Integrity Score 380
No Records Found
No Records Found
International Community in
Afghanistan Continues...
In the US, fears surged concerning a new terrorist attack following the crash in Brooklyn on 12 November of American Airlines flight 587.
Among the dead were two WTC employees who had survived 9/11. The crash was deemed accidental only after national security alerts were imposed and international financial markets plummeted. The spectre of domestic attack did not diminish, however, as by mid-November the US Department of Justice had accumulated 5,000 names of people living in the USA to be questioned about 9/11.
In Kabul, the end of Taleban rule was marked by music being played publicly for the first time since the Taleban consolidated its power by seizing Kabul in 1996, men’s beards being trimmed or shaven off and women able to bare their faces; but victory was not bloodless, with the International Red Cross reporting that hundreds were killed in the earlier taking of Mazar-i-Sharif.
There were several reported rights abuses by Northern Alliance force in the wake of the Taleban retreat from Mazar-e Sharif, Herat, Kunduz and Kabul in November 2001.
Scattered reports from aid agencies, refugees, and new correspondents indicated that Northern Alliance forces in newly captured areas summarily executed a significant number of Taleban troops who had surrendered or were captured and engaged in looting of humanitarian aid compounds and commercial stores.
With the north largely secured, save for the area around Konduz in the north-east, near the Tajik border, Western attention turned to other parts of Afghanistan. Taleban control was eroding elsewhere as Jalalabad fell and the Taleban faced revolt in Kandahar. On 15 November, an advance group of 100 British Royal Marines were deployed at Bagram airbase. Arriving without prior knowledge of the Northern Alliance, it was nearly fired on.
Thereafter, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told his Northern Alliance counterpart Abdullah that he would personally inform the Northern Alliance of future British arrivals.
These unannounced British personnel became the first conventional forces, after the small number of American, to be used in Afghanistan. French forces were meanwhile being prepared for deployment to Mazar-i-Sharif to assist with the distribution of humanitarian aid.
To be continued....