Afghans rally to the Lion to oust America
The Sunday Times
Antonia Francis in Kabul
June 04, 2006 -
YOUNG men with scarves wrapped tightly across their faces were rampaging through Kabul’s deserted streets last week, hunting down foreigners in hotels and aid offices in an explosion of hatred sparked by a traffic accident. Shouting “Death to America” and clutching Kalashnikovs, they brandished the poster of an unlikely hero: Ahmed Shah Massoud, the assassinated anti-Taliban commander who in death has been transformed into the symbol of resistance to the US-backed government.
Massoud, scourge of the Soviet occupiers and spearhead of the war on the Taliban, was murdered on Osama Bin Laden’s orders by a bomb hidden in a television camera two days before the September 11 attacks on America in 2001.
The terror strikes provoked the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. With the help of Massoud’s forces, the Taliban were toppled, ushering in the democratic era. But now history has turned full circle. It is in Massoud’s name that today’s rioters are seeking to rid Afghanistan of “all foreign forces and non-Muslims”. More
Massoud's Last Words
Two weeks before his assassination, the Taliban's chief adversary granted what would be his last interview
Newsweek Exclusive
Sept. 20 - Ahmed Shah Massoud, the former defense minister and head of Afghanistan's deposed government, was killed by suicide bombers two days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The 48-year-old Massoud was an indomitable resistance leader in the 1980s, repelling one Soviet foray after the next. But after the Soviets withdrew from the country, the coalition government that he was a part of was unable to hold onto power. By the mid '90s, Massoud became the chief adversary of the Taliban. As head of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, he would have been a key figure in any future attempts by the United States to overthrow the current regime in Kabul.
THE ASSASSINS, posing as journalists, and now suspected of working for Osama bin Laden, murdered Massoud with a bomb hidden in a television camera. Two weeks earlier, NEWSWEEK's Antonia Francis met with Massoud in a large reception room at a compound near the town of Khwaja Bahaouddin. Security was lax. Journalists were not searched. Massoud kept everyone waiting while he said his prayers, then sat behind a large desk and answered questions through a translator.
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Riots in Karzai's Kabul
On The Frontline
By Antonia Francis
Kabul, Afghanistan
For the first time in 15 years, the swimming pool is full in the Hotel Continental, Kabul. For journalists what greater sign of progress?
This is Karzai’s Kabul where foreigners have easy access to Toyota land cruisers and discrete French restaurants, efficient ISAF coalition press emails and air-conditioned interviews. This Kabul seems a different city to the car-less streets of calm under the Taliban.
Far away in southern Afghanistan, there are talks of hundreds of casualties in the US 'Operation Enduring Freedom' and GB-led ISAF coalition operations. A mosque holding 50 Taliban bombed; Taliban attacking in broad daylight with units 100-men strong; anti-Taliban provincial police chiefs assassinated; US air-strikes killing tens of women and children as well as ‘suspected’ militants.
Some question the statistics. Some question the targets. Some suggest foreign military operations are increasingly embroiled in tribal feuds, blindly trusting local tip-offs from tribal chiefs whose real motives are to eliminate competition in Afghanistan’s $2.7 billion-dollar drugs industry.
But nothing is verifiable. Fixers for the foreigners don't like to go. Maybe it's just propaganda.
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Myth-Making Ceremonies for Evo Morales
Antonia Francis
La Paz, Bolivia
Wreathed in coca leaves and white carnations, Evo Morales walked barefoot through the ancient pre-Incan capital of his forefathers to give thanks to the mother earth he believes helped make him president. As the first indigenous elected president in south American history, Morales´s inauguration this weekend had all the signs of a wider historic change for the continent.
Walking upon the grounds where local Quechua and Aymara had buried llamas foetus's to satisfy the earth goddess, Morales paid homage to the indian Gods, the Bolivian people and Che Guevara. As if the left wing message wasn´t clear enough, on Sunday, he stood hand in hand with Venezuela´s far left leader, Hugo Chavez and praised the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes.
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Fighting for the Rainforests [Bolivia] An environmentalist discusses how big business is helping to preserve the Amazon—and how Bolivian President Evo Morales's efforts to help poor coca farmers could threaten these efforts.
By Antonia Francis
Newsweek
March 24, 2006 - There's a reason that William Powers's writing is so down to earth. It's because Powers's goal is to protect the earth. On the front line of conservation in the Amazon, Powers has successfully initiated the largest rainforest-based carbon project in the world. He has harnessed big-business financing from companies such as British Petroleum and American Electric Power to protect Bolivia's rainforests in exchange for "green points"—a system allowing Kyoto Protocol signatories to gain credits for activities that boost the environment's capacity to absorb carbon.
In the process, Powers's project has protected 2 million hectares—almost 5 million acres—of carbon-absorbent forest, saved endangered species such as the jaguar and river dolphin and ensured legal rights to the land for 2,000 native Chiquitano Indians, who now head the project themselves. His new book, “Whispering in the Giant's Ear” (Bloomsbury) is a rip-roaring chronicle of the struggles and compromises, doubts and determination needed to implement the Kyoto accords—an international agreement setting targets for industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions—in Bolivia. With a host of unlikely heroes, it pits petroleum companies alongside local Indians, fighting against loggers.
Bolivia's leftist new president, however, could pose a fresh threat to the protected forests as he tries to help his nation's impoverished farmers.
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Nepal's students look for 'third way' out of civil war The Army says it killed 50 Maoist guerrillas in a battle on Sunday. The rebels dispute claim and vow to press on.
By Antonia Francis| Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Since the suspension of Nepal's parliament two years ago, student unions have stepped in to fill the country's political void. Students are widely seen as the voice of the Nepalese people who are caught in a deepening civil war between King Gyanendra and Maoist insurgents.
The eight-year conflict has left more than 9,000 dead. On Sunday, 50 Maoist guerrillas and 17 police and soldiers were killed in a 12-hour battle in the mountain town of Beni, according to the Army.
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