International Socialists

The mainstream media likes to present the complex history of Afghanistan and other "trouble spots" in simplistic terms that often serve only to further confuse and take attention away from the real causes of their problems. Here, we take a closer look at how imperial powers have devastated Afghanistan over the past two centruies in their "Great Game" for control of the region's resources.

 

 

Afghanistan has been the battleground of imperalist powers for centuries, since the time of Ghengis Kahn and the Mongol empire. It sits on the junction of the central Asian steppe, the Indian sub-continent and the Ancient Persian region, one of the ancient "silk road" trading routes passed through the region and today it is an important potential route for gas and oil pipelines. In the nineteenth century the British and Russian empires competed for military and trading rights over the state, however attempts to assert authority were repelled by the Afghani people themselves. In 1839 Shah Shuja was installed as a "puppet king" by the British. In January 1842 Afghan tribesmen under the leadership of Akbar Khan drove the occupying forces from the country, out of 16,500 soldiers (and 12,000 dependents) only one survivor of the British-Indian garrison reached the British fort in Jalalabad, on a stumbling pony.

 

Throughout the rest of the century Russia and Great Britain carved off pieces of Afghan territory incorporated these lands into their respective empires, the modern borders of Afghanistan have very little in common with the ancient cultural/tribal groups of the region. The Durand Line of 1893 divided zones of responsibility for the maintenance of law and order between British India and the kingdom of Afghanistan; it was never intended as an international boundary established by legal precedent. Afghanistan, therefore, although never dominated by a European imperial government, became a buffer between tsarist Russia and British India.

 

The influence of British imperialism was finally ended in 1921 after the third Anglo-Afghan and Afghanistan gained full control of its foreign affairs. The new head of state, Amanullah Khan initiated a series of ambitious efforts at social and political modernisation. He was overthrown in 1929 by conservative political forces intent on turning back the minimal reforms began under his rule. For the next two decades various conservative factions vied for control of the nation.

 

The British withdrawal from South Asia in 1947 resulted in the split of the former colonies in India and Pakistan; the Pashtun region occupied by the British under the Durand agreement became part of Pakistan. This led to direct confrontation with Pakistan in 1949 as Afghanistan's Parliament refused to recognize the Durand line as a legal boundary and Pashtuns in Pakistan proclaimed an independent Pashtunistan, their proclamation was unacknowledged by the world and repressed by the new Pakistani government.

 

In 1953 Mohammad Daud Kahn seized power, becoming Prime Minister, and appealed to the world, particularly the two superpowers, to help modernize the economy and military. The US rejected Afghanistan's requests, however in 1956 Soviet premier Kruschev and Bulgaria agreed to provide aid to Afghanistan. Under the Daud government some minimal democratic reforms were enacted, the veil or Purdah worn by Muslim women was made optional, women begin to enroll in the university which became co-educational, women also began to enter the workforce, and the government. However the regime remained politically repressive and tolerated no direct opposition. Daud resigned in 1963 after continued confrontation with Pakistan.

 

A new constitution resulted in elections for both houses of the legislature in 1965 and 1969. Several parties ran candidates with beliefs ranging from fundamentalist Islam to the far left. National politics became increasingly polarised, and the democratic process was suspended and the King appointed five successive prime ministers between September 1965 and December 1972. The King refused to promulgate the Political Parties Act, the Provincial Councils Act, and the Municipal Councils Act, blocking the institutionalisation of the political processes guaranteed in the 1963 constitution and disenfranchising the majority of Afghans.

 

Mohammad Daud Khan, the former Prime Minister, sensed the stagnation of the constitutional processes and seized power on July 17, 1973, in a virtually bloodless coup. Leftist military officers and civil servants of the Parcham (Banner) Party assisted in the overthrow. Daud Khan abolished the constitution of 1964 and established the Republic of Afghanistan, with himself as chairman of the Central Committee of the Republic and Prime Minister. During Daud's rule Afghanistan began to move away from Soviet influence and make closer ties with other Muslim nations, especially Pakistan.

