November 18, 2001	Sunday	Ramazan 2, 1422

ISLAMABAD, Nov 17: Cracks in the relationship between Washington and the Afghan opposition alliance appeared to be widening on Saturday as US special envoy James Dobbins steered clear of Kabul during a trip to the region.

Dobbins is Washington’s pointman with Afghanistan’s opposition groups, but has so far failed to meet any senior officials from the armed factions of the Northern Alliance during his first round of talks.

He is currently in Peshawar, meeting exiled ethnic leaders to persuade all parties to work towards a broad-based post-Taliban government, said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker in Washington.

“At the moment there are no plans for him to go into Afghanistan,” said Reeker.

“We continue to consult with a number of nations, and at the UN in terms of examining security options, possible structure of a multinational force and other thinags.”

US embassy officials in Islamabad could not immediately comment on Dobbins’s schedule, or why he was not going to Afghanistan.

UN deputy special envoy Francesc Vendrell had arrived in Afghanistan and a Russian military delegation was en route to make contact with the Northern Alliance for the first time since their march into Kabul.

And exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, 87, the man touted by the international community as the only figure capable of unifying Afghanistan, is planning to return to Kabul for the first time in almost 30 years.

“We are waiting (for) our brothers in the Northern Alliance to tell us of their preparedness so that we can sit and form the Supreme Council for National Unity of Afghanistan,” a spokesman for the ex-king said in Rome.

The alliance has agreed to participate in the UN-backed council but its rapid march into Kabul has raised doubts that it is ready to share power.

US officials had already acknowledged having no control over the Northern Alliance.

The Northern Alliance had also made it clear it would brook little foreign interference in the process of forming a new government.

The Americans were using the collapse of the Taliban to intensify their hunt for Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network, admittedly their prime objective in the Afghan campaign.

State Department officials have admitted that Dobbins’s trip was rushed by the pace of developments on the ground in Afghanistan.

“By going to Rome he gets the king and the king’s partners in the (opposition) Northern Alliance — some of the Pakhtoons have already joined that grouping. And then by going to Pakistan he then talks to other Pashtun leaders,” a senior State Department official said.

The UN has proposed a five-point plan which would lead to a representative, multi-ethnic transitional government and a new constitution.

The United States has been highly supportive of the initiative, though insisting it is not interested in “nation building.”

INCLUSION OF WOMEN: The United States on Saturday urged Afghanistan’s future government to include both genders, saying the Taliban’s repression of women had crippled the country like cutting the wing off a bird.

It peppered a State Department report called “The Taliban’s War Against Women” with quotes from members of the collapsing hard-line Islamic movement and from ordinary people, revealing horrors Afghan women have endured since 1996.

“The Afghan people want, and the US government supports, a broad-based representative government, which includes women, in post-Taliban Afghanistan,” the report said.

“We believe any future Afghan government should be multi-ethnic, representative, and respect human rights, including those affecting women and girls,” it quoted Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky as saying.

BIRD WITH ONE WING: “Afghan society is like a bird with two wings. If one wing is cut off, then society will not function,” it quoted an Afghan elder as telling a refugee activist.

The old regime’s education minister had a different view. “It’s like having a flower, or a rose. You water it and keep it at home for yourself, to look at it and smell it. It (a woman) is not supposed to be taken out of the house to be smelled.”

In a striking example of the impact of Taliban rule, the report recounted how a young mother left her home without a male escort because her baby was sick.

Seeing her alone, a teenage guard shot her and her baby who were only saved because witnesses intervened.

“The Taliban has clamped down on knowledge, and ignorance is ruling instead,” said Sadriqa, a 22-year-old woman in Kabul.

“The life of Afghan women is so bad. We are locked at home and cannot see the sun,” said Najeeba, a 35-year-old widow.

Women suffered burns to the throat from swallowing battery acid in attempts to kill themselves, things were so awful under Taliban’s rule, the report said.

Life had been different before. “There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country began moving toward democracy,” it said.

Pre-Taliban, 70 percent of schoolteachers, half of government workers and 40 percent of doctors in Kabul were women, the report said.—Reuters