Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Come cambiano i tempi

Dal NY Times, 1995.
Notare come sia simile in tono a cio' che si dice oggi.  Con ruoli
invertiti.
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1995, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
New Afghan Force Takes Hold, Turning to Peace
By JOHN F. BURNS,   Special to The New York Times
DATELINE: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 15
After a decade of a Soviet military occupation and five more years of
ruthless civil war, Afghanistan has taken a sudden and startling turn
toward peace.
In a military campaign that has lasted barely four months, a new force of
professed Islamic purists and Afghan patriots known as the Taliban, many
of whom were religious students until they took up arms last fall, has
taken control of more than 40 percent of the country. With at least 30
percent filled by the soaring mountains of the Hindu Kush and only
sparsely populated, the Taliban are now by far the most powerful force in
the country.
In their 300-mile drive northeast to the capital from Kandahar,
Afghanistan's second-largest city, and a 200-mile drive westward from
Kandahar into the drug-trafficking center of Helmand, the Taliban have
made big gains in 9 of Afghanistan's 30 provinces. Their drive has
created the largest chunk of Afghanistan under united control since the
Soviet forces arrived in December 1979.
This week, a Taliban force halted barely nine miles from Kabul, the
capital, and demanded a pullback by the city's defenders that suggested
that Kabul is next in their sights.
Along the way, the Taliban have uprooted scores of mujahedeen commanders,
the self-styled "soldiers of God" who took to Afghanistan's wild valleys
and mountains to fight Soviet occupiers 15 years ago.
When the Soviet troops withdrew, those armed leaders disintegrated into a
ragtag army of local warlords. In recent years, using guns acquired when
the United States was bankrolling the Afghan resistance, they have
established a reign of terror, pillage and heroin-running.
An explosion of resentment against the warlords, hidden beneath a blanket
of fear until the Taliban emerged to tap it, has been as much a factor in
the Taliban's success as their military might. Now many Afghans say they
see in the new force the salvation for their country that they have
waited for so long.
"We may be close to the end," said Abdul Jabbar Naeemi, a diplomat in
Afghanistan's Embassy in Islamabad, while stamping a reporter's visa.
"Inshallah!" he added with a broad smile, using an Arabic term that
means, "With God's grace."
But the enthusiasm of many Afghans is not wholly shared by diplomats who
have worked for years to secure an Afghan peace.
As Taliban successes grew in recent weeks, the mujahedeen leaders who led
the resistance to the Russians suddenly found common ground that had
eluded them for years.
Last week they agreed to a peace formula put together by Mahmoud Mestiri,
a former Tunisian Foreign Minister who is the United Nations special
envoy to Afghanistan. Mr. Mestiri's plan, embracing 10 mujahedeen
factions but not the Taliban, was to have been signed in Kabul next
Monday. But today Mr. Mestiri moved the date up to Saturday, in the hope
that a new interim governing council can be set up before the Taliban
make any new moves.
A spokesman for the United Nations envoy said today in Islamabad that the
official's hope was that the Taliban would join the new council, or at
least to work with it. But the movement's hostility toward the mujahedeen
may make that impossible.
Many Afghans also point to the mysteries that surround the Taliban, and
question if the new force will keep its appeal when it becomes better
known. The man thought to be the Taliban leader, Mohammed Omar, who is
said to be a Muslim cleric in his late 40's and blind in one eye, has
avoided meeting Western visitors to Kandahar. Some of the group's strict
Muslim beliefs could stir protest once the relief felt by people freed of
the
warlords' repression begins to recede.
In Kandahar and other places where they have taken power, the Taliban
have barred women from working outside their homes, forbidden the playing
of soccer and forced all men to have short haircuts. But they have also
shown flexibility.
When women in Kandahar protested a ban on their entering the city's
bazaar, the Taliban relented, but ordered that women stay outside stores
where men were serving, and ask for goods to be brought out to them. So
far, according to people who have visited Kandahar, there have been no
signs of overt resentment of the West.
Armed groups calling themselves Taliban -- a Persian word that means
"seekers after truth" -- played a minor role in the resistance to the
Soviet occupation. But the new group was unknown until September, when it
forced a mujahedeen group to release a convoy of trucks carrying food and
other supplies from Pakistan through Kandahar to the Central Asian
republics of the former Soviet Union.
Hijacking food supplies has been a common tactic of the mujahedeen,
particularly in trying to starve the 600,000 people in Kabul. But the
mujahedeen who blocked the Pakistan convoy at Kandahar -- a group known
as "the Gucci muj" because of the expensive tastes of its leader -- went
a step too far for the religious students at maddrassahs, or Muslim
schools, in Kandahar and in neighboring cities. More than three million
Afghans who fled the Soviet intervention live in these cities, which
include Quetta, across the border in Pakistan.
The students had already been angered by incidents in which mujahedeen at
roadblocks in Kandahar had pulled women from their cars and raped them.
After freeing the Pakistan food convoy, the students seized control of
Kandahar.
There, as in their drive on Kabul later, they are said to have found that
local mujahedeen commanders had little stomach for battle. The Taliban
boast that many of their victories have been won without firing a shot.
According to some estimates, they now have 25,000 fighters, 200 tanks, a
dozen fighter planes and several helicopters. By the standards of
Afghanistan, where a dozen Kalashnikovs can be sustain a warlord, that
makes them a formidable force.
But more striking than their weaponry is their success in drawing
together
people from factions whose enmities have made Afghanistan ungovernable
for so long.
In their fighting units, religious students who pad their breast pockets
with the Koran bunk alongside disaffected veterans of the mujahedeen who
fought the Soviet forces. Some Taliban commanders were officers in the
Afghan Communist army that was allied with Soviet troops.
Of the Taliban's victories, the one that undoubtedly stirred Afghans the
most was the rout this week near Kabul of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the
hard-line leader of one of the most powerful anti-Soviet resistance
groups. Mr. Hekmatyar established his reputation for ruthlessness 25
years ago, when his followers were known to throw acid in the faces of
women who refused to wear veils.
More recently, Mr. Hekmatyar's forces have been relentlessly shelling
Kabul, turning at least half its population of 1.5 million into refugees.
But this week, the Taliban caught up with Mr. Hekmatyar. After days of
taunting the Taliban, Mr. Hekmatyar fled suddenly into the night from his
headquarters south of Kabul this week.
Afghanistan's ethnic geography could still stall the Taliban.
The Taliban are mostly from the country's Pathan majority, and the areas
they have captured so far are overwhelmingly Pathan. In Kabul, and in
areas north of the capital, many Afghans are ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks,
and they have strong allegiances to leaders of their own.

Incredibile, e sono passati solo pochi anni.
La nostra lungimiranza.....