Excerpt from Alexander Cockburn 1997 article
---

It sometimes seems, these days, as though The New York Times's foreign desk
has been relocated to an outbuilding on the C.I.A.'s premises in Langley,
Virginia. Back in September there was the laborious though unpersuasive
effort to dispute the allegation, made most recently by Gary Webb in the
San Jose Mercury News, that the C.I.A. was complicit in the smuggling of
drugs from Central and Latin America to the United States.

Then, on December 31, under the headline "How Afghans' Stern Rulers Took
Hold," the Times printed a long dispatch by John Burns and Steve LeVine,
datelined Kandahar, Afghanistan, insisting that the United States had not
been an important factor in the rise of the Taliban, and printing without
qualifying comment the denial of David Cohen, head of the C.I.A.'s
clandestine operations, that his agency had "any relationship" to the
movement. Cohen had apparently made this statement to Indian government
officials last November.

For connoisseurs of Afghan coverage down the years, the first couple of
paragraphs -- designed to display a Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar,
as solicitous of ravished maidens and as the nemesis of their violators --
were interesting for a laconic anecdote, involving the repeated rape of two
teenage girls by "one of the gangs of mujahedeen, or 'holy warriors,' who
controlled much of the Afghan countryside." For more than a decade the
mujahedeen were displayed in the mainstream press here as noble protectors
of the Afghan hearth from the Soviet marauder. It was inconceivable for a
mujahedeen to be a member of anything so coarse as a "gang." They were
"warriors." Dan Rather loved them, though presumably not with the love that
prompted two mujahedeen to have an armed confrontation in tanks in a
Kandahar bazaar "over possession of a young boy both men wanted as a
homosexual partner." The confrontation, Burns and LeVine report, ended in a
firefight, with many civilian deaths.

Another odd feature of the Times story is an inversion of that hoary old
cold war favorite, the prospective Soviet lunge down through Afghanistan,
in search of a warm-water port. Now Burns and LeVine invoke "an old
Pakistani dream of linking their country, through Afghanistan, to an
economic and political alliance with the Muslim states of Central Asia."

I asked my old friend Tariq Ali whether he, of aristocratic lineage in
Lahore, was cognizant of this ancient dream of his people, and he said no.
But Tariq said it most certainly had been a dream of the late and
unlamented Pakistani despot, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who nourished the
fantasy of carrying the green crescent north and planting it on the
ramparts of Tashkent. This mad plan so disturbed Zia's military colleagues
that they -- it was surely them -- took the drastic step of planting high
explosives on the general's plane, dispatching him, along with the U.S.
ambassador, into the hereafter in 1988.

Burns and LeVine make much of the views of "one man who has seen more of
the Taliban than any other outsider, Rahimullah Yusufzai, a reporter for
The News in Pakistan." They quote him as saying that the story of the
Taliban is "not one of outsiders imposing a solution." Tariq tells me that
Yusufzai is regarded as one of the favorite journalists of I.S.I.,
Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Directorate, one of the organizations
funding and arming the Taliban.

It's a pity that Burns and LeVine didn't look up the transcripts of an
interview Benazir Bhutto gave to the BBC earlier this year, in which she
acknowledged the support Pakistan's military and intelligence services had
given the Taliban in their training colleges in Pakistan, and in which she
also said that these colleges had been paid for by the United States and
Britain.

When Burns and LeVine start referring politely to "an American energy
company, Union Oil Company of California," reality begins to gleam through.
Amid thickets of "officials deny that," Times readers learn that Unocal
wants to build a pipeline across Afghanistan to tap into the huge natural
gas fields in Turkmenistan; and that Pakistan's former Interior Minister,
Naseerullah Babar, "saw a Pakistan linked to the newly independent Muslim
Republics of what had been Central Asia" and also saw the Taliban as a
vehicle to assist this vision. So he gave the Taliban plenty of supplies
and money, thus prompting "a widespread belief" that it was backed by
Pakistan and the United States.

The Times reporters also note the amiable visit to Kandahar of Robin
Raphel, the State Department's top official in supervising U.S. policy in
this area. Raphel has a well-known penchant for dictators such as the late
Zia, and the U.S. ambassador who expired with him was Arnold Raphel,
Robin's former husband. Burns and LeVine report, apparently with a straight
face, that Raphel hopes that positive engagement with the Taliban will
soften their posture toward women who work or who leave their homes, or who
don't wear bits of cloth over their faces.

Sections of the women's movement here raised a stink when the Clinton
Administration started making cautiously positive noises about the Taliban,
and their protests have had some effect. They should keep up the pressure.
As far as the drug trade is concerned, the Taliban is knee-deep in it. But
you knew that. Don't tell the C.I.A. It might upset them.

---------------------------------------

JOHN F. BURNS and STEVE LeVINE, "How Afghanistan's Stern Rulers Took
Power," New York Times, December 31, 19
---------------------

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- When neighbors came to Mullah
Mohammed Omar in the spring of 1994, they had a story that was
shocking even by the grim standards of Afghanistan's 18-year-old civil
war.

Two teen-age girls from the mullah's village of Singesar had been
abducted by one of the gangs of mujahedeen, or "holy warriors," who
controlled much of the Afghan countryside. The girls' heads had been
shaved, they had been taken to a checkpoint outside the village and they
had been repeatedly raped.

At the time, Omar was an obscure figure, a former guerrilla commander
against occupying Soviet forces who had returned home in disgust at the
terror mujahedeen groups were inflicting on Afghanistan.

He was living as a student, or talib, in a mud-walled religious school that
centered on rote learning of the Koran.

But the girls' plight moved him to act. Gathering 30 former guerrilla
fighters, who mustered between them 16 Kalashnikov rifles, he led an
attack on the checkpoint, freed the girls and tied the checkpoint
commander by a noose to the barrel of an old Soviet tank. As those
around him shouted "God is Great!" Omar ordered the tank barrel raised
and left the dead man hanging as a grisly warning.

The Singesar episode is now part of Afghan folklore. Barely 30 months
after taking up his rifle, Omar is the supreme ruler of most of
Afghanistan.
The mullah, a heavyset 38-year old who lost his right eye in the war
against the Russians, is known to his followers as Prince of All Believers.
He leads an Islamic religious movement, the Taliban, that has conquered
20 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces.

Omar's call to arms in Singesar is only part of the story of the rise of
the
Taliban that emerged from weeks of traveling across Afghanistan and
from scores of interviews with Afghans, diplomats and others who
followed the movement from its earliest days in 1994.

It is a story that is still unfolding, with the Taliban struggling to
consolidate
their hold on Kabul, the capital. The city fell three months ago to a
Taliban force of a few thousand fighters who entered the city with barely
a shot fired.

But the Taliban, despite their protestations of independence, did not score
their successes alone. Pakistani leaders saw domestic political gains in
supporting the movement, which draws most of its support from the
ethnic Pashtun who predominate along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Perhaps more important, Pakistan's leaders, in funneling supplies of
ammunition, fuel and food to the Taliban, hoped to advance an old
Pakistani dream of linking their country, through Afghanistan, to an
economic and political alliance with the Muslim states of Central Asia.

At crucial moments during the two years of the Taliban's rise to power,
the United States stood aside. It did little to discourage support for the
Afghan mullahs both from Pakistan and from another American ally,
Saudi Arabia, which found its own reasons for supporting the Taliban in
their conservative brand of Islam.

American officials emphatically deny the assertion, widely believed among
the Taliban's opponents in Afghanistan, that the United States offered the
movement covert support. American diplomats' frequent visits to
Kandahar, headquarters of the Taliban's governing body, the officials
insist, were mainly exploratory.

In fact, American policy on the Taliban has seesawed back and forth. The
Taliban have found favor with some American officials, who see in their
implacable hostility toward Iran an important counterweight in the region.

But other officials remain uncomfortable about the Taliban's policies on
women, which they say have created the most backward-looking and
intolerant society anywhere in Islam. And they say that the Taliban,
despite promises to the contrary, have done nothing to root out the
narcotics traffickers and terrorists who have found a haven in Afghanistan
under the mujahedeen.

In its most recent policy statement on Afghanistan, the State Department
called on other nations to "engage" with the Taliban in hopes of
moderating their policies.

