News, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Seven killed in new fighting in north Afghanistan
Khaleej Times, (Reuters)
29 September 2003
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan - At least seven people, including two commanders, were killed in fighting at the weekend between rival pro-government factions in three provinces of northern Afghanistan, faction officials said.
The fighting erupted on Sunday in the provinces of Sar-i-Pul, Faryab and Balkh between forces of Ustad Atta Mohammad and those of his rival, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, said one of Atta’s commanders.
The two factions have clashed repeatedly in the north since the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001, even though both leaders are officials in President Hamid Karzai’s government.
A total of five fighters were killed and two wounded from both sides in Qala-i-Shar district of Sar-i-Pul, the Atta commander said, but he gave no breakdown of the casualties.
“The fighting is still going on,” the commander, General Abdul Saboor, told Reuters.
Most of Dostum’s troops are from the ethnic Uzbek minority. Atta and his forces are mostly ethnic Tajiks.
The violence in the north underscores the difficulties facing Karzai, who is now overseas, in imposing order in the provinces as Western governments debate whether to expand a NATO-led peacekeeping force, now confined to Kabul.
Saboor also said Dostum’s forces attacked the house of one of Atta’s commanders in the district of Sholgara in Balkh province. The commander was killed in the attack along with the commander of the attacking forces, Mullah Dawod, he said.
Fighting also broke out between the two factions in Faryab province, but the casualties there were unclear, he said.
Dostum commander Majeed Rozi said commanders from Dostum’s faction were meeting to find ways to end the fighting.
Elsewhere in the north, Saboor said suspected Taleban fighters burned down three girls’ schools in Balkh.
He said the attackers had left leaflets warning families not to send girls to school and non-governmental organisations not to employ women.
NGO CAR ATTACKED
In another incident, suspected Taleban fighters fired on a car belonging to a Czech aid group, according to Saboor.
An official of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said the incident last week involved an attacker opening fire from a motorcycle, but no one was injured.
The government aims to launch an ambitious UN-backed plan to disarm about 100,000 factional fighters later this month having announced reforms to the defence ministry that analysts say may not go far enough to make it more balanced ethnically.
Britain has stationed a military-civilian provincial reconstruction team in the northern capital of Mazar-i-Sharif.
But critics say such teams, seen by Western governments as a means to help maintain security in the run-up to elections due next June, are too small to be effective.
The period since early August has been the bloodiest since the Taleban fell, with about 300 people killed, among them civilians, aid workers, police and militiamen, three US soldiers and many guerrillas.
Also at the weekend, Taleban guerrillas killed seven bodyguards of the governor of the southern province of Helmand, where two Afghan aid workers were killed in an attack last week.
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |