The Toronto Star Bhutto Helped Create Taliban Monster
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The Toronto Star Bhutto helped create Taliban monster Wednesday, January 2, 2008 Page: A02 Section: News Byline: Rosie DiManno Source: Toronto Star Illustrations: SAEED KHAN getty images Pakistani policemen patrol at the site of the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi yesterday. Parliamentary elections originally set for Jan. 8 are expected to be delayed until February, due to the fallout caused by Bhutto's death. A date is to be announced today. In 1991, Pakistan's intelligence services stashed a lied brazenly to Washington about the extent to massive cache of assault rifles and ammunition at a which Pakistan, with her approval, was covertly secret weapons dump in Spin Boldak, rushing arming and funding the Taliban. As Bhutto admitted armaments across the border as a (phony) deadline in a 2002 interview: "Once I gave the go-ahead that loomed for ending direct supply of their favoured they should get the money, I don't know how much combatants in Afghanistan's civil war. money they were ultimately given ... I know it was a lot. It was just carte blanche." Seventeen tunnels beneath the dump contained enough weaponry to arm thousands of soldiers. For Bhutto, the objective was to keep a new Afghanistan yoked to Pakistan and out of India's Three years later, the Taliban broke the depot open orbit. (Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah and handed out rifles - still wrapped in plastic - to Massoud was considered far too Delhi-friendly.) Out volunteers summoned from local madrassas, an of this relationship would flow the riches of a incident documented in the authoritative book Ghost Pakistan-controlled trucking industry circumventing Wars. Kabul - a modern Silk Road trade incorporating the markets of Central Asia - the never realized gas Within 24 hours, the Taliban captured Kandahar, pipeline from Turkmenistan, and training camps, off Mullah Omar took possession of the governor's the Pakistan reservation, for fighters deployed to headquarters, and the airport was seized - with its six Kashmir. MiG- 21 fighter jets, four Mi-17 transport helicopters, fleet of tanks and armed personnel Bhutto had an economic and political vision for carriers. Pakistan, one that depended largely on creating a compliant client state next door. It all got away from The Taliban gutting of Afghanistan was on, nearly all her, as it did also from the ISI. Indeed, Al Qaeda - opponents swept aside, Kabul falling with barely a now firmly interwoven with the Taliban - was whimper. contemptuous of Bhutto from the start, plotting her political demise, at the invitation of some ISI As Ghost Wars author Steve Coll so dryly put it: officers, as early as 1989. "Benazir Bhutto was suddenly the matron of a new Afghan faction." Maybe by 2007, Bhutto had learned from her mistakes. Perhaps there was more to her than the The late - twice - but no longer future prime minister democratic platitudes she espoused, as Washington's of Pakistan was far, far from a stupid woman. The latest putative ally in the region. But this was a Taliban was a gamble she took, cunningly if not woman who lied and connived with brio, bewitching without considerable trepidation - and certainly at the even the most garrumphing skeptics with her behest of a powerful intelligence service, the ISI, she intelligence, charm and beauty. feared but had to accommodate, in the doomed hope of retaining office. She's already a better martyr than she ever was a leader of state. But make no mistake: The woman who is now being so widely mourned - assassinated last week, perhaps Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, by the very elements she empowered more than a Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. decade ago - was nurturing stepmother to terrorists incubated under her watch; the same Islamist fanatics © 2008 Torstar Corporation she inveighed against during the election campaign that came to a screeching halt in the calamitous assault on her motorcade. She was a brave woman, without question, but Bhutto was much to blame for the tinderbox that Pakistan became during her exile in Dubai and London - the toxic military entanglement with the Taliban - having helped to create a monster that not even the sponsoring ISI can control any longer. For years, during her second tenure as PM, Bhutto FPinfomart.ca Page 1 Prince George Citizen Taliban Target Canadians; Bombing against convoy kills 38 civilians Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Page: 24 Section: News Dateline: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan Source: Canadian Press with files from The Associated Press and Afghan journalist A.R. Khan Illustrations: Colour Photo: CP Photo / An Afghan survivor of a suicide car bombing in Kandahar is carried into a hospital in Chaman, Pakistan for treatment on Monday. KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Concerns that the explosion. Taliban are changing tactics grew Monday after another brutal bombing in southern Afghanistan, and