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| Afghanistan |
| Search begins for Taliban successor regime |
| 2001-10-09 |
In the wake of air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition, the search has begun for a viable successor to Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban regime, whose ragtag army and outdated arsenal are not expected to survive a protracted offensive by modern weaponry. The quest is not an easy one in the rugged Central Asian country, divided by the towering Hindu Kush mountain range and ancient squabbles among warlords who fight each other for the most banal of reasons... "People in Afghanistan are not afraid of the American bombings but are afraid that the Northern Alliance, another brutal regime, is coming back into power," said Samhara Saba, who runs the foreign affairs committee of the women's organization called the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan. Human-rights groups argue that allowing the Alliance to take power unchecked by a United Nations peace-keeping force is a dangerous move. In the first initiative of its kind, an umbrella organization of human-rights groups Monday announced the formation of a war-crimes committee. Its purpose is to gather evidence against Taliban commanders and the warlords who committed war crimes and human-rights abuses in Afghanistan over the past two decades. The evidence will then be submitted to the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |