New York Times
Just days after its victory in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance has swiftly expanded its control over northern Afghanistan and has now sent Taliban forces fleeing from Kabul. This creates an urgent need for the United Nations to assemble an international administration that can govern the capital until Afghanistan's people can choose a new government. Secretary of State Colin Powell is rightly pressing for such an arrangement, which can help prevent political and ethnic reprisals and make Kabul a showcase for the kind of international help that would follow the Taliban's ouster nationwide.
The power vacuum in Kabul seems to be enticing Northern Alliance forces to enter the city despite their promises to remain outside. The alliance is little more than a coalition of convenience among chieftains of the main ethnic minority groups of northern Afghanistan. While it has been greeted warmly in the northern towns it has captured, it cannot count on a similar reception in multi-ethnic Kabul. Some of the alliance's leaders held power there in the early 1990's, an unpleasant experience for the capital's residents. In addition to human rights abuses and egregious misgovernment, incessant warfare killed more than 30,000 residents and pounded much of the city into rubble. A repeat performance could strengthen the Taliban's grip over their southern stronghold around Kandahar, where Osama bin Laden has found sanctuary.
The national government that eventually succeeds the Taliban should be organized by the Afghan people themselves, with all major ethnic groups represented. That surely includes the country's largest group, the Pashtuns of the south and east, who are nearly absent from the Northern Alliance leadership. For now, responsibility for administration in the capital should fall to international civil servants, with military security provided by peacekeepers, ideally from Muslim nations like Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
Authorization for this temporary administration should be provided as quickly as possible by a United Nations Security Council resolution. Such an arrangement would provide Kabul's residents with the peace and security they have been denied during more than two decades of war and repression.
Washington Post
Reports from Afghanistan yesterday suggested that the Taliban's hold on large parts of the country may be crumbling. Most of the north has apparently fallen to the opposition Northern Alliance; the western city of Herat has been taken back by its pre-Taliban governor; and opposition troops are reportedly closing in on Kabul, even as some Taliban units flee south toward their last stronghold in Kandahar. This is important and encouraging progress for the U.S.-led military campaign. At the same time, the sudden breakthrough after five weeks of bombing calls for a quick follow-up by the Bush administration and its allies, not only in the military sense but in the political and humanitarian spheres.
The first focus for U.S. military commanders in the region must be on pursuing and destroying the Taliban and al Qaida forces that have taken flight, and seizing any opportunities that now arise to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pointed out over the weekend, it is the destruction of that leadership and the forces closest to it that is the most important U.S. objective, not the capture of territory or cities. But it is also important that the United States does as much as it can to ensure that the Afghan opposition forces entering cities do not perpetrate atrocities, and that they turn authority over to civilian administrations as quickly as possible. United Nations officials in Pakistan yesterday delivered worrisome, if sketchy, accounts of abductions and killings in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Any such violence must be quickly controlled, in part to allow U.N. relief workers to open a secure corridor for the delivery of food and other humanitarian supplies to the millions of Afghans at risk of starvation.
By working to quickly establish civil order and step up humanitarian relief in the north, the Bush administration can improve the chances that a broad-based Afghan administration can be developed to take power in Kabul. Though there has been little progress so far in brokering a political alliance including all of Afghanistan's principal ethnic groups, U.N. officials hope to convoke an emergency meeting in the coming days. Bush administration officials rightly are still leaving room for the recruitment of ethnic Pashtun leaders in the south, since Pashtun participation is vital to creating a stable Afghan administration. That may mean pressuring the Northern Alliance to postpone entering Kabul even if the Taliban's defenses around the capital collapse entirely.
If Pashtun defections do not soon materialize, the Bush administration should accelerate plans for an international force that can occupy and maintain order in the city, with or without the collaboration of an Afghan civilian administration. If necessary to ensure security or the participation of other nations, U.S. forces should be committed to that mission. Now that its defensive lines have been broken, the Taliban should not be allowed to maintain its brutal regime in Kabul, or anywhere else, any longer than necessary.
