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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

Asiaweek Time Asia Now Asiaweek story

Week of December 27, 1996

Taliban's religious police have ruled that midday prayers in government offices should be led by the heads of government ministries and departments. The Sunni movement, which captured Kabul on Sept. 27, continues to spread its strict interpretation of Islamic law to the two-thirds of the country it controls.


Week of December 13, 1996

Iran: Into the Afghan Vortex

Playing its cards cautiously, Iran is slowly becoming more deeply involved in the fighting in Afghanistan, and relations between Tehran and Islamabad are suffering a marked chill. Since hardline Sunni Taliban forces pushed into the northwest of the country after taking Kabul, Shia Iran began supporting efforts to ferry anti-Taliban Afghanis by truck and plane to three fronts, as well as giving logistical support to the behind-the-lines activities of a group led by Ismael Khan. With Tehran's aid, more than 2,000 frontline fighters have been flown back into Afghanistan from refugee camps via the eastern Iranian city of Mashad. Iran's backing for Ismael's forces is clearly motivated by self interest: his men are active around the Iran-Afghan-Turkmen tri-border area and are committed to recapturing the city of Herat from the Pakistan-backed Taliban. If Ismael's forces can retake the city and the region, Iran will feel much less threatened on its eastern flank.

So far the Iranis have managed to stay out of the fight. Even though hundreds of Pakistani nationals have been fighting alongside the Taliban and assisting them in technical roles, so far there have been no reports of Iranian Revolutionary Guards involved on the opposite side in Afghanistan.


Week of November 29, 1996

The Burdens of Shuttle Diplomacy: Since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, United Nations Special Envoy Norbert Holl has shuttled assiduously - but apparently in vain - between Taliban chiefs in southern Kandahar and the Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam in northern Mazar-i-Sharif. But the German diplomat has failed to meet with the third key player in Afghanistan's enduring conflict: former government military supremo Ahmadshah Massoud (pictured), whose forces are ranged north of Kabul.

Holl's apparent reluctance to meet Massoud has bemused diplomatic analysts. At one press conference, the 60-year-old diplomat, who took over the post in July, said he did not know where to find Massoud - a remark the commander's aides (and most observers) found astonishing. Massoud is based at Jabal Saraj on the main north-south highway, and has been visited by journalists and even by one of Holl's own political advisers.

The problem may be logistics and comfort. To reach Massoud would involve Holl taking a six-hour drive from the airport at Mazar-i-Sharif south across the Hindu Kush range. "He would not be able to fly in and out on the same day and be back in Islamabad by nightfall," notes one insider. "There seems to be a perception that over-nighting in Afghanistan, let alone getting into the countryside, is somehow a high-risk proposition." But the failure to engage one of Afghanistan's key powerbrokers means that Holl's mission, already difficult, may have less chance of succeeding than if Massoud were involved meaningfully in the negotiations.


Week of November 15, 1996

Taliban fighters moved from Kabul toward the northwest, using aircraft and troops to attack forces led by General Abdul Rashid Dostam, who are fighting under the name of the Supreme Council for the Defense of Afghanistan.


Week of November 1, 1996

Who Killed Najibullah?

The prime suspects have denied responsibility for the death. And, really, why would the Taliban have killed former Afghan president Najibullah? They had little to gain from the grisly execution that left him swinging from a traffic control post in central Kabul in the early hours of Sep. 27. And despite the years of warfare, Taliban leaders harbored no personal vendetta against him. Nor were Taliban fighters in Kabul at the time of his seizure likely to have known where he was staying.

Many Kabulis are convinced that whoever seized the 49-year-old ex-president was operating according to a plan and knew exactly where to find him. That might include Pakistan's military establishment, always assumed to be working closely with the Taliban. They would have a strong motive: avenging years of covert warfare against them, and removing a leader popular among opposition groups in Pakistan's own Pushtun border belt.

Another - and probably more likely - explanation is that Najibullah fell victim to the savage internal feuding that bloodied the Afghan communist movement. The former leader headed the largely urban, Farsi-speaking Parcham (Banner) wing of the party. And as the chief of the secret police, he presided over deadly purges of the Khalq (People's) faction, which is mainly rural and Pushto-speaking. Khalq dominated the Interior Ministry and the para-military police. Many former Khalq hardliners who survived Najibullah's regime now work in technical and military roles with the Taliban movement, which is also Pushtun-dominated. They, the argument goes, had both the opportunity and a much stronger motive than most.


