More here:
[url]www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/afghan-bck1005.htm[/url]

Violations of international humanitarian law committed by United Front factions include:

Late 1999 - early 2000: Internally displaced persons who fled from villages in and around Sangcharak district recounted summary executions, burning of houses, and widespread looting during the four months that the area was held by the United Front. Several of the executions were reportedly carried out in front of members of the victims' families. Those targeted in the attacks were largely ethnic Pashtuns and, in some cases, Tajiks.

September 20-21, 1998: Several volleys of rockets were fired at the northern part of Kabul, with one hitting a crowded night market. Estimates of the number of people killed ranged from seventy-six to 180. The attacks were generally believed to have been carried out by Massoud's forces, who were then stationed about twenty-five miles north of Kabul. A spokesperson for United Front commander Ahmad Shah Massoud denied targeting civilians. In a September 23, 1998, press statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross described the attacks as indiscriminate and the deadliest that the city had seen in three years.

Late May 1997: Some 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers were summarily executed in and around Mazar-i Sharif by Junbish forces under the command of Gen. Abdul Malik Pahlawan. The killings followed Malik's withdrawal from a brief alliance with the Taliban and the capture of the Taliban forces who were trapped in the city. Some of the Taliban troops were taken to the desert and shot, while others were thrown down wells and then blown up with grenades.

January 5, 1997: Junbish planes dropped cluster munitions on residential areas of Kabul. Several civilians were killed and others wounded in the indiscriminate air raid, which also involved the use of conventional bombs.

March 1995: Forces of the faction operating under Commander Massoud, the Jamiat-i Islami, were responsible for rape and looting after they captured Kabul's predominantly Hazara neighborhood of Karte Seh from other factions. [b]According to the U.S. State Department's 1996 report on human rights practices in 1995, "Massood's troops went on a rampage, systematically looting whole streets and raping women."[/b]

On the night of February 11, 1993 Jamiat-i Islami forces and those of another faction, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's Ittihad-i Islami, conducted a raid in West Kabul, killing and "disappearing" ethnic Hazara civilians, and committing widespread rape. Estimates of those killed range from about seventy to more than one hundred.

In addition, the parties that constitute the United Front have committed other serious violations of internationally recognized human rights. In the years before the Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan, these parties had divided much of the country among themselves while battling for control of Kabul. In 1994 alone, an estimated 25,000 were killed in Kabul, most of them civilians killed in rocket and artillery attacks. One-third of the city was reduced to rubble, and much of the remainder sustained serious damage. There was virtually no rule of law in any of the areas under the factions' control. In Kabul, Jamiat-i Islami, Ittihad, and Hizb-i Wahdat forces all engaged in rape, summary executions, arbitrary arrest, torture, and "disappearances." In Bamiyan, Hizb-i Wahdat commanders routinely tortured detainees for extortion purposes.

[url]www.commondreams.org/views01/1123-05.htm[/url]

Published on Friday, November 23, 2001  
Bush's Definition of Terrorism Fits Northern Alliance Like a Glove;
TV Interviewers Don't Notice  
by Dennis Hans
 
Mark well the sequence. On the morning of November 10, President
George W. Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly and spoke words
that warmed the hearts of human rights activists the world over:  
"For every regime that sponsors terror, there is a price to be paid
and it will be paid.... [Nations that support terror] are equally
guilty of murder and equally accountable to justice... We must unite
in opposing all terrorists, not just some of them. No national
aspiration, no remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate
murder of the innocent. Any government that rejects this principle,
trying to pick and choose its terrorist friends, will know the
consequences.... The Afghan people do not deserve their present
rulers.... I make this promise to all the victims of that regime: The
Taliban's days of harboring terrorists, and dealing in heroin, and
brutalizing women are drawing to a close."

That evening, during a joint press conference with Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf, Bush described the Northern Alliance
as "our friends." ("We will encourage our friends to head south
across the Shumali Plains, but not into the city of Kabul itself.")

[b]Moments later, Musharraf branded Bush's "friends" terrorists:

"Why I have been recommending that Kabul should not be occupied by
the Northern Alliance basically is because of the past experience
that we've had when the various ethnic groups were ahold of Kabul
after the Soviets left. There was total atrocities, killings and
mayhem within the city. And I think if the Northern Alliance enters
Afghanistan -- enters Kabul -- we'll see the same kind of atrocities
being perpetuated against the people there...."[/b]

A reporter followed up by asking Bush if he agreed with Musharraf's
assessment of the Alliance. Bush replied, "Only, only, I said one
question. Now you're going with three." No other reporter put the
question to Bush.