Washington Times
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist massacre of nearly 5,000 civilians in the American homeland, the geopolitical background of the U.S.-Russian summit, which starts today, contrasts sharply with earlier meetings between leaders of these two nuclear powers. Not only did Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly overrule his defense minister in welcoming the deployment of U.S. military forces inside two former Soviet republics, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, he has also ordered Russian intelligence services to provide their U.S. counterparts with reams of information relating to the al Qaida terrorist network throughout Asia and the Middle East. Either development would have been virtually unthinkable earlier this year.
During the summit, some of which will take place at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, President Bush and Mr. Putin will discuss the future of Afghanistan, counterterrorism in general, Russia's desire to join the World Trade Organization, the relationship between Russia and NATO and nuclear proliferation. The principal issue confronting them, however, is the fate of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and Russia's obsession with achieving an agreement that would maintain, at a significantly reduced level, rough parity between each nation's nuclear arsenals.
Regarding the ABM Treaty, it appears unlikely that Mr. Bush will provide the requisite six-months notice of a U.S. intention to withdraw. Instead, Mr. Putin is reportedly prepared to accept unlimited anti-missile testing in exchange for a U.S. commitment not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty until a deployment decision is made.
Of course, de jure abrogation of the treaty is preferable. The immediate concern, however, is that the United States is able to pursue its robust testing schedule. If de facto changes in the ABM Treaty permit the necessary anti-missile tests to be conducted without limiting their scope or the system's potential, then it will represent a major advance toward the ultimate goal. However, given the nearly pervasive view within the Democratic Party that the ABM Treaty represents the "cornerstone of strategic stability," a major drawback of such a compromise is the possibility that a Democrat might capture the White House before deployment can be achieved. Therefore, the Bush administration needs to deploy even a rudimentary system by 2004, in effect making national missile defense a fait accompli.
Regarding the reduction in strategic nuclear warheads -- each arsenal now has between 6,000 and 7,000 warheads and is scheduled to decline to 3,000 to 3,500 -- Mr. Bush has committed the United States to further, substantial reductions irrespective of Russia's actions. Mr. Putin wants each nation to reduce its strategic nuclear arsenal to 1,500 warheads, which is the most Russia can ultimately afford. The Pentagon, however, begins to get worried when plans call for fewer than 2,000 warheads. If Mr. Bush agrees not to jettison the ABM Treaty, surely Mr. Putin ought to accept relatively minor differences in the two nations' arsenals. In the meantime, work on national missile defense must proceed as quickly as possible.
Baltimore Sun
The collapse of Taliban rule in non-Pashtun parts of Afghanistan adds urgency to the effort to create a broad-based alternative capable of winning acceptance and establishing stable interim government.
Two months of frantic networking has not kept pace with the U.S. bombing that enabled the Northern Alliance offensive now gathering momentum.
More victories can be expected in the north, center and west of the country where Uzbeks, Tajiks or Hazaras predominate. There the Taliban, all young Pashtun, have been unwelcome rulers, hostile to local custom and language.
But that would not give the Northern Alliance entry to the Pashtun belt running along the border with Pakistan. Tajik and Uzbek warlords left a trail of atrocities there and in Kabul in the early 1990s. They would be as unwelcome as the Taliban have been in Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif.
The U.S. and British governments have warned their Northern Alliance clients not to enter the great ethnic mosaic of Kabul until an interim regime is ready. The danger is that as Northern Alliance forces invest Kabul, the Taliban may melt away, leaving an anarchic void. The Northern Alliance would then enter the capital, ready or not.
So far, the hope of establishing a fit partner to the alliance from the Pashtun two-fifths of the population rests on the valiant Hamid Karzai. This pillar of the old establishment has been eluding Taliban hunters, rekindling clan loyalties in the name of the exiled king.
The difficulty in cobbling an Afghan alliance mirrors the challenge to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He must keep Pakistan, protector of the Pashtuns, on the same page with India, Iran, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, sponsors of the Northern Alliance. The United States needs them all (Iran indirectly) for war and for the subsequent peace.
Aged King Mohammed Zahir Shah in Rome, the Northern Alliance and former Pashtun leaders in Pakistan all talk the game of broad-based coalition. But not to each other in the same room.