But the statement came as the Taliban were tightening still further their
Islamic social code, particularly the taboos that have banned women from
working, closed girls' schools, and required all women beyond puberty to
cloak themselves head-to-toe in garments called burqas that are the
traditional garb of Afghan village women.

The result, so far, is that not a single one of the member countries of the
United Nations has recognized the Taliban government and none have
come forward with offers of the reconstruction aid the Taliban say will be
needed to rebuild this shattered country. In the words of Mullah
Mohammed Hassan, one of Omar's partners in the Taliban's ruling
council, "We are the pariahs of the world."

How the Taliban succeeded in pacifying much of a country that had spent
years spiraling into chaos is not, as their progress from Singesar to Kabul
attests, primarily a question of military prowess.

Much more, it was a matter of a group of Islamic nationalists catching a
high tide of discontent that built up when the mujahedeen turned from
fighting Russians to plundering, and just as often killing, their own
people.
By 1994, after five years of mujahedeen terror, the Taliban was a
movement whose time had come.

One man who has seen more of the Taliban than any other outsider,
Rahimullah Yusufzai, a reporter for The News in Pakistan, put it simply:
"The story of the Taliban is not one of outsiders imposing a solution, but
of the Aghans themselves seeking deliverance from mujahedeen groups
that had become cruel and inhuman. The Afghan people had been waiting
a long time for relief from their miseries, and they would have accepted
anybody who would have freed them from the tyranny."

In any case, Omar contends that the decision to act at Singesar was not,
at the time, envisaged as a step toward power.

Although he is universally known in Afghanistan as mullah, or giver of
knowledge, he is a shy man who still calls himself a talib, or seeker after
knowledge. He has met only once with a foreign reporter, Yusufzai.
Omar said at their meeting in Kandahar that the men at Singesar intended
originally only to help local villagers.

"We were fighting against Muslims who had gone wrong," he said. "How
could we remain quiet when we could see crimes being committed against
women, and the poor?"

But appeals were soon coming in from villages all around Kandahar. At
about the time the two girls were being abducted in Singesar, which is in
the Maiwand district 35 miles to the west, two other mujahedeen
commanders had confronted each other with tanks in a bazaar in
Kandahar, arguing over possession of a young boy both men wanted as a
homosexual partner.

In the ensuing battle, dozens of civilians shopping and trading in the
bazaar were killed. After the Taliban took control of Kandahar, those
commanders, too, ended up hanging from Taliban nooses.

With each new action against the mujahedeen, the Taliban's manpower,
and arsenal, grew. Mujahedeen fighters, and sometimes whole units,
switched sides, so that the Taliban quickly came to resemble a coalition of
many of the country's fighting groups. The new recruits included many
men who had served in crucial military positions as pilots, tank
commanders and front-line infantry officers in the Afghan Communist
forces that fought under Soviet control in

After a skirmish in September 1994, at Spin Boldak on the border with
Pakistan, netted the new movement 800 truckloads of arms and
ammunition that had been stored in caves since the Soviet occupation,
there was no force to match the Taliban. Moving rapidly east and west of
Kandahar in the winter of 1994 and the spring of 1995, they rolled up
territory. Sometimes, using money said to have come from Saudi Arabia,
Taliban commanders paid mujahedeen commanders to give up.

But mostly, it was enough for Taliban units to appear on the horizon with
the fluttering white flags symbolizing their Islamic puritanism. "In most
places, the people welcomed the Taliban as a deliverance, so there was
no need to fight," recalled Yusufzai, the Pakistani reporter.

Another event in Sept. 1994 gave the Taliban their most important
external backer.

Naseerullah Babar, Pakistan's interior minister, had a vision for
extricating
his wedge-shaped country from the precarious position in which it was
placed when it was created in 1947 by the partition of India from
territories running along British India's frontiers with Afghanistan.

Babar saw a Pakistan linked to the newly independent Muslim republics
of what had been Soviet Central Asia, along roads and railways running
across Afghanistan. He believed that stability in Afghanistan would mean
a potential economic bonanza for Pakistan and a strategic breakthrough
for the West.

