Hussein info....

[Navaron]

Here's a few things for those of you who don't think we're justified going into Iraq, or that it isn't the moral thing to do.


British PM Brings Back Baghdad Horrors

March 6, 2003


If any of these peace protesters could go talk to Kurds or marsh Arabs under Hussein's thumb - they'd do a complete 180 on the need to remove Saddam by force. Liberal British MP Ann Clwyd underwent such a transformation, and it helped bring about this massive switch in British public opinion which now favors Tony Blair's position by a 3-1 margin.

Ms. Clwyd is a member of the left who has opened her eyes to evil. Read her column and master some of the horror stories, so you can educate everyone who asks about this. She told the UK Guardian of an under-nourished Iraqi teacher who gave birth in prison. She begged for milk to feed the child, but the guards refused. "For three days she held that baby in her arms and would not give the body up," Clwyd said. "After three days due to the 60-degree heat, the body of course started to smell, and [the woman] was taken away and killed."

Remember that New Zealand woman who offered to let Bush crucify her if he'd leave Saddam alone? Clwyd writes of a tortured and crucified a 15-year-old boy: "On the walls were hundreds of photographs of piles of clothing, mass graves and skulls. Saddam's regime is like the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis." Anti-war protesters "scream traitor" at Clwyd, but she won't back down on the truth and now admires Tony Blair for his stance. She's seen the proof which, as I predicted, we'll all find when we liberate that country. That's when the world will ask the Frances of the world, "Why did you sit still and trade with this monster?"


MP backs war after meeting victims of Saddam's torture
By Greg Hurst, Parliamentary Correspondent



THE Labour MP Ann Clwyd told the Commons yesterday how hearing harrowing accounts of Saddam�s torture victims convinced her of the case for military action to overthrow him.
She described visiting Northern Iraq, from which she returned to attend yesterday�s debate, where she was told by former prisoners of mass executions, beatings and the crucifixion of a teenager.

Ms Clwyd asked MPs opposed to war: �Who is to help the victims of Saddam Hussein�s regime unless we do it? �I believe in regime change. I say that without any reservation I will support the Government tonight because I think it is doing a brave thing.�

She accused MPs of overlooking human rights abuses in Iraq and blamed a mistaken belief that these had been halted by the last Gulf War. She had pressed for Britain to indict Saddam for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, but became convinced of the need for military action on her most recent visit.

She described how she wept, the first time she had cried in public, when opening a genocide museum in Northern Iraq on finding herself surrounded by victims of Saddam�s regime.

One mother showed her photographs of her husband and her two sons who were tortured and died in the same building.

A man freed from prison in Saddam�s amnesty for political prisoners described in a victim statement almost daily executions. After an attempt to kill Uday Hussein, one of Saddam�s sons, 2,000 prisoners were killed in one day, Ms Clwyd said.

Another account was of a woman who gave birth in jail, but was unable to produce enough milk to breast-feed her baby because of the diet of thin soup and bread. �She begged guards for milk, but they refused and then the baby died. For three days she held that baby in her arms,� she said. �The temperature was very hot, and the body began to smell. They took the woman and the dead baby away. I asked a prisoner what happened to her. He said she was killed.�

A boy of 15 fainted during torture in prison. �They pinned him up to the frame of a window, crucified him,� she said. The boy cried for water, which was refused, and another prisoner who splashed water on his face was taken away and beaten, she said.

She also told MPs of visiting a United Nations camp housing Kurds, who had been given 24 hours to leave their homes. �That is the reality of Saddam�s Iraq,� she said. �When I hear people calling for more time, I say who is going to speak up for those victims?�

Ms Clwyd, MP for Cynon Valley in South Wales, has campaigned for 25 years to stop human rights abuses in Iraq. She was Labour�s spokeswoman for overseas development during the last Gulf War.

[Navaron]

Ann Clwyd: 'I support the government. It's doing a brave thing'

Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
Thursday February 27, 2003
The Guardian

Labour leftwinger Ann Clwyd, a long-standing supporter of Kurdish rights in northern Iraq, last night in the Commons recounted individual horror stories of the suffering inflicted on ethnic minorities by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Ms Clwyd told MPs: "I believe in regime change, and I say that without any hesitation at all, and I will support the government tonight because I think it's doing a brave thing."