Washington needs to bang heads. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, are trying to assemble appropriate Afghan representatives somewhere in Europe in the next few days.
Afghanistan won't wait. It may soon split in two. The forces the United States supports will win it all eventually. They must be up to that responsibility. They were not in the early 1990s, and they are not ready now.
Chicago Tribune
President Bush welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin, his new ally in the war on terrorism, for a three-day summit starting Tuesday that could fundamentally realign relations between the two former Cold War rivals.
There are opportunities for dramatic agreements on U.S. missile defense, the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and substantial cuts in the thousands of offensive strategic nuclear arms held by both nations.
Yet the most important issue they will discuss--arguably the greatest threat to peace in the 21st century -- has gotten far less attention.
That is the prospect that elements of a nuclear arsenal could fall into the hands of a terrorist organization or rogue nation. Bush told the United Nations on Saturday that terrorists will use such weapons "the moment they are capable of doing so. No hint of conscience would prevent it."
This is a grave concern in large part because there is great uncertainty about the vulnerability of Russian nuclear materials and the status of some of the nation's top scientists.
Putin insists Russia's nuclear stockpiles are secure and that no Russian "loose nukes" or fissile material has fallen into terrorist hands. That sounds comforting, but the cold facts are that there were dozens of violations last year of Russia's rules for securing nuclear material.
Russian forces reported two incidents this year in which terrorists staked out a secret nuclear arms storage site. In late 1998, Russia stopped an attempt by an organized gang to steal more than 40 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a military facility in the Urals. There was an attempt by Taliban emissaries to recruit a Russian nuclear expert. There were reports a few years ago by a top aide to President Boris Yeltsin that 40 KGB nuclear suitcase bombs were not accounted for. The aide later backed off his statement, but doubts linger.
To combat these vulnerabilities, Russia must reduce the number of sites where nuclear weapons are stored, closing the vulnerable ones and heightening security at the ones that remain. The United States must continue to help with the destruction of Russian nuclear materials and with providing employment for nuclear scientists, who might otherwise sell their services to terrorists.
There have been breathtaking changes in relations between Russia and the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks. A new vision of the relationship is emerging; it is paying benefits right now in the former Soviet areas of Central Asia, where U.S. troops are stationed for the fight against the Taliban and al Qaida terrorist network.
The agenda for Bush and Putin holds the possibility of an historic agreement to cut offensive nuclear arms. The United States and Russia each have more than 6,000 warheads, those numbers could be pared to something between 1,750 and 2,250 warheads in the United States and 1,000 and 1,500 warheads in Russia.
It's ironic that these weapons were the focus of security concerns for decades. Yet, just as it appears an extraordinary breakthrough is about to happen, the risk of the great powers firing their arsenals has suddenly diminished. More important, it seems, is eliminating, or preventing the dissemination of, insecure nuclear materials.
Dallas Morning News
For much of the 1900s, America's bugbear was communism's quest for world dominion. It led America to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba and into years of battle in Vietnam. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, that changed ... somewhat.
Russia may have lost its ideological motives, but it has retained its enormous nuclear capabilities. The meetings this week between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush offer the opportunity to redefine their relationship. For Sept. 11 showed there's a new, shared enemy.
Islamic extremists threaten Russia's national security as well as America's. Russia has Islamic terrorists active in neighboring Central Asian states and separatists in its Chechnya province. Mr. Putin wisely overruled Russian hard-liners in clearing the way for American troops in Central Asia with flights in Russian airspace. As Russia turns to the West, America should respond.
The tone of this week is important. There's no reason to threaten American abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; a skillful agreement allowing additional warning systems and further testing of anti-missile systems are needed.
Nuclear security in Russia is a problem. Greater international efforts are needed -- and the United States can lead the way -- to help Russia better safeguard nuclear weapons and reactor facilities. For their part, Russians -- who had a large biological warfare program -- can help address bioterrorism.
Mr. Putin understands Russia's common interests with the West. His opposition to the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has softened. In return, Russia is considering an alliance ("small a") with NATO.
