Malik73

This is why the American's are scared to send ground troops to Afghanistan. Within a week or so the Northern Alliance is feling it's muscles, and defying the west. It's protests to the British are ominous and they are an unpredictable bunch. Danger may lie for the British ahead...

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynami...text_id=430417

Marines stranded at Bagram airbase


Not since General Gordon was marooned in Khartoum has a British garrison been more beleaguered than the troops now stuck at Bagram air base outside Kabul. One hundred Royal Marines are here in this giant airfield, surrounded by thousands of potentially hostile Afghan troops, and coping with the news last night that London has cancelled plans to fly in reinforcements. The hills nearby are infested with several hundred Arab Taliban fighters, cut off by the fall of Kabul and now fighting daily clashes with the Northern Alliance.

At Bagram, the Northern Alliance troops guarding the Marines seem more like jailers than friends, with Alliance commanders demanding an end to the British operation. The Marines, many from the elite Special Boat Squadron, arrived on Friday here, 22 miles north of Kabul, as the spearhead of a much larger force of up to 2,000, which was supposed to begin arriving today.

But the Alliance has slammed on the brakes. Foreign minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah, happy enough last week to see American bombs clear a path for his forces to Kabul, now says there can be no more British troops without further "discussions". His deputy intelligence chief, named Engineer Arif, has gone further, ordering the British to cut their numbers, rendering their deployment pointless.

London insists the force is in Afghanistan to provide humanitarian relief. But the Alliance fears the British are here as peacekeepers, and might interfere with its sudden dominance of Kabul. Last night the UN contradicted London's claims about relief work, saying these Marines form no part of any UN humanitarian operation.

"You don't move relief items in by air unless you have no alternative," said Mike Sackett, the Australian humanitarian coordinator. "We have a number of routes. We can move thousands of tonnes of food." In fact an efficient UN feeding operation is already uncoiling along highways from well stocked food depots in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. There is simply no need for an air bridge, especially to Kabul, where the bazaars are groaning with food. If London has another motive for plonking its special forces in the middle of Afghanistan, now is probably the time to come clean.

Bagram, a huge sprawling base stretching over three miles, is an unhappy place in which to be beleaguered, with wide open spaces allowing snipers to take pot shots. The place was fought over many times by the Alliance and Taliban. Its hangars and control tower have huge holes in the roofs. Every building is wrecked. Broken fighter planes sit in the former dispersal areas and rubble, shrapnel and spent ammunition casings lie everywhere. Until last week it was on the front line with the Taliban and the whole area is strewn with mines.

Bagram was built as the hub of the 10-year Soviet effort to subdue the Afghans. The war, dubbed "Moscow's Vietnam", ended in humiliating failure and withdrawal in 1989. What the Marines inside think about all this is impossible to tell - their Alliance "hosts" refuse to let me in - but the longer they stay here, the more they become pawns in a much bigger political game.

The Alliance no longer needs American air power, and is busy strengthening its grip on Kabul. A single party, the ethnic-Tajik Jamiat i Islami, now dominates not just the city but the government too, accounting for all three ministers - interior, defence and foreign affairs. That party's allied warlords are also the only ones in control of troops patrolling the streets - to the annoyance of other ethnic groups who fear Tajik domination. Ethnic Hazara troops, arriving to guard their own suburbs in the capital at the weekend, complain that they have been forcibly disarmed by the "ring of steel" the Alliance has thrown around Kabul.

None of this is likely to impress the Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest group, who dominate the south. Pashtun warlords may well be about to dump the Taliban, but most Taliban units are likely to be re-employed, ready for a possible war against their bitter foes, the Tajik- dominated Northern Alliance. Whether Balkan-style peacekeeping, which involves forcing all sides to disarm, is going to work here is uncertain.

Yasir -

Well, the sh|t has hit zee fan

I knew it was a matter of time before the NA showed its true colors and intentions.Now lets see how the americans react to their "new found buddies".

Malik73

Well at present Afghanistan is practically split in two zones - the NA-ruled North and the Pashtun South. But both these zones are in turn split into ethnic and tribal fiefdoms. In the North, you have the Tajik warlords ruling the North East and Kabul, the Hazara warlords in Bamiyan, the Uzbek warlord Dostum ruling his own fiefdom from Mazar-i-Sharif, and Ismail Khan running his own mini-state from Herat, and the Taliban are still in Kunduz. In the Pashtun South the Taliban still control most of the interior (amounting to a 1/3 of Afghanistan), but three Pashtun area's - Jalalabad, Oruzgun and Kandahar all have bickering Pasthun warlords vying to take control. That's nearly ten ethnic and tribal power centres that have emerged in the last week. A recipe for total chaos and anarchy, that the Americans dare not enter, but if they don't and let the NA run amock, then any American 'achievments' will unravel fast.

PakistaniAbroad

US couldn't care less.. they'd just carry on with a request-a-bomb campaign till all armed resistance is squashed by the other armed group.

Time for these armed groups to realise who's the real enemy here.

Judge^MentuLL

the problem is, these armed groups couldn't care less about the overall wellbeing of Pakistan. They all have their own priorities, such as setting up lucrative checkpoints, controlling drug routes, looting, banditry etc. A lawless state is a perfect atmosphere for all these activities to thrive in.

Malik73

Yes and turn into another Vietnam. America's 'success' so far is becoming very bitter with this chaos and anarchy, growing day by day.



[This message has been edited by Malik73 (edited November 20, 2001).]

PakistaniAbroad

The more I understand current events in Afghanistan, the more I realize that the Talebans did well by retreating. Very few of them got killed.. they just switched caps.. and let the foreign volunteers take the front lines to get killed or captured. Smart move on their part.

Now for those who thought that the US was there to remove Al-Qaida and eliminate OBL and see that Taleban cease to exist.. well all but one has been accomplished.. so should we now consider continued operation in and occupation of Afghanistan as the means to achieve the REAL goal of this war?

PIPELINE.