For calling attention to the now long overdue issue of human rights abuses by the Taliban in Afghanistan, I applaud the author of the column "A Wake-Up Call We Should Learn From" (Opinion, Nov. 21, 2001). However, lost in the reports of a story that is only slowly filtered through national news, we have missed the other horrific human rights story in Afghanistan: the Northern "Alliance." The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) records reminders of the atrocities of local commanders of factions that are now part of the Northern Alliance. "From 1992 to 1996, the Northern Alliance was a symbol of massacre, systematic rape and pillage. Which is why we -- and I include the U.S. State Department -- welcomed the Taliban when they arrived in Kabul. The Northern Alliance left the city in 1996 with 50,000 dead."(http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/na-killers.htm)


The question is, how does the Northern Alliance act now that it has U.S. support?


Check under "Recent reports from Afghanistan" on www.RAWA.org (http://www.RAWA.org/) for more articles on how the Northern Alliance has been behaving recently, including the Human Rights Watch "Backgrounder" for a deconstruction of who the Northern Alliance is and what it has done: (http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/na.htm).

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