Stories from 2002-01-06

"Now the Taliban are gone, and the city and the surrounding Nangarhar Province is run once again by warlords and guerrillas, whose enterprising rackets have almost instantly turned the place into Afghanistan's version of Shakedown Street, the land where almost everything is corrupt." [more]

"After nearly a week of scouring the area near Baghran where Mullah Omar was believed to be hiding, a team of American Special Forces and anti-Taliban Afghan troops left the region today, said officials in charge of Helmand Province, where Baghran is located.
" 'He's escaped,' said Pier Muhammad, the deputy governor of Helmand in an interview here in the provincial capital. 'No one knows where he is. People are saying he is in Baghran. But he is not in Baghran.' " [more]

"Today it may appear, from titles alone, that Hamid Karzai is the leader of Afghanistan. Actually, he is a figurehead, chosen at the behest of United States officials. Afghan delegates at the conference in Bonn that selected the government have told reporters they voted for Karzai only because American officials instructed them to. Karzai's largest following is in Washington, not Afghanistan." [more]

"An unmanned Pakistani spy plane was on Sunday shot down after it intruded into Indian air space in Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir, defence sources here said." [more]

"America [has] harnessed, even cultivated, terrorism in the struggle against movements it saw as Soviet proxies. Yes, I do mean 'terrorism,' which Washington supports when it backs groups for whom the preferred method of operation is destroying the infrastructure of civilian life." [more]

"Something must be wrong with the way the United States exercises its power. Too many people, in too many countries, see U.S. foreign policy as lacking universal principles that resonate with the rest of the world. It seems to them that an America projecting its power in pursuit of its own interests will only end up destabilizing a globalizing world." [more]

"For a brief moment, it looked as though the crime perpetrated by Osama bin Laden would persuade President Bush to rethink the defiant unilateralism his campaign had proposed as the leitmotif for American foreign policy. But the Afghan triumph seems only to encourage the simplicities of the Republican right. Its talk grows harsher and appears to scorn, even more deeply than a year ago, the complexities of global crises, not to mention the prudent generosity of outlook demanded of the sole surviving Great Power." [more]

"The Berlin Wall fell not because capitalism triumphed but because communism failed. I am not sure the United States realizes this. We may tell ourselves that capitalism is the only game in town, yet in 80 percent of the world, capitalism is not yet a reality." [more]