The sudden collapse of the Taliban under the attack of the US surprised and disappointed many Muslims. Dr Perwez Shafi, of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought in Karachi, discusses the reasons of the Taliban’s failure in Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s American-installed puppet, Hamid Karzai is feeling puffed up because he was promised US$2.6 billion at an international conference in Tokyo on January 21-22. It was attended by representatives from Western countries, the World Bank/IMF and the UN.
On December 22, almost exactly 22 years after the Soviets installed a puppet government (on December 27, 1979, headed by Babrak Karmal) in Kabul, the Americans repeated the feat. Hamid Karzai was “sworn in” as prime minister with British troops guarding the interior ministry building where the ceremony took place...
While assorted representatives of Afghan groups were meeting with Western leaders in Bonn to map out a government for Afghanistan “freely determined by its own people,” and American bombs were continuing to fall on towns and villages in some parts of the country, two other conferences on Afghanistan’s future were taking place in Washington and Pakistan.
In the two-month period from October 7 to December 7, the Taliban’s world has been turned upside down; from controlling more than 90 percent of Afghanistan’s territory they were forced to surrender their last stronghold of Qandahar to tribal elders on December 7.
Almost two months after the US began its bombing of Afghanistan, the Taliban remain defiant in substantial parts of the country. As we go to press, the Northern Alliance and the US are claiming to be about to capture the northern town of Kunduz...
The United Nations conference on Afghanistan, scheduled for November 24 in Berlin, has been postponed until November 27 and the venue shifted to Bonn without explanation.
While America has couched its ‘war’ on Afghanistan in the language of morality, more sinister motives are at work: desire to control the Caspian Sea’s oil and gas, as well as the destruction or removal (‘neutralisation’) of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Northern Alliance troops were reported to be moving south through the Afghan countryside towards Kabul on November 11, two days after their capture of Mazaar-e Shareef from Taliban forces.
One feature of the crisis that began on September 11 has been the extent to which the US’s subsequent policy has been questioned and opposed by so many people even in the West. Even in America, where war-fever has been most intense, opposition to the attacks on Afghanistan has been evident, in demonstrations on university campuses, in New York and other cities...
Whether the US-led war on Afghanistan will overthrow the Taliban is a moot point, but it has already caused tremors in Saudi Arabia. Not because the House of Saud is concerned about what happens to the Taliban or the Afghans...
Three days after the bombing of Afghanistan began, US officials admitted that they were running out of targets. The bombing is likely to continue, however, to satisfy public opinion. Hawks in Washington also want to attack other countries.
More than two weeks after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, the initial shock has worn off and the prevalent mood has changed to nervous anticipation as the world waits to see what the US will do next.
The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan arrested 24 staff members of a German charity working in Kabul on August 5, setting off yet another international outcry about their alleged inhumanity.
Muslims throughout the world celebrated Eid al-Fitr on December 27, coinciding with a less pleasant event that has been virtually forgotten by most of us by now. On this date in 1979, tens of thousands of Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, setting off alarm bells in world capitals, not least Washington, then a leading champion of the ‘cold war’ mentality.
The plight of the beleaguered Afghanis placed under UN sanctions on November 14 was relieved a week later, when Iran opened its border for trade with Afghanistan.
The US has demanded that the Taliban in Afghanistan hand the Saudi mujahid Osama bin Laden over to them fro trial by November 14, or face international sanctions.
Fears of US action against Shaikh Osama bin Laden were further raised on August 9, when US military aircraft carrying commandos were reported to have landed at Islamabad and Quetta airports. Speaking at a rally later the same day, Maulana Fazalur Rahman, head of the pro-Taleban Jami’at Ulama-e Islam (JUI)...
Zahir Shah, the former king of Afghanistan, refuses to fade away. Living in exile in Italy since July 1973, when he was overthrown by Sardar Daoud, his prime minister, Zahir Shah has made occasional appearances on the political stage amid suggestions of resurrecting Afghanistan’s traditional system.
US foreign policy has been reduced to a three-point agenda in the post-cold war era: unquestioning support of Israel, daily bombings of Iraq, and chasing Osama bin Laden
