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What U.S. newspapers are saying

New York Times

With American warplanes now directly supporting Afghanistan's rebel Northern Alliance, there is an urgent need to come up with a viable plan for the installation of a new government in Kabul. The alliance's ground forces can be an important military asset in dislodging the Taliban. But its fractious and ethnically unrepresentative leaders must not be allowed to exploit an American-backed drive on the capital to position themselves as the nation's dominant political figures. Such a lopsided government would have little chance of gaining nationwide legitimacy or acceptance by important neighbors like Pakistan.

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Many of the Northern Alliance's leaders are the same people whose murderous feuding and misgovernment between 1992 and 1996 helped open the way for the Taliban takeover. The alliance's ranking political leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, served as Afghanistan's president in the early 1990's and twice plunged the country into civil war. One of its top generals, Abdul Rashid Dostum, is infamous for brutality and ever-shifting political allegiances.

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Almost wholly absent from the Northern Alliance leadership are members of Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. A government that marginalizes Pashtuns would be unacceptable to Pakistan and would undermine its leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has taken political risks to align himself with the United States. Those Pashtun leaders who now make up the Taliban high command can have no place in Afghanistan's future government. Other Pashtuns, whose cooperation with the Taliban has been purely pragmatic, should be considered. It is not the role of the United States or any other country to impose the next Afghan government. What Washington and its allies need to do, in conjunction with the United Nations representative Lakhdar Brahimi, is encourage efforts already under way to convene a broad constituent assembly. It could be headed by a widely accepted figure like Afghanistan's exiled king.

Should Northern Alliance forces soon fight their way into Kabul, Washington and its allies would achieve an important symbolic success. America's larger goal, however, is to defeat and replace the Taliban throughout Afghanistan so that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network can no longer find shelter there. Achieving that objective requires forming a coalition that reaches well beyond the discredited warlords of the Northern Alliance.

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Chicago Sun-Times

It's called "precision bombing," but it really isn't 100 percent precise. For all the whiz-bang technology that has been squeezed into today's weaponry, sometimes the bombs still miss the mark.

That's apparently the situation in Afghanistan, where the Pentagon confirms that two errant bombs crashed into a residential area near Kabul and another landed near a senior citizens home. The number of casualties is unclear, but civilians were certainly killed.

President Bush has repeatedly emphasized since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that America's war is on terrorism and not the people of Afghanistan. Indeed, we have poured millions of dollars in food and medicine into Afghanistan--not just since the bombing began but for years earlier.

But this is war, and in war people get killed--including innocent people. The United States has gone to great lengths to avoid these unintentional fatalities. Ultimately, blame for the deaths lies with the Taliban rulers who have used their people as human shields to protect terrorist Osama bin Laden. Indeed, evidence of the Taliban's betrayal of the Afghan people grows: Aid organizations say that Taliban forces have been robbing them of food and clothing earmarked for the cold and hungry citizens. The Washington Post reported this week that the Taliban have also been stashing military equipment in schools, universities and mosques.

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The civilian casualties have the potential of eroding the support of the moderate Muslim world. These amnesiacs would well be reminded that--in addition to America's aid to Afghanistan--at the time the terrorist attacks were being planned, U.S. soldiers were defending Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. Moreover, America has sent nearly $500 million to the Palestinians--at least $75 million a year since 1994. And it was the United States that turned back Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator who ordered his troops to invade the Islamic nations of Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

There is a danger, too, that civilian deaths in Afghanistan might wear at support along Main Street, America. It has been suggested that our nation's greatest vulnerability is our soft heart. Indeed, it is a testament to our sense of fairness that reports of innocents being killed are not cavalierly dismissed. However, it is worth noting that a terrorist organization savvy enough to attack two of America's most celebrated symbols knows something about our psyche as well. Remember: The U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan are necessary to combat terrorism. We are not the bad guys.


Boston Globe

With Americans under attack from biological weapons, the Bush administration needs to address two intertwined questions: Where did the anthrax come from that appears to have been milled to float in the air? And is Saddam Hussein an unindicted co-conspirator with Osama bin Laden in the terrorist war being waged against the United States?

