Dmitry Litvinovich: There are weapons of mass destruction in Afghanistan. Americans do not know about it for some reason

Afghanistan is craving for the peace, but with one hand holding a weapon. The Afghan Defense Ministry started forming a new national army. The number of the people in the new army may reach 200 thousand people. Each of the 33 provinces was ordered to recruit 200 men as a start.

Security is one of the major problems of the country. This issue is even more actual now, since the new administration of the country is trying to establish the total control of the country.

The problem of security has also been put on the agenda of the Tokyo conference, which is devoted to political and social improvement in Afghanistan. The UN experts made a report about the development of the events in Afghanistan. The main conclusions of the report are not optimistic: the Taliban movement still enjoys support in the country, and it still has the ability of using weapons of mass destruction. As the experts believe, the Taliban, and possibly, al-Qaeda, have up to 100 missiles at their disposal as well as four missile launchers. “These missiles can carry common as well as chemical and nuclear warheads,” – the experts declared. The Taliban also have reserves of the artillery and chemical ammunition, with the neuro-paralytic gas.

It was also said in the report that the level of the support towards the Taliban movement in the country allows one to speak about an opportunity of mutiny among the Taliban. The experts do not know where the Taliban keeps its considerable arsenal of weapons. The source of the information is not known either. This is rather strange, for the Americans, who climb and crawl in the mountains, searching for the Afghan guerrillas, do not mention anything of the kind. Therefore, they either do not know about it, which is not likely, or are concealing it, which is even less likely.

If the Americans had such information, they would let the whole world know about it. They have very a very good reasons: to assure the world of the necessity of the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan and to prove the criminal nature of the al-Qaeda movement and of its leader, Osama bin Laden. It would also be a good reason for them to stay longer in Afghanistan, preferably for good.

The Americans were giving away pieces of information to the media before: about secret labs in Afghanistan, where Bin Laden’s followers were producing weapons of mass destruction, but that information did not receive a proper reaction though. Today’s report at the conference is like a gift to the Americans.

I would like to draw your attention to one thing in the report. They think that the Taliban movement still enjoys a large level of support amid the local population. They were probably talking about the Pashtun tribes of the country, as many of them sympathize with the Taliban indeed; they even helped some of its leaders leave the territory of Afghanistan. It is not ruled out that they are still hiding the most dangerous terrorists on their territory.

We wrote about it before: the Americans were not happy about such a position of the Pashtun tribes; the USA even refused their gratuitous help to search for the Taliban separatists.

If the USA has a serious attitude to the report made by the UN experts (which is most likely to happen), then it is not excluded that the American army contingent in Afghanistan will be considerably increased with all the coming consequences.

This situation is not good for the provisional government of Afghanistan, which was insisting on the withdrawal of the American troops from Afghanistan’s territory. This is actually what the new army is for.

One thing should be added here. The international conference is taking place in Tokyo, and its participants have already collected a significant sum for Hamid Karzai, the interim Afghanistan leader. They pay, and they make it go.

In addition, the UN has recently made a decision to withdraw the ban on the weapon deliveries to Afghanistan. However, a group of experts of the UN was offering to set the embargo on the deliveries of weapon to all Afghan groups, with the exception for the forces of the defense ministry of the country. The embargo does not hit upon the Afghan army, which is being set up currently: the Pashtuns are likely to make up a big part of it.

Russia can earn a lot of money on the new army of Afghanistan, delivering weapons there: the Afghans are armed with Russian defense technology, and a lot of their commanders were trained in the Soviet military schools.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

Reuters photo: Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai listens to a reporter during a news conference following the conclusion of the two-day International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan in Tokyo