, according to State Monopoly Electricity of Vietnam. But that’s set to ratchet up quickly, and officials feel a huge complex in son la would go far to solving a pending energy crunch. Some disagree. "Small is beautiful," says Dr Tran Nhon, resident of the Vietnam Water Resources Development Association. "We oppose all the decisions for high son la as not scientific." Nhon is among a handful of influential experts who have expressed widespread misgivings over high son La, saying a medium or even low option would be more viable. Safety is a primary concern, as the Da river flows through the earthquake-prone northwest and down to hanoi, which experts say would be destroyed in the event of a catastrophic son La Breach. A mild earthquake in the region earlier this year brought the very real threat home. (DPA) |
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Uzbek Islamist guerrilla chief killed: Dostam TASHKENT, Nov 19: Uzbek pro-Taliban Islamist guerrilla chief Djuma Namangani has been killed in Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan, Northern Alliance Commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostam, told the BBC’s Uzbek Service today. "According to our information, Namangani and 24 of his followers were killed in the province of Kunduz, where fierce fighting is taking place now," said General Dostam, who is an ethnic Uzbek. Other Afghan sources were not able to confirm the death of Namangani, who according to Northern Alliance officials, recently became a right-hand man of Saudi-born fundamentalist Osama bin Laden. An estimated 20,000 and 30,000 troops, including many foreign fighters linked to Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, are besieged in Kunduz the Taliban’s final refuge along with pockets of Southern Afghanistan that include the city of Kandahar. When former Soviet Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, Namangani, 37, was one of the leading Wahhabite Muslim fundamentalists. Driven into hiding, he fled in may 1992 to neighbouring Tajikistan and fought‘in the ranks of the Islamic opposition seeking to overthrow the post-communist regime in Dushanbe. In September 1992, as Tajik Government troops gained the upper hand, he went into exile in Afghanistan. In summer 1999, fighters from his Islamic movement of Uzbekistan kidnapped four Japanese geologists and launched an incursion into Kyrgyzstan aiming to pass into Uzbekistan to declare an Islamic state there. Defeated, Namangani’s men retreated into a remote region in eastern Tajikistan. Last year, under pressure from the Uzbek authorities, the Uzbek Islamist fled again to Afghanistan to the Northern province of Kunduz. Around 700 rebels and their families followed him. (AFP) |
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Woman’s murder highlights deep-rooted superstitions KATHMANDU, Nov 19: A 60-year-old woman taking a late afternoon siesta in her house is dragged outside and, as neighbours look on, she is beaten up and left to die. The scene might have been from the middle ages when in Europe many innocent women were burned at the stake on suspicion of being a witch. The gruesome event took place in September at Ekdara village in Mahottari district, about 175 kilometres southeast of the capital. According to family members and newspaper reports, Malechhiya Devi Yadav, the mother of three sons, was dragged from her bed by two men and three women who accused her of being a "witch". They forced the woman to eat human excreta and severely beat her up. Left almost dead from the attack, Yadav lay unconscious on the rural road guarded by her assailants. She died the next morning as she was being taken to a hospital. Police did not act immediately nor did the members of the victim’s family. She was alleged to have cast black magic on a three-year-old boy in the village who had died a few weeks ago. A number of women-related Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and political parties did not raise any meaningful objections to the cruelty meted out to the victim. Rita Sharma, district president of the Nepal Women’s Association, the women wing of the ruling Nepali Congress Party, said: "We came to know of the event only after reading the newspaper." Neither she nor any other political or public figure thought it fitting to visit the victim at the hospital where Malechhiya Yadav was pronounced dead. Most social workers in Nepal think that while it is easy to go on preaching new imported western ideas in urban areas, it is really difficult to penetrate the rural areas where people are mostly illiterate. Nor is the case of Malechhiya Devi Yadav an isolated one. Newspapers carried at least two dozen news items in September and October about women being prosecuted in their community on allegations of practising witchcraft. Some of the rural population in Nepal is so entrenched in superstition that even proper education seems to have failed to make them see sense. In another village in Southern Nepal, Marani Devi, who worked as a volunteer in an NGO run day-care centre and in a health post, was subjected to mental and physical torture following allegations that she was a witch. The most educated person in her village, Jaya Kumar Shahni, who had studied up to graduation level, believes that "Mid Terai (the low lying areas in south central Nepal) is in the grip of witches." He asks, "if there is no such thing as a witch, how did the word witch come about?" A journalist in the Nepalese capital said: "As an editor of domestic news, I have come across many items relating to torture of women on allegations of their being witches." He said, "I do not want to sound communal but most of this news come from southern Nepal where there is a majority of people of Indian origin." But superstition is not limited to the plains of the Terai and people in some villages in the mountains are just as susceptible. A 14-year old girl, Radha Pahadi, suffering from respiratory problems was tortured by witch doctors in Sindhuli district in the mountains, about 80 km east of the capital, last month "to exorcise" the witch that allegedly possessed her and was causing her illness. Her father, who brought in the witch doctors to "cure" his daughter, was finally advised by the village elders to take her to a hospital in the capital. The doctors at the hospital say that Radha had suffered a mental shock and that a good dose of loving care would restore her to normal. (DPA) |
