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Thursday, October 23, 2003

I can't believe I am posting a link to Fox News but that's where Rumsfield's memo is posted.

I have read to paragraph 4 and find a remarkable statement showing, perhaps, less expertise about terrorists than I would imagine Rumsfeld has.

I quote "USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban - Omar, Hekmatyar, etc."

The odd thing is that Gulbudin Hekmatyar is not a Talib. He is the head of the Hezb i Islami a very different organization which has fought the Taliban.

Hekmatyar is a violent, anti-US fundamentalist moslem.
The Hezb i Islami are responsible for most (almost all)
of the devastation of Kabul done not by the Soviet Union, not by the Muhjedein (incl Hezb i Islami) fighting the
Soviet Union, done not by the Taliban or the
United Uniteds (US-UK) fighting the Taliban.
Kabul was largely destroyed by the Hezb i Islami (on Hekmatyar's orders) as it fought the other 6 Muhjedein groups for control of Afganistan.

One of the first effects of the rise of the Taliban was the destruction of the Hezb i Islami as an effective fighting forse.
This largely explains the significant support the Taliban originally had among non insane Afghans.

Hekmatyar is a particularly interesting case, since, unlike the Taliban he was assisted by US dollars. The division of US assistance to the resistance to the Soviet occupation was handled by Pakistan which gave the largest share to the Hezb i Islami.

I am an economist. Can it really be that I know more about Afghan politics than the secretary of defence ?

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