FWD: West's new allies include vitriolic anti-Americans... part one

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<<  ## Nachricht vom 13.10.01 weitergeleitet/ fwd by LPA Berlin  [lpa at free.de]
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Human Rights Watch Backgrounder of United Front/Northern Alliance
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The difference between Taliban and jehadi fundamentalists

Northern Alliance main opium producer: UN

West's new allies include vitriolic anti-Americans, human-rights violators,
former allies of Osama bin Laden and more ...
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The Toronto Star, Oct.7, 2001
Thomas Walkom, STAFF REPORTER

The West s new Afghan friends in the war against terrorism and the Taliban
are a curious lot. They include Islamic fundamentalists, vitriolic
anti-Americans, human-rights violators, one-time allies of Osama bin Laden
and soldiers of the former communist regime.
Officially, they are known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation  
of Afghanistan. Unofficially, they call themselves the Northern Alliance.

The terror attacks on the United States have given them a boost in their
five-year-old war against the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic regime that
rules almost all of Afghanistan.
Already, U.S officials are hinting they'll provide weapons to the
alliance's estimated 15,000 troops, on top of the non-military aid
Washington has been giving since 1998.
Western journalists, too, have rediscovered the alliance and are busy  
reporting on what some are already calling Afghanistan's new freedom  
fighters.
But the history of the key players in the Northern Alliance suggests they  
may prove difficult allies in the U.S.-led war against terror. An uneasy  
coalition, bound as much by mutual hatred as by dislike of the ruling  
Taliban, their relations with one another over the past decade have been  
marked by treachery, backstabbing and a level of deviousness so profound  
that the word Byzantine cannot do it justice.
"They may not be perfect," acknowledges Mike Vickers, a former officer
with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] and now director of
strategic studies for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and  
Budgeting Assessments. "But the Northern Alliance does have some good  
elements."
At times, those good elements are hard to find.
Senior members of the alliance, including former Afghan president  
Burhanuddin Rabbani and northern warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, a key ally  
of the Soviet Union during that country's attempt to occupy Afghanistan,  
have been cited by the U.S. for human-rights abuses.
Deputy-premier Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the alliance's number two political  
figure, is a hard-line, vehemently anti-American Islamic fundamentalist  
who is so strict on the subject of separation of the sexes that, according  
to one Associated Press report, he won't even speak to women.

Yet another figure in the alliance, eastern warlord Haji Abdul Qadir, was  
Osama bin Laden's first sponsor in Afghanistan when the Saudi millionaire  
- already wanted at the time by the U.S. for his alleged involvement in  
anti-American terrorist attacks - fled to that country in 1996. At  
different times, both Rabbani and Dostum have found themselves in informal  
alliances with the Taliban and occasionally against each other.
At other times, the various factions have cheerfully massacred one  
another. In 1993, according to the non-governmental organization, Human  
Rights Watch [HRW], Rabbani's Society of Islam killed 70 to 100 members of  
the Hazara minority linked to the rival Party of Islamic Unity, another  
member of the Northern Alliance.
Two years later, according to the U.S. State Department, Rabbani forces -  
under the command of Ahmed Shah Massood (celebrated by Western journalists  
as the "Lion of the Panjshir" until his untimely assassination last month)  
- went on another anti-Hazara rampage "systematically looting whole  
streets and raping women."
As for the shifting loyalties of the Northern Alliance members, these are  
so numerous as to make the head ache.
In 1994, Rabbani's Society of Islam was informally allied to the Taliban  
in an effort to defeat the rival Party of Islam of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an  
Islamic fundamentalist who, during the decade-long war against the Soviet  
Union, had been sponsored by the CIA. A year later, Rabbani and Hekmatyar  
allied with each other to fight the Taliban. And now Hekmatyar, in exile  
in Iran, is opposed to both Rabbani and the Taliban.

Dostum's career is even more complicated. From 1979 to 1992, he was allied  
with the communist government in Kabul. As that government was about to  
fall, Dostum switched loyalties to join the anti-communist mujahideen  
"freedom fighters." When the various mujahideen factions had a falling  
out, he first allied himself with Rabbani to fight Hekmatyar. Later, he  
joined Hekmatyar to fight Rabbani. By 1995, he was supporting the Taliban  
against both Hekmatyar and Rabbani. By 1996, he was allied with his two  
former enemies against the Taliban.
Up to now, the U.S. and other Western countries have kept a respectable  
distance from the Northern Alliance.

The United Nations recognizes Rabbani's Islamic State of Afghanistan as  
the legitimate government of the country. But except for India, Iran,  
Russia and a few Central Asian states, almost no one else does.
Neither Canada nor the U.S. has recognized any government in Afghanistan  
since 1979.

Kurt-Werner Pörtner