Now that is a disciplined press corps. In the morning, President Bush
takes a strong stand against those who terrorize the innocent and
brands governments that support such terrorists "equally guilty of
murder and equally accountable." In the evening he hails as "our
friends" an alliance that has terrorized the innocent (and, by the
way, dealt heroin) both as a government (1992-96) and as an
opposition force.

For a sampling of Northern Alliance atrocities, see the October
2001 "Background" report from Human Rights Watch. Since 1992, the
various Alliance factions have killed tens of thousands of civilians
every bit as innocent as America's 9-11 victims; their rap sheets
includes rape, torture, summary executions and "disappearances." "To
date," states HRW, "not a single Afghan commander has been held
accountable for violations of international humanitarian law."
(http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/afghan-bck1005.htm)

(continued)

Saturday night is followed by Sunday morning, so it was just a matter
of time before a Bush administration official would have to explain
why the president would describe forces that fit his own definition
of terrorists as "our friends," why he was backing them, and what he
intended to do to bring his own administration to justice for
supporting Alliance terrorists.

Secretary of State Colin Powell looked cool November 11 in the Meet
the Press hot seat. His inquisitor, Tim Russert, can be relentless
when the topic is a stained blue dress, but he simply is
intellectually and emotionally incapable of raising moral questions
about U.S. foreign policy. He missed the obvious disconnect between
Bush's words and policy.

Thus, Powell never had to say, "I endorse what the president said at
the U.N., and as soon as we crush al-Qaida, whether it's next year or
next decade, we'll base our foreign policy on his words." He never
had to relinquish any moral high ground for a more pragmatic (and
defensible) realpolitik position.

On ABC, Slammin' Sam Donaldson did indeed hold National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice's feet to the fire on state sponsorship of
terrorism. Outflanking the Bush administration on the right,
Donaldson put on the screen the State Department's list of states
that sponsor terror (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea,
Sudan) and asked why we aren't taking it to those governments like
we're taking it to the Taliban.

Note that Donaldson, in theory, represents ABC's "liberal" wing. For
two decades he's been cast as a counterweight to George Will, the
staunch conservative of "This Week." Donaldson could have asked why
Cuba was on the terror-sponsor list. He could have asked why Colombia
was not, given that its army collaborates with and protects a right-
wing death-squad federation on the State Department's list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations. He could have quoted from Bush's U.N. speech
and the Human Rights Watch report on the Northern Alliance -- or
cited the massive U.S. aid to the terror-facilitating Colombian army -
- and asked why the U.S. wasn't on the terror-sponsor list.

To ask any of those questions, Donaldson wouldn't necessarily have to
be a liberal. He could just as well be a moderate or conservative,
many of whom disapprove of selective morality and alliances with
cutthroats. But he would have to be informed.

Like most everyone else posing questions on Sunday morning, Donaldson
is bright, articulate and ignorant. All are prerequisites: Smarts and
a way with words lend an air of credibility; ignorance ensures the
avoidance of embarrassing questions about "principles" that seem to
be honored more often in the breach.

(continued)

To gain a coveted seat as a network foreign-policy interviewer, you
must be incapable of thinking outside the parameters of bogus State
Department lists. Your knowledge must be sufficiently superficial
that you cannot recognize an evasive answer or demolish a dishonest
one. Mix in an abiding faith in the fundamental decency of U.S.
foreign policy and you could be the next Russert, Donaldson or Jim
Lehrer.

Dennis Hans is a freelance writer whose essays have appeared in the
New York Times, Washington Post, National Post (Canada) and online at
TomPaine.com, Slate and The Black World Today (tbwt.com), among other
outlets. He has taught courses in mass communications and American
foreign policy at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, and
can be reached at [email protected]

Imbroglio, does this mean that our new found Northern Alliance heroes aren't the "heroic freedom fighter" we were told they were?

Does this mean that they would turn on us at the first opportunity?

I'm shocked! [:0]

I am going to take down my poster of my new hero General Abdul Rashid Dostum!  And I thought he was such a swell guy!

DaMan

In my opinion, since they are our friends I would be more than willing to trust them with the wives and daughters of those in the U.S. who support the NA as heroes.

The NA in reality is more like a south american drug running military dictatorship. Yet people still cheer them on.