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S Africa policemen on trial for brutal dog attacks PRETORIA, Nov 19: The trial opened in pretoria today of six white South African policemen who allegedly set police dogs on three black immigrants in a deliberate video-taped assault that shocked the nation. The policemen face charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, attempting to defeat the ends of justice and corruption. The trial opened at 0800 gmt and a court source told Reuters that four of the six policemen were expected to plead guilty, a move that could speed up the case that sent revulsion across South Africa and abroad. "There will be a lot of interest in this case and it will be examined closely," said Gareth Newham, an analyst at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. "It is a classic example of racism and the abuse of power." The video showed three men later identified as illegal mozambican immigrants apparently being taken in turn from a police van in an open field. German shepherd dogs were encouraged to maul them about the face, limbs and, in one case, the groin as the attackers laughed and the victims screamed for mercy. The victims were repeatedly savaged by four police dogs and were beaten when they tried to fend them off. They were filmed by one of the policemen in what one man described in a comment to the camera as a training exercise. The video-taped torture shocked south africa when it was aired last year by the public broadcaster, which had obtained footage of the incident. It triggered a national debate about the nature of post-apartheid change. The tape was allegedly made in 1998 and was reported to have been shown at police parties. The footage has evoked memories of the video-taped beating of Black Motorist Rodney King in 1991 in Los Angeles at the hands of white policemen after a high-speed chase. Three of the accused, who have all been out on bail, have since resigned from the police force. The others have been suspended pending the outcome of the trial. Analysts say the incident has thrown the spotlight on racism and police brutality, twin legacies of white-minority rule which ended in 1994. Analysts say while the police force has made major strides in racial integration, it has a long way to go before it sheds all of the racist baggage it carried during the apartheid era. The independent complaints directorate, which monitors police, says 687 suspects died in custody or during an arrest in the year to end-March 2001, six more than in the same period the previous year. But South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime, fuelled by poverty, and around 200 officers are murdered each year. In 1999, 10 white policemen were cleared of wrongdoing after they stood by while two of their colleagues beat black suspects in an assault filmed by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The two, who beat a car hijacking suspect injured in a crash, were fined. (REUTERS) |
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Alcohol, fatty foods rob sleep HAMBURG, Nov 19: Too much alcohol and fatty foods can make for an uncomfortable night. As health insurers dak here recently reported, overindulgence adversely affects metabolism. It said that the pressure brought to bear on the stomach after a rich meal is so intense that the rest of the body is kept awake while it works overtime and will frequently result in an early wake-up call. Dak said that a light, suitable snack eaten in the evening is the best way of assuring a good night’s sleep. Milk and tuna fish, for example, are excellent for this purpose: they contain sleep-inducing amino acids such as tryptophan. Several small, carbohydrate-rich meals spread throughout the day can also cure sleep problems. (DPA) |
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Afghans, leaders divided on foreign troop presence HERAT (AFGHANISTAN), Nov 19: While anti-Taliban Afghan warlords reject foreign troops in their country, ordinary people said they would welcome foreign forces to stave off a feared return of factional fighting. Both Ismail Khan, in control of Herat, and his allies in the Sih’ite Hezb-i-Wahdat that also has many Mujahideen fighters in the newly captured western city, say they do not need peacekeepers as they are working together to keep the peace. But many Herat residents, while grateful the Taliban were thrown out of town last week, are not reassured. "Foreign countries have to rally round and try to help," said Golamali Azareh, from the Shi’ite minority Hazara ethnic group in a dusty village on the edge of Herat. "The people of Afghanistan are poor, illiterate and ignorant, we need foreign countries to help us bring peace." Armed men, whether mounted on four-wheel drive pick-ups, lounging outside headquarters or sitting in restaurants waiting to break their Ramzan fast, are everywhere in the city. Two of Khan’s men were killed in a shootout in the city on Saturday close to his main barracks where craters and mangled military hardware attest to heavy us bombing of its previous Taliban occupants. A spokesman for Khan said the shooting was a personal dispute that could happen anywhere. A local leader of Hezb-i-Wahdat, which draws its support from among Shi’ite Afghans, said the gunfight was between two factions within Khan’s forces. Whatever the reason, the violence shows the volatility of the country ravaged by more than two decades war. Khan, a former Governor of Herat, and a key member of the northern alliance, held a meeting with local Hezb-i-Wahdat leaders later on Saturday. It was there that they agreed to work together and maintain calm in the city. Also present were newly arrived representatives of neighbouring Iran, a large regional power in the persian-speaking north of Afghanistan. "The Iranians didn’t especially bring up the subject of a possible conflict with Hezb-i-Wahdat, but stressed their wish that there should be no fighting," Khan spokesman Mohammadullah Afsali told Reuters. "Part of of the discussion was about military affairs and what should happen next and part was to express their protection and support of Ismail Khan and announce their readiness to serve in the city," he said. Officially Shi’ite Iran harbours a deep-seated dislike of the strict Sunni Taliban and has backed the Northern Alliance, especially the persian speaking Tajiks such as Khan as well as their fellow Shi’ite Hezb-i-Wahdat, with arms and money. Many in Herat say hundreds of Hezb-i-Wahdat fighters have been pouring into the city since it was taken from the Taliban on Tuesday and are nervous that that could lead to more fighting. "The people of Afghanistan need food and clothing, but neighbouring countries just send guns," said Nurahmad, speaking nervously as two armed men looked on. "Afghan people have always hated foreign troops in our country, but now we need them." (REUTERS) |
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