 

Close ties between Afghans and USSR continued and in 1978 the pro-Moscow Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan seized control and began a bloody coup, purging the nation of political opposition on both the left and right. Resistance to hardline Stalinist rule picked up almost immediately; the US began supplying weapons to the opposition forces, especially those aligned with conservative nationalists in exile. The resistance grew as muslim groups joined and the Afghan guerrilla movement (Mujahideen) was born. After a series of factional struggles Nur Mohammad Taraki was named President, and Babrak Karma became his deputy Prime Minister, mass arrests, torture, and execution of political opponents was met by large scale uprisings in most of the country. In December 1979 the Soviet Army invaded to prevent the overthrow of the PDPA regime. Taraki was killed and Babrak Kamal became president, the Soviets manufactured an agreement between Kabul and Moscow inviting the Soviet army in to help protect the new government.

 

The vast majority of the people did not support any form of Soviet interference in their state and many soldiers defected to the Mujahideen. Public opposition to the invasion was so great that Russian soldiers couldn't walk the streets of Kabul without fear of being stabbed in the back. The invasion drew instant condemnation from around the world and many nations began public and/or private support of the Mujahideen (but only as it suited their particular foreign policy interests). Military backing for Mujahideen came from Iran, Pakistan, US through the CIA, and wealthy Gulf States. Guerilla training camps and religious schools (Madras's) were set up for Afghans fleeing the war, these camps in Pakistan were run by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, the funding for these camps came from the US and wealthy gulf states. Volunteers from many Muslim countries headed to the border to fight for the Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden. It was during the this period that Bin Laden learned bomb-making and met many of the volunteers for his Al-Queda network. The CIA was quite happy to train these people to kill, maim and terrorise on their behalf.

 

The Soviet invasion forces used all the modern weaponry at their disposal including tanks, fighter planes, heavy bombers, helicopter gunships and even chemical weapons. Large areas of the country were completely devastated by carpet bombing and heavy shelling, the use of chemical weapons destroyed crops and killed livestock, but most devastating of all were the helicopter gunships that could hunt down troops on foot and horseback and kill them with being in any immediate danger. However the complete air superiority that Russian forces maintained over Afghanistan was not translated to equal superiority on the ground, the Mujahideen proved to be extremely effective guerilla fighters and with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles supplied by the CIA, the Russians were fought to a virtual standstill. One cannot help but wonder what lessons US military advisers took from their time training Afghan fighters in this war; Afghanistan was described as the Soviet Union's Vietnam. The truth is that an organised, popular resistance movement can defeat an occupying army, no matter how much military might that army possesses.

 

The human cost of any military occupation is enormous; the Soviet/Afghan war created over 2.5 million refugees fleeing to Pakistan, two million fleeing to Iran and at least one million internally displaced people. The numbers of people killed remains unknown although most estimates run over one million civilian casualties. The Soviets pulled out in 1989 leaving the economy and infrastructure destroyed as well as large parts of the country littered with landmines, unexploded bombs and large stockpiles of light weapons, many villages had been completely flattened by carpet bombing.

 

The withdrawal of Soviet forces left the remnants of the Stalinist government to fight the Mujahideen for control of the country. A central figure in the government forces was General Abdur Rashid Dostrum, who was in command of a 20,000-strong militia ruling the northern provinces through terror. He defected to the Mujahideen and helped defeat the PDPA Government in 1992, leaving the Mujahideen as the only military-political force capable of governing the country. Instead of rebuilding the nation and trying alleviate the suffering of Afghan refugees, the Mujahideen government leaders President Burhanuddin Rabbini and General Rashid Dostrum turned their respective forces on each other to gain complete domination over the nation. Both armies were occupying Kabul at the time and as a result of this fighting Kabul was levelled by shelling, rocket attacks and air strikes.

 

By 1994 the Taleban had emerged from religious Madras's in Pakistan, under the leadership of Mullah Mohammed Omar, with weapons and training from Pakistani military intelligence and possibly the CIA (the US for obvious reasons denies any involvement in funding or training the Taleban). They fought and defeated all the warlords in the Pashtun regions quickly and took Kabul. General Rashid Dostum then retreated to his power base in the north (while other warlords fled the country), consolidating his hold on an area which covered six provinces with a population of around 5 million. He reached the height of his power in 1997 when he controlled a private mini-state in Northern Afghanistan. While much of the rest of Afghanistan was in ruins, the General grew rich in his stronghold of Mazar-i-sharif (a city of around two million people), from trade with the newly independent states of central Asia and even started his own airline, Balkh Air, flying to destinations in central Asia and the Gulf. General Rashid Dostrum is now an important leader of the Northern Alliance, along with many of his former enemies.

