[sixties-l] Antiwar News...(# 28) (fwd)

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Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 15:26:49 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Antiwar News...(# 28)

Antiwar News...(# 28)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents:

--On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New Vigor
--U.S. Appears to Be Losing Public Relations War So Far
--Anti-war protests in Turkey, Pakistan despite gov't suppression
--US bombs civilians, again
--This report cannot be independently verified
--Thousands protest Afghan strikes at EU summit
--US bombs UN demining dogs
--Academic says public want quick fix to Afghan war
--War-Time Realism Through the Looking Glass
--Direct witness of Afghanistan civilian victims of attacks
--No peace, no justice
--Trapped by the barbed wire border
--Killing Our Own Kind
--U.N.: American planes destroyed military hospital
--U.S. bombs hit civilian areas
--A True Patriot Can Pose Hard Questions
--U.N. Confirms Bomb Hit Hospital on Outskirts of an Afghan City
--Pentagon admits US jets bombed old people's home in Afghan city
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Anti-war links/resources at the end.)
===================================================

On Campus and Off, Antiwar Movements See New Vigor

LA Times. 28 October 2001.

AMHERST, Mass. -- As never before, their dance cards are full.

Scholars of peace and diplomacy say that with little effort -- and no
exaggeration -- they could schedule three speaking engagements per
night. Elder statesmen of this country's antiwar movement report a
similar surge in demand since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Academics
who study terrorism or the Middle East are taking part in teach-ins that
generally are packed.

Off campus, the voices of nonviolence are heard in such places as
Worcester, a working-class city where a weekly vigil during rush hour
draws cheers from passersby.

And in Northampton, where a draft counseling center has opened -- even
though, at the moment, there is no military draft.

Any organized campaign to oppose U.S. military force in Afghanistan "is
still in the process of taking shape," said Joseph Gerson of the
American Friends Service Committee in Cambridge. But, he said, momentum
is building.

"It's big and it's diverse," Gerson said. "I think it can be described
as a peace movement and an antiwar movement and a justice movement."

The energy is evident in increased traffic on the Internet, where new
peace sites are complementing existing sources of information about the
war. But along with the vast virtual audience, actual crowds are
growing.

In longtime centers of peace activity such as Berkeley and Madison,
Wis., large demonstrations began before the first bombs were dropped.

But New England, long a focal point for activism, is where much of the
antiwar action is unfolding.

The new pacifism feels almost polite, lacking the stridence of earlier
generations of American protest. Resistance to the U.S. military
involvement in Afghanistan is thoughtful, reflective. It is tempered by
angst, anguish--and most of all, a fundamental abhorrence of what
happened to this country when hijackers commandeered four jetliners and
killed more than 5,000 people.

The focus still is diffuse; there is no monolithic chorus of dissent. No
charismatic leaders have yet stepped forward. And if there is a single
defining trait, at present it is a thirst for information.

With foundations in the vast and growing antiglobalization campaign, the
evolving peace movement draws on long-standing, traditional
organizations and philosophies. Days after Sept. 11, Quaker groups
organized the first peace rallies. The War Resisters League, the
Fellowship of Reconciliation and other old-time pacifist groups are back
on the radarscope. Again and again, a well-worn chestnut from Mahatma
Ghandi -- "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" -- shows up
on handouts and bulletin boards.

"I'm seeing a lot less of the knee-jerk kind of stuff," said Stephen
Zunes, a Middle Eastern specialist who directs the peace and justice
studies program at the University of San Francisco. "People are
concerned, and they oppose the war. But they realize this is a different
kind of situation. They need the facts. They want more information."

A recent two-day speaking swing took Zunes from the Bay Area to Los
Angeles to Eugene, Ore. His audiences were "big and enthused and
agitated, but I think in a more reflective, responsible way than we have
seen sometimes."

"Certainly there is passion out there, but it is a responsible passion
-- one that has been tempered by the fact that we witnessed this
enormous tragedy on Sept. 11."

Boston University history professor Howard Zinn said he has been
"besieged" by invitations to speak about terrorism and the war in
Afghanistan, with "more requests than I could possibly deal with." At
79, Zinn approaches the stepped-up demand as an eminence grise of the
antiwar movement and as a bombardier from World War II.

What he sees, Zinn said, is a massive appetite for information and a
resistance effort that is fast churning into action.

[N.B.] "Things are starting earlier now than they did with the Vietnam
War," Zinn said. "In the spring of 1965, we had 100 people on the Boston
Common. Just a week or so ago, we had 2,000 people at Copley Square.
It's starting earlier, and I believe it will grow."

"Immediately after Sept. 11, if you talked about American foreign policy
as having anything to do with the problem, people were horrified. It was
too close. People thought you were diminishing the tragedy. I think as
time passes, it will be easier to think in more long-term ways."

Out here in western Massachusetts, fertile territory for alternative
views since the American Revolution, opposition to capitalism and
corporate power was already fueling many students.

Right away, said professor Michael Klare, head of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College, "protests were organized by
students who were already geared up for antiglobalization protests."
They have a perspective that makes them distinct from many other
undergraduates Klare has encountered in his post-Sept. 11 flurry of
speeches and seminars. "Most students don't even have that. They're just
bewildered," he said.

But some students--and many nonstudents as well -- crave involvement as
a way to stave off feelings of helplessness. Over lunch one recent day,
a table full of Hampshire College students talked about how and why they
have plunged into action, forming a local branch of a group born at UC
Berkeley on Sept. 12: Students for a Peaceful Response.

Their principles of unity, they explained, begin with a condemnation of
the attacks of Sept. 11.

>From there, said 21-year-old Kai Newkirk of Shepardstown, W.Va., "we
have the priority of stopping the mass murder of millions. We have a
window of a few weeks."

Sydney Hoover, 17, a freshman from Upper Coe, Md., said she already was
involved in an antiglobalization protest aimed at the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank. After Sept. 11, that effort hastily
shifted focus to initiate a campus dialogue with a group called
Activating Peace.

The loosely knit group launched nonviolence training seminars and began
preparing speakers, Hoover said. With the goal of creating "some kind of
visible dissenting presence," they reached out to local high schools and
community groups, organized teach-ins and held a daylong walkout at
Hampshire, a private school with 1,200 students.

The process unfolding at Hampshire reflects a powerfully American
quality, said Dale Bryan of the peace and justice studies program at
Tufts University, near Boston.

"This voice that for many represents rancorous discourse actually it is
bona fide, genuine American participation," Bryan said. "It is what the
country does well, to assemble and participate freely, and we always
have. And sometimes it is directed at the government, and the
Constitution says, well, sometimes it should be."

For those in "the movement" -- a timeworn sobriquet that the peace
effort has clung to -- "this is how it is being realized: in day-to-day,
face-to-face, ordinary conversations," Bryan said.

At Lincoln Square in Worcester, an industrial-era city in central
Massachusetts, this theory plays out each Tuesday at a street vigil.
Mothers, lawyers, clergy, students -- the number stays constant at about
50, though the participants change--stand at a busy intersection. They
chant, wave signs, hand out leaflets and often hold conversations with
people who come to a stop in their cars.

Out on the street in his suit and tie, Philip Stone, a 47-year-old
attorney, said: "I think this is a fairly typical example of the kind of
grass-roots peace activity that you will see going on all over the
country. This is a location with high visibility, a place where we can
demonstrate that there is thoughtful opposition to the policies of the
current administration."

Kindergarten teacher Kathleen Connelly Legg, a 45-year-old mother of
three, said she never protested during Vietnam and thought hard before
showing up at Lincoln Square. She was troubled, Legg said, that "we, as
the most powerful nation on Earth, are bombing the most destitute."

Though small, the weekly demonstration will help the seeds of a new
peace effort to take root, Legg said.

"It spreads and it spreads as information gets out. I am hoping we are
laying the groundwork for something much larger. I am hoping that we get
that kind of time."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S. Appears to Be Losing Public Relations War So Far

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/international/middleeast/28PROM.html

Published on Sunday, October 28, 2001 in the New York Times
by Susan Sachs

CAIRO ^ The Bush administration has belatedly deployed its forces for a
propaganda war to win over the Arab public. But the campaign, intended to
convince doubters that the American attacks on Afghanistan are justified and
its Middle East policy is evenhanded, has so far proved ineffectual.

Thousands of words from American officials, it appears, have proved no match
for the last week's news, which produced a barrage of pictures of wounded
Afghan children and of Israeli tanks rolling into Palestinian villages.

"Talking heads just can't compete with powerful images," a Western diplomat
here said. "The images touch emotions, and people in this part of the world
react according to their emotions."

Since the bombs started falling nearly three weeks ago, it has become
obvious to people in Washington, as well as to many friendly Arab leaders,
that President Bush's "war on terror" has an image problem outside the
United States.

The reasons for Arab skepticism may not be immediately apparent to many
Americans who feel personally threatened by terror and are inundated with
daily news about anthrax and young soldiers being sent to faraway places to
fight terrorists.

But that sense of immediacy ^ that terrorists threatening America are hiding
out in Afghanistan ^ is absent in the Middle East. While the anthrax story
is widely reported in the Arab media and stories about Osama bin Laden's
terror network appear frequently in newspapers here, news organizations in
the Middle East have shifted much of their attention in the last two weeks
to events in their own backyard.

The front pages of newspapers in the region have been filled with reports on
Israel's latest attacks on Palestinian towns. Funerals of Palestinians
killed in clashes with Israel are the first item on television news
programs. The images are taken directly from Western news agency reports.

For the Bush administration's new public relations campaign to win over
people in Arab nations, the renewed cycle of killing in Israel and the
Palestinian territories came at an especially inauspicious time.

Beginning 10 days ago, a parade of administration officials started
appearing on Arabic television stations to explain the goals of American
policy in the Middle East and the attacks on Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, have all been interviewed
on Al Jazeera, the widely watched Arabic television station based in Qatar.
State Department officials have appeared on state television in several
countries, and interviews with other American diplomats have run in
newspapers in the region.

