After touring Kabul, Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for Washington to send troops to be part of this military occupation force. "I'm not talking about blue helmets," stated Biden, referring to the symbol for UN-sanctioned "peace-keeping" troops. "I'm talking about a multilateral force with orders to shoot to kill. Absent that, I don't see any hope for this country."

For his part, interim Afghan president Hamid Karzai has called for the imperialist nations to send even larger numbers of troops and to extend their deployment to other provinces throughout Afghanistan. Karzai has announced plans to create a national army while attempting to disarm the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who carry guns and other weapons.

Washington is turning Kandahar into a major military base, with some 3,100 U.S. troops now stationed there.

After more than a week of heavy bombardment centered around the town of Zawar in the mountainous region near the border with Pakistan, the Pentagon announced January 14 that they had totally destroyed the area and were now looking for new targets. "We have leveled the remaining structures," which had encompassed some 60 buildings and 50 caves, gloated Navy Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem. "It is now time to go look [for bombing targets] elsewhere," he added.

According to an Associated Press report, the virtually nonstop bombing of the area sent civilians fleeing. Many others were killed and wounded by falling bombs. Noorz Ali, who was trying to get out of the area in a rickety truck told AP that most of the 35 homes in his village were destroyed. "No one is left but the dead," he said. "There were so many bombs and rockets I couldn't count.

As the beginnings of a 5,000-strong occupation force centered around Kabul is being put in place, British defense secretary Geoffrey Hoon said the force is "not a peacekeeping operation." Instead, its aim is to "assist the Afghan interim administration."

The British government recently announced that they will lead this force only for the first three months, during which it will supply 1,800 troops in addition to the 300 already operating out of the Kabul airport. Germany is sending 800, France 550, Italy 300, Spain 300, Greece 100, and the Netherlands 100. Others sending troops include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and Turkey, which has offered to lead the force by the end of April. Canada had offered to send a 900-member infantry battlegroup, which has been rejected for the time being.

As of mid-January only 1,100 troops comprising this force have arrived in Afghanistan. According to British Army spokesman, Maj. Guy Richardson, the force would not reach full strength until mid-February.

As the U.S. rulers extend their military bases around the perimeter of Afghanistan, Washington sent a warning to the Iranian government. "If they in any way, shape, or form try to destabilize the government [in Afghanistan] the coalition will deal with them, in diplomatic ways initially," U.S president George Bush said. The White House charged the Iranian government had been "shipping arms to its allies among the Afghan factions that pushed the Taliban regime from power," reported the January 11 New York Times. The Pentagon is also now accusing Tehran of giving refuge to some Al Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan.

The Iranian regime has been a longtime supporter of the Northern Alliance forces, well before Washington adopted the group as its proxy force as part of its drive to oust the Taliban from power.

"Iran must be a contributor in the war against terror," proclaimed Bush. "Our nation in our fight against terrorism, will uphold the doctrine of either you're with us or against us." A spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry responded with a statement denouncing Bush's remarks as "unfounded comments that rely on undocumented information."

Meanwhile, as the threat of war grows between India and Pakistan and both nations continue their massive troop buildup along their common border, Pakistani officials requested of Washington that it be allowed to have at least partial access to two of the four military bases in that country that U.S. forces now control. The Pentagon has deployed Special Operations forces, Marine combat units, support aircraft, and units of the 101st Airborne Division to the Jacobabad, Pasni, Dalbandin, and Shamsi air bases. Pakistani military officials have said they plan to share use of the Jacobabad and Pasni bases.

In the nearby Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, President Askar Akayev expressed his eagerness to extend the one-year agreement recently signed with Washington that gives the Pentagon full use of a military base located at the Manas airport outside the Kyrgyz capital. Some 3,000 U.S. troops and some 40 warplanes are set to be deployed there in February.  
 
Brutal treatment of POWs
U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have incarcerated and are interrogating more than 400 Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners of war being held on Kandahar base. Some 50 others--soon to be hundreds--have been sent to the U.S. naval base on occupied Cuban land at Guantanamo Bay for more intensive interrogation. They're being imprisoned in cages--six-by-eight foot concrete slabs with open-air chain-linked fences. The Pentagon is setting up enough cages to detain as many as 2,000 prisoners captured in Afghanistan. No charges have been filed against any of these captives, some of whom could be hauled before U.S. military tribunals.

Washington has denied press access to the prisoners. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has described these individuals as "unlawful combatants" rather than prisoners of war, who under international conventions on war would be guaranteed certain basic rights while held in detention.

"Unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention," stated Rumsfeld. "We have indicated that we do plan to, for the most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the Geneva Conventions, to the extent they are appropriate." Amnesty International has said that all prisoners in US. hands should be considered POWs until proven otherwise.

As they were herded onto U.S. military planes for the trip to the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo, the prisoners had their hands and feet shackled and their heads covered by hoods. The detainees, wearing taped-over ski goggles to block out their sight, were to be chained to their seats for the entire flight with heavily armed military police outnumbering the prisoners by two to one. They also wore surgical masks because some had tested positive for tuberculosis, and have had their beards forcibly shaved off.  
 
U.S. boosts military force in Philippines
Washington this week also boosted its military operations in the Philippines with the arrival of some 650 U.S. troops. The deployment includes 150 members of special forces units. The units are on their way to join 1,200 Philippine soldiers in the southern port city of Zamboanga in what is described as training exercises, dubbed "Balikatan," or "shouldering the load together." The exercises, which run for six months and can be extended to the end of the year, will utilize modern U.S. weaponry recently shipped to the country, including various aircraft and helicopters capable of night flights. Washington supplied more than $70 million in military aid to Manila last year, more than triple the figure for the previous year, in a drive against the Abu Sayyaf Muslim group, which Washington has labeled a terrorist organization.

U.S. forces also began a joint naval exercise with Algerian troops off the coast of Algiers January 13, the fourth joint maneuver between the two countries in recent months. The Algerian defense ministry described the latest exercises as part of the "ongoing development of military cooperation ties."

In another development, the government of Russia strongly objected to an announcement by the Bush administration that it plans to store rather than destroy decommissioned nuclear warheads. Washington had earlier said after discussions with Russian president Vladamir Putin that it would reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal from 7,000 to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads over the next decade. Moscow is also cutting its missile arsenal to a similar level.

"What reduction can we talk about if the United States can go back to the Start I level in just a couple of hours?" asked Aleksei Pikayev, director of an arms control institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "It looks more like swindling," he added.
 
 
Related article:
U.S. out of the Philippines!  
 
 
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