Increased economic relations can prove mutually beneficial. Russia has oil and gas, but needs better civil institutions and laws to invite foreign investment. Can the U.S. revoke the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that threatens economic sanctions and help Russia accede to the World Trade Organization? Can Russia ingrain democratic institutions -- like a free press -- in its culture and find a political solution to Chechnya?
Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin can serve the long-term interests of both countries by setting the course for a new, broader relationship -- one that goes beyond strategic competition.
Los Angeles Times
Opposition fighters in Afghanistan swept across the north and entered Kabul Monday, driving the Taliban before them and validating the U.S. strategy of bombing the enemy while leaving the ground war to the Northern Alliance. But the fighters' arrival at the capital and their earlier capture of the city of Mazar-i-Sharif make establishing a political framework to replace the Taliban rulers all the more urgent.
It is far from certain that the alliance can hold on to the wide swath of territory it seized so swiftly, and it may still have to battle the Taliban in its southern strongholds. Of greater importance right now is the makeup of an eventual new government. The next regime must represent all regions and ethnic groups--especially the majority Pushtuns, from the south, as well as the northern Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek tribes that constitute the alliance. A claim of sole rule by ethnic minorities would mean war without end, particularly if the rule were to begin with brutal reprisals.
The new government also cannot be perceived as imposed by other nations. One problem is that Russia and Iran have supplied the Northern Alliance since the Taliban drove it out of Kabul several years ago. That support is poison to the Afghans who fought Moscow's troops for a decade after the 1979 invasion. It doesn't help that the alliance was brutal when it reigned in Kabul. The best solution will be for the United Nations to help establish a broad-based government, probably under the figurehead leadership of Mohammad Zaher Shah, the exiled king. But the United Nations and its point man on the Afghan issue, Lakhdar Brahimi, have to move more quickly. Hold the meeting this week, perhaps in Geneva, with invitations to all groups. Northern Alliance leaders occasionally have indicated they realize they cannot form a government by themselves. They need to meet now with other groups to plan a post-Taliban Afghanistan. This new government will be critical not only to the beleaguered citizens of Afghanistan but to the global anti-terrorist coalition. Long after the fall of Kabul, the coalition's objectives are likely to remain: capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and dismantling his al Qaida network.
The new government must not itself provide a haven for terrorists, and it cannot be allowed to finance itself with opium. What it can and must do is be ready to start filling in where the Taliban has so miserably failed.
The capture of so much territory should allow aid groups to start supplying millions of Afghans with the food they need to ward off starvation. Decades of warfare and years of drought have devastated the country. For the time being, the United Nations can take the lead in meeting the need for food and clothes. As a new government wobbles into being, immediate humanitarian relief in the face of some uncertainty and danger would demonstrate again that this is not a war against the Afghan people, or against Islam, but against terror.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
On the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 17, three Palestinian gunmen stole into the Hyatt Hotel in East Jerusalem, made their way to an upper floor, and shot Israeli Cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi in the face as he returned to his room from breakfast. The assassination plunged Israelis and Palestinians into a new cycle of recrimination and crushed the latest of many diplomatic efforts to end their long conflict.
Ask Israelis and Palestinians how this destructive cycle can be stopped, and you find yourself witness to an infuriating blame game. Israeli authorities said last month that they have given Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a list of 100 known terrorists whom he must arrest before peace talks can start. Arafat told a group of visiting American journalists that the list has only 10 names and that he has already arrested four.
But there is an impartial and effective way to assess and settle these vexing claims. Three years ago President Bill Clinton authorized his CIA director, George Tenet, to visit the Middle East and establish a committee of American, Israeli and Palestinian security officials who would exchange intelligence on terrorism and evaluate the parties' compliance.
For many months, the Tenet framework worked. American authorities certified that Arafat was cooperating with U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials, and even the Israelis admitted that Arafat had given them useful information.
But last year, after a series of failed peace negotiations at Camp David, Arafat ceased his cooperation with the Tenet committee. There may be nothing that infuriates Israel more than this; it puts innocent Israelis at risk of bombings and shootings, and it calls into doubt whether Arafat is a genuine partner in the peace process.