The American views ^ always avowing that the United States has nothing
against Muslims or Islam ^ have received prominent play.

But in terms of content and impact, the interviews have often fallen flat.
Ms. Rice, for instance, said several times in her interview that Palestinian
violence had to end before Israel would consider reopening peace talks. Not
long after the interview was aired, Al Jazeera viewers saw news reports of
Israeli tanks rumbling into Palestinian towns.

"America has failed miserably in marketing their war to the Arabs," said
Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a political science professor at Cairo University.
"How can they convince the Arabs of anything while Israel's American-made
tanks are occupying the Palestinian territories?"

American newspapers and magazines available in the Middle East do no better
than the administration in explaining the war on terror to foreigners, he
added. "They write about how right America is," he said. "They do not try at
all to articulate the fundamental American thinking. All are writing the
same thing: terrorists are Arab and Muslim, and the Arab regimes produce
them."

The United States, of course, started off at a disadvantage in the
propaganda war because its Middle East policy was seen as blindly
pro-Israel, and Mr. Bush was seen as being uninterested in the plight of
Palestinians under Israeli rule.

Battlefield information is also scarce. Al Jazeera is the only foreign
television network with a bureau operating in Kabul.

After nearly three weeks of watching television footage of American missiles
streaking across the skies of Afghanistan and seeing newspaper photographs
of Afghan civilians in bloody bandages, many Arabs remain skeptical about
the war's aim.

The suspicion can be seen in the way news from the front has begun to be
treated.

Akhbar el Yom, one of Egypt's biggest newspapers, ran a wire service picture
on the front page on Friday showing an Afghan child with wounds said to have
been caused by the American bombing.

Inside the paper was another picture of an Afghan child whose family was
reported to have been killed in by American bombing. The caption read, "Is
this baby a Taliban fighter?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anti-war protests in Turkey, Pakistan despite gov't suppression

Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 1, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper

TURKEY, PAKISTAN:
LEFT ORGANIZES ANTI-WAR PROTESTS DESPITE GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSION

By John Catalinotto

Important demonstrations opposing U.S. aggression in
Afghanistan have taken place in two key members of the U.S.-
led "coalition"--Turkey and Pakistan.

The significance of these protests is that they were called
and led not by religious fundamentalists but by communist
and working-class forces.

According to a report from the Party of Labor (EMEP) in
Turkey, demonstrators took to the streets in the cities of
Istanbul and Adana on Oct. 14 to protest U.S. aggressive
attacks on Afghanistan and the collaboration of the Ecevit
government.

The day before, demonstrations were held in Izmir and
Ankara.

The leading forces in these demonstrations were the EMEP,
the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP) and the Socialist
Power Party (SIP). Trade unionists from unions affiliated to
the Confederation of Public Sector Unions also participated.

All four demonstrations were first called for Oct. 14. But
when the government banned the actions, two were
rescheduled. All four protested both the banning of the
rallies and the war.

While the demonstration in Adana ended peacefully, police
brutally attacked the 1,500 people on the Istanbul
demonstration and took 44 into custody. Others were beaten
or bitten by police dogs.

The most popular slogans on the march were "No to war,"
"Down with U.S. imperialism," "Budget for education, not for
war," "No to war--work, bread, equality and freedom" and "No
to poverty and hunger."

In a talk that was ending as the police attacked, EMEP
President Levent Tzel noted that "outside of a handful of
collaborators and people in capitalist circles, the people
of Turkey do not regard the U.S. as a friend or ally. And
the people who have sent their sons to Korea and Kosovo
yesterday are against troops being sent to Afghanistan
today."

The EMEP leader added, referring to Turkey's grave economic
crisis, "the government that has dragged the country and the
people into such a decline should immediately resign its
duties, without opening the door to new disasters."

Both the EMEP and SIP party leaders said that neither the
police attacks nor threats would intimidate their parties,
and that they would continue to protest U.S. aggression and
Ecevit's collaboration.

PROTESTERS BLOCK TRAFFIC IN ISLAMABAD

The Communist Workers and Peasants Party (CMKP) of Pakistan
held a demonstration Oct. 21 of 200 people in Islamabad.
According to a participant, this anti-imperialist action
against attacks on Afghan istan took over Murree Road and
blocked traffic as participants walked for a kilometer.

At a seminar in Peshawar, Afzal Kha moosh, general secretary
of the CMKP, told the audience that U.S. imperialism is in
search of mineral resources in Central Asia and can only be
defeated through an anti-imperialist struggle.

Ghinwa Bhutto, president of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and
former Finance Minister Dr. Mubasher Hassan also addressed
the seminar and showed their solidarity.

Syed Azeem, president of the CMKP, said that his party's
anti-imperialist campaign is going well and has already led
to demonstrations in Lahore and Okara. In the next phase the
CMKP will demonstrate in Multan, Kasoor, Faisalabad and
Pesha war, where they expect more than 3,000 people,
including guests from abroad.

Among the many anti-imperialist resolutions passed at the
seminar was the following: "In the opinion of this session,
putting a prefix of 'Islamic' before terrorism is
unjustifiable and this propaganda on behalf of imperialists
is wrong and we condemn it. We are of the opinion that the
U.S. offensive is not a crusade, nor is it a clash of
civilizations, but it is a war to capture the oil reserves
of Central Asia."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

US bombs civilians, again

Afghans: Three Villages Hit by U.S.

AP. 28 October 2001.

GHANIKHEIL -- American warplanes struck three villages near the front
line in the plains north of Kabul, killing as many as nine people,
villagers told hospital workers on Sunday.

Kate Rowlands, program coordinator of the Italian-run Emergency hospital
in nearby Anawa said three villages were bombarded by U.S. planes on
Saturday. Two were on the northern alliance side and one was on the
Taliban side.

She told a news conference the first village hit was Nikhahil on the
Taliban side of the front line. She said wounded patients had crossed
the front line on a donkey, arriving after 8 p.m. Saturday.

The patients said they had been told by relatives there that two people
had died in the 10 a.m. air strike.

Eight people from Ghanikheil were admitted to the hospital. Relatives
there reported that three or four people had been killed in the attack.

The third bombed village was Raqi on the northern alliance side of the
front line, Rowlands said. Villages there reported three dead, she said.

"Myself and the staff are deeply shocked, especially when you see a
four-year-old and old people coming in," Rowlands said.

"It's a tragedy and a shock and it should not happen."

She said all the patients, including those allowed to cross the front
line by the Taliban, had been treated and were in stable condition.

In Ghanikheil, standing near mud houses reduced to rubble, distraught
villagers on Sunday described the air strike -- apparently a stray U.S.
bombardment -- that hit their village Saturday, killing at least one
woman and injuring 10.

"The world shook," said one.

In the village about 1 mile from the fighting on the Shomali plain north
of Kabul, one mud house was completely crumbled, and another was partly
wrecked. In one of the homes hit, the family had been preparing for a
wedding, relatives said.

In the worst-hit house, where villagers said a 20-year-old woman was
killed and six others hurt, wreckage was scattered. A dusty bicycle and
an empty birdcage could be seen.

Four others were injured in the second house, witnesses said.

"I saw it, when the bomb came," said Mohammed Ibrahim, a commander in
the anti-Taliban alliance, who was nearby when the airstrike hit. "The
world shook." Those living in one of the houses were his cousins, he
said.

Saturday's bombardment was the heaviest of the 3-week-old air campaign
along the front lines where opposition troops are confronting Taliban
troops north of Kabul.

Another alliance commander, 35-year-old Imam Jan, said the strike had
been a mistake. He was not angry, he said, but added: "America should
not do this again. We're two kilometers from the front lines. Why did
they bombard this place?"

A man named Gulkhan, in his 20s, said he had had left one of the houses
to buy flour in the bazaar just before the bomb hit. "I heard the sound
of the bomb so I ran back," he said. All those injured were his
relatives, he said.

The owner of one of the houses, 70-year-old Amin Ullah, described the
attack. "The sound was huge. The plane swooped down -- I could hear it
dive," he said. "I heard the huge explosion."

Gulkhan, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said: "Everything was
gone."

Saturday marked the first day that this sector of the front line was
hit. The anti-Taliban rebels had been pressing for heavier airstrikes
against the Taliban, complaining that previous bombardment had not been
heavy enough to inflict real damage on them.

Britain's Sky News, reporting on the air strike, said just before it, a
U.S. Navy F-18 Hornet could be seen headed in the wrong direction toward
an area of the anti-Taliban forces.

Moments after the jet fired its missile, it said the opposition's radio
reported a bomb hit the village. Sky broadcast pictures from the village
showing a young girl with a bloodied face and hand, lying on the ground
near piles of rubble and the remaining walls of a house on the edge of
the village.

A 7-year-old boy, nestled in the arms of a young man, had cut hands and
feet. Nearby, a 22-year-old man, wounded in the abdomen, was shown being
transported in a wheelbarrow to the nearest road.

"Why has America attacked us?" an elderly man asked.

"We are civilians. We thought America was our friend. Please tell them
to stop bombing us."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This report cannot be independently verified

http://atimes.com/c-asia/CJ24Ag04.html

By Pepe Escobar
October 25, 2001

ISLAMABAD - "This information cannot be independently verified." This is the
new mantra on 24-hour news TV as the Slaughter Show of the world's most
miserable by the world's most affluent reaches its third week - with very
good ratings indeed.

Shame on CNN and BBC. Shame on Donald "Duck!" Rumsfeld. Fact: Afghan
civilians are dying by the hundreds, victims of American bombing. But for
Christiane "The Vulture" Amanpour, Father John Simpson, those sparkling,
bubbly, fizzy CNN talking heads, and those dour, somber, frozen-cucumber BBC
talking heads, "this information cannot be independently verified".