"It was in the West's overall interest," he said in an interview in
Islamabad,
Pakistan's capital. "Unless the Central Asian states have an opening to the
sea, they will never be free from Russia."

With the rise of Taliban power around Kandahar, Babar spied a chance
to prove the vision's practicability. Using Pakistani government funds, he
arranged a "peace convoy" of heavily loaded trucks to run rice, clothing
and other gifts north from Quetta in Pakistan, through Kandahar, and
onward to Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenistan.

But outside the American-built airport at Kandahar, a mujahedeen
commander guarding one of the thousands of checkpoints that had made
an obstacle course of any Afghan journey seized the convoy, demanding
ransom. Once again, the Taliban intervened, freeing the convoy and
hanging, again from a tank barrel, the commander who hijacked it.

Babar's subsequent enthusiasm for the Taliban gave rise to a widespread
belief among the the group's opponents that it was a Pakistani creation, or
at least that its growing military power was sustained by large transfers
of
cash, arms and ammunition from Pakistan. Because of Pakistan's close
ties with the United States, it was a short step for these Taliban
opponents to conclude that Washington was also backing the Taliban.

After Kabul fell in September, Americans venturing into non-Taliban
areas north of Kabul faced a common taunt from soldiers of the ousted
government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani. "The Taliban are
American puppets!" they said.

But while this was not accurate, there were ties between American
officials and the growing movement that were considerably broader than
those to any other Western country.

From early on, American diplomats in Islamabad had made regular visits
to Kandahar to see Taliban leaders. In briefings for reporters, these
diplomats cited what they saw as positive aspects of the Taliban, which
they listed as the movement's capacity to end the war in Afghanistan and
its promises to put an end to the use of Afghanistan as a base for
narcotics-trafficking and international terrorism.

Unmentioned, but probably most important to Washington, was that the
Taliban, who are Sunni Muslims, have a deep hostility for Iran, America's
nemesis, where the ruling majority belong to the rival Shiite sect of
Islam.

Along the way, Washington developed yet another interest in the Taliban
as potential backers for a 1,200-mile gas pipeline that an American
energy company, Union Oil of California, has proposed building from
Quetta, in Pakistan, to Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic that sits
atop some of the world's largest gas reserves, but has limited means to
export them.

The project, which Unocal executives have estimated could cost $5
billion, would be built in conjunction with Delta Oil Co., a Saudi Arabian
concern that also has close links to the Taliban. Among the advisers
Unocal has employed to deal with the Taliban is Robert Oakley, a former
U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.

American officials, however, denied providing any direct assistance,
covert or otherwise, to the Taliban.

Similar assurances were given to Russia and India, as well as indirectly to
Iran, countries that were involved in heavy arms shipments of their own to
the Taliban's main opponents, the armies of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum
and Rabbani that control the 12 northern provinces that continue to resist
the Taliban.

"We do not have any relationship with the Taliban, and we never have
had," David Cohen, the CIA official who directs the agency's clandestine
operations, told Indian officials in New Delhi in November.

Babar offered similar denials, asserting that "there has been no financial
or
material aid to the Taliban from Pakistan." But Western intelligence
officials in Pakistan said this was a smokescreen for a policy of covert
support that Babar, a retired Pakistani general, had extended to the
Taliban after the convoy episode at Kandahar airport.

These supplies, the intelligence officials said, apart from ammunition and
fuel, included the deployment at crucial junctures of Pakistani military
advisers. The advisers were easy to hide, since they were almost all ethnic
Pashtuns, from the same tribe that make up the overwhelming majority of
the Taliban.

American officials like Robin Raphel, the top State Department official
dealing directly with matters involving Afghanistan, have placed heavy
emphasis on the hope that contacts with the new rulers in Kabul will encourage them to soften their policies, especially toward women.

Similar assurances were given to Russia and India, as well as indirectly to
Iran, countries that were involved in heavy arms shipments of their own to
the Taliban's main opponents, the armies of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum
and Rabbani that control the 12 northern provinces that continue to resist
the Taliban.

"We do not have any relationship with the Taliban, and we never have
had," David Cohen, the CIA official who directs the agency's clandestine
operations, told Indian officials in New Delhi in November.