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Until now, officials in the State Department and CIA have reacted to reports suggesting a connection between Iraq and bin Laden's Al Qaeda network either by suggesting that meetings between them prove nothing or by warning that any digression from the current military campaign in Afghanistan could disrupt a tenuous antiterrorist coalition.

There is certainly good reason to preserve a coalition that is producing intelligence cooperation and assistance in locating and freezing terrorist bank accounts. And it is true that American incrimination of Saddam's regime for the Sept. 11 attacks or the subsequent anthrax mailings might be met with incredulity in some sectors of the Arab world.

But as former CIA director James Woolsey wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal, ''When you are at war, the primary task should be to determine whom you are at war with.'' The crucial background to Woolsey's warnings of a possible collaboration between Saddam and bin Laden's network is a history of contacts between Iraqi intelligence officers and operatives or leaders of Al Qaeda.

On June 2, 2000, hours before flying to the United States to attend a flight school in Florida, Mohamed Atta, a prime suspect in the suicidal hijackings of Sept. 11, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, according to Czech counterintelligence officers. Among many other known contacts is a meeting that one of the top Iraqi intelligence officials, Farouk Hijazi, held in 1998 with bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, at which Saddam's secular pan-Arab regime offered the Islamist terrorist resources and asylum in Iraq, according to several European news reports.

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Recently, two defecting Iraqi intelligence agents have described to US officials, journalists, and the democratic Iraqi opposition a training camp in a suburb of Baghdad, Salman Pak, where Iraqis and segregated groups of Islamist foreigners received training in hijacking techniques.

This history - and the suspicions cast on Baghdad because of Iraq's documented production of anthrax as a bioweapon - likely induced Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, to declare: ''Iraq has nothing to do with all that happened in America between the 11th of September and now.''

Every effort should be made to find out if Aziz is telling the truth. Few things could be more relevant to the safety of Americans than for their government to determine if Saddam's vengeful hand is hidden behind bin Laden's band of fanatics.


Washington Post

Israeli forces carried out a major raid on a Palestinian village in the West Bank yesterday. It killed at least five people, but Israeli officials said it also resulted in the capture of two of the men responsible for the assassination last week of cabinet member Rehavam Zeevi. If that is true, then the operation -- which Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had failed to undertake -- would be an appropriate response to Mr. Zeevi's murder. But it also contrasts sharply with Israel's six-day assault on Bethlehem and five other Palestinian towns, which has killed dozens of Palestinian civilians and further undermined Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority but done nothing to stop Palestinian terrorism. As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon persists with the offensive in defiance of strong appeals by President Bush for an immediate withdrawal, Israel increasingly appears to be embarked not on a legitimate action of self-defense but a destructive campaign of aggression.

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Since the assassination of Mr. Zeevi, Mr. Sharon has renewed his practice of equating Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The logical consequence of such a conclusion would be for Israel to attack and destroy Mr. Arafat's regime, much as the United States is seeking to ruin the Taliban. The invasions of Palestinian towns make far more sense as part of such a strategy than they do as an attempt to capture terrorists or to force Mr. Arafat to act against them. But despite Mr. Arafat's many failings -- including his failure to arrest Mr. Zeevi's killers or act decisively against other terrorist organizations -- he is not comparable to Osama bin Laden, and the destruction of his administration would make the situation in the Middle East far worse. It would unite both moderate and militant Arabs against Israel and bring enormous additional pressure to bear on those governments, such as Pakistan, that are giving critical support to the U.S. campaign against Afghanistan. It would also leave Israel with no possible Palestinian partner for peace negotiations -- a scenario that clearly appeals to hard-liners in the Israeli government, if not to Mr. Sharon himself.