Week of October 18, 1996

The Taliban's Next Move

Though they now hold Kabul, the student-led fundamentalist Taliban, Afghanistan's new rulers, do not yet control the entire country. Former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and his military chief Ahmadshah Massoud retreated to the northeast, while Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostam dominates much of the north. Sources say the Taliban might revert to their tactics of infiltration, bribery and lightning military strikes against the holdouts. Massoud is battling to protect the Panjshir Valley, the entrance to his northeastern realm. Politically, Dostam could in the end be the more vulnerable. The assassination of his Faryab province boss - and possible rival - Rasool Pahlawan in June left the western part of his region exposed. Rasool's family and commanders are believed to have opened clandestine contacts with the Taliban. The area is also home to many Pushtuns, who feel persecuted under Dostam. If the Taliban move on Dostam's capital Mazar-i-Sharif, their main push could well come not across the high Hindu Kush, as some expect, but along the sandy Turkmenistan border.


Week of October 11, 1996

Leaders shiver at the thought of the coming winter. The nation has been unable to pay for heating gas from nearby states. Chimkent province alone owes Uzbekistan $24 million. Some $676 million in unpaid wages has left people without cash to pay for fuel.


Week of September 13, 1996

Cars and trucks jammed the Salang Highway, which links Kabul with the country's northern region, after it was officially reopened. The road had been closed for three years because of fighting among the country's various militias. The reopening marks the end of hostilities between the Kabul government and a northern rebel faction.


Week of August 30, 1996

After months of plotting, seven crew members of a Russian cargo airline, who had been taken hostage a year ago by the rebel Taliban militia in Afghanistan, made a daring escape. They overpowered three guards and flew their own plane out.


Week of August 23, 1996

Battle for the Skies

The fragmentation of Afghanistan into separate fiefdoms has taken another step forward. A rebel passenger airline has been set up to compete with Kabul's government-run Ariana. Based in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh Air is the idea of warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam - who rules much of the country's northwest - and British entrepreneur Christopher Barnett-Jolley.

The fragmentation of Afghanistan into separate fiefdoms has taken another step forward. A rebel passenger airline has been set up to compete with Kabul's government-run Ariana. Based in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh Air is the idea of warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam - who rules much of the country's northwest - and British entrepreneur Christopher Barnett-Jolley.

Balkh Air boasts only an old British-built, 80-seat BAC 1-11 jet registered in Liberia, acquired by Barnett-Jolley and resold to Dostam. But Pakistan, which backs Dostam, has already given the fledgling airline permission to fly to the frontier town of Peshawar.

Balkh Air boasts only an old British-built, 80-seat BAC 1-11 jet registered in Liberia, acquired by Barnett-Jolley and resold to Dostam. But Pakistan, which backs Dostam, has already given the fledgling airline permission to fly to the frontier town of Peshawar.

Kabul is not amused by the arrival of Balkh Air. It has fired off letters to the International Air Transport Association de-manding that the body instruct members not to grant Balkh landing rights. But Dostam is banking on Kabul losing this battle. Balkh Air has plans to acquire a Boeing, and extend services to Istanbul, Moscow and other cities in Iran and Central Asia.

Kabul is not amused by the arrival of Balkh Air. It has fired off letters to the International Air Transport Association de-manding that the body instruct members not to grant Balkh landing rights. But Dostam is banking on Kabul losing this battle. Balkh Air has plans to acquire a Boeing, and extend services to Istanbul, Moscow and other cities in Iran and Central Asia.


Week of August 9, 1996

Heading for the High Road?

Pakistan may finally be giving up on Afghanistan. Ever since Kabul's communist regime collapsed in 1992, Islamabad has hoped its allies in the Afghan civil war might prevail, allowing the country to become both Pakistan's strategic partner and conduit for trade with Central Asia. The two most direct routes to the post-Soviet republics run through Afghanistan (see red lines on map). The first runs through the east, from the border near Peshawar to Kabul and over the Hindu Kush to Uzbekistan. The second passes through the west, via Kandahar to Turkmenistan and beyond. As the conflict drags on, Islamabad now appears less and less hopeful that either of these roads will soon be passable to commerce.

So it is looking at other options. It has recently embarked on an upgrading of its portion of the 1,300-km Karakoram Highway, which goes over the Khunjerab Pass into China to Kashgar (see orange line). From there it links up with the Chinese road system in Xinjiang and thus with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. The upgrade and widening of the landslide-plagued road, a project that will cost $88.3 million over the next three years, should facilitate traffic between Pakistan and the Chinese border.

The country is also studying the feasibility of importing natural gas from Iran rather than from Turkmenistan, as it originally planned. Gas from Central Asia must pass through western Afghanistan, an area still contested by Kabul and the Kandahar-based Taliban movement. But a pipeline from Iran's natural gas fields at Asaluya near the Pakistan border would cross directly into Pakistani Baluchistan to the distribution head of Sui, where Pakistan has its own gas fields. Business, after all, can't wait - even for peace.