Returning from Kurdistan this week, she said she had cried after hearing from victims of torture.

Ms Clwyd, MP for Cynon Valley, told of an under-nourished university teacher who had given birth in prison and begged guards for milk to feed her child. The guards refused and the baby died.

"For three days she held that baby in her arms and would not give the body up. After three days due to the 60-degree heat, the body of course started to smell, and [the woman] was taken away and killed."

She also told of a 15-year-old boy tortured and crucified, and pinned against the prison window. When he begged for water a prisoner who came to his aid was beaten up.

She found many refugees had been ethnically cleansed for being Kurds.

"That's the reality of Saddam's Iraq," she said. "When I hear people calling for more time, I say, who is going to speak up for those victims? Who is to help the victims of Saddam's regime unless we do it?"

She said the regime should be indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and it was her great regret that Britain had not led the way to regime change in Iraq when it had the chance during the first Gulf war.

[Navaron]

'Saddam controlled the camp'
The Iraqi connection

As evidence linking Iraqi intelligence to the 11 September hijackers begins to emerge, David Rose gathers testimony from former Baghdad agents and the CIA to reveal the secrets of Saddam's terror training camp

War on Terrorism: Observer special

David Rose
Observer

Sunday November 11, 2001


His friends call him Abu Amin, 'the father of honesty'. At 43, he is one of Iraq's most highly decorated intelligence officers: a special forces veteran who organised killings behind Iranian lines during the first Gulf war, who then went on to a senior post in the unit known as 'M8' - the department for 'special operations', such as sabotage, terrorism and murder. This is the man, Colonel Muhammed Khalil Ibrahim al-Ani, whom Mohamed Atta flew halfway across the world to meet in Prague last April, five months before piloting his hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Centre.

Evidence is mounting that this meeting was not an isolated event. The Observer has learnt that Atta's talks with al-Ani were only one of several apparent links between Iraq, the 11 September hijackers and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Senior US intelligence sources say the CIA has 'credible information' that in the spring of this year, at least two other members of the hijacking team also met known Iraqi intelligence agents outside the United States. They are believed to be Atta's closest associates and co-leaders, Marwan al-Shehri and Ziad Jarrah, the other two members of the 'German cell ' who lived with Atta in Hamburg in the late 1990s.

In the strongest official statement to date alleging Iraqi involvement in the new wave of anti-Western terrorism, on Friday night Milos Zeman, the Czech Prime Minister, told reporters and Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, that the Czech authorities believed Atta and al-Ani met expressly to discuss a bombing. He said they were plotting to destroy the Prague-based Radio Free Europe with a truck stuffed with explosives, adding: 'Yes, you cannot exclude also the hypothesis that they discussed football, ice hockey, weather and other topics. But I am not so sure.

In Washington and Whitehall, a furious political battle is raging over the scope of the anti-terrorist war, and whether it should eventually include action against Iraq. According to the Foreign Office, British Ministers have responded to this prospect with 'horror', arguing that an attack on Saddam Hussein would cause terrible civilian casualties and cement anti-Western anger across Middle East.

Meanwhile, Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, heads a clique of determined, powerful hawks, most of them outside the administration - among them James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA. The doves argue that an al-Qaeda-Iraq link is improbable, given the sharp ideological differences between Saddam's secular Baathism and Islamic fundamentalism. They also say that claims of Iraqi involvement are being driven by the agenda of the hawks - a group which has for years been seeking to finish the job left undone at the end of the Gulf war in 1991.

Nevertheless, Saddam does not lack a plausible motive: revenge for his expulsion from Kuwait in 1991, and for the continued sanctions and Western bombing of his country ever since. In this febrile atmosphere, hard information about who ordered the 11 September attacks remains astonishingly scarce.

US investigators have traced the movements of the 19 hijackers going back years, and have amassed a detailed picture of who did what inside the conspiracy. Yet what lay beyond the hijackers is an intelligence black hole. If they had a support network in America, none of its members has been traced, and among the hundreds of telephone records and emails the investigators have recovered, nothing gets close to identifying those ultimately responsible.