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The Bush administration has rightly moved sharply in the past several days to raise the pressure on Mr. Arafat. It organized a delegation of senior Western diplomats Tuesday who met the Palestinian leader and demanded that he act against the terrorists on his territory -- a message echoed in a letter from President Bush. If Mr. Arafat responds appropriately, he could open the way to a renewal of the peace process. If he fails to act, he should be sanctioned and isolated by the international community. But Israel's military campaign is not only damaging Mr. Arafat's ability to act but also undermining the interests of both Israel and the United States. If Mr. Sharon continues to reject U.S. demands that this self-defeating campaign cease, he too should face consequences.


Washington Times

The European Union promised "total support . . . without equivocation" for the United States' bombing campaign in Afghanistan at a summit in Ghent on Friday. But the conference, during which the 15 members discussed how to aid the campaign against terrorism, highlighted the fact that assistance hasn't been so easy to give. This has been because of tensions between members within the European Union as well as a lack of direction by the Bush administration.

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Likewise, in September NATO promised the United States its assistance and paved the way for Operation Enduring Freedom by declaring that an attack against one of its members is an attack against all. Yet, six weeks after the attack, members cannot agree on what help should be given, nor are they sure what is being asked of them. The result has been that the administration has increasingly chosen to deal with countries directly, rather than with each institution as a whole.

"You could say the real problem arises for NATO, which offered its services and was told 'don't call us, we'll call you'," French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said last week after the United States had rejected NATO's offers of help. France's offers of its commandos, as well as the use of its jets in Uzbekistan, had been refused. NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson disagreed that NATO was being underused, repeating President Bush's words that "NATO is the cornerstone of the international coalition."

In typical Bush style, the president is choosing to create his defense and economic policies directly with individual members. As the United States and Britain carry out most of the military exercises in Afghanistan, Mr. Bush is enlisting the help of other NATO members for other support: Germany and France for intelligence, and Australia and Canada for naval assistance. But even here, members have run into problems as politicians have rushed to offer support that their parliaments have not yet approved.

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The European Union was stuck with similar challenges Friday. First, there was disagreement in Ghent over what could be considered a legitimate goal of the terrorism campaign. Though Britain, France and Belgium wanted the overthrow of the Taliban to be the ultimate objective, the EU ended up settling for the elimination of al Qaeda.

The more detailed proposals raised at the summit provided sticking points as well. Take, for instance, the matter of the European arrest warrant, which would allow for terrorists to be extradited more quickly. Only six of the EU members defined terrorism as a crime before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Financial Times reported, making extradition difficult. In addition, getting rid of "double criminality" laws, which require both the country extraditing and the country receiving the terrorist to have laws defining their action as terrorism, will require a lot of work.

Still, there is in Europe an increasing desire for unity since the attacks on America. It will be in the United States' best interests if the European offers to help are taken seriously.


Dallas Morning News

The prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation appear to be getting bleaker by the minute. Since the Oct. 17 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Israeli military forces have entered Palestinian-controlled cities and towns of the West Bank. Dozens of Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed in the fighting.

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Israel has a right to be angry about the unprecedented assassination of a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet. It should continue to insist that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority extradite for trial in Israel the accused assassins and their accomplices. Mr. Arafat, who has suspects under arrest, should spare no time in complying with Israel's extradition demands. At the same time, Israel should heed Washington's urgent call that it immediately exit the Palestinian-controlled areas and make no further incursions. As U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said, "The deaths of those innocent civilians under the circumstances reported in recent days are unacceptable. We call upon Israel to ensure that its armed forces exercise greater discipline and restraint and consider where their actions are leading. ... Retaliatory actions by Israel cannot produce lasting security, which is the goal we so long advocated."

The principal objective for both sides should be a lasting cease-fire, followed by implementation of the recommendations by the commission headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell. The commission's recommendations are an essential step in the search for a comprehensive peace. They include a freeze on new Israeli settlements and on the growth of existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza; prevention by the Palestinian Authority of Palestinian attacks against Israelis; lifting of Israel's economic restraints in Palestinian-controlled areas; and a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation.

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The ongoing fighting is making it harder for Washington to hold together its coalition against international terrorism. For that reason, Washington must intensify its pressure on both parties to stop the senseless cycle of violence. It's time to get back on the path to peace and reconciliation.


