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October
15, 2001
Marwan
Bishara
Clash
of Civilizations? Hardly
Patrick
Cockburn
Modern
War in
A Medieval Village
October
13, 2001
Carl
Estabrook
Letters
to Editors
Molly
Secours
War:
The Procter and Gamble Perspective
Alexander
Cockburn
War
Can't Save the Economy
October
12, 2001
Imran
Khan
Try
Them in Court
Vijay
Prashad
War
in a Passive Voice
Patrick
Cockburn
Bombing
the Taliban
October
11, 2001
David
Vest
Bob
Dylan and 9/11
Amb.
Edward Peck
Bush
War Plan "Dumb"
Hani
Shukrallah
West
Is As West Does
Patrick
Cockburn
Looming
Humanitarian Crisis
October
10, 2001
Tom
Turnipseed
Earth
is Our "Homeland"
Steve
Perry
What
Is To Be Done?
Simon
Jenkins
The
Dumbest Weapon
Tariq
Ali
The
Pakistan Maelstrom
Cockburn/St.
Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
October
9, 2001
David
Vest
The
Rout That Wasn't
Michael
Mandel
This
War Is Illegal
Patrick
Cockburn
Bombs
Weaken Taliban
Lenni
Brenner
Powell
the Owl
Zha
Marginalization
and Terror
Steve
Perry
It
Begins
October
8, 2001
Zbigniew
Brzezinski
How
Jimmy Carter and
I Started the Muj
Philip Agee
The
USA and Terrorism
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?
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Five
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By
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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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
Nostrodamus
Jam-maker
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CounterPunch
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
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
Al
Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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October 22,
2001
In Afghanistan
Killing Mullah Omar's
Son
By Patrick Cockburn
in Jabal Saraj
The
Independent
The son of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of
the Taliban, has been killed by an American air strike.
An Afghan doctor said yesterday that
he had struggled in vain to save the life of the boy, aged 10,
after the child was injured during the first night of strikes
on the southern city of Kandahar.
Dr Abdul Bari said he had treated the
boy for abdominal injuries and a broken femur in a hospital
in Kandahar and that Mullah Omar had stood by, pleading with
the doctor to save his son's life.
Dr Bari was interviewed by the BBC at
a border crossing near Quetta in Pakistan. He did not give the
boy's name, but said his injuries were too severe to survive.
The child died the same night he was admitted to the hospital.
Mullah Omar's uncle was injured in the
same attack, Dr Bari said, and was still being treated in hospital
in Kandahar. Dr Bari said the hospital had only five days' supply
of drugs left to dispense.
Other reports said many of the city's
500,000 inhabitants had fled, leaving only the very poor behind.
Kandahar has always been considered the main power base of the
Taliban.
Little is known about the 41-year-old
Taliban leader and even less about the number of wives and children
he has. He is reported to have married Osama bin Laden's eldest
daughter, while Mr bin Laden is reported to have taken one of
Mullah Omar's daughters as his fourth wife, although the Taliban
have denied this.
Some reports have said Mullah Omar has
only one son, so it is conceivable that the boy killed in Kandahar
was a grandchild of Mr bin Laden.
American officials have admitted they
are attacking places where the Taliban leader is known to live,
under the supposition that they are military command centres.
The boy's death is just one indication
of the mounting civilian death toll from the strikes.
As the third week of attacks began yesterday,
Taliban officials said 18 people had been killed in the morning
raids over the capital, including eight members of a single
family at breakfast time. The Taliban say up to 900 have been
killed in attacks since the campaign began on October 7.
There has been no verification of the
Taliban claim. Reporters in northern Kabul yesterday saw the
bodies of three women and four children killed by bombs.
"There were no military bases here,
only innocent people," said Bacha Gul, the brother of one
of those who died. "We don't care about military targets.
If they want to hit military targets let them, but these were
not terrorists."
Taliban execute five of their own soldiers accused of being spies
The Taliban have executed five of their
own men as American spies, two of them local military commanders,
in a sign of their determination to keep control of the key
northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, they said yesterday.
The executions may be a sign of a growing
panic in the ranks of the Taliban about defections from their
army and the possibility of the strategic city falling to the
anti-Taliban forces of the Northern Alliance.
If the Taliban lose Mazar-i-Sharif, their
whole position in the north, where their rule is already unpopular,
might crumble, opening the way for an opposition offensive against
the capital, Kabul.
The battle for the city is also a test
of the military strength of the Afghan opposition, which claims
that it can defeat the Taliban on the ground if it receives
wholehearted American air support.
A Taliban official confirmed the executions
of the alleged spies. "Two commanders by the names of Saboor
and Yusuf and three of their men were executed for acts of sabotage,
provoking people and spying for the Americans," he said.
The Taliban recently rushed an extra
1,000 men into the city, which they only captured in 1998, to
quell an uprising against the government.
Meanwhile, America stepped up air activity
yesterday afternoon around the north of Kabul. The sound of
jets passing overhead reverberated around the mountains near
Jabal Saraj. They were reported to have dropped several bombs
near the former Soviet military airport at Bagram.
But this was not the massive air assault
on the front line which opposition commanders wanted.
There are signs, however, that America
may be increasing its military aid to Abdul Rashid Dostum, one
of three opposition generals trying to surround Mazar-i-Sharif.
An official working for Ustad Attah,
another anti-Taliban general, said: "There are over 15
Americans here and they are collecting information about Taliban
targets in order to hit them during air attacks." He claimed
500 men, including 10 commanders, had recently switched from
the Taliban to the Northern Alliance.
Few details of the fighting in Mazar-i-Sharif
can be independently checked and the Taliban education minister,
Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, indignantly insisted yesterday that
they were holding their own. "We have pushed back the opposition
attacks," he said. "We will never bow before America."
In areas held by the opposition, north
of Kabul, the fighters voiced scepticism about the effectiveness
of raids by the US special forces along the lines of the weekend
raids around Kandahar. A commander named Mohammed Arif, said
yesterday: "It is impossible for it to be effective. Afghanistan
is too mountainous. Local forces know the terrain work better."
The Northern Alliance have their own
reasons for downplaying the use of American or British special
forces. But they are right in suggesting that the Taliban forces
will be difficult to uproot without the help of local troops.
"The Taliban can easily fight in people's houses and villages.
They will be very difficult to find," Mohammed Arif said.
The Northern Alliance forces consist
of about 12,000 to 15,000 well-trained assault troops and a
much more numerous village militia. They have been bitterly
disappointed by America's reluctance to support them openly,
in case this offends neighbouring Pakistan.
The Alliance represents mostly ethnic
minority interests in the north and its leaders ran a chaotic
and violent administration when they ruled Kabul five years
ago. The US airforce has only given them effective aid around
Mazar-i-Sharif. CP
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