 

Ismil Khan was an officer in the national army and rose up against the Soviet forces stationed in Herat just months after their arrival in 1979. This initial fray resulted in the death of hundreds of Soviet soldiers. Khan's rule in the city stands out as an exception in the last twenty years. Herat's schools were filled with more than 40,000 children; nearly 50% of whom were girls. But the establishment of a conscript army was not welcome in the traditionally liberal city. When the Taleban launched their offensives towards Herat in 1996, corrupt officials and reports of a lack of funds to pay his soldiers contributed to his downfall. He was captured by the Taleban and held until eighteen months ago when he made a daring escape from Afghanistan. It remains unclear if he is actually inside the country although his forces are currently fighting the Taleban.

 

Other leaders of the Northern Alliance include: Karim Khalili (Hazara) Leader of the Hezb-e-Wahdat (Unity Party) which claims to represent the Shia Muslim, ethnic Hazara minority and is the main benefactor of Iranian support, Abdul Rassoul Sayyaf Leader of Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan. Former President Burhanuddin Rabbini is the nominal head of the Alliance and members of his government hold key positions in foreign relations. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister who has become the Alliance's principal spokesperson and Rawan Farhadi, Permanent Representative of the ousted government to the United Nations (the Taleban has never been permitted to speak at the United Nations)

 

Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from Sudan after the bombing of US army barracks in Saudi Arabia was pinned on him by the US, who used economic pressure on the government of Sudan to extradite him. He was welcomed by the Taleban, who saw him not only as an ally from the war against the Soviets but a hero of Islam and a fellow Muslim in need of help besides. The Taleban with had control of 90% of the country by 1998, and were the closest thing to real government and real peace the Afghans had seen since the 1980s. The Taleban was not recognised as a legitimate government, (only Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia recognised the Taleban diplomatically) and the UN placed sanctions on the Taliban denying the people any opportunity to trade with outside countries for much needed food, medical supplies and building materials. The Taleban had no trouble bypassing sanctions and buying weapons etc. from Pakistan and Qatar.

 

The Taleban are a particularly extreme form of Islamic government, preventing women from education, work or even leaving the house without being covered from head to foot and accompanied by a male member of her family. All television, magazines and other representations of the human form is considered blasphemous and therefore is banned. All attempts at rebuilding educational and industrial development have been halted by the Taleban who keep the nation in a state of underdevelopment in order to maintain their political supremacy over the people, this runs counter the teachings of Islam as prescribed by the majority of Muslim clerics. Public beatings and executions are commonplace in Taleban Afghanistan, but it is important to remember that in many other countries, mass arrests, torture, and execution of political dissidents is just as prevalent as Taleban abuses. Many these nations are US allies and their crimes are not considered worthy of the same UN sanctions placed on the Taleban.

 

In 1998 when US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam were bombed by terrorists of a still unknown origin, President Clinton accused bin Laden of the crimes and in retaliation Afghanistan and Sudan were hit with cruise missiles. The targets were both claimed to be military-terrorist targets, however the missiles sent into Khartoum, Sudan, destroyed Sudan's only pharmaceutical factory, killing an unknown number of workers. Clinton claimed at the time that this was a chemical weapons factory.

 

Following the devastation of over twenty years of civil war and new sanctions applied by the UN, Afghanistan is now the poorest country in the world. There is very little infrastructure left, virtually no heavy industry, and most of the cities and towns have yet to be rebuilt after the fighting of the last twenty years. The country remains littered with land mines, weapons and unexploded shells and bombs. Prior to the US's war on the nation over a million people relied on foreign aid agencies for their food as a result of a massive drought currently griping the country. Since September 11 massive numbers of Afghanis have begun fleeing their homes, entering neighbouring countries, despite attempts to close the borders.