In recent weeks, Arafat has asked repeatedly and strenuously for American help in halting the escalating violence. The Bush administration should help, but it should also insist that Arafat resume security cooperation under the Tenet framework. It will, no doubt, anger many Palestinians to see Arafat acting as "Israel's policeman." But any leader with a genuine interest in peace must face down his internal opponents and protect the lives of his neighbors.
It's hard for anyone who has visited the Middle East lately to be optimistic about peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Talk to Israelis, and before long you hear the most vicious contempt for Palestinians. Talk to Palestinians, and you soon hear the wildest conspiracy theories about Jews. The hawks on both sides seem to pretend, deep down, that somehow the other side will go away. But that will never happen. American diplomacy can help neutralize the hawks on both sides and, in so doing, spare a holy region and two peoples much bloodshed and heartache.
New York Newsday
As Afghan opposition forces advance on Kabul and the Taliban's resistance buckles faster than anticipated, the search for a broad- based government to replace Afghanistan's fundamentalist rulers has taken on a new urgency.
The U.S.-led coalition is facing a two-pronged problem. On the military front, it must defeat the Taliban on the ground - which also means destroying al Qaida's forces and hunting down its leader, Osama bin Laden. On the diplomatic and political front, it must come up with a skeletal framework for a post-Taliban government to install in Kabul before the capital is taken over by the forces of the Northern Alliance. Ideally, the diplomatic objective would be reached before a military victory. Right now, it looks as if it might work out the other way around, and that's not the best outcome.
The good news is that the Northern Alliance is within shooting distance of Kabul; that means the Taliban is set to make a final stand after suffering serious losses. The bad news is that the Northern Alliance is in sight of Kabul, and if it defeats the Taliban, its troops may not live up to its leaders' pledge not to enter the capital until a coalition government is formed.
For the Northern Alliance to occupy Kabul would be a huge mistake for the future stability of Afghanistan. Kabul is a Pashtun city whose population will fear and resent the Tajik and Uzbek fighters who make up the Northern Alliance. It is essential for a post-Taliban government to include, and ideally to be led by, the Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group. The general Afghan population would never accept rule by northern ethnic minorities.
These calculations are precisely what led Secretary of State Colin Powell to meet in urgent session yesterday in New York with the foreign ministers of the six nations bordering Afghanistan, in addition to the two major regional powers with vested interests in the conflict's resolution, India and Russia. Together, they are trying to come up with an acceptable compromise for a post-Taliban government. They need to work fast: The Northern Alliance is making such swift gains on the ground that Kabul may fall soon.
Boston Globe
With Taliban troops fleeing before the Northern Alliance, the Bush administration must make sure that the sudden military success of its client warlords does not jeopardize the goal of a stable new Afghan government.
The immediate danger is that Northern Alliance forces may break their pledge not to enter Kabul if they succeed in breaking through Taliban lines north of the city.
Kabul, like many other places in Afghanistan, is haunted by memories of past massacres. The last time some of the commanders now in the Northern Alliance fell upon Kabul, in 1992, they perpetrated horrific crimes.
Yesterday at the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell took part in a ministerial meeting of the group known as the ''Six-plus-Two,'' regional neighbors Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, China, and Iran plus the United States and Russia. After years of futile efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan, the ''Six-plus-Two'' U.N. regional committee has suddenly become the proper source for desperately needed peacekeeping and postwar nation-building in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan today is not only a staging area for Osama bin Laden's terrorist cult, but a country suffering the final paroxysms of a long decline into chaos, famine, and a war of all against all. To begin Afghanistan's convalescence, the U.N. should provide peacekeepers from several nations, declare Kabul an open demilitarized city, and then set about shepherding Afghan representatives from diverse ethnic and tribal groups into a broad-based government.
The more Afghanistan's diverse population is included in that process, and the more Afghanistan's neighbors cooperate in the country's rehabilitation, the easier it will be for Washington to avoid a regional backlash against its antiterrorist war. To win that war, America will have to demonstrate that its true goal is to dismantle bin Laden's cult and not to expand U.S. influence over Central Asia's energy reserves, pipelines, and Muslims.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
