Britain to cut back troops as N Ireland hopes grow

BELFAST, Oct 24: Britain today said the IRA’s decision to start scrapping the arms that have fed a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland would trigger a cut in its garrison, but renegade guerrillas vowed to resist peace moves.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the momentous announcement yesterday by the Irish Republican Army, which has fought British rule in the province for three decades, would prompt a cut in Britain’s 13,500 strong military presence in the province.

"It requires us now to push on with trying to normalise the security situation in Northern Ireland," Blair said. "It allows us to make moves in that direction, and it allows us to get the political process started."

Blair also said he thought the IRA’s move had been prompted at least in part by changes in the world brought about by the September 11 attacks on the United States.

"Everybody understands that there is just no support anywhere in the world now for trying to resolve political differences by acts of terrorism," he told GMTV television.

The IRA and its political ally, Sinn Fein, had relied on backers of Irish Republicanism in the United States for financial and political help, but that has faded since the suicide hijack attacks on New York and Washington.

US President George W Bush said the IRA had made "an historic step", adding: "The people of Northern Ireland are now measurably closer to the lasting peace which they richly deserve."

The announcement by the IRA, which has been observing a ceasefire since 1997, also put pressure on pro-British protestant "loyalist" militias to make a reciprocal move.

These have been carrying out more and more acts of violence and the British Government announced this month that it no longer recognised the ceasefire they declared in 1994.

One of the main protestant militias, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), announced it would not match the ira disarmament move by handing in any of its own guns.

And a spokesman made clear there were renegade Republican guerrillas who did not plan to lay down their arms.

"There are other sections of the Republican Army still opposing Britain’s presence on the Island (of Ireland)," said Joe Dillon of the 32 county sovereignty movement, which speaks for the real IRA.

"They (the real IRA) will no doubt pick up the mantle of being the IRA now and continue the challenge to Britain’s occupation," he told BBC radio.

The real IRA, whose members split from the mainstream IRA, has carried out a series of audacious attacks in recent years, including firing a rocket-propelled grenade at the London headquarters of the MI6 intelligence service.

Despite the warning from Dillon, the IRA’s move should breathe fresh life into the British province’s devolved political structures, filling a vacuum which has led to intense bouts of sectarian violence in recent months, and into a peace process dogged by squabbles since 1998.

While few details of the scrapping of weapons have emerged, the province’s independent disarmament body, led by a retired canadian general, yesterday said it had witnessed arms, ammunition and explosives being put beyond use.

Pro-British protestant leader David Trimble is now expected to re-enter the province’s Government, where the protestant and pro-irish catholic communities share power under the 1998 peace agreement. It had been on the brink of collapse after trimble led a protestant walk-out over the IRA’s failure to disarm.

Trimble has warmly welcomed the IRA’s move but must still dispel Qualms among members of his Ulster Unionist Party to be re-elected as the province’s first minister next week.

In Belfast, the unionist newspaper news letter splashed a picture of a Balaclava-clad IRA guerrilla aiming an automatic rifle above the slightly sceptical headline "farewell to arms?".

The headline in the pro-catholic Irish news simply read "beyond use".

South of the border, Dublin’s Irish Times enthused: "For Irish physical-force republicanism, a Rubicon has been crossed. A historic milestone has been passed." (REUTERS)

Pakistan refuses to receive nationals killed in US bombing

ISLAMABAD, Oct 24: Pakistan’s border authorities today refused entry to bodies of eight Pakistani nationals killed in US bombing of Afghanistan, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency said.

AIP did not say why entry at Torkham border post in northwestern Pakistan was refused.

But press reports said the bodies were among the 22 members of the militant Harkatul Mujahedin group who were killed when a bomb hit a house in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday.

Harkatul Mujahedin has been active in the separatist struggle in Kashmir. Pakistan hunted out the group after the United States declared it as a terrorist group, with links to Al-Qaeda network of suspected terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to the reports.