CNN and BBC are now indistinguishable from "Duck!" Rumsfeld. They behave
like fundamentalists: with arrogance - in their sense of unquestionable
superiority; with certainty - in their iron belief in a set of absolutely
universal values; with prejudice - why would they waste their time trying to
understand what is profoundly different from themselves? As BBC's Tim "Mr
Righteous" Sebastian put it in referring to Pakistan, why should the West
cut "shabby little deals with shabby little nations"?

The Rasool family was having breakfast in Kabul when a bomb supposed to hit
a military base a mile away struck their house, killing nine members of the
extended family and injuring 12. Refugees crossing the Chaman border every
day tell of dozens of civilian victims in Kandahar. "Duck!" Rumsfeld would
say they are nothing but liars.

Afghan civilians, for CNN and BBC, obviously do not qualify as independent.
They are the only eyewitnesses of the carnage inside Afghanistan. But
"independently verified" means verified by CNN or the BBC - in their
arrogant, barely contained rage at not being there, inside Afghanistan.
Every serious journalist now working in Pakistan is obviously on the verge
of a nervous breakdown brought on by the impossibility of being in the
theater of war. But it is hard enough trying to convince the Taliban that it
is in their own interest to open the borders for the global print media -
without having to cope with the "You're lying" shrieks of CNN and BBC.

Al Jazeera - the Qatar-based TV station - happens to be inside Afghanistan
and as close to the theater of war as possible - but that is too much for
the Anglo-American media giants, and Way Too Much for America itself, which
does not think twice about censoring "sensitive" Al Jazeera broadcasts.
Mohamad Bourini is a reporter covering the war for Al Jazeera from Peshawar.
He worked for three years in Afghanistan. He said he was "never censored" by
his bosses in Doha, Qatar.

The smart, high-IQ bombs of the Pentagon may not find Osama bin Laden and
the evildoers of Al-Qaeda, but they are finding houses a mile away from
their targets, UN mine-clearing staff, shepherds and their families, a whole
village, a Red Cross compound, a school, a bus, the bazaars of Kandahar, a
hospital in Herat. It is a sterling record - but of course this cannot be
independently verified. One of these days the Pentagon may even
"inadvertently" drop a bomb on Al Jazeera's office in Kabul - and remain
mute about it. Or accuse any accusing voice of lying.

As this is an invisible war, and perception is reality, the fact is that the
Pentagon can say or not say anything it wants: its barrage of disinformation
cannot be independently verified.

So the major public relations lesson is this: if you are rich and poweful
and Western, you can bomb whatever you like, the way you like, for as long
as you like. And you disclose information - if any - about it the way you
like. If you are poor and miserable and Islamic, you shut up and get bombed.
Don't make any attempt to say anything about it, because your information
cannot be independently verified.

The Greatest Armada in the History of the Universe took four days to secure
"aerial supremacy" over a pair of ailing MiGs. Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani,
the Taliban supreme military commander, said that not a single leader or
commander was killed in two weeks of American ballistic fury. He said the
Taliban planes were "safe", and Osama bin Laden was "safe, sound and in good
spirits". The Taliban says it downed an American helicopter: but the spare
parts shown by the Taliban, says the Pentagon, were made by Bin Laden
Enterprises.

So T S Eliot was wrong. This is the way the world ends: not with a bang -
but with zillions of whimpers which cannot be independently verified.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thousands protest Afghan strikes at EU summit

19/10/2001
By Katie Nguyen

GHENT, Belgium (Reuters) - Thousands have protested against U.S.-led
strikes on Afghanistan and global capitalism near a European Union
summit, but there was no sign of the violence that has marred some
recent international meetings.
Belgian police said some 12,000 people had taken part in three
marches through Ghent as EU heads of state or government met under
tight security at an ancient abbey in the town.
The turnout fell far short of the 40,000 predicted by police.
Two of the protests, involving a wide variety of groups, were aimed
against the military action in Afghanistan and against capitalism
while a third was by trade unionists demanding more jobs and social
rights.
"This war is about the power and prestige of the U.S.A. which still
wants to prove it's the strongest power in the world," said Simon
Kaplan, a British member of the Committee for the Workers
International, a Socialist Workers' group.
"Workers and young people will pay for this war through job losses,
increases in tax and possible loss of life," he told an afternoon
rally protesting against the strikes in Afghanistan.
The marches were generally orderly and police said just seven people
had been arrested as preventative measuresfour because they had
objects that could be used as missiles, two for carrying screwdrivers
and one for wearing a balaclava, used in previous demonstrations by
protesters bent on violence.
During the evening march, two bank windows were smashed, a police
spokeswoman said.
The police mobilised a huge force of around 2,000 officers in Ghent
in case of trouble.
LOW PROFILE
But they kept a low profile and kept riot gear out of sight of the
marchers.
The United States has launched military strikes against Afghanistan's
ruling Taliban, which it accuses of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the
Saudi-born dissident blamed for September 11 attacks on New York and
Washington.
EU leaders in Ghent discussed the situation in Afghanistan and the
impact of the September 11 attacks on an already weakening European
economy.
Those attacks seem to have taken the steam out of the increasingly
violent anti-globalisation protests that had marred major
international gatherings.
The violence culminated in police shootings of protesters at an EU
summit in Gothenburg in June and at a Group of Eight summit in Genoa,
Italy, in July.
Many anti-globalisation activists have now turned their attention to
the air strikes against Afghanistan.
Marchers carried anti-war and anti-capitalist banners such as "People
not profit", "War stinks, Bush go home" and "No war but the class
war".
One activist, Peter Ghyselbreght of the anti-capitalist group
International Resistance, was angry at EU economic liberalisation
plans, saying: "Thousands of workers in the postal and rail sectors
are going to lose their jobs, all in the name of the EU."
Betraying a sense of frustration that the war against terrorism has
squeezed the anti-globalisation movement out of the headlines, he
said: "Terrorism isn't good for the workers' movement because it
pushes us into the background."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

US bombs UN demining dogs

U.S. fighter jets target Kabul in overnight attacks.

CNN. 27 October 2001.

KANDAHAR -- Iran's state-owned radio and television also reported that
U.S. planes and missiles repeatedly attacked targets in and around Herat
throughout the night.

An Iranian correspondent, one the few international journalists in
Herat, reported that residents rushed to the streets as they heard the
sounds of explosions and roar of U.S. jets overhead.

The United Nations said one of its demining centers in Kabul, which
houses mine-sniffing dogs, was hit in the attacks.

"The mine dog center is a large compound that included several
buildings," said U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker.

"The exact damage is not known, but some of the buildings have been
damaged in some ways. Two mine dogs were killed and two vehicles
destroyed in the attack. There was no injury to mine-action personnel as
far as we know."

This incident comes after several warehouses in a Red Cross compound in
Kabul were bombed Friday.

Smoke billowed from a compound of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, whose warehouses were hit by U.S. jets a day earlier. The ICRC
said on Saturday it could not distribute food to Kabul residents because
of the bombing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Academic says public want quick fix to Afghan war

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_435176.html

Sun, 28 Oct 2001

Calls for a swift resolution to the Afghanistan conflict are said to be the
result of the West's growing dependency on "fast food culture".

Dr Mark Aspinwall says people in the US and Britain may not have the
stomach for a long, protracted military campaign.

The Durham University politics lecturer puts it down to the result of the
relentless pace of modern life.

He says the increasing reliance on credit to buy luxury products has made
society a slave to both convenience and immediacy which will inevitably be
reflected in people's perception of the current war.

Despite repeated messages from George W Bush and Tony Blair that it will
take many months, if not years for the campaign to be successful, Dr
Aspinwall says public opinion may waver as time goes by.

He commented: "Calls for results arise out of people's desire for immediate
satisfaction.

"The longer it takes the more there will be a fracturing of opinion - you
will have more negative voices and some will say, 'Let's get more active in
our attacks'.

"The fast food culture is partly a desire for fast results but also partly
a result in itself of a busy society. People try to cram more and more into
their lives."

He added: "The majority of the population is now demanding and seeking
results and convenience. The growth in credit is an obvious indicator.

"You can even extend that to the realm of politics, if a government doesn't
deliver then consumers choose another government."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who's Being Naive?

War-Time Realism Through the Looking Glass

By Tim Wise
October 28, 2001

To hear those who support the current air assault on Afghanistan tell
it, those of us who doubt the likely efficacy of such a campaign, and
who question its fundamental morality are not only insufficiently
patriotic but dangerously naive. Lampooning the left for adhering to
such ostensibly simplistic slogans as "violence begets violence," these
self-proclaimed pragmatists insist that sometimes massive force is
necessary and that in the case of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, little
else could possibly serve to diminish the threat of terrorist attack.

It takes me back, all this self-assured confidence in the value of
preemptive assault. To 1986 in particular, when a co-worker of mine
insisted that although our bombing of Libya had failed to kill Colonel
Quadafi, that by killing his daughter we had nonetheless served the
cause of peace. After all, said my co-worker, she was destined to become
a terrorist someday, so better to kill her before she grew. That others
might be able to apply the same logic to Americans--who, after all could
grow up to be Elliot Abrams--was lost on her, as she was convinced the
world had been made safer that day.

Of course, come to find out that Libya had not been involved in the
terrorist incident for which we claimed to be attacking them, but why
bother with details? And of course, just two years after my colleague
insisted that our assault on Libya had made us safer, 259 people in a
plane over Lockerbie, Scotland--and eleven more on the ground
there--learned how dangerously ignorant such faith really was. They as
it turned out became the victims of actual Libyan terrorists enraged by
the previous U.S. attack on their country.

All this talk of what's naive and what is realistic has seemed to be
nothing if not bizarre. It's as if words no longer have their original
meanings, or perhaps mean the opposite of what one might otherwise
think.

