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"...Also, during the late 1997s and early '98, while the Taliban imposed a blockade on more than 2 million people of Hazara ethnic group which is located in Central Afghanistan. This blockade put tens of thousands of people at risk of starving to death after perishing from lack of medicine during the harsh winter months. The state department undercut my efforts to send two planeloads of medicine by the Ameri-cares and Knights-bridge relief agencies. The State Department representatives made false statements that a humanitarian crisis had been exaggerated and that there was already sufficient medical supplies in the blockaded area. When the relief team's risked their lives to go into that area anyway with the medicines that we raised privately, and I say without the support of the State Department, on April 14, 1999

The State Department in effect was assisting the Taliban's inhumane blockade intended to starve out communities, which opposed their dictates. Perhaps the most glaring evidence of this administration's tacit support was the effort made during the Spring of 1998, when a visit to Afghanistan made by Mr. Inderfurth who will be with us today and the United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson. These administration representatives convinced the anti-Taliban northern alliance not to go on the offensive against a then weakened and vulnerable Taliban. Instead they convinced the anti-Taliban leaders to accept a cease-fire that was proposed by Pakistan. This cease-fire lasted only as long as it took the Pakistanis to re-supply and reorganize the Taliban. In fact within a few months of the announcement of the U.S. backed Ulima (ph) process, the Taliban freshly supplied by the ISI from Pakistan and flush with drug money went on a major offensive and destroyed the northern alliance.

So, our administration, at a pivotal moment, interceded in a way that brought the Taliban to almost complete power in Afghanistan. This was either incompetence on the part of the State Department and US intelligence agencies, or it is indicative of a real policy, the real policy of our government to insure a Taliban victory. Can anyone believe that with a Taliban, identified by the United Nations and the DEA as one of the two largest producers of Opium in the world; that they weren't being closely monitored by our intelligence services who would have seen every move of the military buildup of the Pakistanis and when they tried to build up the forces of the Taliban...."

--- US congressman Dana Rohrabacher, 1999