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| Afghanistan |
| Hundreds of Hekmatyar thugs rounded up |
| 2002-04-04 |
This is an expansion of the previous entry, but it's got more detail and more thugs... "They wanted to launch a coup d'etat against the government," said Mohammed Naseer, the security director at the Kabul governor's office. He said the plotters also wanted to disrupt the loya jirga, a political gathering planned for June to select a new Afghan government. Those Loya Jirgas can be poison when you're carrying out The Will of the People. Sometimes it can take a year for the legitimacy to wear off. About 350 people had been arrested, most in the past three days, Naseer said. International Security Assistance Force peacekeepers were not involved in the operations, but were tipped off of the raids in advance so they could stay clear of the area, said Lt. Col. Neal Peckham, a force spokesman. Looks like either the Karzai government is starting to feel a little more secure, or that it's driven entirely by Northern Alliance elements. But it gets better... Peckham said weapons had been found and that those arrested also included Pakistani members of another militant group, the Jamiat-e-Islami, the main supporter of Hekmatyar in Pakistan. Oh, isn't this jolly? Seems like only a day or two ago that Karzai and Perv were making kissy-face and vowing to root out terrorists. The Paks say they're not going to meddle in internal Afghan affairs. And here's a bunch of Qazi's thugs involved with Public Enemy #1. 'Course that could mean that both Perv and Karzai are more on top of things than we expect - this operation could be exactly what they were talking about, which'd mean that Perv's broken with or taken real control of the ISI, which is also a wholly-owned Qazi subsidiary. (Surprise! You thought it was the other way around, didn't you?) Now that would be significant. Some 600 people were rounded up in the raids, and 250 released, said another Western official in Kabul. Ten were being held on suspicion of serious offenses, including terrorism. Takes a lot to get arrested for terrorism in Afghanistan. The roundups could heighten tensions between Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, and the northern alliance, which is dominated by ethnic Tajiks and which controls the interior and other key ministries. Hekmatyar's following is largely Pashtun. And that's the spin Hekmatyar's thugs and Qazi's thugs will try and put on it. Drive that wedge wider and deeper. But even most Pashtuns consider Hekmatyar pretty ripe. Afghan police on Monday raided the home of Hekmatyar's one-time aide, Wahidullah Sabaun, but there was some confusion Thursday over his whereabouts. Sabaun was once the military chief of Hezb-e-Islami and served as Afghanistan's defense minister in 1995 when Hekmatyar became prime minister under President Burhanuddin Rabbani. When the Taliban took over the country in 1996, Sabaun allied himself with the northern alliance resistance. Couldn't get to Iran, and the Talibs would have killed him, huh? Hekmatyar has been a vocal opponent of Karzai and of U.S. presence on Afghan soil, but last month his deputy, Jumma Khan Hamdard, said the party was ready to cooperate with the interim administration. And everybody believed him. Why would he lie? A senior leader of Hezb-e-Islami, Qutbuddin Hilal, said those arrested were former members of the group. "There is no truth in these reports that our men are being arrested," Hilal said. So we're finally down to the "wudn't me" defense. One of the signs of a bull market is when bad news has its good points. There was a coup attempt, which is bad, but fortunately it fingers the guys we didn't want around anyway. Maybe this the beginning of good times for real? Yeah, but it's like making a rabbit stew. First you've got to catch the rabbit... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |