From Workers World September 19, 2002

EDITORIAL: U.S. DOMINATION IN AFGHANISTAN

Stability--U.S. style. That's what the people of Afghanistan are enduring today, at Ground Zero of the Pentagon's war on their impoverished country. The Sept. 5 assassination attempt on the country's president, Hamid Karzai, and the car bomb explosion in Kabul that killed at least 30 people earlier the same day, illustrate that the United States has not and will not be able to establish a stable government in Afghanistan.

The grueling conditions in the war-torn country are generating anger, resentment and resistance from sectors of the population.

Some 1.5 million people were turned into refugees by the devastation of U.S. bombing raids and destruction of the infrastructure. On Sept. 7 the Pentagon admitted that scores of civilians were killed or injured in a U.S. air strike on a string of Afghan villages in July. According to Afghan investigators, what Washington called "valid military targets" were really wedding parties.

After a quarter of a century of U.S.-instigated wars, 10 million land mines remain buried in the earth, killing or injuring some 400 people every month. And, the United Nations estimates, 6 million people face starvation this winter.

Very little of the billions of dollars promised by Washington and other Western powers has arrived.

The Karzai government is the lightning rod for a great deal of anger--which is why the United States installed this puppet regime to enforce its imperial bidding. Those placed as titular heads of Afghanistan are certainly beholden to U.S. interests in the region.

Karzai, it should be recalled, is a former consultant for the U.S. oil company Unocal. He helped Unocal plan a proposed 1,500-kilometer gas pipeline starting in Turkmenistan, stretching across Afghanistan, and ending in Pakistan. In May, while he was still acting as interim leader, Karzai and the presidents of Pakistan and Turkmenistan signed an agreement to move ahead with the pipeline. Unocal was said to be the frontrunner to head the multi-billion-dollar project.

Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani reportedly worked for the World Bank after nearly a decade as a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Anwar Ahady, governor of Afghanistan's central bank, taught political science at Providence College in Rhode Island and worked as a banker in Chicago before returning home.

These are just the most prominent individuals who guarantee the United States nearly absolute control over all financial and economic decisions made in Kabul.

Instability in Afghanistan is guaranteed as long as U.S. military brass steer from the helm toward their course of economic and strategic interests in the region.

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Edited by author 09-17-2002 07:39 PM

Rockets hit UNICEF's Afghan office

17 Sep 2002 10:20 BST
 
KABUL (Reuters) - At least one man has been wounded after two rockets exploded in the compound of the U.N. Children's Fund in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, Western sources in the city said.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, said two rockets landed "in the vicinity" of coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan early in the morning but caused no casualties.

The man wounded in Jalalabad was an Afghan guard for UNICEF, the Western sources said, adding that a room at the office had been badly damaged.

A third rocket landed in another part of the city, but it was unclear if it had caused an casualties, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.N. officials in the Afghan capital Kabul said they were not able to comment.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted sources in Jalalabad as saying the rockets hit the office in the eastern part of the city, not far from the airport, at 4.40 a.m. (0010 GMT).

It said the blasts shattered windows and injured security guard Mohammad Shoaib. The agency said many more people could have been hurt had the attack taken place during office hours.

A government soldier, Mahbood Shinwari, told Reuters from Jalalabad the rockets may have been fired from the Tora Bora mountains, a former base of the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is considered by Washington the mastermind of the attacks on the United States on September 11 last year.

FATAL BLAST LAST MONTH

Last month, a massive explosion at a construction firm in Jalalabad killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens. Officials said it appeared to have been an accident but they could not rule out sabotage by al Qaeda or Taliban remnants.

There have been several rocket attacks over recent months on Jalalabad airport, which is used by U.S. special forces in their hunt for al Qaeda members and remnants of the former Taliban regime. There have been no casualties in previous attacks, which authorities have blamed on al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Colonel Roger King, a spokesman at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, said in Tuesday's attacks in eastern Afghanistan, one rocket was launched in the eastern town of Asadabad and landed "well away" from coalition installations.

Another landed more than 800 metres (yards) from a coalition position near the village of Shkin in Paktika province, he said, adding that there were no reports of casualties.

King said a U.S. special operations position outside the southern city of Kandahar had also reported small-arms fire, but it was unclear if it was hostile.

King said on Monday two U.S. special forces soldiers were slightly wounded when a mine exploded beneath their vehicle on a road between Jalalabad and Asadabad.

But he denied reports that U.S. bases near the city of Khost came under rocket attack on Sunday night, saying the reports were part of a disinformation campaign.

On Monday, Asmat Gul, the head of intelligence in Khost, told Reuters by telephone that U.S. aircraft were scrambled after at least 10 rockets were fired the previous night at the city's old and new airfields, which are bases for hundreds of U.S. troops.

A similar report was carried earlier by the Afghan Islamic Press. But Kheal Baz, military commander for Khost governor Hakim Taniwal, also denied that there had been any attacks.