What is the Northern Alliance?
The US currently supports the Northern Alliance, a group of warlords and fanatics based in a small area in northern Afghanistan. The US and UK admits that it would be difficult and bloody for them if they were to launch a ground war. So instead of sending thousands of American troops (which is costly and sure to fail), they will arm the Northern Alliance and conduct the war from the Pentagon and MI-6, the UK's intelligence agency.
The Northern Alliance which the US supports as a replacement for the Taliban is composed of small groups that the Taliban expelled when it seized power in most of Afghanistan in 1996. The Northen Alliance was previously supported and armed by the Russian, Irani and Saudi Arabian goverments.
There is no basic difference between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, which the US wishes to put in power. Like the Taliban, the Northen Alliance has a long and heinous record of criminal activities in Afghanistan. Neither party respects human rights and the rules of war. In more than 10 years of civil war led by the two camps, summary executions, arson, theft, rape and other crimes against humanity have been the norm.
Most of the Northern Alliance's crimes were perpetrated before 1996, when it still controlled Kabul, the capital and political center of Afghanistan, and most of the country's northern portion. The Northern Alliance continues to violate the human rights of the Afghan people, particularly of the Pashtuns, the ethno-linguistic base of the Taliban:
Latter part of 1999 up to the early part of 2000. Northern Alliance forces perpetrated massacres, burned down houses and plundered the villages within and around Sangcharak district for four months. Most of the targets were Pashtuns and Tajiks.
September 20-21, 1998. A market located on the northern side of Kabul was bombed, killing 76 to 180 people.
Latter part of May 1997. Three-thousand Taliban soldiers within and around the area of Mazar-e-Sharif were captured and killed. Some of the soldiers were brought to the desert where they were shot while others were thrown into wells and blasted with grenades.
January 5, 1997. Junbish airplanes bombed crowded areas of Kabul. The Junbish is a group within the Nothern Alliance. A number of civilians died and many more were wounded.
March 1995. Northern Alliance troops plundered and raped in Karte Seh, Kabul. According to reports from the US State Department itself, the troops systematically robbed houses and looked for women to rape.
February 11, 1993. Jamiat-i Islami and Ittihad-i Islami, both groups within the Northern Alliance, bombed the western area of Kabul. Many ethnic Haraza civilians died and disappeared. The troops also raped women.
1994. Up to 25,000 people were killed by the Northern Alliance in Kabul. Groups under it likewise perpetrated rape, summary executions and illegal arrests. The Northern Alliance's use of torture on captured Taliban soldiers is widespread.
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