Week of July 26, 1996

The Drugs of War

Afghanistan may have national boundaries, but it is less a country than a collection of warring states. A government stands in Kabul, with a president and a prime minister, but it holds little sway outside the city's walls. Elsewhere, various groups control their own pockets of terrain.

The political fragmentation has made it nearly impossible to curb Afghanistan's drug trade. The country is now the world's No. 2 opium producer after Myanmar. Yet not so long ago, narcotics officers were hoping that the rise of the Taliban militia zealots might blunt growth of the poppy, given Islamic prohibition of intoxicants. Such optimism is proving misplaced. This year, the poppy has continued to bloom across the lush Helmand valley in Taliban-run southern Afghanistan.

The government of Saudi Arabia is particularly concerned because Afghan heroin is now finding its way to the Gulf. Earlier this year, two Afghans were arrested in the kingdom, one for trying to move a substantial 50 kg consignment of heroin. Both men had flown in from the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. The irony is that the militants are said to be partly backed by Riyadh. The Taliban insists it is embarked on a drug suppression drive. If so, it is not working. For the Saudis, the lesson is that, in Afghanistan, friends and enemies are hard to distinguish.


Week of July 12, 1996

TALIBAN

Militia shelled Kabul on June 26 to show their opposition to the new prime minister, Gulbud-din Hekmatyar, who heads a rival guerrilla group. At least 60 people died.


Week of June 28, 1996

HOPE FOR CHILDREN

President Burhanuddin Rabbani administered polio vaccine drops to a child to launch a U.N. campaign to immunize three million children in Afghanistan against the disease. The program also aims to immunize one million mothers against tetanus and to administer measles and diphtheria vaccines to about 500,000 children.


Week of June 14, 1996

CHANGING ALLIANCE

A commander of the Hezb-i-Islami says 3,000 of his fighters have joined with government forces to fight Taliban guerrillas outside of Kabul. It is the first time the Hezb-i-Islami has admitted to the tactical alliance. In the past it has been a staunch opponent of the Afghan government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani.


Week of May 24, 1996

SILK RAILS

The Silk Road is back, now cast in iron. The final rail link connecting the Iranian and Turkmen rail networks now gives Central Asia and China access to the Gulf, Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean region. The final 165-km link, inaugurated by dignitaries from 12 countries, connected the holy city of Mashhad in Iran to Sarakhs, a small border town in Turkmenistan.


Week of May 17, 1996

REMNANTS OF WAR

Cairo's ambassador to Islamabad, Numan Galal, says about 2,000 veterans of the Afghanistan war are living in Pakistan. Galal claims they form the core of a group responsible for much of the anti-government violence that has left 1,000 people dead in Egypt. Pakistan's foreign ministry denies the charges, saying there are only a few dozen of the men in the country.


Week of April 26, 1996

TALIBAN TO TALK

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Alauddin Boroujerdi says rebel Taliban guerrillas, ideologically at odds with Iran, have agreed to send a delegation to Tehran for talks aimed at ending the factional fighting in Afghanistan. Boroujerdi did not say when the talks would take place. Earlier negotiations between the Taliban and Iran took place in Pakistan.


Week of April 19, 1996

DRUG CHARGES

Speaking to the U.N. Security Council, Afghanistan's deputy foreign minister accused rebel Taliban guerrillas of producing morphine and heroin to raise money for its war effort. Abdul Rahim Ghafoorzai also indirectly accused Pakistan of helping the Islamic group obtain the machinery needed to manufacture the drugs.


Week of March 29, 1996

GOING HOME

About 250,000 of the millions of Afghan refugees who fled to Iran during the 1980s to escape fighting between mujahideen rebels and Soviet forces will soon be allowed to return home. Kabul has approved an Iranian plan for repatriation, although it doubts it will be able to handle the one million people projected to return within the next year.


Week of March 1, 1996

SELF-INFLICTED

Smoke was still rising from the presidential palace in Kabul the day after a faulty heater started a fire which spread to a large supply of ammunition stored in the compound. The ensuing explosions lit the Afghan capital's nighttime sky, randomly killed at least 60 civilians, wounded 70 others and damaged the western wing of the building.


Week of Feburary 9, 1996

FLYING TO KABUL

With the two main roads into Kabul closed by rebel roadblocks, the International Committee of the Red Cross will start flying three planes a day into an airport 25 km north of the besieged Afghani capital, to supply it with 1,000 tons of food. This is the second ICRC airlift to the city's 200,000 residents. It ran a one-week operation in Nov. 1994.


Week of Feburary 2, 1996

STARVING KABUL

The main supply route into Kabul has been cut, leaving what is left of the city's residents facing a 50% rise in the cost of bread and fuel. An internal dispute within the Hezb-i-Islami faction over tax collection led to the closure. To mark the beginning of Ramadan, the Afghan government has offered a unilateral cease-fire to all warring factions.


News from Central Asia in 1995


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