In this issue:

Pan-Asia Railway Expansion Set for New Year

'Silk Road' More Than 5,000 Years of History

Let the Truth Be Told About Afghanistan

U.S. Forces Under Almost Daily Attack in Afghanistan

New al-Qaeda Being Trained in Eastern Afghanistan

Aid to Afghanistan Has Never Arrived

Crises Hit Gloria Arroyo Government in Philippines

Invitation to Taiwan President Chen Cancelled

From Volume 1, Issue Number 42 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Dec. 23, 2002
Asia News Digest

Pan-Asia Railway Expansion Set for New Year

China will start construction of the Yunnan Province section of the Pan-Asia railway in 2003, it was announced at the Second China-ASEAN Business Council Meeting, held Dec. 16-17 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan.

China's Ministry of Railways and the government of Yunnan Province have submitted to the national State Development Planning Commission a proposal for construction of the 212-kilometer section of the railway. The Chinese railroad will connect the cities of Yuxi and Mengzi.

Yunnan is very rugged, and therefore construction will be an engineering feat. Other railroads exist, connecting Kunming to the coast, and to Chongqing on the Yangtze.

'Silk Road' More Than 5,000 Years of History

East-West exchanges along the "Silk Road" began at least 5,000 years ago, Chinese archaeologists stated at a conference in Xi'an, China. Professor Li Shuicheng of Beijing University reported that examination of a group of mace heads found in northwest China showed that they were at least 3,000-5,000 years old, and were extremely similar to those used ceremonially by kings of Ancient Egypt. The oldest date back 5,500 years. The report appeared in the China People's Daily of Dec. 18.

"Many experts shared the view that the mace heads were not a product of ancient Chinese civilization, but were transported from the West," Prof. Li said. They are made of stone, jade, or bronze, and have shapes and functions "surprisingly similar" to those of Ancient Egypt.

The Silk Road has generally been considered to be about 2,000 years old. Other East-West exchanges, through Mongolia and Central Asia to Europe, date back to the Bronze Age, 3,000-4,000 years ago, according to other Chinese scholars.

"Cultural influence is mutual and the earliest date for East-West exchanges might surpass our imagination," said Wang Hui, deputy director of Gansu Provincial Archaeological Institute.

Let the Truth Be Told About Afghanistan

In every war, the first casualty is truth. It was never so evident as in Afghanistan in recent days. The Bush Administration has convinced Americans, who really do not want to know the truth anyway, that the war in Afghanistan is over. The "good guys" have won and Afghanistan is now better than ever. The fact is, Washington is dishing out a pack of lies wrapped as a Christmas gift to Americans.

The Taliban militia, under attack from B-52 bombers, fled Kabul, but did not altogether vanish. They are very much there in southern Afghanistan, nourished by the Pushtun warlords, funded by vast poppy fields and various U.S. agencies, including the CIA. These warlords, led by such luminary "jihadis" as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Ismail Khan of Herat, Padshah Khan Zadrani of Paktia, Hazrat Ali of Nangarhar, Abdur Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad of Northern Afghanistan, amongst others, are all preparing for fresh battles against each other in their pursuit to take over what is left of Afghanistan.

In Kabul, where the U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai's writ runs only during the daytime hours, the Panjshiri Tajiks, led by Vice President and Defense Minister Gen. Fahimi, have captured the land and buildings in the true spirit of carpetbaggers. Panjshiri Tajiks, who have pledged their allegiance to the Northern Alliance leaders, pay no attention to President Karzai, who is simply a pawn in their hands.

Despite occasional outbursts against the warlords, particularly in presence of Western scribes, Karzai and his American benefactors know that even the nominal survival of the Afghan President depends upon the goodwill of the Panjshiri Tajiks. Most of the important Ministries belong to the Northern Alliance: Defense, Interior, Education, Security, External Affairs, Reconstruction and other important portfolios. Warlords not only rule the provinces, the central government consists mostly of warlords.