Seattle Times

The women and girls living at Khaiwa Refugee Camp in northwestern Pakistan have audacious plans: They will educate themselves and then steal across the border to their native Afghanistan to educate and help other oppressed females.

These activists are not on the front lines of the war, but they are brave people living in the shadows of the conflict.

Afghan women are treated worse than second-class citizens. Under the Taliban's strict rules, girls are not allowed to go to school. Women cannot work outside the home. And women must wear a head-to-toe burqa, or full covering, outdoors.

Without judging Muslim women who proudly wear veils and live traditional lives, some practices and attitudes need to be modernized. And those young feminists living in border camps in Pakistan are leading the way.

Five hundred families live at Khaiwa. The women avoid the full cloth coverings. Many women belong to the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. RAWA sends young women on missions back to their homeland, where they set up secret schools for girls and snap photos documenting abuse of women.

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Twenty girls living at Khaiwa are orphans. The camp is widely known as a place to send girls threatened by Taliban religious restrictions or the sexual aggression of Afghan warlords.

The young girls spend their days studying science and Koranic scripture. They will grow up and help others. In Pakistan, RAWA operates schools, hospitals and orphanages.

The young women are fleeing abuse and oppression, but they do not leave their past behind. They risk their young lives to help other girls and women with nowhere to turn.


San Francisco Chronicle

Ignoring U.S. appeals for restraint, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is pressing ahead with a risky and potentially counterproductive offensive against the Palestinians.

In recent days, he has sent tanks and troops blasting into Palestinian towns, killing dozens and causing heavy damage.

The offensive apparently has had limited success in its goal of capturing the assassins of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, who was gunned down Oct. 17 by a radical Palestinian faction. Israel arrested 11 possible suspects in a raid yesterday.

The overall results, however, have been largely negative -- unnecessary bloodshed, unprecedented tension with the United States and the weakening of Arab and Muslim nations' support for the campaign against terrorism.

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But Sharon appears to be gambling that despite the Bush administration's criticism, Israel can take for granted the $3 billion in annual U.S. aid that helps prop up Israel's economy and military.

Sharon may have been emboldened by mixed signals from the Bush administration. While Secretary of State Colin Powell has called for Israel to withdraw "immediately" from Palestinian territory, President Bush has merely said the Israelis should pull out "as quickly as possible."

Sharon is also getting the wrong signals from Congress. For example, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, yesterday called the State Department criticism "the ultimate hypocrisy" -- because, Lantos claimed, the United States is using the same tactics against Afghanistan as Israel is against the Palestinians.

Such rationale is dangerous. Israel certainly has a right to defend itself, but it also must recognize that the scale and precision of its counterassaults could have serious ramifications for the precarious international alliance against terrorism. Israel, too, has a stake in the outcome of the war against Osama bin Laden's network.

The Bush administration has correctly criticized Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat for his weak attempts at cracking down on radical groups. Arafat should do better, and the United States must insist that he do so.

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But the Bush administration should speak with one voice to Sharon and make it clear to him that American support of Israel is not a blank check. U.S. aid has always been based on shared principles and interests.

These principles and interests, in both the short and long term, require peace between Israel and the Palestinians.


Raleigh News Observer

The greatest favor Israeli and Palestinian leaders could do the United States right now -- short of talking serious peace -- would be at least to stem violent and deadly confrontations in recognition of America's battle against its terrorist enemies. Yet Israel, our longstanding ally and the recipient of billions of dollars in annual aid, so far has declined a Bush administration request to pull troops out of six Palestinian towns.

The stationing of the troops, a response to last week's assassination of Israel's tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi, by a Palestinian group (which took credit for the murder in response to the killing of its own leader), is guaranteed to stir more violence and death. That would further boost tensions in the region, which in turn can only hamper U.S. efforts to win the war on terrorism.

