There is no victory in Afghanistan’s tribal war, only the exchange of one group of killers for another. The difference is that President Bush calls the latest occupiers of Kabul “our friends”.
However welcome the scenes of people playing music and shaving off their beards, this so-called Northern Alliance are no bringers of freedom. They are the same people welcomed by similar scenes of jubilation in 1992, who then killed an estimated 50,000 in four years of internecine feuding.
The new heroes so far have tortured and executed at least 100 prisoners of war, and countless others, as well as looted food supplies and re-established their monopoly on the heroin trade.
This week, Amnesty International made an unusually blunt statement that was buried in the news. It ought to be emblazoned across every front page and television
— source johnpilger.com | john pilger | 16 Nov 2001
