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POLITICS-AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Emerges as UN Pariah

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 8 1999 (IPS) - Support for UN embargoes against Libya and Iraq may be weakening but the UN Security Council has found a new target for sanctions: Afghanistan and its ruling Taliban movement.

There were few objections when the United States and Russia introduced a draft resolution in the Council Wednesday that would impose an international ban on all flights by Afghanistan’s Ariana airline and freeze the Taliban’s overseas assets.

The draft resolution, which may come to a vote next week, urged the Taliban to hand over Saudi financier and suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden “without further delay” so that he could be put on trial.

Bin Laden, head of the Islamist al-Qaeda organisation, was accused by US authorities of planning the Aug. 7, 1998, bombing of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.

In retaliation, US warplanes stuck at targets in Afghanistan two weeks later but Taliban leaders claimed that Washington had not provided proof of bin Laden’s involvement.

The United States unilaterally imposed a ban on Ariana flights two months ago and has lobbied heavily for the proposed UN sanctions. Even such longtime opponents of sanctions as Russia and China hesitated to back the Taliban’s radical Islamists.

Russia, increasingly concerned about radical Islamists in general, pushed for sanctions aginst the Taliban and China indicated it would not cast any veto but would abstain from any sanctions vote – as long as it was targeted at the Taliban leadership.

At a time when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Muammar Khadafi’s Libya are slowly emerging from cumbersome sanctions regimes, the Taliban – which controls some 95 percent of Afghanistan – is not recognised by the United Nations as the government and has become a uniquely isolated state.

Many traditional opponents of sanctions – including two neighbouring states, Iran and India – were sympathetic to efforts to punish the Taliban.

Iran accused the Taliban, a radical Sunni group, of conducting massacres against Shi’a Muslims while India has alleged Afghan involvement in training Kashmiri separatists.

As a result, as one UN ambassador put it, governments have “no major problems” in passing a resolution which could in effect cut Afghanistan off from the outside world.

Currently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the only country which allows flights by Ariana airlines.

Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, the Taliban’s representative in New York, conceded recently that he was “not very optimistic” that the Islamic group would be able to prevent the imposition of sanctions. “They want chaos and anarchy to prevail,” he said of the nations which favoured sanctions.

Ironically UN sanctions regimes have not fared well in recent years.

This year, amid signs of dwindling support for a flight ban against Libya, the United States and Britain struck a deal for a trial of two Libyan bombing suspects in the Netherlands – a move which led to the suspension of UN sanctions on Tripoli.

Meanwhile, Washington and London backed an effort to suspend export sanctions against Iraq if Baghdad allowed renewed UN weapons inspections. Yet China, France and Russia threatened to block any such resolution, arguing that it did not go far enough in lifting the entire nine-year-old embargo on Iraq.

Afghanistan, however, is a different case.

More than three years after the Taliban seized the Afghan capital, Kabul, and imposed its unusual form of Islamic rule – including the drastic seclusion of women and crackdowns on religious and ethnic minorities – it has won recognition from only three countries: the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The UN seat for Afghanistan remained occupied by representatives of former President Berhanuddin Rabbani’s government, which largely was in exile in neighbouring states and controlled only a small strip of the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s record on everything from women’s rights to drug control, if anything, has worsened since it strengthened its grip over the country.

Last month, the UN Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) reported that Afghanistan was estimated to have produced 4600 metric tonnes of raw opium this year, the highest level recorded for any country.

That amount, UNDCP added, represented a 120 percent increase in Afghan opium production in just 12 months.

Last month, Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN special rapporteur on violence against women, reported that the Taliban had one of the most misogynist administrations she had encountered. “I have never seen suffering like in Afghanistan,” Coomaraswamy declared.

She said that she received reports of widespread beatings and harassment of women, as well as their exclusion from education and employment.

The movement’s record has been so poor that some diplomatic sources have claimed that Pakistan – perhaps its firmest ally – had quietly decided not to oppose the UN sanctions campaign.

Yet the Taliban has countered that its opponents – such as Rabbani’s ousted regime – had similarly poor records, without arousing international condemnation.

Mujahid contended that for years, “not a single women” was allowed in the schools run by their opponents in refugee camps in Pakistan, and added: “Did you raise your voice?”

Mujahid doubted that the Taliban would change its posture against extraditing bin Laden if sanctions were imposed. Bin Laden, he claimed, posed no threat since “he is being patrolled by a special committee” while he resided in Afghanistan.

 
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