Some reports said members of the group were meeting in Kabul in secret when intelligence operatives working for the US and Islamic Taliban’s opponents gave out their position for an air strike. (DPA)

Capture of Kabul key to US bombing stop: Experts

WASHINGTON, Oct 24: Relentless US bombing of Afghanistan will end when opposition forces capture Kabul, which would signal the downfall of the country’s ruling Taliban, US analysts said.

Until that happens the US military campaign will not let up, even if it means bombing during the muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which starts in mid-November, and into harsh winter months in the unforgiving mountainous terrain, analysts said yesterday.

US military strategy is aimed at two main objectives —toppling the Taliban and destroying the Al Qaeda extremist network led by Saudi-born militant Osama Bin Laden.

The twin objectives need different approaches, analysts said. The bombing campaign destroys Taliban military sites to allow opposition forces to gain advantage, but US special operations forces on the ground are required to round up Al Qaeda members, they said.

While constant US bombing was likely to end by year-end, US special forces were expected to conduct ground operations in Afghanistan well into next year, analysts said.

Even Bin Laden’s death would not by itself halt US bombing because the goals were to destroy his network and the Taliban which gave Bin Laden shelter, analysts said.

The United States has bombed Afghanistan since Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden, who Washington blames for orchestrating the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks that killed more than 5,000 people.

"They’ll probably stop the bombing campaign when the Taliban collapses," Ivan Eland, Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, said.

"Our implicit aim is to topple the regime and when that happens I think they can quit bombing," he added.

Without the Taliban, members of Al Qaeda would have little protection in a country of many ethnic factions who see Al Qaeda, which includes Egyptians and Saudis, as foreigners, analysts said.

"On the one hand all of these divisions tend to make it very difficult to forge a better Government, on the other hand they make it easier to divide the country militarily," Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.

But the Northern Alliance will be key to toppling the Taliban, analysts said.

"You’re going to see Kabul and Kandahar fall to hostile factions," as a sign the taliban has broken, Cordesman said, referring to the Afghan capital and the Southern Taliban stronghold.

Complicating efforts to capture Kabul are the Taliban’s apparent use of cities and civilians for protection against bombing, analysts said. Also the Northern Alliance must breach intense fortification of the city by land mines and trenches, analysts said.

"You have a rag tag Northern Alliance force that you have to rely on so i think even with bombing it’s going to be a while before they get to kabul," Eland said.

US special forces will be key to finding and disposing of Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, and if they found Bin Laden he would more likely end up dead than alive, analysts said.

"I don’t have the sense that there is a great deal of appetite for putting Bin Laden on trial," John Pike, Director of Globalsecurity.Org, said.

Special forces such as the elite Army rangers will scour the region to capture members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban who after interrogation may provide leads to the locations of the leadership, Pike said.

"I don’t see using the Northern Alliance as a proxy to round up Al Qaeda, I think the US Government is going to do that on its own," he said.

In that effort, mountain caves are a prime target.

"Caves are clearly in target sets because that’s where Al Qaeda has traditionally hidden," Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, Deputy Operations Director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters. "The numbers I don’t think are known to anyone on this earth. There are hundreds if not thousands of caves."

Cordesman said the winter might actually benefit US targeting of Al Qaeda and Taliban members hiding in remote sites.

"The winter is a two-edged sword because it blocks a lot of movement in the northern areas," he said. "But on the other hand, with thermal sights and sensors, when the weather is half-way clear, anything that the Taliban does or anything that Al Qaeda does that radiates heat in any facility makes an almost perfect target map," Cordesman said. (REUTERS)

Cambodia could be model for a new Afghanistan

BANGKOK, Oct 24: The Cambodian peace agreement signed 10 years ago this week in Paris, putting the United Nations in charge and paving the way for elections, could provide the model for transition to a post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Similarities between the two fractured nations, which have suffered decades of war, communist occupation and external meddling, have not gone unnoticed by Washington and the United Nations, academics and diplomats say.

"There is of course a lot of talk in the corridors of what to do in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, and Cambodia is the first model that comes to everybody’s mind," said Nancy Soderberg, a former American Ambassador to the UN Security Council who now heads the New York office of the international crisis group.

"Kosovo and east timor are the other two models, but they are just tiny."