It still seems almost certain, intelligence sources say, that parts of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network actively backed the conspiracy: about half of the estimated $500,000 the hijackers used reportedly came from al-Qaeda sources, while some of the terrorists are believed to have passed through bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. At the same time, however, evidence is emerging of direct Iraqi links with the US hijackers in particular, and with radical Islamic terror groups in general.

In the early period after the attacks, Western intelligence agencies said they knew of nothing to suggest an Iraqi connection. That position has now changed. A top US analyst - a serving intelligence official with no connection to the 'hawks' around Wolfowitz - told The Observer: 'You should think of this thing as a spectrum: with zero Iraqi involvement at one end, and 100 per cent Iraqi direction and control at the other. The scenario we now find most plausible is somewhere in the middle range - significant Iraqi assistance and some involvement.'

Last night, Whitehall sources made clear that parts of British intelligence had reached the same conclusion. Uncomfortable as it may be, this reassessment is having a political impact. Last month, when the CIA was still telling him it did not believe Iraq was involved in 11 September, Powell said there were 'no plans' to attack Iraq. Last Thursday, speaking in Kuwait, he abruptly reversed his earlier pronouncements. He promised that after dealing with bin Laden and Afghanistan, 'we will turn our attention to terrorism throughout the world, and nations such as Iraq'.

The FBI is now sure that Atta, the Egyptian who had studied in Germany, was the hijackers' overall leader. He personally handled more than $100,000 of the plot's funds, more than any other conspirator, and he made seven foreign trips in 2000 and 2001 - all of which appear to have had some operational significance. Investigators lay heavy stress on a captured al-Qaeda manual which emphasises the value of conducting discussions about pending terrorist attacks face to face, rather than by electronic means.

Two of those trips were to meet al-Ani in Prague. The Iraqi's profile has been supplied by defectors from Saddam's intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, who are now being guarded by the London-based opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). CIA sources have confirmed its crucial details. 'There's really no doubt that al-Ani is a very senior Iraqi agent,' one source said.

[Navaron]

The Observer has interviewed two of the defectors. They began to tell their stories at the beginning of October, and have been debriefed extensively by the FBI and the CIA. Al-Ani's experience in covert 'wet jobs' (assassinations), gives his meetings with Atta a special significance: his expertise was killing.

According to the defectors, he has an unusual ability to change his appearance and operate under cover. One defector recalls a meeting in the early 1990s when al-Ani had long, silver hair, and wore jeans, silver chains and sunglasses. Al-Ani explained he was about to undertake a mission which required him to look like a Western hippy. A member of Saddam's Baathist party since his youth, al-Ani also has extensive experience working with radical Islamists such as Mohamed Atta.

Since the 1980s, Saddam has organised numerous Islamic conferences in Baghdad, expressly for the Mukhabarat to find foreign recruits. Al-Ani has been seen at at least two of them. On one occasion, the defectors say, he took on the cover of a Muslim cleric at a fundamentalists' conference in Karachi, presenting himself as a delegate from the Iraqi shrine of the Sufi mystic Abdel-Qadir al-Gaylani, whose followers are numerous in Pakistan.

Last Wednesday, Iraq made its own response to the news of the meetings between al-Ani and Atta. Tariq Aziz, Saddam's Deputy Prime Minister, denied Iraq had anything to do with the hijackings, saying: 'Even if that [the meetings] happened, that would mean nothing, for a diplomat could meet many people during his duty, whether he was at a restaurant or elsewhere, and even if he met Mohamed Atta, that would not mean the Iraqi diplomat was involved.'

Yet the striking thing about the meetings is the lengths to which Atta went in order to attend them. In June last year, he flew to Prague from Hamburg, only to be refused entry because he had failed to obtain a visa. Three days later, now equipped with the paperwork, Atta was back for a visit of barely 24 hours. He flew from the Czech Republic to the US, where he began to train as pilot. In early April 2001, when the conspiracy's planning must have been nearing its final stages, Atta was back in Prague for a further brief visit - a journey of considerable inconvenience.

