Since October 7 Washington has dropped 12,000 bombs throughout Afghanistan, killing thousands of civilians. A convoy of Pashtun tribal elders traveling to Kabul to attend the December 22 inauguration of Hamid Karzai as the leader of the newly appointed Afghan government, became one of Washington's bombing targets. About 65 people were killed in the attack, which the Pentagon insists was a Taliban convoy.

The new Afghan defense minister, Gen. Mohammed Fahim, asked in an interview December 28 for Washington to end its bombing raids in Afghanistan. Bush promptly dismissed this request and the Afghan Defense Ministry December 30 backed down from objections to the U.S. bombings.

Three days later Reuters reported that a U.S. air strike killed more than 100 civilians, many of them women and children, in the village of Qalaye Niazi in Paktia province, which borders Pakistan.

While much of the intensive U.S. bombing of Afghanistan has stopped, U.S. warplanes continue to fly 50 to 70 daily sorties over the country "ready to attack targets of opportunity," stated a defense department spokesman. B-1B bombers and B-52 bombers flying from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia rotate sorties so that bombers are in the air and on call for missions in Afghanistan 24 hours a day.

With thousands of U.S. troops currently operating inside Afghanistan, along with massive firepower positioned in Central Asia, the Gulf state region, and on U.S. warships in the North Arabian Sea, Washington is digging in for the longterm to prop up and defend its imperialist interests in this part of the world. Despite the installation of a new regime in Kabul, U.S. forces operate at will across the country, including deciding where to bomb and deploy new forces.

Paving the way for a more permanent military presence, the Pentagon has sent soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division to replace the more than 1,000 marines who had set up a U.S. military base and POW camp at the Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan. While the soldiers from the 15th and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units will return to amphibious assault ships in the north Arabian Sea, they will remain in the region on call "to do other things," according to a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command. A third Marine Expeditionary Unit with 2,200 troops on board is set to arrive in the Arabian Sea by mid-January.

To assist Washington in maintaining order--and to carry out housekeeping chores as the pecking order of the imperialist powers dictates--a British-led occupation force of up to 5,000 troops began arriving in Kabul, the nation's capital. Agreed to by the new Afghan government after some hesitation, and with blessings from the United Nations Security Council, the troops will be based near the Kabul airport while conducting military patrols in the surrounding areas. Britain has announced plans to contribute at least 1,500 troops. Others sending soldiers include France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Jordan, and possibly Malaysia.

The UN-sanctioned force will, however, be under the overall command of Gen. Thomas Franks, the leader of the United States Central Command, responsible for the ongoing U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. While participating in the operation, the German government has expressed objections to the force having to report to a U.S. general.  
 
Preparing to use military tribunals
Washington is also moving ahead with plans to start using military tribunals against noncitizens. The Bush administration has backed off for now in deciding to haul people residing in the United States before these "courts," and instead says it will use them against captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters captured and now incarcerated in Afghanistan.

Bush authorized the tribunals in a November 13 military edict but they created divisions in U.S. ruling circles. Conservative columnist William Safire labeled them "kangaroo courts" and others in both the Democratic and Republican parties pushed the administration to recraft the proposal. The tribunals were given wide authority to introduce hearsay as evidence, conduct much of their proceedings in secret, and order executions short of a unanimous agreement of the "judges."

Under pressure, the administration leaked some changes in the draft rules for the tribunals. According to the New York Times, measures under consideration "would allow tribunals to be open to the public and the news media, would grant defendants the presumption of innocence and allow them to have military lawyers and their own civilian lawyers and would require a unanimous verdict for imposition of the death penalty." The tribunals will still allow circumstantial evidence and testimony from witnesses who can remain anonymous.

In response to these leaked changes, Safire hailed the administration's planned changes. "Cooler heads are prevailing," he wrote in a December 13 column. "What we are likely to get, if Bush is wise enough to ask for it, is Congressional approval of overseas trials of terrorist leaders by military courts adhering to basic standards of U.S. military justice. Most civil libertarians as well as Ashcrofite zealots would express a degree of satisfaction with this, just as they have with the trial of the accused conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in a regular criminal court in Alexandria, Va."

The panel of uniformed officers conducting these trials will be making their recommendations to the secretary of defense, and the final verdict and sentence will be up to the president. The Bush administration maintains that it has the authority to proceed with these tribunals without Congressional approval.

Washington has so far refused to classify the Taliban fighters it has incarcerated as "prisoners of war," which under the Geneva Conventions would guarantee them a court- martial, as well as various rights in detention. Instead the Bush administration has described them as "detainees" or "unlawful combatants."

Nearly 7,000 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are being held by the new Afghan government and interrogated by the U.S. military and various police and spy agencies. This includes some 3,500 fighters held in abysmal conditions at the Shibarghan prison in northern Afghanistan, who are crammed into cells built to house 800 people, and hundreds of others being held by the Pakistani government.

Many of those taken into direct custody by Washington--numbering 150 so far and growing--have been taken to the U.S. base at the Kandahar airport, where they are bound, blindfolded, and separated from each other by concertina wire. These prisoners face even more intensive military interrogation. The U.S. military is holding eight others, including U.S. citizen John Walker aboard an amphibious assault ship in the Arabian Sea, and at least a couple at the Bagram air base north of Kabul.

In a brazen affront to the sovereignty of Cuba, U.S. officials announced plans December 27 to transfer within the next few weeks the prisoners being taken into U.S. custody to the U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.  
 
Renewed calls for U.S. assault on Iraq
Meanwhile, a number of bourgeois commentators, reflecting a wing of the U.S. ruling class, are pressing forward their call for a renewed U.S. military assault on Iraq. They argue that Washington's "Afghan strategy," which includes backing an opposition proxy force on the ground, the deployment of special operations units, and a massive U.S. bombing assault, should now be directed against Iraq.

"Old Strategy on Iraq Sparks New Debate: Backers Say Plan Proven in Afghanistan," read the headline of a December 27 article in the Washington Post. "The U.S. Must Strike at Saddam Hussein," was the title of a New York Times column appearing the following day by Richard Perle, the assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1987.
 
 
Related article:
Washington's 'year of war'  
 
 
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