In addition, the NGOs, foreign and domestic, have swamped Kabul and other major cities. Though people have started building their houses here and there, there are no visible signs of reconstruction. The donors shy away from investing seriously and the promises of donations largely remain illusory. President Karzai has rightly blamed the international community for spending $1.3 billion through NGOs, which the latter use for posh offices, expensive cars, inflated salaries, etc., without any visible results. Meanwhile, reports of robbery, drunkenness, and bomb explosions fill the air of Kabul.

Outside Kabul, things resemble the Wild West. The regional authorities are totally in the hands of warlords allied mostly with the Northern Alliance. Ismail Khan rules the southwest; the east is in the hands of Hazrat Ali and his band. Commander Atta and Dostum rule the north. Other warlords, some of whom are allied with Northern Alliance, dominate the south. Gul Agha Sherzai dominates Kandahar, once the bastion of Taliban power, and it is not in his interest to finish warlordism.

Meanwhile, across the border in Pakistan, the dregs of the "Afghansis," dreaded and abandoned by the authorities of their Arab homelands, are continuing their drug-running, gun-smuggling plots and plans to "recapture" Afghanistan with the help of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers, Pakistani Army regulars, and the mullahs from Pakistani schools (madrassas). Yet Washington is telling the Americans that everything is going according to plan, and that there is nothing not under the control of the U.S. military.

It is evident that there are not many takers of this Washington propaganda, even among its newfound friends in India and Russia. President Vladimir Putin, prior to his recent trip to China and India (he also stopped at Kyrgyzstan on his way back home), gave the formal nod to set up a military air base in Kyrgyzstan close to the capital city of Bishkek. India has already set up an air base near the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border.

Both Russia and India are convinced that the United States, with its attention and interest focussed elsewhere, will abandon Afghanistan again as it did in 1989, handing control over to Pakistan, its staunchest ally in the war against terrorism. Both Russia and India believe that with American blessings, Pakistan will once again set out to establish a pro-Pakistan, anti-Russia, anti-India government in Kabul. Hence, the preemptive moves by Delhi and Moscow.

What all this means is that the rebuilding of Afghanistan was a cruel hoax; peace in our time in Afghanistan is a lie; and many Afghans who are freezing and starving to death now, will continue to do so till the bloodbath begins again.

U.S. Forces Under Almost Daily Attack in Afghanistan

On Dec. 19, Dan Plesch, senior research fellow at Britain's Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, warned in the London Guardian that U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan are under almost daily attack.

U.S. forces have suffered a lot of setbacks during 2002 in Afghanistan, Plesch wrote. Since mid-September, U.S. forces based around Khost in eastern Afghanistan have been increased to more than 2,000, from just a few hundred.

U.S.-led attacks have been "ineffective, suffered outright defeat, or resulted in disaster," Plesch wrote. The troops are kept inside their bases by almost daily assault by missiles and machine guns.

Even the highly publicized "Operation Anaconda" last March was a disaster: Instead of crushing al-Qaeda forces, "it was the U.S. Army that was ambushed" after its plans were betrayed by the supposedly cooperating Afghan militias. Months later, the 82nd Airborne was brought in—instead of being kept available for use in Iraq, noted Plesch, and in recent months has been used to run brutal, and largely ineffective, house-to-house searches for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

"U.S. strategy appears to be limited to continuing to pay local warlords to keep the peace, but these efforts have not even been enough to get control of the opium crop," Plesch wrote. A new 82nd Airborne brigade is to arrive in Afghanistan this month, and in 2003, German and Dutch forces will be stationed in Kabul. The U.S. is now considering setting up a dozen new bases around Afghanistan. However, these bases will be very vulnerable to continued attack, Plesch concluded.

New al-Qaeda Being Trained in Eastern Afghanistan

Further evidence of the failure of the U.S. Afghanistan campaign in the war on terrorism was revealed with the latest report by the United Nations group monitoring al-Qaeda, which says the group remains a "potent global force" with new "foot soldiers" being trained in camps in eastern Afghanistan.

Over a year after the U.S.-led war began against the Taliban in Afghanistan, now there is evidence of "the apparent activation of new, albeit simple, training camps in eastern Afghanistan" for al-Qaeda. The camps are "small, discreet" and mobile. "Volunteers are making their way to these camps, swelling the numbers of would-be al-Qaeda activists and the longer-term capabilities of the network," the UN report said.

There are also reports of training camps coming from the area of Peshawar, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistani intelligence officials said last week that suicide squads are being trained in Pakistan by al-Qaeda operatives.

Aid to Afghanistan Has Never Arrived

In November, Western aid agencies released the horrifying figures that the Afghan population has gotten far less economic aid than any other nation recently involved in military conflict. The people of Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and East Timor all received an annual average of $250 per person in postwar aid; Afghanistan, torn by 20 years of war, got a fraction of that—only $75 per person in 2002, and has been promised a pathetic $42 per person a year in the next four years. Food supplies have been destroyed by four years of severe drought; now, yet another winter is beginning.

The "aid" farce continues. Afghanistan had been promised $5 billion in aid by 20 industrialized countries at a meeting in Tokyo last year; it got about $1.5 billion. There was just another such aid meeting in Norway, and about $1.2 billion was pledged for 2003. What will materialize, is another question.

Health care for mothers and children is especially horrendous. Almost half the deaths among Afghan women of childbearing age, 15-49, resulted from complications of pregnancy or childbirth, according to a study by CARE. The death rate of reproductive Afghan women is almost 200 times higher than in the United States.

In mid-November, the anniversary of the liberation of Kabul from the Taliban, students demonstrated over the dire conditions at the university. When riots broke out, at least six students were killed when police opened fire.

Crises Hit Gloria Arroyo Government in Philippines

The Philippines government of President Gloria Arroyo-Macapagal has been hit with several political crises. With the IMF breathing down its neck to increase tax collections and raise taxes on the poor (they even want to tax "texting," the phone-message system used across the Philippines!), Arroyo-Macapagal followed the Bush path by firing the messenger—her top economic adviser, National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Director Dante Canlas—on Dec. 14, along with two of his assistants. She also switched to another overall economic plan, but neither the old nor the new approaches reality.

Also, Hernando Perez, the Justice Minister, was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, in regard to accusations that he extorting $2 million from Congressman Mark Jimenez. Arroyo-Macapagal had given Perez a 30-day leave to clear himself at the end of November, but he will now certainly resign.

As to Congressman Jimenez, he has just lost bail on his appeal of extradition to the U.S., where he is wanted on charges of illegal campaign contributions to Clinton Democrats in 1996, while he was working in the United States. He has now agreed to return to the U.S. and turn himself in.

Sources in Manila report that coup rumors—most tracing back to the usual source of Fidel Ramos and his U.S. backers—are heating up, as Arroyo-Macapagal looks increasingly unable to win the 2004 election. Look out for another phony "people's power" movement to put another oligarchical puppet in place before the election.

Invitation to Taiwan President Chen Cancelled

The Indonesian Government has intervened to cancel the invitation to Taiwan President Chen Shuibian from the Sultan of Yogyakarta, according to the Jakarta Post. President Chen was initially scheduled to arrive in Indonesia with a large trade delegation on Dec. 15, at the invitation of Yogyakarta Governor Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X (the Sultan of Yogyakarta, who historically plays a leading role in Indonesian politics and society). The invitation may have been a challenge to the Jakarta government, since it clearly could damage the Indonesia-China relationship, at a time when China is playing an increasingly important role in Indonesia's development.

Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda intervened publicly, saying that Jakarta would not receive the Taiwanese President. "We rejected the visit and denied the entry of the official should he insist on coming to Indonesia," Hassan told the Jakarta Post. "I think (Taiwan is) fully aware that it will be very embarrassing should their President be denied entry by our authorities, so they have to postpone the plan," the Minister said. He stressed that Indonesia adheres to the One-China policy and does not acknowledge Taiwan as an independent state. China also made its objections to Chen's planned visit public.

Chen then cancelled the trip. There have been calls from some circles in Taiwan for a cut in economic relations with Indonesia in response. Foreign Minister Hassan responded that investment and trade relations are based on business criteria, and should not be affected by the incident.

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