 

This leads to the question: why is the richest and most powerful country in the world using its power to attack one of the poorest and weakest? The attacks on New York and Washington are acts of mass murder that are indefensible by anyone with humanitarian values. This does not justify the new horrors being visited of Afghanistan by US bombing and military operations now underway. The Taleban has remained defiant of the US calls to hand over bin Laden and has at times arrested and mistreated foreign aid workers, as well as violating all human rights of Afghan civilians.  The US response has been to bomb basically anything that is not already been destroyed. The attacks were begun with so-called smart weapons such as radar or laser guided bombs and satellite guided cruise missiles, the British and US Airforce began targeting the only operating airstrips and air control towers in Afghanistan. Moving on to so-called terrorist training camps and carpet-bombing Taleban troops, US troops are in Afghanistan working with the Northern Alliance and other forces attempting to subvert the government and guiding in bombs dropped by US/British planes. US Special Forces have also raided some Taleban bases looking for "terrorists" and Taleban leaders.

 

The US has begun using a flying gunship known as specter that has six barreled cannons and a howitzer onboard, to attack vehicles and troops on the ground. The largest non-nuclear bombs, known as the "Daisy-Cutters" have also been dropped on the country, these bombs are designed to be as effective as tactical nuclear weapons and devastate huge areas, killing anything within a three mile (4.8 km) radius. They claim that all of these weapons are the latest technology and that this will reduce the number of civilian casualties. However BBC World News carried reports of a single 2,000 pound radar guided bomb "going astray" and killing around 200 civilians in Kabul (at least 15% of laser and radar guided bombs miss their intended targets). The Taliban also claim refugees were hit by gunships shelling vehicles and around 100 were killed in one attack. The bombs have twice hit the Red Cross building in Kabul killing four aid workers and a mine-clearing charity has also been destroyed by US bombs hitting Kabul.

 

The Red Cross, UNICEF and other organisations have openly criticised the attacks as killing innocents, disrupting aid workers attempts to alleviate suffering and say there is no excuse for the targeting mistakes of the US Airforce. The US describes these casualties as "collateral damage" the same phrase used by Timothy McViegh to describe children killed in the FBI building he bombed in Oklahoma City. The corporate media aren't reporting the true horrors of US bombing in Afghanistan because it could put the war effort in danger and it is considered "unpatriotic" by the government and media editors to talk about innocent deaths caused by US troops in the wake of September 11.

 

The actual amount of food dropped (around 40,000 food parcels per day) could not possibly feed all the starving Afghans and the food drops are US army ration packs that contain food Afghans do not normally eat, with English instructions on how to prepare them. To add injury to insult these packages look very similar to cluster-bomb canisters that now litter the countryside (around 10% of cluster-bomblets fail to explode on impact and lie around waiting to maim or kill those who stumble upon them).  The real goal of dropping food into Afghanistan is to appear concerned about the plight of Afghan civilians and try to defuse the protests against the US bombing campaign. If George W Bush and his advisers were really concerned about the humanitarian crisis they would not have started bombing in the first place.

 

The US government is still working to shore up its coalition against the Taleban and bin Laden. Pakistan has been the focus of much of the effort because of close ties between the two nations. While military dictator General Musharraf is cooperating fully with the US - including basing US troops in his country - many thousands of Pakistanis have been angrily protesting the bombing and US presence in their country. The Pakistani military has been purged of pro-Taleban generals and is now being used to crush the protests in the northern provinces, killing many protesters, as well as fighting with Taleban troops on the border. In Palestine there have been more clashes with Israeli forces and anti-American protests. George W Bush has been pressuring both sides to make peace so that Muslim anger at the West doesn't affect the "Anti-Terror" coalition

 

For his part Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has attempted to stop the anti-US protests which resulted in several protesters being shot dead by Palestinian police. The Israelis have continued their nationalist rhetoric, assassinating Palestinian political leaders, occupying Palestinian land, bulldozing houses and clamping down even harder on Palestinian rights. Yasser Arafat is now unable to leave Gaza after an extremely right-wing Israeli politician Rahavam Zeevi was gunned down in a Jerusalem hotel in October. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed responsibility and its leaders were arrested by Palestinian police. The PFLP said it assassinated Zeevi in revenge for the killing of its leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, by Israeli forces last August. Israel rolled tanks into Palestinian controlled areas and demanded that Zeevi's killers be handed over to Israeli security forces. The war on terrorism has emboldened many other states (Russia in Checnya, Malaysia, Turkey) to clamp down on internal dissent and suspend democratic rights in their nations.