So to be realistic means to believe that bombing one of the poorest
nations on Earth will not only reduce terrorism, but also fail to ignite
a new round of anti-American fanaticism. To be nave, on the other hand,
is to pay attention to modern history, which tells us in no uncertain
terms that bombing people is rather likely to fuel their anger,
resentment, and desire for revenge.

To be realistic is to think that pummeling one nation--in this case
Afghanistan--will have some appreciable effect on the thugs in al-Qaeda,
despite the fact that the group operates in sixty-four countries
including many allies whom we have no intention of bombing. To be naive
is to point out that terrorists aren't reliant on one, or even several
countries to operate, and as such, we could eradicate every member of
the Taliban tomorrow without delaying by so much as a day any future
attacks on our shores.

To be realistic is to believe our government officials when they insist
they have proof of bin Laden's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. To be
naive is to wonder how an intelligence community that completely missed
the signs of impending disaster, could be so sure, so soon, of who did
this thing that they had no idea was coming in the first place.

To be really nave, I guess, would be to think that perhaps they might
be lying. Forget that that's exactly what they did so as to justify
bombing Quadafi, and what they did when the CIA announced that armed
Libyans were roaming the streets of America, planning to assassinate
Ronald Reagan. And it's what they did when they claimed the Soviets were
building a military base in Grenada, or that the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua were running drugs (actually it was our guys, the contras, who
were doing that). And apropos of today's headlines, it's what they did
when they decided to dub a certain band of fundamentalist thugs known as
the Mujahadeen, "freedom fighters."

To be realistic is to say things like "all they respect is force." To be
naive is to point out that the force we have demonstrated over the years
by our support for Israel, or bombing and sanctions against Iraq, has
apparently led not to something so kind as their respect for us, but
rather to their willingness to slaughter as many Americans as possible.
If this is how al-Qaeda shows respect, I shudder to think what disdain
must look like.

To be realistic is to say, "we tried peace and peace failed." To be
naive is to ask when, exactly, did the U.S. try peace: in the region, or
specifically in Afghanistan? Was it when we were selling Stinger
missiles to the Muj, so as to help them fight the Soviets? Or was it
after, when we left the nation in ruins, unconcerned about helping
rebuild so long as the Russians had fled? Or was it when we cozied up to
the Taliban because they promised to crack down on opium cultivation,
using the time-honored anti-crime techniques of extremist Islam?

To be realistic is to insist that nations harboring terrorists must be
brought to justice. To be naive is to note that a) we aren't really
serious about that--after all, many nations that do so are coalition
partners in the war on Afghanistan; and b) by that standard, any number
of nations would have the right to attack us. After all, we have
harbored and even taught terrorists and death squad leaders at the
School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. We have harbored known
Cuban terrorists in Miami. We even gave a tax exemption for several
years to a neo-Nazi "church" affiliated with the National Alliance,
whose leader has called for worldwide racial cleansing, whose words are
credited with inspiring Timothy McVeigh, and whose members have
committed bombings, murders and armed robberies across the country.

To be realistic is to believe that Afghans will be impressed by our
packets of peanut butter, dropped from airplanes, and that they will
thank us, and view us as their beneficent saviors. To be naive is to
point out that the food drops--according to relief agencies--are
insufficient to meet the need, especially since our bombing has
aggravated the refugee crisis to staggering proportions. To be really
naive is to note that to even get the food, Afghans would have to
traipse across minefields, and that their experience with toy dolls
dropped from Soviet planes in the 80's--which turned out to be
explosives--might have left them a bit reluctant to tear into our
humanitarian goodies. To be naive to the point of disloyalty, would, I
suppose, be to ask whether or not American soldiers in Pearl Harbor
would have felt better about the bombing of December 7, 1941, had the
Japanese pilots made a second run to drop sushi and edamame.

To be realistic is to claim that attacks on Afghanistan will lead the
pulverized citizenry to overthrow their Taliban oppressors. To be naive
is to point out that never in history has a nation under attack blamed
its own leaders for the attack, but rather, exactly the opposite. After
all, in the wake of 9/11, Americans did not, en masse write to the
President demanding he accede to the wishes of Osama bin Laden.

To be realistic is to insist that this is not a war on Islam. To be
naive is to point out that if we continue to bomb, especially through
the holy month of Ramadan, there will be few Muslims in the world who
will believe that.

Perhaps it's just me. But something seems dangerously Alice in
Wonderland, when Clinton Advisor Dick Morris can say on national
television that we should declare war on Afghanistan, and then Iraq,
Libya, Sudan, and Columbia--and not be viewed as a paragon of mental
illness--but Quakers and pacifists are derided as uninformed boobs.

And yet I have no doubt that many of these American warlords will attend
Martin Luther King Jr. day celebrations come January, and sing the
praises of a man who would have condemned them roundly for their current
course of action. And they will continue to go to church--those who call
themselves Christians--and sing praises to someone whose teachings run
completely counter to everything they are now doing. But hey--King,
Ghandi, Jesus: what did they know? Dreamers all of them: nave,
simplistic, innocent, and not nearly as informed or clear-headed as say,
Donald Rumsfeld, or Stephen Ambrose, or Tom Clancy, or White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Even more disturbing than the uniformity with which conservatives have
labeled dissenters un-American and unrealistic (which at least is to be
expected), is the rapidity with which quite a few progressives have
accepted the need for, and ultimate propriety of war. Richard Falk--a
longtime international peace expert--has called Operation Enduring
Freedom, "the first truly just war since World War II." This, despite
the fact that by the standards he himself has laid out for a just war,
the bombing of Afghanistan--and the refugee crisis alone that it has
sparked^completely fail the test of justice (see Stephen Shalom, "A Just
War? A Critique of Richard Falk." at,
http://www.zmag.org/shalomjustwar.htm).

Or Marc Cooper, who recently suggested that antiwar protesters might
suffer from self-hatred, and who accused us of claiming that the U.S.
invited the attacks of the 11th, merely because we dare point out the
truism that certain of our policies might have something to do with the
motivation for flying 757's into buildings. The difference between
explanation and excuse apparently having escaped him, and the good
counsel of a Thesaurus that might explain the difference apparently
being out of his reach, Cooper insists that the left should embrace
limited military action (the substance of which he leaves undefined) as
a "moral imperative."

And one hardly knows what to make of Eleanor Smeal, of the Fund for the
Feminist Majority. Recently she testified to Congress about Afghanistan,
not to plead for an end to the macho militarism currently underway,
which is likely to accelerate the starvation of perhaps a million women
and girls there, but merely to suggest that the women of Afghanistan not
be forgotten in any reconstruction government. Not only does she appear
to support the overthrow of the Taliban by the same U.S. government that
funded it and cared not a whit for the women there until six weeks ago,
but she also seems to trust that patriarchy can be pounded into rubble
by exploding phallic symbols, dropped and fired by guys whose view of
feminism is probably not much better than Mullah Omar's. Talk about
irony.

Again, maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's 1984, and War Is Peace, and
Slavery Is Freedom, and Ignorance Is Strength. Or maybe all that is just
bullshit, being served up on a silver platter, while the servers tell us
it's really Goose Liver Pate. It reminds me of something my Grandma once
said: "You can call your ass a turkey, but that doesn't make it
Thanksgiving." Likewise, you can call your war just, and the rest of us
naive, but that won't make it so.
--------
Tim Wise is a writer, activist and antiracism educator. He can be
reached at tjwise@mindspring.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Direct witness of Afghanistan civilian victims of attacks

By Richard Lloyd Parry
in Quetta, Pakistan
The Independent

Sami Ullah was asleep when it happened, and so his friends and neighbours
had to tell him about the bomb that struck his house and what it did to him
and his family. How the American planes, which had been over earlier in the
evening, had returned after everyone went to bed and how, instead of the
Taliban base two miles away, they dropped their bombs on a residential area
of the town of Tarin Kot.
Mr Ullah's injuries are obvious enough even now deep cuts caused by the
collapsing house and the fragment of something in his belly that might be
bomb shrapnel. One of his cousins was also pulled alive from the rubble but
no one else was. In the 11 hours between the explosion and the moment when
he finally regained consciousness, the bodies of Mr Ullah's wife, his four
children, his parents, and five of his brothers and sisters had been lifted
from the rubble of their home and buried.
What do you say to a stranger who tells you he has just lost every member
of his immediate family? All you can decently do is ask questions.
When did it happen? On Friday night or early Saturday morning. Where? In a
suburb of Tarin Kot, capital of the Afghan province of Oruzgan. And why?
But Mr Ullah, who is not familiar with the phrase "collateral damage" or
"just war" does not have an answer.
In the 19 days of the bombing campaign, many terrible things have been
reported but the scenes at the Al-Khidmat Al-Hajeri hospital, where Mr
Ullah lay last night, are the most pathetic I have seen. In one ward lay a
woman named Dery Gul, about 30 years old, with her 10-year-old daughter,
Najimu, and a baby named Hameed Ullah. The little girls have bruised and
cut faces; the cheek of the baby is cut neatly in a T shape, as if by a
knife. But to understand how lucky they were you only have to look at their
mother.
Her face is half-covered with bandages, her arm wrapped in plaster. "The
bomb burned her eyes," says the doctor. "The whole right side of her body
is burned." The reason Ms Gul is so battered and her daughters so lightly
injured, they say, is because she cradled them.
From the Pakistani city of Quetta, where the injured people were carried
late on Tuesday, the town of Tarin Kot is just a dot in the middle of the
map of Afghanistan, traversed by a single road, surrounded by contour
lines. But even if it amounts to no more than a few thousand mud houses
with a handful of administrative buildings, it is a provincial capital an
Afghan York or Norwich. Yes, the people in the hospital yesterday said, of
course there were Taliban there; but, no, they were miles away from Sami
Ullah, Dery Gul, the little girls and their dead relatives.
There had been bombing earlier in the evening, Sami Ullah said, and the
military camp had been hit. "There were four bombs that hit the Taliban,"
he said, "but many more bombs fell on the houses."
While some of the villagers were pulling their neighbours out of the
rubble, more bombs had fallen, and more people had been hurt "about 10
people were injured, and 20 were killed". But the danger appeared to have
passed by the time the family went to sleep. If the planes roared overhead,
they did not wake them and perhaps those who died 12 in Sami Ullah's
house, eight in the home of the mother and her girls did not even know
what had happened to them.
What then went wrong? The Pentagon has already admitted this week bombing
an old people's home in Herat with a simple targeting error. Two weeks ago,
bombs killed dozens in the village of Karam where, according to the local
people, there had once been an Osama bin Laden camp which had moved years
before. Other stories like it suggest that in some cases American
intelligence is simply out of date.
But there is a third possibility that the Taliban are deliberately moving
military personnel and equipment close to civilian areas, turning their
oblivious inhabitants into de facto human shields.
In another hospital in Quetta yesterday, a nurse told of how nine days ago
the Taliban had turned up at her family's house and ordered them to leave.
"They said it was for our own safety, because there was a barracks a few
hundred metres away," she said.
"But after we had left they moved Taliban soldiers in and stayed there
themselves. Afterwards the bombs did fall, and my house was destroyed and
the civilian people who stayed behind were hurt too."
"We heard the bombs falling often," said Mr Ullah, as I start to run out of
questions, "but we didn't feel afraid because everyone said that American
bombs were accurate, and that they would bomb the Talibs, but not the
innocent people."
The American broadcasters have a phrase which they repeat in reporting
civilian casualties in Afghanistan: "The claims cannot be independently
confirmed". And, of course, there is no way to check on anything that the
people at the Al-Khidmat Al-Hajeri hospital say.
But if this is all a hoax perpetrated by the Taliban, why does Mr Ullah
speak of them with such disdain? And would even the Taliban mutilate a baby
to win a political point? I believe that Sami Ullah and Dery Gul and her
girls are what they appear innocent victims of an increasingly
back-handed war, and that there will be many, many more of them before it
is close