Canadian troops operate in Kandahar province as part the local governor suggested the bloodbath could of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, have been avoided had Canadian troops heeded or ISAF. Spin Boldak is about 75 kilometres south of Afghan government warnings. Kandahar city. A suicide bomber blew up his car next to a Canadian The Afghan government has levelled criticism in the convoy patrolling near the Afghan-Pakistan border past at coalition troops for not communicating Monday afternoon, killing 38 Afghans, wounding enough with local forces, leading to civilian dozens more and injuring four Canadian soldiers. casualties during military operations. The blast in a busy market area in Spin Boldak came The Canadian military says all of its operations are one day after the worst explosion in Afghan history -- conducted jointly with Afghan national security more than 100 people are believed killed in the forces, including police, who themselves are often the suicide attack at a dog-fighting festival on the target of insurgent attacks. outskirts of Kandahar city. But with the horrific death toll in the latest attacks, The target of Sunday's attack was believed to have Afghan politicians and academics are suggesting that been a local police commander, who was killed in the Afghan civilians are becoming the target. blast, while Monday's target appeared to be the Canadian Forces directly. "The attacks show that the enemies of Afghanistan are changing their tactics. Now they are not thinking Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said he tried to about civilians at all," said Nasrullah Stanikzai, a warn the police commander away from Sunday's professor of political science at Kabul University. event, much like he warned Canadians away from the Spin Boldak area on Monday. "They wanted to cause such big casualties in these attacks to weaken the morale of the government and "We informed the Canadian Forces to avoid the international community, to show the world the patrolling the border areas because our intelligence Afghan government is too weak to prevent them," he units had information that suicide attackers were in said. the areas and wanted to target Canadian or government forces," Khalid said. Suicide attacks aimed at Canadian convoys are not always effective against soldiers protected by tonnes "Despite informing the Canadians, they went to those of armour. But in crowded areas, the bombing can be areas anyway." deadly for civilian bystanders. The Canadian military bristled at the suggestion the Babinsky said it was too early to declare the deaths and injuries could have been avoided, saying back-to-back bombings a change in tactic, and the Canadian Forces make the decisions on where its Defence Peter MacKay said he would not describe soldiers will patrol. the latest violence in Afghanistan as an escalation. "I would describe it as another example of, sadly, how "We regularly receive threat warnings and obviously determined the Taliban insurgents continue to be," we go where we want to, when we want to in our area MacKay said. of operation," said Lt.-Cmdr. Pierre Babinsky. while visiting New Delhi. "We obviously take notice of these warnings but our aim is to operate freely within our area of operation "We have to be persistent in our efforts to succeed in despite those." turning back these insidious and despicable tactics used by the Taliban, and not be thwarted in our Three of the four Canadian soldiers wounded in the determination to work with the allies and to see that blast have been released from hospital; the fourth was Afghanistan is going to become a peaceful, stable expected to remain overnight for observation, place." Babinsky said. But Denis Coderre, the Liberal defence critic in One military vehicle was damaged during the Ottawa, disputed MacKay's assessment. FPinfomart.ca Page 2 "There is an escalation of violence," Coderre said. The Taliban "want to impose themselves ... It's part of their plan saying: `We exist. We're growing. We're back. You didn't get us'." Coderre also had questions about the relationship between the Canadian military and local authorities. "How do they treat the intelligence from the Afghan government and the Afghan people?" The Taliban claimed responsibility for Monday's attack but have denied they were involved in the blast at the dog-fighting competition. © 2008 Prince George Citizen FPinfomart.ca Page 3 The Canadian Press - Broadcast News --Twentieth NewsWatch-- Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Section: General And National News Some women's advocates say a trial set to begin in Edmonton in the morning is already a victory for (StatsCan-Fat-Kids)(Audio:175) their cause. Children living in Canada's poorest neighbourhoods Outreach worker JoAnn McCartney says the killings are more likely to be overweight. of prostitutes such as Rachel Quinney and Theresa Innes rarely result in charges. A Statistics Canada survey that tracked 22-hundred children for eight years concludes poor families Aboriginal women's advocate Muriel Venne (VEHN) cannot afford healthy food.