On 17 April, the Czechs expelled al-Ani, who had diplomatic cover, as a hostile spy. Last night, a senior US diplomatic source told The Observer that Atta was not the only suspected al-Qaeda member who met al-Ani and other Iraqi agents in Prague. He said the Czechs monitored at least two further such meetings in the months before 11 September.

The senior US intelligence source said the CIA believed that two other hijackers, al-Shehri and Jarrah, also met known Iraqi intelligence officers outside the US in the run-up to the atrocities. It is understood these meetings took place in the United Arab Emirates - where Iraq maintains its largest 'illegal', or non-diplomatic, cover intelligence operation, most of it devoted to oil exports and busting economic sanctions.

The source added that Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which has now effectively merged with al-Qaeda, maintained regular contacts with Iraq for many years. He confirmed the claims first made by the Iraqi National Congress - that towards the end of 1998, Farouk Hijazi, Iraq's ambassador to Turkey and a key member of the Mukhabarat leadership - went to Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he met bin Laden.

The FBI believes many of the 11 hijackers who made up the conspiracy's 'muscle', Saudi Arabians who entered the US at a late stage and whose task was to overpower the aircrafts' passengers and crew, trained at Afghan camps run by al-Qaeda. But they have no details: no times or places where any of these individuals learnt their skills. Meanwhile, it is now becoming clear that al-Qaeda is not the only organisation providing terrorist training for Muslim fundamentalists. Since the early 1990s, courses of this type have also been available in Iraq. At the beginning of October, two INC activists in London travelled to eastern Turkey. They had been told that a Mukhabarat colonel had crossed the border through Kurdistan and was ready to defect. The officer - codenamed Abu Zeinab - had extraordinary information about terrorist training in Iraq. In a safe house in Ankara, the two London-based activists took down Zeinab's story. He had worked at a site which was already well known - Salman Pak, a large camp on a peninsular formed by a loop of the Tigris river south of Baghdad.

However, what Zeinab had to say about the southern part of the camp was new. There, he said, separated from the rest of the facilities by a razor-wire fence, was a barracks used to house Islamic radicals, many of them Saudis from bin Laden's Wahhabi sect, but also Egyptians, Yemenis, and other non-Iraqi Arabs.

Unlike the other parts of Salman Pak, Zeinab said the foreigners' camp was controlled directly by Saddam Hussein. In a telephone interview with The Observer, Zeinab described the culture clash which took place when secular Baathists tried to train fundamentalists: 'It was a nightmare! A very strange experience. These guys would stop and insist on praying to Allah five times a day when we had training to do. The instructors wouldn't get home till late at night, just because of all this praying.'

Asked whether he believed the foreigners' camp had trained members of al-Qaeda, Zeinab said: 'All I can say is that we had no structure to take on these people inside the regime. The camp was for organisations based abroad.' One of the highlights of the six-month curriculum was training to hijack aircraft using only knives or bare hands. According to Zeinab, women were also trained in these techniques. Like the 11 September hijackers, the students worked in groups of four or five.

In Ankara, Zeinab was debriefed by the FBI and CIA for four days. Meanwhile he told the INC that if they wished to corroborate his story, they should speak to a man who had political asylum in Texas - Captain Sabah Khodad, who had worked at Salman Pak in 1994-5. He too has now told his story to US investigators. In an interiew with The Observer, he echoed Zeinab's claims: 'The foreigners' training includes assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking. They were strictly separated from the rest of us. To hijack planes they were taught to use small knives. The method used on 11 September perfectly coincides with the training I saw at the camp. When I saw the twin towers attack, the first thought that came into my head was, "this has been done by graduates of Salman Pak".'

Zeinab and Khodad said the Salman Pak students practised their techniques in a Boeing 707 fuselage parked in the foreigners' part of the camp. Yesterday their story received important corroboration from Charles Duelfer, former vice chairman of Unscom, the UN weapons inspection team.

Duelfer said he visited Salman Pak several times, landing by helicopter. He saw the 707, in exactly the place described by the defectors. The Iraqis, he said, told Unscom it was used by police for counter-terrorist training. 'Of course we automatically took out the word "counter",' he said. 'I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq. Like, derrrrrr! I mean, what, actually, do you expect? Iraq presents a long-term strategic threat. Unfortunately, the US is not very good at recognising long-term strategic threats.'