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No peace, no justice

[unattributed]

In the Vietnam War and again at the time of the Gulf War, different
slogans have defined contending currents in the anti-war movement.
That seems to be happening again today. While the differences are
important and perhaps inevitable, they should not prevent the
movement from mobilizing the broadest mass participation in united
struggle against the warmakers.

For several years at the beginning of the Vietnam War, the issue was
negotiations versus withdrawal. Peace groups that had until then been
focused mainly on the issue of nuclear arms raised the
slogan "Negotiations now," counterpoising it to a withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Vietnam. As large coalitions began to form against the
war, some of these groups sought to exclude the demand for withdrawal
from the coalition demonstrations.

This struggle within the coalitions was ultimately resolved in the
streets. The demand to "Bring the GIs home" became so immensely
popular, and was so obviously the only way to end the war, that it
became the dominant slogan. Especially as news began to filter out on
how Henry Kissinger and others used the Paris peace talks to threaten
the Vietnamese with nuclear weapons, the view that the movement here
should support a role for the U.S. government in shaping Viet nam's
future became discredited.

At the time of the Gulf War, the programmatic divide came over the
issue of sanctions. The first demonstrations, which were organized by
the precursor to today's International Action Center, called for no
war against Iraq. Period.

A second coalition formed in December 1991, a month before the actual
bombing started, that called for "Sanctions, not war." This slogan
implied that Iraq had to be punished--by the U.S., but with UN cover,
as it turned out. It also implied that sanctions are not a form of
war.

There are very few today who call themselves part of the peace
movement who would defend the sanctions on Iraq. After a decade in
which five times as many Iraqis have died of sanctions than died of
bombs, that slogan has withered away as it became obvious to all that
sanctions are a vicious and brutal form of warfare targeting the most
vulnerable members of society--the old, the infants, the sick.

The issue today seems to be whether or not to have confidence
that "justice" for those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks can be had
within the context of the existing international framework.

The demand for justice is usually coupled with an exhortation to hunt
down and prosecute those responsible for the terror attacks. In the
meantime, without waiting for the results of any investigation, the
U.S. government is carrying out a monstrous war against Afghanistan
that threatens literally millions of people with death by starvation
and exposure this winter. This death sentence is being carried out on
an innocent population long before the judicial niceties of evidence,
a trial and a verdict.

If the U.S. government were capable of bringing mass murderers to
justice, wouldn't the heads of the tobacco companies be in jail right
now? They knowingly condemned millions of people in this country to a
miserable death from smoking-related diseases. And what about all the
police who have shot down unarmed people in the oppressed communities
and been set free after departmental review?

Are socially conscious people supposed to suddenly have confidence
that the authorities now investigating terrorism--organizations like
the FBI, the CIA, and local police departments--can be trusted to
dispense justice?

When it comes to activities abroad, the record is even more dismal.
If there is any organization independent enough of Washington's
pressure to bring mass murderers to justice, then why isn't Chile's
Pinochet behind bars? Why is Haiti's Toto Constant alive and well in
Queens, N.Y.? Why is Indonesia's General Suharto enjoying retirement?
Why are Henry Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam War, and
Zbigniew Brzezinski, mastermind of the Afghan counter-revolution,
still powers behind the throne in Washington?

The job of the anti-war movement is to stop the war. There will be no
justice while bombs are raining down on Afghanistan. Justice for the
victims of the terrible tragedy on Sept. 11 will come with a people's
victory over the warmakers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trapped by the barbed wire border

Difficult road for refugees does not end when they reach Pakistan

Rory Carroll in Quetta
Monday October 22, 2001
The Guardian

A 13-year-old boy was wounded when Pakistan border guards opened fire on
Afghans last night, forcing back hundreds fleeing the American bombing.
Border officials said they fired in the air, but doctors treating the child
at the hospital near the Chaman border said he had been struck by a bullet.
His condition was not thought to be life-threatening.

Chaman is a shocking spectacle. Families drained by hunger and thirst jostle
in a no man's land for a place in the queue. It is a chaotic scene of
exhausted people squatting in the dust and milling between hundreds of cars,
buses, trucks, trailers and motorcycles.

It is thought that on Saturday at least 5,000 people crossed at Chaman, the
biggest influx in a single day. Pakistan had relaxed its border controls on
Friday, but clamped down yesterday as thousands more made their way from the
bombing around the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

Many of those who managed to enter Pakistan ended up at a checkpoint about
three miles south of Chaman, where authorities inspected papers and decided
who could continue. Those who were turned back simply sneaked through the
hills out of sight of the checkpoint guards and rejoined the highway south
towards Quetta.

UN workers said 10,000 to 15,000 civilians were crowded into a stretch of no
man's land between the Afghan and Pakistani borders.

The human tidal wave is a bonanza for corrupt police, taxi drivers,
smugglers and forgers, while aid agencies battle red tape, land ownership
disputes and drought to prepare refugee camps for the thousands more
expected should Islamabad officially open the border.

Pakistan is already home to 2m Afghan refugees, spillage from previous wars,
and its generosity may not stretch to the million who aid agencies warn will
come if the border is opened. Islamabad says it will open the gates if
massive numbers would otherwise starve on its doorstep, but meantime it
deters them by ensuring the journey will be expensive and uncertain of
success.

Kandahar is a ghost town, missing 80% of its population according to the UN,
but the deterrent is working. Most have sought refuge in the Afghan
countryside, cramming villages already close to starvation, rather than sell
everything for a gamble on the border.

In theory all the wounded elderly, infirm and very young are allowed over
the border. But often they have to produce a Pakistani identity document.

Fatatoumah Kava, from the UN's refugee agency, said: "We know people have
bribed guards to get through _ Entrepreneurs on the Afghan side are selling
documents to those who can afford them after paying off their driver. One
document can get 10 people across at once if they come up with a good
spiel - being a funeral cortege is popular - and grease guards' hands."

Once they are across, a smuggler will take the documents back into
Afghanistan for recycling. Taxis from Quetta make the two-hour shuttle to
Chaman several times a day, charging whatever they can, according to
refugees.

Mohammad Usman, 58, a Taliban elder whose Barech tribe straddles the border,
said Afghans were being fleeced. "The Americans are bombing us and the
Pakistanis are robbing us. Whatever these refugees have is taken from them.
If they are caught they are deported unless families here pay more bribes.
They are picked up easily because they don't speak Urdu and stick out."

Mr Usman accused the police, the federal investigation agency and the
Frontier Corps of involvement in the scam.

Aid agencies say they need at least the rest of the month to finish two
refugee camps near Chaman, but for now those who make it must maintain the
fiction that they are Pakistanis and thus cannot seek humanitarian aid. They
try to vanish into the settled Afghan communities around Quetta, seeking
relatives. After Afghanistan this city, impoverished by western standards,
is an oasis, with food stalls and paved roads and children flying kites.A
13-year-old boy was wounded when Pakistan border guards opened fire on
Afghans last night, forcing back hundreds fleeing the American bombing.

Border officials said they fired in the air, but doctors treating the child
at the hospital near the Chaman border said he had been struck by a bullet.
His condition was not thought to be life-threatening.

UN workers said 10,000 to 15,000 civilians were crowded into a stretch of no
man's land between the Afghan and Pakistani borders.

In theory all the wounded elderly, infirm and very young are allowed over
the border. But often they have to produce a Pakistani identity document.

Fatatoumah Kava, from the UN's refugee agency, said: "We know people have
bribed guards to get through ... Entrepreneurs on the Afghan side are
selling documents to those who can afford them after paying off their
driver. One document can get 10 people across at once if they come up with a
good spiel - being a funeral cortege is popular - and grease guards' hands."

