[Mb-civic] Tale

[Michael Butler]

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Two U.S. Soldiers Killed on Patrol in Afghanistan    €

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    Tale 
    By Patrick Sabatier
    Libération

     Monday 11 October 2004

     More than a thousand and one nights -three years - have elapsed since
the Allied forces, along with Commandant Massoud's, got rid of the bloody
Taliban theocracy for the Afghans and the whole world. The tale told this
weekend of the half-full or half-empty ballot box is not the last in the
tragic history of the "Kingdom of Impudence".

     There are reasons to congratulate ourselves: the ballot box is
half-full. The vote took place under the nose and the beards of the Taliban.
In their millions, Afghan men and women have eaten the previously forbidden
fruit of democracy. Their lot is much improved since the flight of Mullah
Omar. Three million refugees had voted with their feet by returning to the
country. Hamid Karzai, the election's probable winner, will derive
additional legitimacy from their return.

     However there are also reasons for worry: the ballot box is half empty.
These elections took place on the basis of fanciful voters' lists, with
probable fraud and all kinds of pressures in a country where insecurity and
the law of armed gangs are the rule, a country that has once again become a
"narco-State", escaping Kabul's control, and which remains under threat from
the Taliban. If the genius of the democracy that came out of the ballot box
is still far from having extended its hold over Afghanistan to assure peace
and prosperity for its inhabitants, that's first of all an artifact of the
brutal and complex reality of the country's history. It's also because the
international efforts towards its pacification and reconstruction after
twenty-five years of war have been inadequate. The road from Kabul to a
possible Afghan democracy has not been cut off, but it would be much more
secure had Bush not sidetracked the world away from it to go astray on the
road to Baghdad.

     Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie
Thatcher. 

  

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    Two U.S. Soldiers Killed on Patrol in Afghanistan
    Reuters

     Saturday 16 October 2004

     Kabul - Two U.S. soldiers were killed and three wounded by a roadside
bomb while on patrol in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, a U.S.
military spokesman said on Saturday.

     They were the first U.S. soldiers to die in Afghanistan since last
week's historic presidential election and brought the number of U.S.
military personnel killed since an operation to drive out the Taliban and al
Qaeda was launched three years ago to 102.

     The bomb exploded northwest of Deh Rawood, 400 km (250 miles) southwest
of the capital, Kabul, on Thursday.

     The military were unsure who was behind the attack, Major Mark McCann
said, but Uruzgan is the home province of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar.

     Millions of Afghan voted in the presidential election, braving threats
of violence from the Taliban and its hard-line Islamist allies.

     While the high turnout was regarded as an overwhelming success for
Afghanistan's political transition, the absence of any major incident was
also seen as a triumph for the U.S., Afghan, and NATO-led security forces.

     Counting began on Thursday and could take three weeks to complete, but
early returns showed President Hamid Karzai, who has led an interim
government since the fall of the Taliban militia in 2001, had struck an
early lead.

  

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