At the end of September, Donald Rumsfeld, the far from doveish US Defence Secretary, told reporters there was 'no evidence' that Iraq was involved in the atrocities. That judgment is slowly being rewritten.

Many still suspect the anthrax which has so far killed four people in America has an ultimate Iraqi origin: in contrast to recent denials made by senior FBI officials, CIA sources say there simply is not enough material to be sure. However, it does not look likely that the latest anthrax sample, sent to a newspaper in Karachi, can have come from the source recently posited by the FBI - a right-wing US militant. 'The sophistication of the stuff that has been found represents a level of technique and knowledge that in the past has been associated only with governments,' Duelfer said. 'If it's not Iraq, there aren't many alternatives.'

If the emerging evidence of Iraqi involvement in 11 September becomes clearer or more conclusive, the consequences will be immense. In the words of a State Department spokesman after Powell's briefing by the Czech leader on Friday: 'If there is clear evidence connecting the World Trade Centre attacks to Iraq, that would be a very grave development.'

At worst, the anti-terrorist coalition would currently be bombing the wrong country. At best, the world would see that some of President Bush's closest advisers - his father, Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney, to name but three - made a catastrophic error in 1991, when they ended the Gulf war without toppling Saddam.

The case for trying to remove him now might well seem unanswerable. In that scenario, the decisions Western leaders have had to make in the past two months would seem like a trivial prelude.

Additional reporting by Ed Vulliamy in New York and Kate Connolly in Berlin.

[Navaron]

�In 1991 Saddam killed 500,000 people when they rose against him. Nobody demonstrated against him then. But now the United States wants to get rid of the dictator, people are demonstrating against it.�
-one of the Iraqi liberation soldiers the U.S. is training at "Camp Freedom" in Hungary

[�io]

Politics again?

[Lexington_Steele]

What is the post Saddam plan? What will prevent a worse regime from taking power.

I have not heard much talk about plans for post Saddam Iraq. All I have heard are reasons for or against the removal of Saddam by force.

I think alot of anti war folks would feel more confortable with removing Saddam by force if they knew of and approved the plan for a post Saddam Iraqi government.

[Derfud]

I have said it before and I will say it again. Why have a war when you can make an Assassination, along with politically changing the environment.

[Bighoss]

cuz then we couldn't get our texas tea

[mistled]

Originally posted by Derfud
I have said it before and I will say it again. Why have a war when you can make an Assassination, along with politically changing the environment.

He's too hard to find. People have tried to assassinate him in the past.

[mistled]

Originally posted by Lexington_Steele
if they ....approved the plan

That's funny Lex. We going to start an online poll on what the anti-war people want??


(I assume you're actually talking about the anti-war countries who are in the UN, but it's fun to pick on you anyway. )

[Navaron]

While the US obviously won't announce it's post Hussein regime plans (for example if we say Mr. Bin Mustafah will become prime minister - Mr. Mustafah will be taking a dirt nap rather quickly) - we *CAN* look at our most recent example -

Now, It's Business That Booms
With Bombs Mostly Silenced, Commerce and Confidence Are Growing in Kabul

Shops have been restored and opened in otherwise ruined buildings in Kabul, part of a small-business boom seen by some as a sign of better things to come. (Photos Marc Kaufman -- The Washington Post)



_____News From Afghanistan_____

� Young Girls Sold as Brides By Desperate Afghan Poor (The Washington Post, Feb 23, 2003)
� WASHINGTON IN BRIEF (The Washington Post, Feb 22, 2003)
� U.S. Urges NATO to Expand Role in Afghanistan (The Washington Post, Feb 21, 2003)
� More News from Afghanistan




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By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 26, 2003; Page A16


KABUL, Afghanistan -- The day Taliban soldiers fled this capital, Sabir Latifa had $9,000 in savings from his dried fruit exports and a head filled with ideas about how to do business in a changed Afghanistan.

He started small by fixing up some guesthouses for the journalists and aid workers who flocked to Kabul when the Taliban left in November 2001. Then he branched into cars and a hotel and the capital's first private Internet cafe. Fifteen months later, Latifa has a business empire he says is worth $500,000, and he hopes to build a water bottling plant, more hotels outside Kabul, a computer store and even a chain of Internet cafes around the country.

