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Sending in the marines Nov 28th 2001 >From The Economist Global Agenda With hundreds of American soldiers now active in southern Afghanistan, and the Taliban�s last stronghold in the north fallen to the opposition, the war may be entering its final phase. A meeting that has begun in Germany between different Afghan factions marks the formal start of the peace process EPA Ready for battle THE arrival in Afghanistan this week of hundreds of American marines, ferried in by helicopter from ships off the coast of Pakistan, signals the beginning of a new stage in America�s war against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The Pentagon says that the deployment, at an airport near the Taliban�s last stronghold, Kandahar, will involve more than a thousand soldiers. The purpose of this �forward operating base�, in the words of General Tommy Franks, the head of US Central Command, �is to give us a capability to be an awful lot closer to the core objectives we seek��namely, the destruction of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. On November 27th, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, said that American warplanes had bombed a compound near Kandahar that was �clearly a leadership area�, though a Taliban spokesman has claimed that their top leaders were not there. It seems unlikely that the marines will be directly involved in fighting in Kandahar itself. But American bombers are continuing to attack the city, in support of efforts by anti-Taliban Afghan groups to capture it. The Americans, meanwhile, are intensifying the search for al-Qaeda�s leaders, including Osama bin Laden. The capture or killing of Mr bin Laden has always been one of America�s primary war aims. As Taliban control over Afghanistan crumbles, that task becomes somewhat less daunting. It was not until November 9th that the armed opposition to the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, won its first big territorial victory of the campaign, with the capture of the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif. But after that, Taliban control over most of the country collapsed. Within days it had been reduced to scattered pockets of resistance, and two big concentrations of fighters: at Kunduz in the north and at Kandahar, the Taliban�s heartland, in the south. Kunduz has now fallen, after a two-week siege, and repeated aerial bombardment by American planes. The final battle for Kandahar seems imminent, and some Taliban leaders have been engaged in negotiations on how to surrender or defect. As in Kunduz, these negotiations are complicated by two factors: the bloody record of some Northern Alliance commanders when they were in power in the 1990s; and the presence in Taliban ranks of thousands of Arab, Pakistani, Chechen and other foreign fighters, who have reason to fear especially vicious reprisals. The depth of Taliban desperation has already been illustrated by a bloodbath in Mazar-i-Sharif. On November 25th, about 500 Taliban fighters, mainly foreigners, who had surrendered to Rashid Dostum, an Alliance commander with a bloodthirsty reputation, staged a mutiny in the fort where they were being held prisoner. The fighting that followed was spread over three days and involved heavy artillery, American air-strikes, and American and British special-forces soldiers. All the prisoners are believed to have been killed, along with dozens of Alliance fighters. Five American soldiers were wounded by a stray bomb, and a CIA agent was killed by the rebels. An Alliance spokesman has denied the rebellion was being used as an opportunity to kill unwanted prisoners. But Amnesty International, a human-rights group, has called for an inquiry into the mutiny and the �proportionality� of the response. Before this battle, the Alliance�s foreign backers had been congratulating it on the restraint its commanders have shown in victory. There have certainly been some peremptory killings of Taliban fighters. But despite the summary executions, there have been intense diplomatic efforts to avoid a repeat of the massacres that have disfigured previous turning-points in Afghanistan�s two-decade-long conflict. Fresh atrocities would bring criticism on America and its coalition partners for their backing of the Alliance. They might also wreck whatever chances there are of reaching some kind of durable peace in Afghanistan. United Nations officials insist those chances are better now than for many years. On November 27th, a UN-convened conference on Afghanistan opened in K�nigswinter, near Bonn in Germany. It brings together some of the warring factions, in the hope of reaching agreement on the composition of a ruling council that can replace the Taliban and prepare for a traditional Afghan grand council, or loya jirga, to agree a new transitional government. That, in turn, would ready the country for general elections, in about three years' time. Four groups are represented at the conference. The Northern Alliance itself will be