Ummm...perhaps I've missed something. Why do they have to be heroes and squeaky clean boyscouts to be our allies?  I recall us allying ourselves with some pretty nasty characters in WW2 because it suited our purposes.
I think SOME people have simply forgotten that the aim of this war isn't to make Afghanistan a Disneyland, it's to take out Al Quaida BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

Gee and I thought you all were so gung ho about the war on drugs.

[url]www.msnbc.com/news/662443.asp[/url]

THE PASHTO-speaking farmer expects to triple what
he had made from the winter wheat he had planted the last
three seasons.
       With the Taliban no longer around to enforce a
three-year ban on poppy-growing, hundreds of farmers
near the eastern city of Jalalabad — their appetite for profit
sharpened by years of drought and hardship — have
resumed planting what they call “narcotic.”
       “We don’t have much water, so with narcotic we make
more money to offset the problem of the drought,” Haidar
said. “If you water twice a year, narcotic will do very well,
but with wheat, you have to water nine times.”

SEEDS HIDDEN NO MORE
       Miles of flat fields surround Jalalabad, with barren
desert mountains visible in the distance. Hundreds of miles
of irrigation canals funnel runoff from mountain springs and
creeks onto the fields, but after three years without rain,
water is precious.
       The 75-year-old Haidar, who lives in a mud house, has
rented his 750 acres from a wealthy Afghan for the past
half-century.
       Before the Taliban ban, he grew poppies almost
exclusively. During the past three years, he switched to
wheat rather than risk imprisonment. But Haidar had
stashed a bag of poppy seeds — and brought them out
when the Taliban fled Jalalabad this month, in time for
planting season.
       Now he has sown 250 acres of poppies, which he said
will yield 650 pounds of opium.
       “It will be just enough to live,” Haidar said. “I have a
family of 10, so I work just to live, eat and for clothes.”
       Afghanistan was once the world’s largest opium
producer, enough to supply 75 percent of the world’s
heroin, according to the U.N. Drug Control Program.
      Farmers produced 3,611 tons from the 1999 planting.
But after a ruthless Taliban crackdown, the crop in 2000
dropped to 204 tons, the agency said in July.
      Most of the opium is exported and is rarely used
locally.

SENT TO PAKISTAN
      Mujahed, a 42-year-old farmer who uses only one
name, said buyers give him an advance so that he can buy
fertilizer and survive until the crop comes in. They return
during the annual harvest to buy his seed pods and take the
opium to Pakistan, where, he says, “they make the stuff that
is very bad.”
      “But we don’t know about the advantages or
disadvantages for other people,” Mujahed said. “I don’t
know what they do with it. ... For me, there are a lot of
advantages over wheat.”
      The U.N. drug program spent years working with the
Taliban and aid agencies to discourage poppy growing and
encourage wheat production. But farmers outside Jalalabad
said they never saw any of the aid money that was funneled
through the Taliban.
      “The Westerners, when they want to help us, they
should put the aid in our hands, not give it to the leaders,”
Mujahed said, adding that he would stop growing poppies if
given an alternative.
      But Kasim, a 65-year-old white bearded farmer, was
less sympathetic.
      “Our life is really very difficult, because we can’t grow
wheat and still survive,” he said. “We need to grow
narcotic, even if it is not fair to the rest of the world.”

Rik, I'm not into "nation building"!  If the various factions in Afgahnistan want to go at each others throats for the next hundred years, I could care less!

Russia and Iran have been the Northern Alliance's main arms suppliers in recent years and both have reaffirmed their support for the NA since 09-11-01. I fear that the US is about to make the same mistake by furnishing these thugs with advanced weaponry.

They WILL turn on us! Mark my words! It's not a question of IF, it is a question of WHEN!

DaMan  

We're pitting them against each other.
Wake up, whiner.

Complain, complain, complain.
Blah, blah, blah......

Always TRYING to find failure, hoping for it.
It's getting boring.

[b]Maybe the Taliban don't like flowers?[/b]



Should we expect the price of poppy flowers to drop?

All of this is a function of trying to avoid ground troop casualities.

We get these proxies to do our dirty ground fighting for us, and we bring in our troops to act as police once all the real danger is gone.

Northern Alliance doesn't seem much different from the Albanian KLA, does it?  Albanians control the distribution of heroin in Western Europe, and that's obviously what funded their efforts against the Serbs.  Then, our one-time 'friends' start a new war of aggression against Macedonia this year.  