 

In other Muslim states from Indonesia to Egypt there have been large scale and sometimes quite violent anti-American and anti-war protests. There have also been protests around the rest of the world including all major cities in New Zealand. This is the most effective response workers and activists can have to the unjust wars of our rulers, by exercising our democratic rights and criticising our government's war policies we challenge the claim that the government is representing the people's concerns by fighting such wars. As long as the war continues people will continue to protest and challenge our government's policy towards the war.

 

All indications from Washington are that this war will not be short and will almost certainly be carried into other "terrorist states" like Iraq. The Palestinian conflict and the possible overthrow of the Pakistani military dictatorship could produce a much larger conflict, particularly if other Muslim governments leave the coalition and oppose the US attacks as well. Ordinary people were never consulted on weather the "war on terrorism" was worth it considering the risk of starting a global conflict killing millions of people.

 

In all wars it is the workers who do all of the fighting and dying and the rulers of nations and capitalist businesses who reap the rewards. Despite claims to the contrary by US spokespeople, oil, gas and other minerals are an important part of the Afghanistan campaign, the possibility of building pipelines from central Asian oil and gas fields through Afghanistan to ports in Pakistan where US dominated oil companies can control the distribution of this fuel is a key objective for the US. For any such plan to work the US will need to place a compliant government in Kabul to ensure the smooth operation of US capital in the region, the Afghan people will see very little or no reward from such a scheme.

 

The current destruction of Afghanistan is not going to make the world a better place. The more unarmed and poor people killed by US bombs, more villages destroyed by tanks, artillery, and bulldozers, will mean more assassins and suicide bombers attacking symbols of imperialism to continue the cycle of violence. It's the impoverishment of the third world that creates the conditions for the growth of extremist political and religious groups prepared to launch terrorist attacks.  Afghanistan is a good example of how nations become, and remain, so underdeveloped. It has numerous deposits of minerals, as well as being on trade routes between south and central Asia, yet it remains devastated and impoverished by the influence of imperialism from Moscow and Washington. Moscow is still sending massive ammounts of arms to the Northern Alliance.  If the Northern Alliance comes to power they will likely be just as repressive as the Taleban (most of the women under Northern Alliance rule are also forced to wear a Purdah and excluded from education), that's if the warlords don't turn their forces on each other as they did in 1992.

 

The problems of such an impoverished nation will only be solved by the redistribution of wealth. A modern education system that all people have accessed to, decent housing and public healthcare, and the rebuilding of industrial areas and the development of modern agriculture. Along with this a democratic society is needed, that allows people to speak their mind without fear of a prison cell, or a bullet. A society where women are treated equaly to men, where race, religon, and sexuality are not factors that divide society into suspect camps (as Muslims have become automatic suspects for every crime considered "terrorism" by the ruling class and corporate media in the West). This can only start to happen when impoverished peoples are offered unconditional aid by wealthier countries and the nation is able to rule itself without any foreign interference from superpowers.

 

 

What is the Northern Alliance?

The US government is out to get Osama bin Laden and topple Afghanistan's Taleban regime for "sheltering terrorism." But it had to scramble to come up with an Afghan opposition to the Taleban.

 

The politicians and their media mouthpieces are now painting the Northern Alliance as heroic and battle hardened opponents of the Taleban's repressive regime. But the truth is a little different. The Northern Alliance is a quarreling bunch of warlords and clan leaders who are cut from the same cloth as the Taleban. "When I was in Kabul last year, I was told time and again that the only thing people there feared more than the Taliban were the warlords of the Northern Alliance," Patricia Gossman, an expert on human rights in South Asia, wrote in the Washington Post.

 

In fact, leaders of the Northern Alliance ruled Afghanistan before the Taleban replaced them in 1996. Their reign was so chaotic and violent that the Taleban was able to sweep across the country and take power in a period of months (sound familiar?). "From 1992 to 1995, fighting among the factions of the alliance reduced a third of Kabul to rubble and killed more than 50,000 civilians," Gossman wrote. "The top commanders ordered massacres of rival ethnic groups, and their troops engaged in mass rape."

 

The 1992-96 regime was called the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA). The ISA took power shortly after the USSR retreated from its military occupation of the country. After Russia"s withdrawal, US-backed Islamist rebels splintered into rival factions, leading to civil war. The ISA was the faction that emerged on top, toppling the pro-USSR government in Kabul in 1992.

