U.S. BOMBS STRENGTHEN TALIBAN!

After 10 days of bombing the LA TIMES headline of 10-18-01 calls out “TALIBAN HALTS OPPOSITION ADVANCE ON KEY NOTHERN AFGHANISTAN CITY (Mazar-I-Shirf)”

On the same date THE WALL STREET JOURNAL states “ For much of this year the CIA financed Afghan commanders to attack the Taliban, according to a State Department official who watches the region and is familiar with the payments. However , these commanders ‘haven’t been doing anything, haven’t produced anything yet,’ the official said.

The JOURNAL further states that Abdul Haq, who was a top Pashtun commander in the 1980’s Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation says that now if we even mention replacing the Taliban “They(the locals) call us American puppets. Afghan scholars and leaders say that while the country is notoriously fractured, it traditionally has unified when faced with a perceived foreign aggressor. Afghans interviewed in Peshawar site such solidarity as an explanation for what they see as a sharp rise in the support for the Taliban.

You kill 200 civilians and say ‘Sorry.’ What does that mean, “Sorry”? asks an Afghan leader. ‘If it continues like this the Americans will get sucked in and bogged down in Afghanistan. It is possible that Afghan defections have dropped significantly.

In another bad sign for the U.S., cracks are appearing in Europe’s for the U.S. led bombing campaign. A member of Tony Blair’s own labor party said the attacks should stop. Perhaps most astonishing to U.S. diplomats, Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero called for a quick conclusion of the strikes against Afghanistan.-the first such call from a major ally within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It came two days after Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi pledged support for the U.S.led campaign.”