He did it all in the midst of political chaos, with frequent security concerns, without the help of a bank to lend him money, and in an investment climate that can only be described as extremely challenging.

But Latifa, a longtime Kabul resident, says that where others saw unacceptable risks, he saw the opportunity of a lifetime.

"There is so much money to be made in Afghanistan now," he said in English learned in a Pakistani refugee camp. "The country has been held back for 25 years, and now is the time to invest and do business. Afghans are very good at this -- we've been doing it since the time of the Silk Road."

Although countries around the world have promised more than $4 billion in aid to rebuild Afghanistan, there are today very few visible signs of the planned roads and schools and infrastructure projects. There are, however, signs throughout the capital, and in many provinces, of fast and dramatic change as Afghans and some intrepid foreigners open shops, businesses and even factories, quickly put up buildings to house them, and buy enough cars to create daily traffic jams.

In a city that had a handful of shopworn eating places two years ago, a new Chinese or Italian or American hamburger restaurant opens almost weekly, as well as kebab shops by the score. Small hotels have sprung up, and a $40 million Hyatt is on the way. The food bazaars are bustling and there are downtown blocks filled almost entirely with bridal shops. Rebuilt homes are rising from the ruins, and every little storefront seems to be stuffed with bathtubs or fans or with men building and carving things to be sold.

President Hamid Karzai, who will meet President Bush in Washington on Thursday, points to this mini-boom as one of the most important accomplishments of his fledgling administration, a sign that people are voting with their money. "People wouldn't start businesses and rebuild their homes here unless they believed that peace and security were coming to Afghanistan," he said in a recent interview. "This is the most positive sign of all."

Shair Bar Hakemy, the business adviser to Karzai and himself a refugee turned entrepreneur who made a fortune in Texas commercial real estate and hotels, said that the price of real estate in some parts of Kabul is now higher per square foot than in downtown Dallas. "My family and friends back in America have difficulty seeing past all the headlines about troubles here," he said. "But the truth is that Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan are changing quickly for the better."

Many of those perceived troubles are real and worrisome, and nobody would mistake Kabul for a prosperous and peaceful city. Sections are still in ruins, and many of the 600,000 returning refugees who have flooded the city live precariously on the margins. Islamic militants remain determined to destabilize and oust the Karzai government through violence, and periodic attacks continue. There is also concern that the flashier developments could offend conservative Afghan attitudes and create a dangerously wide divide between the relatively rich and the very poor.

But whatever the risks, the Kabul of today is almost unrecognizable as the austere city ruled not long ago by the Taliban -- or as the place where warring Islamic militias demolished neighborhood after neighborhood, or where Soviets presided over a rebellious socialist state.

While the current business mini-boom involves mostly small-scale projects, some see it as a harbinger of bigger investments from abroad.

"Large foreign investors look to local entrepreneurs -- the people on the ground -- for signals on the business environment in a place like this," said William B. Taylor Jr., the special representative for donor assistance at the U.S. Embassy. "And the signal now is pretty positive."

Since last summer, the embassy has held monthly round tables to bring together local and international businessmen and Afghan government leaders to discuss opportunities and problems. American diplomats say the meetings started with five firms, and now could easily draw 100 -- if there were a room large enough to hold them all. Topics include such basics as the absence of banks, the fact that property ownership is often unclear, and a bureaucracy that can be infuriating and corrupt.

"The goal is to show businessmen that while there are obvious challenges here, there is also a government committed to building a private sector," a U.S. diplomat said. As part of the outreach effort, the Afghan government will sponsor, with American assistance, a trade and investment show in Chicago this summer. The United States is also helping with some financing of projects. Before Hyatt agreed to manage a Kabul hotel, for instance, it needed assistance from the Overseas Private Investment Corp., a federal agency that specializes in making loans where other banks won't.

While much of the money being invested today is coming from Afghans here and abroad, U.S. and international military and aid programs are surely making the expansion possible. More than 4,000 foreign troops are now in Kabul and another 9,000 U.S. and allied troops are stationed in Afghanistan, many at the Bagram air base 35 miles north of the capital. Without them, the relative peace in Kabul would not likely last long.