Mr Usman accused the police, the federal investigation agency and the
Frontier Corps of involvement in the scam.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Killing Our Own Kind

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/felkins7.html

Attitudes, Perceptions and Contradictions

October 24, 2001
by S. Leon Felkins

When it comes to killing of our own kind, we humans are most peculiar
compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. In addition to the animal
instincts that may drive us to kill, we are saddled with a multitude of
restrictions and incentives deriving from law, customs, religion, and
propaganda. This results in some confusing activity that I think is worthy
of some discussion. While the subject of killing has some interesting
twists in all aspects of our culture, I will limit my exposition here to the
war time situation as that is the only time ordinary humans have the
obligation or opportunity to kill in any significant quantity.

The Soldier's Attitude Towards Killing

Studies of the killing of human beings by human beings are scarce with even
less interest shown by the public or the media. Probably the best source of
information on this subject is the book by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On
Killing, and the associated web site, "Killology Research Group." I would
encourage any of you that are interested in this subject to take a look at
that book and the articles at the web site.

According to Col. Grossman, ordinary soldiers are reluctant to personally
and individually kill the enemy. He quotes the statistic that in World War
II, only about 15-20% of American soldiers actually fired their weapons at
the enemy. Similarly, in both the Civil War and World War I, there are
indications that most non-professional soldiers elected to not actually try
to kill the enemy. In fact, Grossman claims, ordinary humans experience a
high stress level when put in the situation of having to kill other humans
at close range which results in high degree of psychological trauma. It
should be pointed out that of those who do their best to try to kill the
enemy, there are many who kill for pleasure rather than just duty.
Hopefully, those that get pleasure from killing are the professional
soldiers and not employees of the Postal Service.

Two things have considerably corrected this situation to the point where
most modern soldiers do, in fact, try to kill. One is the imbedding of the
modern individual, from childhood, in a sea of violence in the form of
movies, television and games, where killing humans is as routine as swatting
a fly. The other is that the military has changed its training program to
more effectively create a "killing machine" from the clueless civilian
recruit.

By the time the Vietnam conflict came along, the conditioning programs (the
military training as well as the unintended consequence of massive exposure
to violent films and games throughout their young lives) was so successful
that the percentage of soldiers that fired at the enemy had risen to 95%
(see page 250 of Grossman's book). I emphasized killing by individuals for
killing by a group is another matter all together.

Killing Is Easier If You Are Part of a Group

I have written a number of articles on the peculiarities of actions by a
group compared to actions by an individual; see "The Social Dilemmas". The
anonymity provided by membership in a group provides both the opportunity to
do things that society might frown upon (e.g., activities of the KKK) and to
avoid doing things that are dangerous to the individual but society would be
better for it (e.g. the Kitty Genovese case where a group did not act to
help when she was being raped and killed).

In his book, Col. Grossman discusses the group effect extensively. A quote
from the book, attributed to Konrad Lorenz, sums it up nicely: "man is not a
killer, but the group is." A couple of reasons for this is that; 1) the
group provides anonymity (every individual can make a good case that it
probably wasn't his fault) and 2) the group provides very strong peer
pressure on an individual accountability to do his part and not cut and
run. If you happen to be part of a group (involved with a "crew-served"
weapon, crew of a bomber, etc.) and you are also quite distant from your
enemy, the killing even gets easier.

Bombs From Forty Thousand Feet or 500 Miles Away

Recently Bill Maher got in trouble by saying that the terrorists who flew
the planes into the World Trade Center were not cowards. On the other hand,
as far as we Americans go, he said "We have been the cowards lobbing
cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly."

Whether it is or is not cowardly, I will leave for others to judge but I do
want to comment on the strangeness of our attitudes.

Military strategists have a trade-off between close-in fighting and lobbing
bombs from 500 miles away or from 40,000 feet. Distance bombing has a
probability of causing hundreds of civilian casualties. But the political
reality is that losing just a few American soldiers results in a far higher
price to pay than the loss of thousands of innocent civilians civilians
that are guilty of doing nothing more than occupying the wrong spot on this
earth at the wrong time.

But there is another aspect of this trade-off that is even more interesting
in examination. Human beings seem to have no problem causing a massive
amount of suffering, death, and destruction as long as they can't see it.
Give a soldier a gun, a bayonet, a flame thrower, a grenade, and most will
get a bit squeamish about using these tools face to face with the enemy or,
even worse, civilians.

Now put the same soldier in a control room on a ship, plane, or land
facility, and tell him all he has to do is press that button and thousands
of pounds of destructive force and fire will be on its way to some target,
with some probability of actually hitting. This soldier, in general, will
give little thought as to what this missile will do when it reaches the
conclusion of its flight. It might destroy a building, it might kill a few
enemy soldiers, or it might mangle a few innocent citizens.

It seems that humans lack the power to imagine what these destructive
devices will do. Bodies will be torn asunder, women and children may
receive burns that will cause unimaginable suffering for months or years, or
some may lay under rubble suffering from wounds and broken bones for days
while they slowly die. Apparently, the long-distance bombers and artillery
men have not the means to visualize this or they shut it out of their
minds intentionally.

What is wrong with us that we can't visualize and see this destruction and
suffering in the same way we would see it if we were in hand to hand combat?
We certainly have no problem imagining horror when we read a book or go to a
movie. Why can't we see horror when we launch a missile of destruction?

Grossman says that when the soldier is close-in and his senses are exposed
to the death, mutilation, and destruction directly, he is subjected to
emotional pressures such as revulsion toward the destruction and compassion
for the target victims. Whereas, for the long-distance-bomb soldier it is
strictly an intellectual exercise and it is not very difficult to convince
himself that nobody got hurt or if they did, there was little or no
suffering.

Let us go back to the killing of innocent civilians for just a moment: does
it really matter? Apparently not to a large percentage of our population.

Collateral Damage: The Killing of "Insignificant" Civilians

To Achieve a Political Objective You will not hear this discussed on the
evening news, but there is a real trade-off between high-tech warfare and
civilian casualties (the nonsensical term "collateral damage" is preferred
by the military and the whipped-dog media). As I pointed out above, by
using 200 mile guided bombs we can be pretty damn certain that we will have
almost zero casualties on our side, but civilian casualties on the enemy's
side are likely to be high. On the other hand, if we were willing to suffer
some military casualties we could use close-in fire-power, and with
on-the-ground troops we could insure that there were almost no civilian
casualties on the enemy's side. Of course, there are many other operations
of war that cause civilian death and destruction.

Let us look at a few representative cases.

Invasion of Panama

Some say Manuel Noriega, Panama's leader a few years ago, was a brutal thug
and was heavily in the drug trade. Others say he had gotten too cocky and
no longer took orders from the CIA. Whatever the reason, President Bush
(Senior) decided he wanted him off of his seat of power and in a prison here
in the US. It was up to Dick Cheney to figure out a way to pull that off.

A careful examination of the Posse Comitatus act convinced the Secretary of
Defense, Dick Cheney, he could legally go after Noreiga. I quote from the
Joint Chief's of Staff history document, "Operation Just Cause":

Hence, on 20 December Cheney approved modification of DOD Directive 5525.5
to state: "With regard to military actions outside the territorial
jurisdiction of the United States, however, the Secretary of Defense or the
Deputy Secretary of Defense will consider for approval, on a case by case
basis, requests for exceptions to the policy restrictions against direct
assistance by military personnel to execute the laws. Such requests for
exceptions to policy outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United
States should be made only when there are compelling and extraordinary
circumstances to justify them." Secretary Cheney issued a memo making JUST
CAUSE such an exception: "Consistent with...Revised DOD Directive 5525.5...I
approve assistance by the United States Armed Forces in the apprehension of
Manuel Noriega of Panama." This action authorized the use of federal troops
to assist US law enforcement officers in apprehending Noriega who was under
federal indictment for alleged drug trafficking offenses.

The cable TV channel, WorldLinkTV, has shown, a few times, a video
documentary of the invasion, Panama Deception, winner of the 1993 "Best
Documentary Feature" Academy Award. One of the key points brought out in
this video is the participation of the American media in the propaganda
effort to impress on the public that this activity was legal, justified, and
minimally dangerous to the American soldiers involved. To this end, all of
the major news channels concentrated on reporting of the fact that there
were very few casualties to the Americans. The deaths (the number of deaths
are alleged to be anywhere from about 250 to 5,000 depending on who's
counting) and destruction to the civilians of Panama went unreported. It
was as if the American public had no interest, whatever, in civilian
casualties.

This incident strongly confirms the attitude of the press and the public
toward civilian casualties is that any count is acceptable as a price to pay
for bringing an individual that has been declared to be a criminal and/or
an enemy to "justice." This was done; Noreiga now sits in a specially
built prison and as many as 5,000 citizens in Panama paid with their lives.
This poses a most puzzling philosophical and ethical question: "Are the
lives of ordinary citizens so insignificant compared to the life of the
sought after criminal that an unlimited number may be terminated?" Does our
civilian police force becoming more and more militarized every day have
the same attitude? Was this the principle that was applied at the Branch
Davidian Massacre? Were they just trying to arrest Koresh and the women and
children were simply "colatteral damage"?

The Embargoes of Iraq and Cuba

This same question is appropriate for the actions of our government in Iraq
and Cuba. The American government's policy there is that the civilian
population will be made to suffer by trade embargo such that thousands die
of hunger and disease to induce them to overthrow their leaders, Saddam
Hussein and Fidel Castro, respectively (strangely a different policy is
being used in Afghanistan there we are providing food to the civilians.
Go figure). The logic is incredibly puzzling. We do not want to kill these
leaders but instead will kill thousands of innocent but what is assumed to
be insignificant human beings to achieve the goal of causing the leader to
step down. Why is the life of these apparently cruel and despicable leaders
more precious than the mass of unknown, faceless civilians? Conclusion The
military/political policy of taking the lives of hundreds of civilians,
using long distance bombing, to avoid the loss of even a few American
soldiers in close-in fighting is expensive, ineffective and immoral. In
fact, according to Col. Grossman in his article, "Immoral and Soon to be
Illegal," this type of warfare will follow the precedent set for land mines
and be banned in the near future by most of the civilized world. I have my
doubts that that will happen, for there are other pressures involved such as
the powerful influence of the weapons manufacturers to sell expensive,
highly technical, weapons. Nevertheless, the taking of innocent civilian
lives is highly immoral and cruel and does not present the US in a very good
light to the rest of the world.