But ethnically divided Afghanistan would be a far harder job, requiring unprecedented commitment from the world body — which walked away from Cambodia leaving it to grapple with the legacy of years of conflict on its own.

"I think it could work, but would face considerable difficulties," said Amin Saikal, Professor at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.

"Let’s not forget that Afghan society, particularly in the last 30 years or so, has been divided along ethnic, tribal and linguistic lines," he said.

In countries fractured by years of foreign occupation and war, political centres of gravity need to be formed.

In September 1990, under international pressure, a Supreme National Council was set up in Cambodia, drawing in all the factions, including the genocidal Khmer Rouge, and headed by former king Norodom Sihanouk, seen as a unifying force harking back to Cambodia’s more peaceful past.

Then on October 23, 1991, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and 12 other nations, along with the rival factions, signed the Paris agreement.

Central to the treaty was the various foreign backers of the factions, including Russia, China and the United States, agreeing to stop all support, and the running of the country was temporarily handed to the United Nations.

That allowed a force of peacekeepers led by Australia to move in, marking the beginning of what was to become the world body’s most expensive operation.

"It’s the general principles that apply rather than the specifics," said Carl Thayer, a Honolulu-based political analyst and author who served as a UN observer during Cambodia’s subsequent 1993 UN-organised elections.

"Wherever the...International conference on Afghanistan is held, it would bring the actors, the ex-king, elements of the Taliban, Northern Alliance, ethnic minorities of the south. They would agree to some settlement that the international community would ratify," he said.

"One would see perhaps Turkish and Malaysian troops (as peacekeepers) in Afghanistan because they are Muslim. It (Cambodia) provides a model."

There are indications, say analysts, that members of the UN Security Council are thinking along those lines, despite the world body’s expressed reluctance so far to take on such a role.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said peacekeepers could play a role once a "broad-based assemblage" of Afghans, perhaps using former King Mohammed Zahir Shah as a rallying point, had sketched out ideas for a future Government.

"The UN has quite a great deal of experience in going in and helping with this kind of situation," Powell told a news conference last week.

But analysts warn that all that assumes the Taliban will leave power, either by negotiation or force.

"Taking that leap of faith...Could the UN go in and run Kabul? yes it could. If you compare it to the Cambodian operation which was about 1.6 billion over two years," said Soderberg.

One question Cambodia is still grappling with is what to do with former Khmer Rouge leaders, blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people during their 1975-79 "killing fields" reign of terror.

The United Nations reached a provisional agreement with Phnom Penh last year to help set up a Cambodian genocide tribunal —composed of local and foreign judges — to try surviving Khmer rouge leaders. Cambodian legislation for the court is now being considered at UN Headquarters in New York.

Most analysts agree that the more moderate elements of the Taliban would likely need to be represented in any Paris-style agreement and in a new administration.

The Khmer Rouge were included in the 1991 Paris agreement, but, bit by bit, they reneged on their obligations and did not take part in the 1993 elections, prolonging what was then a civil war.

"Basically the UN, with an enormous amount of support, probably 45 billion worth of support, could administer in Afghanistan...But you are talking an enormous operation," Soderberg said.

The biggest hurdle will be the country’s myriad ethnic divides.

"I think you’ll find Afghanistan may be more socially divided than may have been the case with cambodia," said Saikal.

"The Cambodian divisions, if I understand correctly, were more along ideological lines, rather than ethnic, tribal and linguistic lines."

He said that between the 1930s and the 1970s Afghanistan’s ethnic groups — which include the Pashtun majority, along with the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmens — got along relatively well, partly due to the unifying influence of the king, who went into exile in Rome after he was overthrown in 1973.

Problems arose when other nations, including the Soviet Union, the United States and Pakistan began exploiting various ethnic groups to gain influence.

"What is needed is to create a centre of political gravity, in the form of a Supreme Council. A political system will have to evolve around this centre of political gravity, layer by layer, and that can be done under the supervision of the United Nations," said Saikal.

"It cannot be that we are going to stay in Afghanistan for one or two years, have a quick election and then we are going to get out. That is a difference from Cambodia." (REUTERS)

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