Several thousand diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners also live in Kabul, and the most visible part of the new business caters to their needs. It remains an open question whether the new Kabul can sustain itself when some of those relief workers go home.

But the Afghan government, along with some embassies, is working to keep and expand the international presence. The first big wave of foreigners to arrive after the Taliban fled were journalists, who often paid top dollar for homes and services. Most are now gone, but more permanent businessmen are taking up the slack. According to Commerce Minister Seyyed Mustafa Kazemi, the number of foreign firms setting up shop in Afghanistan is growing fast.

He said that in the past six months, his ministry has approved 2,600 business licenses, compared with 2,045 in the 45 years before. Many were given to foreign firms, he said, or those headed by Afghans living abroad who want to return to their homeland. These licensed businesses are the large ones that will pay all taxes and other government fees; most Afghan businesses still open without registration and beyond the reach of central government tax collectors.

"The markets of the world are saturated now, but Afghanistan is a virgin market," Kazemi said. "Our resources have not been developed, our people are have been forced to buy substandard products, and there are opportunities everywhere. . . . This ministry wants to be a friend to the business community, and that has never really happened before."

Latifa, the hotel and computer pioneer, said he didn't get much help from his government, but neither did it stand in his way. And while he is eager to form joint ventures with foreign investors, the financing he has gotten so far has come the old-fashioned way, from his savings and loans from friends, family and those who worked on his projects.

"When I opened the Internet cafe, my friends thought I was crazy," said Latifa, 33. "But it's been in business about two months now, and it has already paid for itself."

"The government and [international aid organizations] won't make Afghans stand on their own feet," he said. "Businessmen will do it."


� 2003 The Washington Post Company


Now, that's just an example of how it's running, and I've heard of countless examples of how much happier the people are.

[MrVicchio]

Lex, do you read the news?

The post Saddam Iraq looks a little like this:

6 Month military control of Iraq by the USA

After that the Iraqi's "should" be stable and educated, and FREE enough to vote thier own system in place. The USA slowly starts to pull out...

In three years, free Democratic Iraq free to chart its own course.

Or we COULD just let inspections go on, course we'd pull all our troops out of there.. and see what happens...

BTW I like the comment an Isreali defense minister made. IF Saddam is stupid enough to launch Scuds with WMD and hits Isreal causing massive casualties.. 10 minutes later bahgdad will be a smoking hole in the ground.

[Gortha]

Whole world knows this... nothing new.

But there are better solutions to disarm.

[MrVicchio]

Name one Gortha? I am sick of this "better solutions" Line of MULARCKY

Better Solutions???? Like what?

Keep going with inspections?? You think the USA is gonna keep its force there forever? FU man. I KNOW what those guys are doing out there, we in the military don't like sitting around, on EXTENDED deployments so that some wuss idiots in the world can be appeased.

Its real simple, it costs LOTS of money, and its a real strain on the members of the Armed Forces to stay out for more then their schedualed time.

I have been on long deployments, they suck... some of those ships are approaching 9 MONTHS underway. You go tell thier families why Daddy or Mommy cant come home.. You tell them its better that they stay out for months on end so that "inspectors" can do thier thing.. which for 12 years has failed to work.

You people have zero clue about what WE in the military have to put up with. You have no clue how hard it is for us when we are out defending your rights, your freedom only to hear crap like this.

Sure, lets give the inspectors more time...

That says to every man and woman deployed, that their just a tool for wimps unwilling to sacrifice anything, scared of thier own shadows, all the expense of our lives and livelihoods.

MAybe I am abit spun up here, fine good, I DONT CARE.

If we hadn't parked 200k+ troops out side Iraq with clear intentions of invasion and removal of Saddam... THERE WOULD BE NO INSPECTIONS YOU FDIASUT@($#T*^($#!*%#$JGSDPT(?$U%(U#T($#UY_#U(!Y#! H$%U!)GUIEK^YT% BG<O%_Y?% Now Saddam has had his chance, inspections have failed, sit down, shush and let the Proffessional war fighters do thier thing. Cause it won't take long to fight this war, and they can GO HOME.