Apparently the American military has solved its problem of getting our
soldiers to actually shoot at the enemy by use of "conditioning" and
"desensitization." The percentage that fire at the enemy has gone for 15-20%
in World War II to 95% in the Vietnam war. But, at what cost? When these
civilians soldiers come back home is there a switch somewhere that will turn
all that programming off? Ask Timothy McVeigh the next time you see him.

That soldiers feel little compassion or remorse for the victims of
long-distance bombing is a subject that needs far more research for it has
several puzzling aspects related to the cognitive and emotional functions of
the mind. It would appear that the ordinary soldiers repulsion to killing
is an emotional response rather than an intellectual decision. Nevertheless
it is the cause of many cases of soldier's trauma.

In any case, while I am not a fan of Bill Maher, his very "politically
incorrect" remarks of September 17 are at least partially correct. There is
no doubt more accurate descriptions you could apply to the terrorists than
to call them cowards. As far as our lobbing intelligent bombs from hundreds
of miles away or from 40,000 feet, I would just say that that action is not
a military but a political and economic strategy.
-----------
Mr. Felkins is a retired former military officer, college professor, and
computer systems engineer. He is now an activist in the fight for the
reform of the forfeiture laws now plaguing the US and the world. He is
presently serving as the Executive Director of F.E.A.R., the forfeiture
reform group. In addition, he maintains a web page on Political Philosophy,
"A Rational Life" and another on the history of politics, "The Political
Almanac."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.N.: American planes destroyed military hospital

<http://web.realcities.com/content/rc/news/attack/realcolumbus/1956575691.htm>

Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2001
By MICHAEL ZIELENZIGER
Knight Ridder Newspapers

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan United Nations officials confirmed here Tuesday that
American warplanes destroyed a military hospital near Herat in western
Afghanistan.
Stephanie Bunker, a U.N. spokeswoman, said relief workers working for the
United Nations said warplanes had demolished "a military hospital in a
military compound" in the Eastern outskirts of the city, but said the
number of casualties could not be determined.
"The term they used was destroyed," she said, referring to her conversation
with U.N. workers remaining in the city.
The independent report corroborates part of the claim made on Monday by
Taliban officials here that U.S. bombers had killed 100 people, including
doctors and nurses, when it destroyed a hospital in the city. But Taliban
officials suggested the facility was a civilian hospital, not part of a
military compound, and claimed that more than 1,000 civilians had so far
been killed in U.S. air raids.
U.N. officials said they did not know whether the military hospital
displayed the Red Crescent, or other similar markings, clearly identifying
the building as a hospital facility.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke said a stray bomb fell
near a senior citizens home in Herat, but was unable to say whether the
home was the same building as the hospital allegedly hit.
Independent confirmation of the number of civilian casualties are
impossible to obtain, as the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have barred
Western journalists from entering the country, and aid agencies say that
many of the country's communication lines have been knocked out by U.S.
bombing raids.
Western journalists and photographers who visited a hospital in Quetta,
near the Afghan border, found at least 12 Afghan victims of U.S. attacks
who had crossed the border to seek medical treatment. The victims included
a young child with a bullet lodged in his brain and a man whose spinal cord
had been shattered by shrapnel.
Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said recent victims of
U.S. air strikes "showed symptoms of chemicals in their bodies." He charged
that Monday's bombing raids had killed 15 civilians and wounded 25 others
in areas surrounding Kandahar.
The U.S. military has flatly denied using chemical weapons in Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, police in Jacobabad snuffed out a small demonstration designed
to protest President Pervez Musharraf's decision to allow U.S. forces to
use a nearby military base.
The government also reportedly seized two of Pakistan's most prominent
nuclear scientists on Tuesday after they criticized the government's
pro-American policy for being contrary to Islamic law. One of those taken
into custody, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, is considered a pioneer of the
nation's development of nuclear technology, and his detention is likely to
trigger more opposition from the nation's intellectuals and social critics.
Mahmood and another engineer, Abdul Majeed, had retired from the Pakistan
Atomic Energy Commission and were active in a non-governmental organization
working on economic development programs in Afghanistan. Under their
leadership, Pakistan developed not only a nuclear energy program but also,
more controversially, the nuclear bomb.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S. bombs hit civilian areas

<http://www.charlotte.com/observer/natwor/docs/warmain1024.htm>

Pentagon says 2 struck neighborhood; 1 dropped near home for elderly

By ESTHER SCHRADER
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Three U.S. bombs went astray in weekend strikes in
Afghanistan, landing in a residential neighborhood northwest of Kabul and
near a home for the elderly outside Herat, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
The incidents were the latest examples of precision-guided weapons going
astray in the U.S.-led military campaign - mistakes that could hurt efforts
to win support in Islamic countries for the war on terrorism.
Pentagon officials also reported that a U.S. helicopter came under fire in
Pakistan on Saturday. The aircraft was trying to retrieve the wreckage of a
Black Hawk helicopter that crashed while supporting a U.S. commando raid
earlier that day.
The crew returned fire and left, with no injuries reported. It was the
first time a U.S. aircraft has been fired on outside Afghanistan, Pentagon
spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said.
Clarke said the Pentagon had no information on civilian casualties in the
weekend bombing mistakes, in which a Navy F-14 dropped two 500-pound bombs
on a residential area near Kabul on Saturday and a Navy F/A-18 Hornet
dropped a 1,000-pound bomb near a home for the elderly near Herat on Sunday.
There was confusion about what had been hit in Herat. In Pakistan, a U.N.
spokeswoman said U.S. air attacks destroyed a military hospital. Clarke
said she was not sure if the U.N. report referred to the home for the
elderly, which was 300 feet from a military vehicle storage facility that
was the bomb's intended target.
Taliban officials claimed Monday that a hospital in the Herat area had been
bombed, killing about 100 people. They asserted Tuesday that the civilian
death toll since the U.S. air attacks began Oct.7 has surpassed 1,000.
Clarke dismissed the Taliban claims and said civilian casualties have been low.
Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, a senior official with the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, called the errant bombings rare errors.
He also said he has seen evidence that Taliban forces may be hiding in
residential neighborhoods, aware of U.S. military efforts to avoid such areas.
The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator's office supported that theory
Tuesday. The office said representatives inside Afghanistan reported that
residential areas are becoming dangerous because troops have moved in.
Stufflebeem said bombing continued Tuesday in Afghanistan.
About 80 U.S. fighters and bombers struck 11 target areas Monday, he said,
including airfields, radar equipment, military garrisons, military training
facilities, bunkers and moving targets such as tanks. Much of the attacks,
he said, focused on Taliban forces fighting opposition groups in northern
Afghanistan.
Stufflebeem said evidence is emerging that supply lines for Taliban troops
and their allies in the al-Qaida terrorist network have been disrupted, as
have their housing and training facilities. He said Taliban forces have
taken over Red Cross warehouses and appear to be using the stores to feed
troops rather than civilians.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A True Patriot Can Pose Hard Questions

The Los Angeles Times
October 23, 2001
By Robert Scheer

War skeptics such as Richard Gere, Susan Sontag, Rep. Barbara Lee
(D-Oakland), Bill Maher and the Berkeley City Council should be
congratulated, not vilified, for daring to demur, ever so slightly, from
government propaganda. Right or wrong, they have acted as free people in a
free society who understand that if our course is correct, it can survive
criticism. And if it is not, it is all the more important that we gather the
courage to state that criticism clearly and in a timely fashion.

It's shocking that so few have raised doubts and that the ones who have are
called wimps, traitors and worse, with their lives threatened by cowards
hiding behind anonymous letters and phone calls. It is no badge of courage
to blindly accept the actions taken in our name by our government.

Let me be clear: Terrorism as exemplified by the murders of Sept. 11 and the
anthrax scare that has followed needs to be stopped, fast and efficiently.
However, there is no blueprint for accomplishing that, and as a free,
self-ruling democratic people, it is not only our right but our
responsibility to vigorously and openly debate the issues: the use of
military force, our foreign policy, civil rights and privacy in a time of
war, and so on. "America Unites" sounds great as a news logo, but unity is
no simple concept. We all want our families, our soldiers, our unions, our
sports teams to be united toward clear, common goals. But is it not
dangerous for a democratic populace weighing if and how to wage war to value
unity above all else? It's all too easy to mandate patriotism, as the New
York Board of Education did last week, bringing back the pledge of
allegiance to classrooms as if that will stop the Osama bin Ladens of the
world.

To understand the limits of government-sponsored "unity," we might ask the
soldiers of the old Soviet Union. They marched with their pledges and
anthems into the treacherous terrain of Afghanistan two decades ago, while
at home the dissent that could have saved them from military and economic
disaster was systematically squelched.

Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the critics
who could save them from the errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury
to be indulged in the best of times but rather an obligation of free people,
particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular. This is why our
nation's founders enshrined the Bill of Rights, within a few years of
fighting a revolution in which one-third of their compatriots were
sympathetic to the British king. They were painfully aware of the
inconvenience of dissent to those who govern--even in times of war--but they
valued it as essential to democracy.

The U.S. Supreme Court clearly understood this when it ruled that mandatory
recitation of the pledge of allegiance--even before the divisive words
"under God" were inserted--was unconstitutional. "To believe that patriotism
will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous
instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the
appeal of our institutions to free minds," wrote Justice Robert H. Jackson
for the majority in 1943. This was, remember, at the height of World War II,
when the war's outcome was very much in doubt.

