Military

DATE=07/09/02

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=AFGHANISTAN ASSASSINTION

NUMBER=6-125745

BYLINE=Andrew Guthrie

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Assignments

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The assassination of Afghanistan's vice-president, Hajji Abdul Qadir in Kabul over the weekend sent shock waves through several American newspapers, worried about its potential destabilizing effects. We get a sampling now from ____________ in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: Mr. Qadir was one of the few Pashtun tribal members in the government of President Hamid Karzai, which is heavily weighted with ethnic Tajiks, the backbone of the Northern Alliance, and some Hazaras.

He was also the governor of Nangarhar province, where he hosted Osama bin Laden before joining the anti-Taleban opposition. Mr. Qadir was heavily involved in a U-S supported program to eradicate the nation's opium poppy crop, although in prior years, he was reportedly a leading opium dealer himself.

And there is speculation his death may have had more to do with Afghanistan's resilient opium trade than with politics. Whatever the motives of the two gunman who escaped after no resistance from the guards outside the Ministry of Public Works, American papers, like The Cincinnati [Ohio] Post, feel it will further destabilize the situation.

VOICE: The assassination . shows the fragility of Afghanistan's new, U-S supported government. And it also shows the moral ambiguity of the political landscape the United States must navigate. . As a senior member of .government, [Vice President] Qadir was technically one of our allies but [he had] played host to Osama bin Laden [and had operated] the opium trade in [his] home province.

TEXT: There is also concern in Colorado, where Denver's Rocky Mountain News points out:

VOICE: As a senior member of the Karzai government, Mr. Qadir was technically one of our allies, but as with so many of our new friends in Afghanistan, he was unlikely to be winning any good citizenship awards. He played host to Osama bin Laden but fell out with the al-Qaida leader at the same time he fell out with the Taleban government. Some reports out of Afghanistan indicate that his murder may have had to do with the opium trade. The Bush administration does not want to be caught in the trap of what it sees as open-ended nation-building, but the president can't rule out any options.

TEXT: Back in Ohio, Akron's Beacon Journal agrees with The Cincinnati Post about the after effects of the assassination.

VOICE: The killing deepens concerns about the stability of the new central government of President Hamid Karzai. While [Mr.] Karzai talks courageously about hunting down the killers, the difficulty he faces is considerable. . [It also] deals a demoralizing blow. to the Bush administration's efforts to build a partnership with a strong, central Afghan government.

TEXT: Turning to Kentucky, the Louisville Courier-Journal laments both the assassination and the mistaken U-S attack days earlier on an Afghan wedding in which dozens of people were killed.

VOICE: Last week's dispiriting events in Afghanistan show that the Bush administration will have to become far more actively engaged in that devastated land if it is to prevent a military success from turning into a political and diplomatic debacle. The first disaster was the ferocious American aerial attack on four remote villages near the southern city of Kandahar. U-S forces apparently believed they were attacking Islamic militants . but instead slaughtered [innocents at a wedding] party. Later in the week. vice president Abdul Qadir, was assassinated in Kabul. and there was immediate fear that the killing could stoke anti-government unrest among the country's dominant Pashtun clans.

. That is a danger, certainly, but it need not come to pass. . Afghan officials believe Mr. Qadir's murder may be linked to a Western-backed program to uproot the country's crop of opium poppies. According to that theory, farmers may have become angry if they were not paid, or drug lords may have taken revenge. .The White House has resisted calls for expanding the international peacekeeping presence beyond the capital, with the result that the force has little ability to mitigate Afghanistan's prevalent violence, poverty and corruption.

TEXT: The views of The Louisville's [Kentucky] Courier-Journal.

In the opinion of The Kansas City [Missouri] Star, opium drug trafficking has got to be dealt with concurrently with all the other problems or the nation cannot move ahead.

VOICE: Even if the assassination was not drug related, no Afghan government can be assured of long-term stability until the country is cleaned of drug-producing operations. Drug lords will continue to wield a corrupting influence there as the profitable narcotics trade seeks to meet the demand (primarily in Europe) for its destructive products.

TEXT: Here in the nation's capital, The Washington Post expresses its anxiety this way.

VOICE: It is not clear who killed Abdul Qadir . but the message from Saturday's assassination is obvious enough. Afghanistan's post-Taleban political order remains fragile; it is threatened by all the forces that may lie behind the killing: ethnic tensions, rivalries between the provinces and the center, the opium trade. The United States and its allies need to recognize that, without stronger efforts to stand behind Hamid Karzai's interim government, the opportunity to stabilize Afghanistan will be fumbled.

The key problem facing large parts of Afghanistan is lawlessness, which makes economic recovery impossible. The capital of Kabul, where Mr. Qadir was assassinated, is mostly an exception: There, an international peacekeeping force has allowed aid workers and wealthy returning exiles to open offices, and the streets buzz with commerce. But the countryside and some provincial cities are different.

TEXT: Excerpts from a Washington Post commentary. Taking a significantly more optimistic view of things, New York's Wall Street Journal notes:

VOICE: . no one said rebuilding a country torn by war for more than two decades would be easy. Amid the calls for the U-S to "do more" to guarantee security in Afghanistan, it's worth reviewing what has already been accomplished in less than a year. The latest declarations of disaster seem premature.

Nine months ago, the Taleban's notions of 'security" included public hangings in soccer stadiums and whipping women whose burkhas opened in the wind. Now Afghanistan has a government peacefully elected last month at a grand tribal council, or loya jirga, the likes of which hadn't been seen in Afghanistan in the lifetimes of most of the population.

. schools are reopening, women are returning to work, civilian air traffic has resumed and roads are under repair. The economy is beginning to revive, albeit from a very low base, with imports showing up in Kabul. Agriculture is picking up too . Overall security also isn't as bad as often reported, given the trauma that Afghanistan has endured. That's especially true in Kabul . Those U-S Senators . now urging that the international security force be extended to the rest of the country might note that its presence in Kabul didn't stop last weekend's assassination.

. it's an illusion to think that the U-S presence, even in much greater force, will wash away the country's ethnic rivalries and rebuild Afghanistan as quickly as Japan rebuilt under [U-S Army General Douglas] MacArthur. The process will be slow and there will be setbacks, but the progress so far is better than last week's headlines suggest.

TEXT: On that optimistic assessment from The Wall Street Journal, the nation's leading business journal, we conclude this editorial sampling of comment on the current situation in Afghanistan.

NEB/ANG/RH