DIJ' VU IN AFGHANISTAN

On the frigid night of Dec. 24, 1979, Soviet airborne forces seized Kabul
airport. Elite Alpha Group commandos sped to the presidential palace, burst
into the bedroom of Afghan President Hafizullah Amin, and gunned him down.
Columns of Soviet armor crossed the border and raced south toward Kabul.

It took Soviet forces only a few days to occupy Afghanistan. They installed
a puppet ruler, Babrak Karmal. Moscow proclaimed it had invaded Afghanistan
to "liberate" it from "feudalism and Islamic extremism," and "nests of
terrorists and bandits."

Soviet propaganda churned out films of Red Army soldiers playing with
children, building schools, dispensing medical care. Afghan women were to
be liberated from the veil and other backwards Islamic customs. The Soviet
Union and its local communist allies would bring Afghanistan into the 20th
Century.

Two years later, Afghans had risen against their Soviet "liberators" and
were waging a low-intensity guerilla war. Unable to control the
countryside, Moscow poured more troops into Afghanistan. The Soviet-run
Afghan Army had poor morale and less fighting zeal. The KGB-run Afghan
secret police, KhAD, jailed and savagely tortured tens of thousands of
"Islamic terrorists," then called "freedom fighters" in the west.

Fast forward to December, 2002 and a disturbing sense of dij' vu. A new
foreign army has easily occupied Afghanistan, overthrown "feudal" Taliban
and installed a puppet regime in Kabul. Western media churns out the same
rosy, agitprop stories the Soviets did about liberating Afghanistan,
freeing women, educating children. The only real difference is that kids in
today's TV clips are waving American instead of Soviet flags. Invaders have
changed; the propaganda remains the same.

America's invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, was billed as an epic
military victory and the model of future imperial expeditions to pacify
third world malefactors. Since then, news about this war-ravaged land has
grown scarce. America's limited attention has turned elsewhere.

In fact, America's Afghan adventure has gotten off to as poor a start as
that of the Soviet Union.

The US-installed ruler of Kabul, veteran CIA 'asset' Hamid Karzai, must be
protected from his own people by up to 200 US body-guards. Much of
Afghanistan is in chaos, fought over by feuding warlords and drug barons.

There are almost daily attacks on US occupation forces. My old mujihadin
sources say US casual-ties and equipment losses in Afghanistan are far
higher than Washington is reporting -- and rising.

American troops are operating from the old Soviet bases at Bagram and
Shindand, retaliating, like the Soviets, against mujihadin attacks on US
forces by heavily bombing nearby villages. CIA is trying to assassinate
Afghan nationalist leaders opposed to the Karzai regime in Kabul, in
particular my old acquaintance Gulbadin Hek-matyar.

Captured 'terrorists' are routinely tortured by Afghan security forces
under America supervision. Last fall, US troops presided over the murder by
Northern Alliance forces of some 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers, a major
war crime at a time when the UN is trying Serb soldiers for similar grave
offenses.

North of the Hindu Kush mountains, America's Afghan ally, the Tajik-Uzbek
Northern Alliance, has long been a proxy of the Russians. The Chief of the
Russian General Staff and head of intelligence directed the Alliance in its
final attack on Taliban last fall. Russia then supplied Alliance forces
with $100 million of arms, and is currently providing $85 milion of
helicopters, tanks, artillery, spare parts, as well as military advisors
and technicians. Russia now dominates much of northern Afghanistan.

Taliban, according to the United Nations drug agency, had almost shut down
opium-morphine-heroin production. America's ally, the Northern Alliance has
revived the illicit trade. Since the US overthrew Taliban, opium
cultivation has soared from 185 tons a year to 2,700. The Northern
Alliance, which dominates the Kabul regime, finances its arms buying and
operations with drug money. President Bush's war on drugs collided with his
war on terrorism -- and lost. The US is now colluding in the heroin trade.

Anti-American Afghan forces -- Taliban, al-Qaida, and others -- have
grouped and are mounting ever larger attacks on US troops and, reports the
UN, even re-opening training camps. Taliban mujihadin are using the same
sophisticated early alert system they developed to monitor Soviet forces in
the 1980s to warn of American search and destroy missions before they leave
base. As a result, US troops keep chasing shadows.

Canadians fared no better. In the sole major battle since Taliban's
overthrow, Operation Anaconda, US forces were bested by veteran Afghan
mujihadin, losing dozens of casualties and two helicopters.

The ongoing cost of Afghan operations is a closely guarded secret. Earlier
this year, the cost of stationing 8,000 US troops, backed by warplanes and
naval units, was estimated at US$5 billion monthly!

CIA spends millions every month to bribe Pushtun warlords.

Costs will rise as the US expands bases in Afghanistan and neigh-boring
Pakistan,Tajikistan, Kyrgystan and Uzbekistan -- all placed along the
planned US owned pipeline that will bring Central Asian oil south through
Afghanistan.

The UN reports Taliban and al-Qaida on the offensive, Afghan women remain
veiled, and the country in a dangerous mess. Declaring victory in
Afghanistan may have been premature.