On the same day what the UN describes as armed elements — rogue Taliban groups –

On the same day, what the UN describes as “armed elements” — rogue Taliban groups — made a violent assault on house inhabited by the UN’s Afghan staff.”They tied up and beat up the Taliban guards outside the house, and then they tied up and beat up the UN guards inside,” Ms Bunker said yesterday in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. “The Taliban police were there immediately, and they controlled the situation, but there was shooting between the police and the armed elements, and a passer-by was injured.” Such a confrontation — Taliban against Taliban — is entirely new and suggests that the US may be right in one of its assumptions about the Taliban: that beneath its smooth and moral exterior, it contains fault lines and fissures which the pressure of the bombing campaign could open up. For all the conviction of its leaders, this theory has it that, at its margins, the Taliban is made up of disparate elements who identify with it for their own convenience, because it has been the strongest and most credible power in the country. As that power is threatened, this thinking goes, they will revert to type — banditry.Over the weekend, similar incidents occurred in the north-west city of Maimana in Faryab province, and the Taliban’s power base of Kandahar. NGOs who remove Afghanistan’s many landmines had their premises raided and their vehicles and equipment stolen. One organisation lost nine of its four-wheel drive pick-up trucks, the vehicles which — with machine guns and armed men loaded into their backs — are used up the famous Taliban “cavalry”. In Mazar-i-Sharif, a loyalist Taliban commander tried unsuccessfully to requisition NGO offices for their troops, part of what UN officials say is a pattern of relocating military facilities close to civilian premises.The risks associated with the bombing are demsonstrated by other stories passed on to the UN.

In the city of Kandahar, bombs struck a court building only 200 yards from the offices of the UN High Commission for Refugees. They were undamaged this time, but in Peshawar a bomb exploded perilously close to a World Food Programme warehouse after apparently missing a military parking area 500 yards away. A local UN worker, who was performing some loading work was injured by shrapnel.Meanwhile, the bombing and ongoing civil war is causing further humanitarian suffering. Half a million internal refugees who were scattered across north-central Afghanistan have disappeared from the view of UN workers after being forced to uproot once again by the civil war. “They’re on the move again, and we don’t know where,” said Ms Bunker.

“We have so little capacity anyway and it was hard enough when we knew where they were Now it’s virtually impossible … We are facing the most serious complex emergency situation in the world ever.”. The predicted refugee crisis has begun. Humayun, a grocer from Jalalabad who arrived in Pakistan on Sunday, said: “Anybody who is able to come is coming now.”

The predicted refugee crisis has begun. Humayun, a grocer from Jalalabad who arrived in Pakistan on Sunday, said: “Anybody who is able to come is coming now.”
They have seen the effect of America’s bombs and missiles, both the ones that hit their targets and the ones that go astray, and they are not hanging around to see any more. These are people who have known little but war all their lives But the impact of American weaponry is a revelation to them.