 

During the group's four years in power, there was "no rule of law" in areas it controlled, according to a July report by Human Rights Watch. As they warred with one another, each faction terrorised the local population in the areas it controlled, using summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and "disappearances."

 

In 1995, one faction captured a Kabul neighborhood that had been a former stronghold of another. "[T]roops went on a rampage, systematically looting whole streets and raping women," the US State Department said of the incident. Now the Northern Alliance has become the US's on-the-ground ally in the war on the Taleban - in a repeat of the "enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend" logic that helped to propel repressive Islamist regimes like the Taleban to power in the first place.

 

"[I]t was the CIA's former allies in the anti-Soviet war who subsequently destroyed the country, and our onetime friends have been responsible for many major terrorist attacks of recent years," journalist Ken Silverstein pointed out in Salon magazine.

 

The US is now set to replay this bloody game. "U.S. officials - who know full well the whole bloody, rapacious track record of the killers in the "Alliance" - are suggesting in good faith that these are the men who will help us bring democracy to Afghanistan and drive the Taleban and the terrorists out of the country," Robert Fisk wrote in Britain"s Independent newspaper. "In fact, we're ready to hire one gang of terroristsour terrorists - to rid ourselves of another gang of terrorists. What, I wonder, would the dead of New York and Washington think of this?"

 

"The terror of the Taleban has been replaced by fear of a new round of bloodletting and ethnic cleansing as rival factions lay claim to the capital," reported BBC journalist Kate Clark. "Kabul has unpleasant memories of the misery caused by factional fighting when the Northern Alliance controlled the city between 1992 and 1996. Already there are signs of abuses and looting."

 

Ahmed Rashid, author of the definitive study of the Taleban regime and Afghanistan, painted a similar picture. "The Northern Alliance faces rivalries in its ranks and with other groups that could cause a renewed civil war," he warned. Rashid described what has happened in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the first major city to fall to Northern Alliance forces.

 

The city "was captured by the Uzbek general Rashid Dostum, General Atta Mohammed, a Tajik, and Ustad Mohaqqiq, a Hazara. "They are still at loggerheads. United Nations officials are unable to enter Mazar because of the lack of security and general lawlessness." Many of the groups now vying for power across Afghanistan are also sponsored by rival foreign powers.

 

The Pakistani regime is determined not to allow the Northern Alliance to dominate the country, and will be willing to fuel rival groups among the majority Pashtun population in the south of the country. Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani has arrived back in Kabul. He is sponsored by Russia and Iran, which will try to secure their influence as against that of Pakistan.

 

 

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When the Taleban were America's allies

The following excerpts are from an article published in the New York Times on 16 February 1995. The "ragtag army of local warlords" who had a "reign of terror, pillage and heroin-running" are the Northern Alliance - the "Afghan patriots" bringing peace to the country - are the Taleban!

After a decade of Soviet military occupation and five more years of ruthless civil war, Afghanistan has taken a sudden and startling turn toward peace.

In a military campaign that has lasted barely four months, a new force of professed Islamic purists and Afghan patriots known as the Taleban, many of whom were religious students until they took up arms last fall, has taken control of more than 40% of the country.

Along the way, the Taleban have uprooted scores of mujahedeen commanders, the self-styled 'soldiers of God' who took to Afghanistan's wild valley's and mountains to fight Soviet occupiers 15 years ago.

When the Soviet forces withdrew, these armed leaders disintegrated into a ragtag army of local warlords. In recent years, using guns acquired when the United States was bankrolling the Afghan resistance, they have established a reign of terror, pillage and heroin-running.

An explosion of resentment against the warlords, hidden beneath a blanket of fear until the Taleban emerged to tap it, has been as much a factor in the Taleban's success as their military might. Now many Afghans say they see in the new force the salvation for their country that they have waited for so long.

 

 

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Afghan women freed?

The religious police have gone but the burqas remain. Foreign newspaper photographers, under pressure to produce images of the city's rejection of the Taleban can be seen each day persuading a few women to remove these garments. What the photos do not show is the women putting them back on again a few moments later. The fact remains that the Northern Alliance feels the same way about women as the Taliban did - they are chattel, to be tolerated but kept out of real life.

Chris Steven, Observer journalist in Kabul