Ibroglio, heroin production in Afghanistan doesn't worry me as far as product coming into the US. 90% of the heroin produced in Afghanistan is consumed in Europe.  Most of our heroin comes from Colombia.

BUT, heroin production in Afghanistan brings in A LOT of hard currency.  Hard currency buys lots of weapons and political influence.  I don't want the NA scum to have either!

DaMan

     

I was not aware we'd provided them with any advanced weaponry.  I certainly hope we don't, and I don't think we will.  AFAIK, we've only given them ammo so far.

You're kinda' like the kid who got a pile of horse crap as a Christmas present.  "Oh, boy!" he exclaimed.  "There's got to be a pony around here somewhere"! [:P]

DaMan

 

Guess they didn't feel you had "the need to know", Mr. Rik!  Did they inform you when they were giving stingers to the Taliban?  [:P]

Daman  

But you did have the "need to know?"  I don't think so.  You know just as much about this as I do, no more.



They never gave the TALIBAN Stingers.  They gave the MUJAHADEEN Stingers.  The Taliban didn't exist at the time.  But maybe you didn't have the "need to know" that...

Rik, OH EXCUSE ME!  They weren't the Taliban back when they got the stingers.... they were the "Mujahadeen" ...... who then became the "Taliban"!

[:P]

DaMan

Edited because Rikki loves word games!

No, little boy, the Mujahadeen did NOT become the Taliban.  SOME members of the Mujahadeen allied with a hell of a lot of foreigners brought in by Pakistani intelligence stole power and became the Taliban.  The Mujahadeen also included elements of what is now the Northern Alliance and the Pashtun tribes in the south.  

You're funny, Rik!  [:P]

Glad to see you recoginize the NA as being NA fuggs!

The stingers were delivered before there was a "Northern Alliance".  They went to the Mujahadeen who joined the Taliban.

Don't you just love Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum?
He's a sweety!

DaMan


Sorry!  Just thought that humorous!

DaMan

Don't be sorry, I find your incoherent ramblings infinitely humorous.

Oh, my God! Laughed my a$$ off! Guess you couldn't understand that the stingers we sent to Afghanistan ended up in the hands of the Taliban? [:P]

DaMan

Given the muslim propensity for firing weapons into the air to celebrate, well, anything, and that the Mujahideen knocked down a sizeable number of Mi-8, 17 and 24 helicopters between, say, 1985 and the Soviet retreat, how many Stingers might the Taliban/UF/NA/Afghan-thug-of-the-month have access to by now?  Are the batteries such that the weapons are still servicable?

Edited because I left something important out.

What I understand is that Stingers have a limited shelf life and exactly NONE have been used to any effect against us in this war.  

About 300!

DaMan

He he,

Worry about the NA?  Dude, their biggest fear is that the US will switch sides and ally with Pakistan which wants them DEAD. They have seen what we can do and do not want to be on the recieving end...


And just where are those evil Stingers now?? The large scale fighting is almost over, and none have shown up.  The Taliban is disappearing fast, who is going to be around to shoot them?

300, eh.  I think Jane's estimated it could be as high as 500, since the actual number of units transferred is in question.  Add to this mix the close relationship that the Taliban have had with Pakistan - a country very adept at reverse-engineering just about everything they can get their hands on.  So then the question becomes: are the Stingers (and whatever else they've got left) more valuable to an "army" on the run as weapons, or as currency?

Rik, you were a "soldier" weren't you?  Would you shoot a stinger at a high performance Air Craft?

DaMan

Edited 'cause I wanted to hear how "soldier RIK" would react to a "stinger'!  

Then why havent they popped one off at a C130 or Stallion or Blackhawk. All these SpecOps guys are getting in and around Afganistan some how, they should have LOTS of opportunities to hit slow movers.

DzlBenz !!!
YOU ARE QUOTING JANE's !!  That's an actual authoritative source and no real facts are ever allowed in these discussions.
No one will still say the "Tali" is composed of great bunches of Arabians but it is.
NA - "Continue to kill Tali" - we'll worry about the dope crop in the spring.

To my recollection, most of the Stinger activity against the Soviets occurred _after_ the Soviets were operating routinely from bases within Afghanistan.  This may be coincident with the arrival of the Stingers, but I'm not sure.  Regardless, it's one thing to target fairly un-sophisticated Mi-8s carrying replacement troops from one known position to another known position during the daytime, and trying to pick off an MH-60 coming from who-knows-where going to who-knows-where at night.  While being carpet bombed.  Again.