there, although its leader, Nurhanuddin Rabbani, who remained the internationally recognised president of Afghanistan during the five years of Taliban rule, last week dismissed the talks as �largely symbolic�, and on November 26th insisted that �the main councils and meetings will take place inside Afghanistan�. His party, Jamiat-i-Islami, an ethnic-Tajik faction which took control of the capital, Kabul, two weeks ago, is one of eight groups making up the Alliance. It is dominated by minority ethnic groups from the north of the country�not just Tajiks but also Uzbeks, Hazaras and others. AP Dismissive Rabbani The other three delegations at K�nigswinter all represent different tribes or factions of the largest ethnic group, the Pushtuns. In UN terminology they are known as �the Rome process�, �the Cyprus process� and �the Peshawar convention�. Rome is the home in exile of Zahir Shar, an octogenarian former king who was ousted in a coup in 1973. Many Afghans and foreign diplomats, including, most notably, the Americans, hope he can be a symbolic figurehead to unite the disparate parts of a broad-based government. The Cyprus process refers to a series of meetings held over the past few years to discuss how to bring peace to Afghanistan. Taking part was a wide range of exiled politicians and intellectuals. Many of them are seen to be close to Iran. Peshawar is a Pakistani border town, where other Afghan exiles have made their base. The delegation from there is being assembled by Syed Pir Gailani, a Pushtun tribal leader regarded as among the most moderate members of the seven-party mujahideen government that took power in 1992. Simply listing the groups represented in K�nigswinter highlights two of the big difficulties the conference will face. First, the Pushtun representatives are largely exiles. There are no delegations from either the Taliban, or from the various tribal leaders and warlords that have taken over from them this month in different areas of the south. The role of the Taliban has been especially controversial, with Pakistan insisting on the presence of Taliban �moderates�, and the Alliance, Iran and Russia refusing to countenance this. In an encouraging sign that some compromises are possible, Mr Rabbani has dropped his blanket objection to the participation of any former Taliban in a new administration. He has now said that �those that don�t have obvious guilt and are elected by a loya jirga are acceptable.� Reuters Heading for compromise? Second, all of the factions have their backers in foreign governments, whose interests compete and conflict. The Alliance, for example, is backed by Russia and India (as well as by some of Afghanistan�s direct neighbours, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). Iran has links not just with the Cyprus process but with the Hazara minority, who share its Shi�ite Muslim creed. Pakistan is intensely suspicious of the Alliance and sees itself as having a duty to protect the interests of the Pushtuns (who also make up perhaps a fifth of its own population). Eighteen foreign governments and the European Union have �observer� status at the talks. For centuries, foreign rivalries have played a big part in stoking Afghanistan�s endless internal conflicts. One reason for guarded optimism now is that so many countries are united in rejoicing at the rout of the Taliban. Some keep repeating that they are ready to help rebuild Afghanistan, both through providing money for the task and, if necessary, by sending soldiers to keep the peace. But that suggestion, too, is controversial. The Alliance has objected to the presence of about 100 British special-forces troops at Bagram airfield, near Kabul. And its opposition to the idea has helped stall plans for a bigger deployment of 6,000 British troops to secure the distribution of humanitarian aid. Some Afghan groups welcome the idea of a peacekeeping force made up largely of soldiers from Muslim countries, such as Turkey, Jordan, Bangladesh and Indonesia. But the Alliance wants a purely Afghan force. Nevertheless, the factions meeting in K�nigswinter have made progress simply by turning up. In doing so they are already agreeing in principle to the idea of a broad-based, multi-ethnic government. They also seem united in accepting that the king should have a role. There are hopes that they might even be able to reach a compromise soon on the composition of a ruling council that would take power until a loya jirga is held in March. Francesc Vendrell, the UN�s deputy envoy to Afghanistan, has pointed to �a great deal of international commitment� as being one of the big differences in the latest attempt to bring peace to the war-weary country. But, as he also said, �the root cause of the conflict in Afghanistan over the past 20 years is the lack of popular legitimacy of successive Afghan governments.� And efforts to establish a government with such legitimacy have only just begun. http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=885495 ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
