Anti-Taliban Rebels Question

Is it probably the goal of the U.S. government to replace the Taliban with the rebels who oppose the Taliban(if the invasion of Afghanistan takes place)? (also, do these rebels have a name, like the Contras in Nicaragua?)

There called the Northern Alliance. I don't believe we care one way or another about the Taliban, or who runs the country. We just want bin laden and the terrorist cells in that country. Whatever gov winds up running Afganistan will not be a supporter of terrorism, that is fact. and


that is all,


dannyboy :o)

Right now I'd just refer to them as the "Short Stack".

I think we will start helping the Northern Alliance. If we do, we should not miss a chance at winning hearts and minds. While I am not one to apologize for our previous actions in Afghanistan, we should try to do better in the aftermath this time. I would start with trying to feed some starving people now. Pakistan has given us the run of their country for now, so we should set up a free McDonald's on the border (or something else to feed people) I think between going after Bin Laden and helping people who hate the vile Taliban, the Taliban regime may collapse. So we should send some butter with the guns and try to set up a government with a constitution like ours. Our culture can hold more ground than our army can if we give it a chance.


But I don't know much about the opposition, if they turn out to be vile, we will suffer from "blowback" as Andy Fox has spoken about recently. And if we side with someone, we can't hang them out to dry like we did so many of our allies in Southeast Asia when the liberal congress stripped all funding and support from what was left of the war effort in '74 and '75. But all those former allies of ours died in reeducation camps or the infamous Killing Fields, so the only blowback was on Khmer Rouge pistols if they happened to have the decency to shoot a given victim instead of torturing them to death.


So that is a long way of saying we should choose our allies carefully and make sure to win a few PR battles in that country this time.

"Right now I'd just refer to them as the 'Short Stack'. "


Yeah, but they're about to get a triple rebuy and quadruple add-on.

Well, I don't know if I'd call them "rebels" exactly. They're called the Northern Star Alliance and all but three countries of the world recognise them as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. They hold Afghanistan's seat at the United Nations. The US has been giving the Alliance non-military aid for some time (food and medical supplies) and there has been talk recently of giving them weapons as well. In return the Alliance is providing ground intel for possible US strikes against the Taliban. Certainly the United States would like to topple the Taliban from power, on ideological grounds. It might end up in the "too hard" basket though. They have a lot of other things to do.


Chris

Hopefully, we'll learn more about these people to see if they're worthy of our aid. It's hard to imagine they could be worse than the Taliban, but you never know.

I think it is quite likely that the U.S. will use the Northern Alliance in the coming attacks in Afghanistan. In the preceding days I have seen a few Special Forces types on the news programs and they have all noted the presence of an armed guerrilla faction that they could work with when asked what role they saw Special Forces playing. After all, the mission of the Green Berets is to train militants in insurgency or counter-insurgency tactics as the situation requires.


The Taliban are very easy to hate and it won't be a surprise if the military has several of the Taliban leaders as targets. I am as unfamiliar with the evidence as everyone else but it is believable that some of them may have not only been in contact with bin Laden but had a pretty good idea of what he was planning.


Despite all of this, support for the Northern Alliance might not be a good thing. There is an excellent web site, www.rawa.org (http://www.rawa.org), that is one of the best alternate media sources for Afghanistan. The RAWA is the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan (I think). They are the ones that run the illegal schools for girls and who have shot the footage of the executions in the soccer stadium (risking their lives to do so in both cases). An excellent documentary was shown on CNN this past weekend, Behind the Veil, where the reporter worked with the RAWA and they used some of the footage that the RAWA had shot. To cut to the point, some of the writing on their page refers to the Northern Alliance, whom they call Jehadi (I believe an ethnic term), as war criminals responsible for massacres and gang rapes and etc. I believe they requested the UN to recognize neither the Taliban nor the Northern Alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.


I do not know if these accusations have been corroborated by any other group or agency. The animosity of the RAWA may also have ethnic underpinnings or political ones. The Northern Alliance is a conglomerate of a couple of different ethnic groups and also has some members of the former puppet government of the Soviets. As expected, it's complicated...

The eighty-seven year old former king of Afghanistan, exiled in 1973, announced from his residence in Rome that he is meeting with all commanders of the Northern Alliance within the next two days to discuss overthrowing the Taliban and replacing it the monarchy, as a temporary measure until a functional democracy can be installed. Interesting, the king's grandson indicated that the Northern Alliance believes that they can displace the Taliban without an infusion of foreign troops, although they will require material and logistical support.