Babar offered similar denials, asserting that "there has been no financial
or
material aid to the Taliban from Pakistan." But Western intelligence
officials in Pakistan said this was a smokescreen for a policy of covert
support that Babar, a retired Pakistani general, had extended to the
Taliban after the convoy episode at Kandahar airport.

These supplies, the intelligence officials said, apart from ammunition and
fuel, included the deployment at crucial junctures of Pakistani military
advisers. The advisers were easy to hide, since they were almost all ethnic
Pashtuns, from the same tribe that make up the overwhelming majority of
the Taliban.

They also say that the United States sees the Taliban, with its Islamic
conservatism, as the best, and perhaps the only, chance that Afghanistan
will halt the poppy growing and opium production that have made
Afghanistan, with an estimated 2,500 tons of raw opium a year, the
world's biggest single-country source of the narcotic. A similar argument
is made on the issue of the network of international terrorists, many of
them Arabs, who have set up bases inside Afghanistan.

But as the Taliban consolidate their power in Kabul, the signs of
cooperation are not strong. In the week before Christmas, as bitterly cold
winds from the 20,000-foot Hindu Kush mountains swept down on
Kabul, senior Taliban officials seemed to be in a more pugnacious mood
than in October, when a counteroffensive by the Rabbani and Dostum
forces came within 10 miles of Kabul.

The attacking forces have since been driven back beyond artillery range,
allowing the Taliban to concentrate on tightening their grip on Kabul's
restive population of 1.5-million.

The sense that these Taliban leaders now give is that they see little
reason
to accommodate the West. Reports from U.N. officials monitoring drug
flows suggest the Taliban have done nothing to impede the trafficking, and
that in the key provinces of Helmand and Nangahar -- accounting for
more than 90 percent of the opium production -- they are in league with
the drug producers, taxing them, and storing some of the opium in
Taliban-guarded warehouses.

Confronted with these reports, Taliban leaders have a stock response.
"We intend to stop the drug trafficking, because it is against Islamic
laws,"
they have said. "But until we can rebuild our economy, there are no other
jobs, so now is not the time."

The Taliban position on those who support international terrorists is still
more elusive. According to Western intelligence estimates, as many as
400 trained terrorists are living in areas under Taliban control, some of
them with links to the groups that mounted the bombing of the World
Trade Center in February 1993 as well as other major attacks.

One of the most-wanted terrorists of all, Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi
Arabian businessman who praised the bombing last December that killed
19 American servicemen at
an air force barracks in the Saudi Arabian
city of Dahran, has been spotted within the past month at a
heavily-guarded home in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, held by the Taliban
since early September.

But it is on their treatment of women that Western governments' attitudes
seem most likely to hinge, and on this, the Taliban show no sign of
relenting. After a Taliban radio bulletin earlier this month celebrated the
fact that 250 Kabul women had been beaten by Taliban forces in a single
day for not observing the dress code, Ross Everson, an Australian
working as a coordinator for private Western aid agencies in Kabul,
visited one of the city's top Taliban officials, Mullah Mohammed Mutaqi,
to appeal for a turn toward what Everson called "the doctrine of
moderation that the Islamic faith is famous for."

Mutaqi stood up and waved his fist in Everson's face. "You are insulting
us!," he said. Then, snuggling back into the blanket that Taliban officials
wear around their shoulders for warmth in the unheated offices of Kabul,
he made his clinching argument.

"I must ask you, are you the Muslim here, or am I?," he said. "If you
westerners want to help us, you are welcome. Otherwise you are free to
leave Afghanistan. You may think we cannot survive without you, but I
can tell you, God will provide the Taliban with everything we need."

Alright - I was up at 4AM and my home page (news.google.com) popped up with an article 'Five Israelis head off to jail for refusing army service in West Bank, Gaza Strip' - it was an underheadline... wow.

I read the article, and was amazed. I have been going to israeli indymedia sites for a while - but never once saw any thing like this in a mainstream (NYT/SF Chronicle) newspaper... I am willing to bet that this was not front page in the print versions.

Essentially, it is a report on Israelis becoming increasing fed up with the governmentsactions regarding the Palestinian people... I thought it was telling, indeed. Of course, even if I am 'left' - I still do my best to look for the hidden truth, and figure that this writer has his own biases indeed. Obviously the overwhelming majority of Israelis still look forward and see it as their patriotic duty to be in the military. Just a few weeks ago, there was a story on CNN regarding women being allowed combat positions in the occupied territories who wanted to go there. However, this article is still indicative of an increasing Israeli resistance to occupation.

[b]Five Israelis head off to jail for refusing army service in West Bank, Gaza Strip[/b]

ALON BERNSTEIN, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, January 7, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(01-07) 23:51 PST KARMEL PRISON, Israel (AP) --

Five youths went off to face cold winter nights in concrete military prison cells, the price for refusing army service in the West Bank and Gaza -- a stand that appeals to a small but growing number of Israelis.

The five began one-year prison terms on Wednesday after courts refused to recognize them as conscientious objectors. They said they could not serve in the army because of the military's abuse of Palestinians.

"I know already what prison is like," said one of the five, Noam Bahat. "I'm mostly afraid of wasting time, not being able to study and to struggle to stop the occupation."

During three years of bloody violence that has seen the Israeli military retake control of most of the Palestinian areas, set up dozens of roadblocks, carry out hundreds of raids and kill more than 2,500 Palestinians, only six young Israeli men have refused outright to join the army, citing the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the reason.

However, uncounted others have evaded army service for other reasons -- some of them clearly fictitious -- with the Palestinian conflict lurking prominently in the background.

Also, several hundred reservists have gone to prison for refusing to serve in the Palestinian areas, though they have stated that service inside Israel or on its borders would be acceptable to them. Uncounted others have worked out quiet arrangements with their commanders to be posted inside Israel.

The most visible of the reservists refusing to serve in the West Bank and Gaza are small groups of air force pilots and soldiers in the army's top commando unit -- fighters who have been held up as models to be emulated all through Israel's history.

Six wars in the country's 56 years have instilled a defensive kind of patriotism among most of Israel's nearly seven million citizens. Most readily serve in the army, three years for men and 21 months for women starting at age 18. Many men serve in the reserves until age 40.

The new phenomenon of refusing to serve in the Palestinian areas -- or refusing to serve at all -- reflects a split among Israelis about what to do about the Palestinian issue. Polls consistently show that more than half the people would be willing to give up much or all of the West Bank and Gaza for peace, but most Israelis also believe that peace is impossible because of Palestinian attitudes.

The result has been growing unease with the harsh Israeli military activities in areas many Israelis believe will one day be abandoned.

The Israeli government and military explain the operations by saying they are necessary to stop terrorism. During the three-year conflict, 905 people have been killed on the Israeli side, half by Palestinian suicide bombers.

Bahat's mother, Amira, worried that her son would suffer from the cold. The military refused to let him take his down blanket along to prison.

Since the day he was supposed to be drafted in December 2002, he has served about a year in jail and confined to an army base, cleaning and cooking while the military court debated the case.

The court ruled that the five are not conscientious objectors, but political demonstrators trying to change Israeli policy by undemocratic methods.

Bahat prepared on Wednesday to leave home, stuffing a backpack with books, including a recent unofficial peace agreement reached between former Israeli and Palestinian Cabinet ministers.

Serving a prison term "is not the highest price to pay" for Israel's military policies, Bahat said from his home in Kfar Saba, an upscale Tel Aviv suburb. "Every day soldiers and Palestinians are being killed ... and the only way to stop it is to stop the occupation."

The bearded, freckled 20-year-old said he expected the government to negotiate with the Palestinians and not use the army as a tool for its hawkish policies. He hopes to show the Palestinians that some Israelis care for their plight and to persuade other Israelis to join his cause.

An older brother serves in a combat unit. Their father, Udi Bahat, said they had both made the right choices, each finding his own best way to contribute to society.

Families and supporters hugged and kissed the men in the prison parking lot before watching them head into the confines of the concrete walls. "Let's go to jail!" joked one of the young men at the gate, as wind whipped a blue and white Israeli flag above their heads.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/07/international0203EST0427.DTL