I guesss what I'm getting at is that the US operations may soon develop into a type that is more prone to providing Stinger targets to the enemy.  I hope not.

Heh.  Good one.  Well, paraphrasing at best.  That make you feel better?

Dsl B.  Paraphrasing allows me to feel much better.
I've got this plan to get "Hollywood" Celebs. to do a televised benefit for getting the Northern/United/Alliance/Front irrigation pumps for next year's dope crop - with good old American help the crop can be bigger and better than ever.
Guess the "Golden Crescent" has stopped growing poppies as they never get a mention.
[:D]

You've got it,Dude!  REASON?

DaMan

Just occurred to my dumb a** that in the intervening years lots of improvements have been made to our "counter measures" suite.  Those old "Stingers" may no longer be effective against our aircraft.

Fighter aircraft?  Or commercial aircraft?

DaMan

I was primarily thinking of helicopters and fighters.  Don't have a clue about non-military aircraft.

About the only countermeasure against a Stinger would be a flare.  Now considering that this think has an effective range of just a couple of miles, an effective altitude of about 8000 feet, and a supersonic velocity, one would have to employ countermeasures at the instant the thing was fired.  Imagine holding an armour plate at your side, and the very instant a bullet is fired at you from any random direction a couple of hundred yards way, you've got to raise the plate and deflect the bullet.  Add the level of difficulty that the Stinger is not ballistic; it's going to follow you around until it either hits you or runs out of propellant.

A truly effective weapon, for what it is meant to do.  Good thing we only give them to our allies.  Oh, wait.

Counter-measures:  Flares yes but I was also thinking of the greatly reduced "IR" signature.

Old Rik, ain't much fun!  Spouts his crap and runs!

raf, don't mean to sound "patronizing" .....but when I run into one who doesn't know what he's talking about, that's the kindest route I can take!

Stingers don't work real well against high performance AC.  But they work just fine against helicopters at moderate to close range or COMMERCIAL (PASSENGER) AC out to maximum range!

Batteries run down???!!!  Hahahahahah!  Batteries are REALLY hard to replace!

DaMan

This is all very shocking.  I'm disappointed that the United States didn't ally itself with the Afghan Green party.  They could have held a protest march through downtown Kabul and just shamed the Taliban out of power. [rolleyes]

Unless I'm mistaken, THE WAR IS JUST ABOUT OVER.
The Taliban are running out of real estate,
& with Marines pouring into the Khandahar area
as I type this, they're running out of options
fast. if the devious & diabolical tali's
are preparing their dreaded masterstroke counterattack with short range manpack missles,
(all of which I'm sure have been meticulously
maintained during the 10 years they've been
lying around in Afghanistan), I figure they have all of about a week tops to pull it off.

Oh, guys..... that is a forward staging area for Apache helicopers south of Kandahar!  Not a Marine assault on the city!

Yes, the end of the Taliban is close at hand..... but not yet!

And you may not like what follows them!

DaMan

Runs?  I figured I had humiliated you quite enough for one day.  Do you enjoy humiliation that much?

UNfortunately, Afghanistan's history is one of tribal conflict and temorary "rule" by foreign invaders.  The Taliban will merely leak out of the country back to whatever Arab nation they came from last, or will change hats to join the UF/NA/Whatever.  Don't think for a minute that the news coming out of that part of the world indicates any of the following.
1) A victory in the "War on Terrorism"
2) A victory over Osama bin Laden
3) A victory over oppression of native Afghans
4) A victory for "democracy and peace"

I'm very afraid that what it really means is a diversion of a great deal of our nation's resources (oh, yeah, and the Canadian navy) and placement in harm's way of a great number of our all-volunteer armed forces.  Further, it represents a switching of our allegiances in the region from one band of theives to another.  We're by no means done in Afghanistan.

Within a year, I expect the US to be fully engaged in USAID projects in Pakistan, India and perhaps (well, almost certainly, really) Afghanistan.  We will be rebuilding, or in many cases building for the very first time, moder infrastructure in these places that only mere weeks ago were on the US State Departments shit list.  Now they're our buddies.  Whoo boy.  Let the games begin.

Right.  Like some 89-year-old "king" is going to give up his cushy western-sponsored life in Europe to return to rule these jokers.