Mon June 9, 2003 11:05 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai Monday blamed a suicide car bomb attack that killed four German peacekeepers in Kabul on foreign terrorists, adding that the ousted Taliban regime was finished as an organization. Addressing a news conference, Karzai pointed to the Pakistan-Afghan border as the main threat to security in Afghanistan, where attacks on peacekeepers, aid agencies and civilians have increased noticeably in recent months.
"I am not worried about the resurgence of the Taliban," Karzai said at the presidential palace in Kabul. "The Taliban movement as a movement is finished, is gone."
"Are we concerned about terroristic activities of the kind that occur at the borders or inside Afghanistan, of the kind that happened the day before yesterday? Yes."
Four German peacekeepers were killed and 31 injured on Saturday when a car exploded beside a bus taking them to the airport at the end of their assignment.
The driver of the taxi carrying the explosives has not yet been identified, but Karzai told reporters: "I guarantee the person is not from Afghanistan."
Karzai has blamed the recent wave of violence across the south of the country and in Kabul on Pakistan-based terrorists and remnants of the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime which fell from power in late 2001 after U.S. military intervention.
In southern Afghanistan, a provincial official said the Taliban was calling on the army and police to join the Islamic movement in its campaign against Karzai and U.S.-led forces.
Pamphlets have been distributed in the restive province of Zabul, part of the former heartland of the Taliban, said Mohammad Omar, deputy governor of Zabul, which borders Pakistan.
"For the past several days we have been seeing these leaflets here," Omar told Reuters by telephone from Zabul on Monday.
Omar said the pamphlets had so far failed to lure anyone from the army or police.
The United States and allies attacked Afghanistan to oust the Taliban after the regime refused to hand over members of the al Qaeda network, blamed by Washington for the September 11, 2001, air attacks.
Remnants of the Taliban and of al Qaeda are believed to be still hiding in the rugged mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
A drive to enforce Islamic law threatens to unravel Musharraf's coalition government - TIME Asia Magazine:
Once again, Pakistan's mullahs are on a collision course with President Pervez Musharraf. In the latest clash, on June 2, religious groups that control Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province declared that Shari'a law would be enforced in their territory—superceding the British-style legal system that is Pakistan's law of the land. Shari'a is the strict religious code that governs Islam. From now on, Arabic, the language of the Koran, will be obligatory in schools; girls 12 years and older will have to wear the head-to-toe veil known as the burqa, and women will not be allowed to leave home unaccompanied by a husband or male relative. A challenge to Pakistan's shaky, secular government is the last thing Musharraf needs, but the mullahs are pushing a showdown. The Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a political bloc of six religious groups, intends to set up a morality police to enforce Islamic virtue, raising cries among human-rights activists against the "Talibanization" of the province. But popular support for the change is evident: even before the law imposing Shari'a was passed, Islamic youths roamed the town of Peshawar tearing down billboards featuring images of unburqa'd women. The religious parties warned Musharraf not to interfere. "We will resist all threats," said the MMA's Secretary General, Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
In retaliation, Musharraf could dissolve the provincial assembly. But the MMA is making threats of its own, warning that 68 of its members serving in parliament may resign if Islamabad tries to overturn the local law. That poses no direct peril to Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999. But the flimsy coalition Musharraf stitched together after last October's elections could come unraveled if there are mass resignations. And if the elected government falls, Musharraf's popularity could plummet, as could his standing with his main international ally: the U.S.
Meanwhile, a nationwide alliance of mullahs has launched a direct attack on Musharraf, demanding that he no longer serve as both the country's President and army chief. They say they are willing to drop that demand—if Musharraf agrees to apply Shari'a law throughout the country, a step the President, a religious moderate, is loathe to make. If he wants to save his façade of civilian government and retain international support, he may have to swallow hard and make peace with two exiled former Prime Ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, whose parties together are strong enough to foil the clerics.