If we discourage dissent now, we will give terrorists the victory they
sought by destroying what they most hate about our society: its commitment
to unfettered thought and expression. And if we who have hard questions
about the path our leaders are taking don't speak up, we may be party to a
more tangible defeat: a continuing erosion of security in a divided world we
don't always seem to understand.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.N. Confirms Bomb Hit Hospital on Outskirts of an Afghan City

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/international/23CND-MILI.html

By JOHN F. BURNS with TERENCE NEILAN
NY Times, Oct. 23, 2001

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 23 ^ The United Nations said here today that it
had confirmed that a bomb hit and "reportedly destroyed" a military
hospital on the outskirts of the western Afghan city of Herat.

A United Nations spokeswoman, Stephanie Bunker, said there had been
casualties in the incident but she did not give precise numbers.

In Washington today a Pentagon spokeswoman said three American bombs went
astray in Afghanistan over the weekend and that one landed near a senior
citizens' center outside Herat on Sunday.

She said it was possible that the seniors' center and the hospital cited by
the United Nations were in fact the same building. "Yes it is possible,"
the spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said, "but it has been described to us as
a senior citizens' center."

For the third consecutive day, United States warplanes attacked Taliban
forces north of Kabul, the capital. The raids this afternoon came after the
rebel Northern Alliance and the Taliban engaged overnight in their heaviest
fighting since the American bombing began more than two weeks ago.

The roar of jets and several huge explosions could be heard at midafternoon
by reporters at the Bagram air base, 35 miles north of Kabul. An opposition
spokesman, Waisuddin Salik, said the jets struck at Uzbashi, an Al Qaeda
stronghold near this alliance-held air base.

The Taliban retaliated with antiaircraft, heavy machine-gun and artillery fire.

The attack on the building near Herat was reported by the Taliban on Monday.

At a Pentagon briefing later that day, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
said that he had seen "absolutely no evidence" that American bombs or
missiles had hit a hospital. But a Pentagon official told a New York Times
reporter on Monday night that it appeared that a missile had gone astray
and might have struck a hospital.

Today, Ms. Clarke said the intended target was a vehicle storage building
at an army barracks. A 1,000-pound bomb dropped by an FA-18 landed in a
field between the seniors' center and the storage building, Ms. Clarke
said. The buildings are 300 feet apart.

Ms. Bunker said her information came by radio today from an Afghan worker,
who is a longtime United Nations employee. She said she believed his
statements could be trusted. There was no way of independently confirming
the information.

The staff member could not be reached by radio on Monday, Ms. Bunker said,
and today his report was monitored by a Taliban soldier. The staff worker
was required to speak in Pashto, so the soldier could understand what he
said, she said, although the language of Herat is largely Dari.

On Monday the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef,
said those killed at the hospital included doctors, nurses and patients and
that the raid was carried out by American and British warplanes. He called
the bombing a deliberate act of terrorism against the Afghan people. The
British immediately denied that any of their planes were involved.

At a news conference today in Islamabad, Mullah Zaeef did not repeat the
allegation about the bombing and said he did not want to take further
questions on it.

Ms. Bunker, who is the spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for
Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance in Afghanistan, also said two
residential areas of Kabul had been hit by bombs. But she said the Taliban
was hiding troops in the civilian districts.

Today, Ms. Clarke said an F-14 attack dropped two 500-pound bombs on a
residential area northwest of Kabul on Saturday while aiming at military
vehicles a half-mile away. She said the military did not have any
information on possible casualties.

Asked if civilian casualties could become a growing problem, particularly
among Muslims, Ms. Clarke said: "We take extraordinary care on the
targeting process. Our targets are military, our targets are Al Qauda. That
is what we are going after. There is unintended damage. There is collateral
damage."

Rear. Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said at the briefing that the United States struck 11
planned target areas on Monday. including airfields, radar, Taliban forces,
vehicles and buildings. Targets also included lines of communications and
military training centers.

About 80 aircraft were used, he said, of which 60 were carrier-based
tactical jets. About 10 land-based tactical aircraft were used and about 10
long-range bombers were part of the strikes.

In overnight fighting north of Kabul, Soviet-made launchers sent salvos of
rockets streaking across the horizon with tails of bright red light, until
they hit thunderously miles away. The staccato sound of machine-gun fire
echoed through the valley late Monday night and early today.

It seemed possible that the battle for Kabul had begun. Until recently, the
American bombardment had avoided hitting front-line Taliban positions north
of Kabul because of concern that such a move would open the way for the
Northern Alliance to take the capital, an outcome that Pakistan opposes.
But American policy has now shifted, and it seems possible that the long
immobile front lines here would shift too.

Similar attacks on Taliban positions were reported around Mazar-i-Sharif,
which the Northern Alliance has been trying to recapture since it lost it
in 1998. A rebel spokesman in Uzbekistan, Ibrahim Ghafoori, said alliance
forces had advanced six to nine miles on Mazar-i-Sharif.

Two United States helicopters came under light, sporadic small-arms fire in
Pakistan today as their crews tried to retrieve the wreckage of another
helicopter that crashed in a covert weekend commando raid, the Pentagon said.

Retrieval crews were transporting a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed on
Friday, killing two Rangers. The crews returned fire in Monday's incident,
the Pentagon said, and left the area. The wreckage was also left behind,
the spokesman said.

The spokesman said officials did not know who fired at the craft, but it
comes amid continuing protests by Islamic militants against the attacks on
Afghanistan and is the most hostile act reported so far against Americans
in Pakistan.

In London today, Britain's defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, said British
troops involved in military exercises in Oman would go to join the
American-led effort against Afghanistan, but he did not say how many would
be sent.

The BBC, citing senior military officials, reported that about 600 Royal
Marine commandos and several hundred special forces personnel would join
the ground assault.

Mr. Hoon said the air assault so far had severely damaged nine airfield and
24 military barracks. "We believe that nine Al Qaeda camps were occupied
before the start of the military operation," he said. "I can now tell you
that we have successfully put all these camps out of action."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pentagon admits US jets bombed old people's home in Afghan city

Foreign Affairs
Source: The Independent (U.K.)
Published: 10/24/2001 Author: Rupert Cornwell

The Pentagon has acknowledged that American jets had probably bombed an old
people's home on the outskirts of the city of Herat, in the most serious
instance so far in the Afghanistan campaign of the "collateral damage" that
caused such controversy in the Gulf and Kosovo.

The exact circumstances of the "collateral damage" - military-speak for the
killing of civilians - are still unclear. The UN mission in Pakistan said it
had been informed by its representatives in Herat that a military hospital
in a military compound to the east of the city had been hit, but could not
confirm the figure of 100 dead advanced by the Taliban. A Pentagon
spokeswoman said a 1,000lb bomb dropped by an F-18 warplane had missed its
intended target, a vehicle storage depot, 300 feet (90 metres) from what she
described as a "seniors citizens centre". The accident, which damaged part
of the latter, was due to weapons guidance system malfunction. "We regret
any loss of civilian life," she added.

The Taliban also claimed a mosque in Herat had been struck, adding an
unspecified number of casualties to the 1,000 people who the Taliban say
have been killed by the American-led air strikes.

Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, said that all nine training
camps known to be used by Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network had been
destroyed in the Allied air strikes on Afghanistan.

But Mr Hoon did not reveal details of the deployment of British ground
forces at a press conference at the Ministry of Defence yesterday, despite
widespread expectations that he would do so.

In Washington, the White House said there was a suspicion that the US
anthrax outbreak was linked to the 11 September attacks. Authorities
confirmed that two postal workers had died from anthrax.

An Egyptian dissident living in Britain was arrested by anti-terrorist
police over allegations that he helped two hit men murder the main Afghan
opposition leader in September.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anti-war resources:

http://www.warresisters.org/mosquito.pdf
http://www.dqc.org/~ben/index.htm
http://www.mewmew.f2s.com/index_eng.html
http://www.thenation.com/special/wtc/index.mhtml
http://mediaed.sitepassport.net/btf
http://www.bigbridge.org/warpeace.html
http://www.mediachannel.org/atissue/conflict/
http://members.aol.com/HalpernTO/
http://www.counterpunch.org/wtcarchive.html
http://www.peacenowfreedomnow.net/
http://www.indymedia.org/peace/
http://www.nomorelostlives.org/
http://www.madre.org/toolkit.html
http://sf.indymedia.org/antiwar/
http://www.thecommunity.com/crisis/
http://action-tank.org/pfp/
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~dereka/
http://www.mpfweb.org/
http://www.forusa.org/NewsFrame.html
http://www.muslimsagainstterrorism.org/home.html
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mn/sept112001/index.html
http://www.fpif.org/justice/index.html
http://www.tenc.net/
http://www.prairie-fire.org/no-war.pdf
http://www.legitgov.org/Top5Lies.pdf
http://www.ten12.com/stickerpage.ten12
http://www.vsasf.org/
http://www.peacefulproductions.com/store/
http://www.justicenotvengeance.org/
http://www.peopleforpeace.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/special/feature.htm
http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html
http://www.geocities.com/miriamczc/czcpazsi.htm
http://www.peacenowar.net/
http://www.911peace.net/
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
http://www.zmag.org/6reasons.pdf
http://www.actionla.org/S11/
http://www.warisnottheanswer.org/
http://www.9-11peace.org/
http://pax.protest.net/
http://www.s29.org/
http://Antiwar.com
http://www.luver.org/
http://www.alternet.org/issues/index.html?IssueAreaID=26
http://www.sfbg.com/News/altvoices.html
http://www.peacefuljustice.cjb.net/
http://www.warresisters.org/attack9-11-01.htm#things
http://www.legitgov.org/peaceprotests.html
http://www.igc.org/inkworks/www/downloads.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/studentsnowar/files (members only)
http://www.honoringourhumangoodness.homestead.com/
http://www.earthflag.net/
http://www.peaceflags.org
http://www.mwaw.org
http://www.stopworldwar3.com/
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
www.internationalanswer.org
http://www.peace2001.org/
http://www.justresponse.org/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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