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Some Israeli leaders have likened Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to terrorist Osama bin Laden, and apparently would like nothing better than to use the United States' war against terrorists as a reason to step up their violence against Palestinians. That Palestinians have fought bitterly, and murderously, against Israelis is of course true -- and the Palestinians have felt the heat and seen the blood of retaliation.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has in fact talked about the establishment of a Palestinian state, one of the long-time sticking points in negotiations, and American leaders have pushed both sides to find common ground. The Sept. 11 attacks have disrupted the process, but they should not serve as an excuse to stop it outright.

Israel's stationing of troops only serves to ensure that the peace table could be broken up for firewood. The Bush administration is apparently keeping up the pressure, and indeed, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said after a meeting in Washington that his country would withdraw the troops soon. The problem is that even a slight delay risks a Palestinian backlash against the presence of Israeli soldiers that could in turn spark retribution from Israel. That's a familiar cycle that, time and again, has stood in the way of serious peace negotiations.

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The United States is fighting for its very survival. It has, through the last half of the 20th century and now in the early part of this one, worked to see that the people of the Mideast can survive in peace as well. Israeli leaders should recognize that a withdrawal of troops would be a prudent, timely assist to America's ongoing battle against terrorism. It would be the act of a true ally.


Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Americans are discovering how it feels to be hated. Not just envied for their affluence or resented for their presumptions of superiority, but hated deeply -- to the point that hundreds, perhaps thousands of people want badly to see Americans, any Americans, dead, and are willing to take on that task as their divine and final mission.

It's not only American government officials and American policy that followers of Osama bin Laden detest, though they do indeed detest those things. Their hatred extends to us, our children, our aging parents, all of us, no matter our religion or race or whether our political opinions are firm or indifferent. How else to interpret the deliberate crashing of airliners into buildings holding tens of thousands of ordinary people? Or -- if they're proved responsible -- the spreading of anthrax in mail rooms?

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Aside from our lives, what they want from us isn't entirely clear. The fanatical Bin Laden has used all sorts of rationales to justify Al-Qaida's murderous acts. He has boasted that fundamentalist Islam was responsible for taking down the Soviet Union and will now do the same to the United States. Hyperbole abounds.

But it's dawning on Americans that terrorist groups and the branch of fundamentalist Islam from which they draw inspiration see their efforts as part of an epic struggle dating to medieval times. To them, the West and, as they call it, "the petty state of the Jews," represent an occupying force on sacred Islamic ground. Thus, according to Bin Laden's edict, it's a duty to kill all Americans "until the Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and the Haram Mosque [in Mecca] are freed from their grip and until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam."

It's news to many Americans that these mosques even exist, let alone that we are occupying them. Even so, the West finds itself pulled backward into history just as it hoped that history had ended with the inevitable triumph of free markets and democracy. Francis Fukuyama, it seems, was wrong about that.

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President Bush has said that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms; it might be truer to say that radical fundamentalists hate us for our pluralism. They hate our ability to entertain more than one idea, to tolerate more than one belief, to venerate more than one book. In that sense, it is really they who are arrogant and presumptive for insisting on seeing the world in extreme and narrow terms. E.B. White defined democracy as "the dent in the high hat." It is they who now wear the high hat, undented.

Is American policy blameless in the Arab and wider Islamic world? Certainly not. Yes, we have interests in the region. Oil, for example, and economic stability -- and now national defense. We do not apologize for them. Should we be more aware of Muslim sensibilities? Yes. Should we have done more to liberalize the feudal monarchies and dictatorships in the region, more to remind people that we rescued the Bosnians and saved thousands of Afghans from starvation, more to help the bulk of the people and to build more just societies in the Mideast and elsewhere?

That would help the U.S. relationship with rational, mainstream Muslims of the region. But it would not have averted last month's terrorist attacks because it's not really what the terrorists strive for. Their desire is not to build but to tear down. Even if the infidel were driven out and the old corrupt regimes overturned, what then? Millions of devout Muslims do not regard the Taliban as an attractive or just model.

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How does it feel to be hated? Terrible, and it's tempting to hate in return. But we must not. Even as bombs fall on Afghanistan and troops move in, our hearts should be filled not with revenge but with profound sadness. Similarly, our minds should be focused not by hatred, but by justice and resolve.


(Compiled by United Press International)

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