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October
8, 2001
Mahajan
and Jensen
A
War of Lies
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance
Builds an Airport
October
7, 2001
John Pilger
Hitchens'
Slurs
Tariq
Ali
Who
Said History
Stopped Being Ironical?
October
6, 2001
Vijay
Prashad
US
War Aims
Kevin
Gray
The
Trap:
Blacks and 9/11
October
5, 2001
Ronnie
Gilbert
Déjà
Vu: The FBI's War
on Civil Liberties
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban
Cluster Bombs
Dave
Marsh
John
Brown, Woody Guthrie
and the Secret Music of 9/11
Babak
Nahid
A
Suspect's Perspective
October
4, 2001
David
Vest
Send
in the Cons
Robin
Blackburn
Road
to Armageddon
Noam
Chomsky
Chatting
with Chomsky
Tony
Blair
The
Dossier on bin Laden
Norman
Madarasz
Canada
Kow-Tows to US
Lorenzo Ervin
No Palestinian
Ever
Called Me Nigger
October
3, 2001
Peter Bell
Hitchens
and Coulter:
Love at Last?
Patrick
Cockburn
Waiting
Is the Hardest Part
Jeff
Chang
Clear
Channel Fires
Davey D!
John Chuckman
War
on Terror:
Crusade Without a Definition
Mahajan/Jensen
Tough
Talk Won't Solve
Problems of Terrorism
Ariel
Dorfman:
America
the Wounded
Lennie
Brenner
Dr.
Watson in Afghanistan
Steve
Perry:
Ashcroft's
Scare Tactics
October
2, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn:
Inside
an Afghan Hospital
Richard
Manning:
A
Vietnam Vet on Patriotism
St. Clair/Cockburn:
Tarnished
Star,
Tom Ridge in Vietnam
October
1, 2001
Noam
Chomsky:
Memo
to Hitchens
Hizam
Bitar:
Refuting
Michael Kinsley
David Grenier:
The
Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly
Douglas
Valentine:
Homeland
Insecurity
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 3, 2001
8-Page Special
Issue
Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on
Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for
Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
God
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
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Gore:
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by Cockburn
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October 8,
2001
Inside
Afghanistan
Flashes on the Skyline and Plumes
of Fire
By Patrick Cockburn
in
the Panjshir Valley
The Independent
From a hilltop 40 miles north of Kabul,
across a clear night sky illuminated by a half a silver moon,
I saw flashes on the skyline last night as the Allied air strikes
began.
Under a canopy of stars, plumes
of fire were visible across the flat, heavily populated Shomali
plain, which leads to the outskirts of Kabul. There, where anti-Taliban
forces are dug in along a front line that snakes within 25 miles
of the city, the distant thumping that reverberated across the
still air signalled the long-awaited turn in their fortunes.
As the horizon lit up with
anti-aircraft fire, Taliban and opposition forces began to blaze
away at each other with artillery. At one moment, there was
an explosion high over Kabul, which may have been a missile directed
at Allied planes overhead. At another, there were flashes of
white light, almost certainly anti-aircraft fire.
From the rocky hilltop overlooking
the village of Jabal Sarraj, there is a straight view south
towards the Afghan capital. This has been one of the great battlefields
during almost a quarter of a century of warfare in Afghanistan,
and is likely to see fierce fighting in coming days as the Northern
Alliance forces attempt to take the capital.
Alliance reserves were already
pouring towards the front, and Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern
Alliance's foreign minister, said there was going to be a ground
offensive by his troops within days of the US bombing campaign.
Civilians immediately to the
north of the front line were retreating to their houses fearing
that the Taliban would retaliate with rockets.
Intercepted radio traffic between
Taliban commanders reveals that they have little idea as to
what is going on, according to Northern Alliance commanders.
They said the troops had received few orders apart from being
told that they were about to be attacked and to hold the line
in front of them. They have moved some reinforcements north
of Kabul, but opposition commanders said there was little sign
of the Taliban digging in.
Mass defections from the Taliban
are expected now, but changing sides is not easy in present-day
Afghanistan.
The last decade of war has
seen prisoners of war locked up in containers until they died
from suffocation, were thrown down wells or were lined up and
shot. This was done to the Taliban and by them.
Deserter
Says Ranks of Taliban are
Full of 'Arabs and Punjabis'
Anti-Taliban fighters on the
front line north of Kabul burst into song last night as the
US-led military assault on Kabul began.
"I am happy! The Taliban
are our enemies, but America is on our side, fighting terrorists
in Afghanistan," sang one member of the opposition Northern
Alliance.
The Northern Alliance, which
launched its own assault on the Taliban late last night, was
already reporting desertions from the ranks of the ruling movement
even before the strikes began.
One young Taliban deserter
crossed enemy lines to change sides just hours before the bombs
started to fall. Khan Jan, a 23-year-old with a turban and black
beard, unwillingly conscripted into the Taliban army, said he
waited until 4am to make his escape.
"By then the other soldiers
were all sleeping," he told me. "I did not feel any
fear because I took a heavy machine gun, a kalashnikov and a
pistol."
Mass defections from the Taliban
are expected now that the bombing has started. But Changing
sides is not easy in present day Afghanistan.
The last decade of war has
seen prisoners of war locked up in containers until they died
from suffocation, thrown down wells or lined up against a wall
and shot. This was done to the Taliban and by them.
For a man who must have been
close to death during the delicate and dangerous process of
deserting the Taliban, Khan Jan seemed perky and relaxed.
"I owned a small shop,
just a booth, in Kunduz city in the north," he explained.
"One day two Taliban came and said I should come with them.
Then they put me with 70 other people in a helicopter and flew
us to Sedarat camp in Kabul."
Khan Jan, like most of the
others picked up in Kunduz was a Tajik, while the Taliban are
primarily Pashtun.
A month ago Khan Jan was sent
to a section of the front close to the battle-scarred headquarters
building near Mahmoud Raqy village where we met. It is not that
difficult to move across the front line because it runs through
a heavily populated area of mud-brick villages and orchards.
Khan Jan had good reasons for
deserting the Taliban. "I decided to leave the Taliban
as soon as possible because their ranks were full of Punjabis
[Pakistanis] and Arabs and they hate women."
This was certainly the politically
correct thing to say for a defecting Taliban being interviewed
by a foreign journalist in the presence of about 10 opposition
soldiers. It is also true, however, that Afghans, who are nothing
if not xenophobic, deeply resent the presence of all foreigners.
But Khan Jan, who eyed his captors with intelligent half-amused,
half-wary eyes, also probably had a good idea that something
unpleasant was about to happen to Taliban soldiers. "America
is very strong," he mused. How had the Taliban soldiers
reacted to news of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and
the Pentagon? Khan Jan said: "We discussed them a lot. Some
people said it was a great victory for us. Also they were happy
to have killed [Ahmad Shah] Masud, [the Northern Alliance military
leader].
"Many soldiers said: 'Now
the Americans will attack us.' But then Mullah Omar [the Taliban
spiritual leader] said: 'Don't worry about America.'" The
last point made the Northern Alliance soldiers in the room laugh
loudly.
Khan Jan's first plan to escape
did not work. He contacted soldiers in the trenches opposite
his own on his field radio suggesting that they cross no-man's
land and pick him up. Presumably fearing a trap they refused.
"I talked to them twice," he said. "They told
me to cross over myself on foot." A night later he made
his way, heavily armed, across the frontline.
The opposition is hoping that
Khan Jan will be the first of many deserters. They may well
be right. CP
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