An Afghan man with a turban decorated with artificial flowers carries some fruits he bought at a market in Kabul, Nov. 18. (Reuters File Photo)

The sky over our nation is darkened
Our land is turning red like poppies
So many innocent children
With their grubby faces sitting sadly
So many mothers bereaved
(because) young men have not come back from the trenches.

This is a song Afghans sing over fires in the cold, windy deserts, from the border with Iran to Kabul. It's a lament for Afghanistan, a once great land now virtually reduced to rubble by decades of war and by the protracted game that the big and powerful nations play.
Afghanistan has long been a mere pawn in the bigger game of geopolitical hegemony, a game that was accompanied by cruelty, intrigues and treachery.
Towards the end of the last century, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and put in place a puppet regime headed by Najibullah and other despotic leaders, the country slid into rapid decay.
The United States backed the Mujahiddeen--in those days, mujahid and jihad were soothing words to the Western ear--and supplied them with weapons to drive out the Soviet Union.
The Soviets, realising that Afghanistan was their Vietnam, pulled out, only to allow the equally cruel regime of the Taliban to take control.
After Sept 11, the United States-led war on Afghanistan saw the Taliban being pushed out and, in the process, the country was further destroyed.
Tens of thousands more people became homeless through indiscriminate bombing; tens of thousands more children became orphans, caught in the battle between the Taliban and the coalition forces; and thousands of women were widowed.
These were Donald Rumsfeld's "collateral damage".
On Tuesday, Astro aired a documentary directed and produced by an Afghan who returned to his land two months after the fall of the Taliban.
Majidi Majid, who directed the documentary, begins with a shot of about seven or eight children, none probably older than 10, trekking across the barren desert at night towards their refugee camp miles away, all carrying sacks over their shoulders.
The barefoot children look frightened at being "waylaid" by these strangers, who ask to see what is in their sacks.
Slowly, they bring out half-eaten bread, saying they are returning to their camp with food for their family.
It is a daily ritual with them, leaving the camp at eight in the morning, walking to settlements miles away to beg for leftovers to feed their families.
At night, they walk back, sometimes managing a lift from passing trucks, to their families.
Further on is Camp Makaki, housing elderly men, women and children. The camp has no tents. The people live in trenches dug into the hard, barren soil, with a carpet or blanket spread out in the hole.
Those interviewed speak of family members killed during the coalition forces' bombing, and orphaned children tell of parents killed.
Did you see your parents killed? asks the interviewer. "No, we were playing elsewhere."
Did you see the bodies of your father and mother? "Yes."
All the children interviewed give similar answers. None smile. Sadder still, none cry, answering in monotones, accepting their fate because this is the only life they have known.
On the periphery of the camp, children as young as three are digging into the earth with their bare hands, searching for roots that can be eaten to appease their hunger.
A voice sings:
Come, let us go far away from here, you and I
To a place where we are free.
NST.COM.MY

This year, the Asian Cup was pockmarked by an ugly racism. The Japanese football team was consistently and extraordinarily abused by Chinese fans. Racist chants during the final went unheeded by 12,000 Chinese police and security forces. Besides this, events in Madrid's Bernabeu stadium, where part of the Spanish crowd at last Wednesday night's fixture monkey-chanted at England's black players, look rather less extraordinary.
There is a new and ugly sentiment abroad and it's not just in Europe. In Asia, Russia and even the USA, despicable prejudices about 'the other' held by the majority of the indigenous population are never far from the surface, but after a period of decline and apparent cultural agreement that they are unacceptable, they are re-emerging.
In France, especially in Corsica, racist and anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise; there have been more in the first nine months of this year than in the whole of 2003. Jean-Christophe Rufin, vice president of Medicins sans Frontiere and Goncourt Prize winner, in a report last month for the French government said that if the rise went unchecked, it would ultimately be harnessed by organised political forces for menacing ends.
Those convicted of anti-Semitism, he found, shared common characteristics, such as a 'lack of bearings, a rootlessness, a loss of identity, a sense of social frustration and failure, a disintegrated family'.
But it is Belgian and Dutch societies which are most convulsed by racism. Both have large Muslim populations concentrated in their ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam but now spreading beyond; a simmering racist reaction has been raised to fever pitch by the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic fundamentalist.
Racist acts against Muslims are growing explosively, reciprocated by Muslim death threats against prominent politicians; Belgian socialist Mimount Bousakla, who criticised senior Muslim figures for not condemning the murder, is in hiding while Dutch conservative Geert Wilders, who wants the closure of radical mosques and a ban on non-Western immigration while better education and employment opportunities for Muslims are found, is under permanent police protection.
Immigrant and indigenous Dutch and Belgians are redrawing the moral circle to exclude the 'other'. Opinion poll support for parties and politicians claiming to speak honestly about the situation--in other words, those who say that Muslims are the problem--is climbing to new highs. It is a tinderbox.
The question is what to do about it. If Rufin's analysis is right, then part of any response must be to tackle rootlessness, fragmentation and dissociation, which is easier said than done in societies where geographical mobility is rising and mass employment in manufacturing.
Globalisation and the rapid pace of change are removing the anchors of societies; rapid immigration of the type seen in Holland, Belgium and Spain only adds to the brew. The exposed and marginalised communities in host societies feel under threat; they respond by putting up a moral fence against the outsider, the threatening, free-riding 'other'.
And if the 'other' is part of the same race and culture as the targets of the 'war against terror', then there is further legitimisation of rank prejudice. Here, some strains of radical Islam have raised the temperature by effectively excluding non-Muslims from their moral circle. White and Islamic racism clash head to head; the result is a potential calamity.
Majorities on both sides of the divide must resist the pressure to join the closing moral circle.
OBSERVER.CO.UK

Colin Powell

Colin Powell's stint as America's top diplomat will end pretty much as it began: flying into Egypt, seeking to make some headway in the violent, corrupt, shambolic Middle East.
As Powell arrives in the Sharm al-Shaikh resort next week for an international conference with key Arab and Islamic leaders, he might well cast his mind back to that first trip into the region as Secretary of State back in February, 2001.
President George Bush had been sworn into office exactly one month earlier, and Powell, the charismatic general, had been put in charge of the superpower's global diplomacy.
Powell arrived in Cairo on a warm autumn evening. The next 24 hours would take him to Tel Aviv, Beit-ul-Moqaddas, the West Bank and Amman. His agenda was two-fold: to persuade Arab nations to hold firm on sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and to plead with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to put a brake on the resurgence of violence between them.
Powell ran into a wall of anger and resentment. In Cairo, a testy press contingent was waiting for him at the Unity Palace, the opulent residence of President Hosni Mubarak.
As a member of the media crush at that first news conference, I recall Powell standing stoically alongside the then Egyptian foreign minister, Amr Moussa, to be given what was tantamount to a public dressing-down over how the US had its priorities all wrong.
The Egyptian diplomat played masterfully to his audience. He told Powell that Saddam's Iraq was not a serious threat, and said the US should not allow itself to be distracted from Palestine as the "basic" issue of regional stability.
You could almost hear Powell grinding his teeth. Here, remember, was the voice of cautious moderation in the Bush Administration being scolded publicly by an influential Arab leader for obsessing needlessly about the importance of containing Saddam. In meetings with Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat, the result was much the same: intransigence at every turn.
It was a reminder that, even for the most powerful figures in the world's most powerful nation, there are often no good answers to the vexing politics of the Middle East.
It is interesting to reflect on that episode as the world assesses Powell's legacy. He helped bring India and Pakistan back from the brink. He was able to calm tension with China. But, like so many before him, Powell couldn't crack the code in the Middle East.
His term as Secretary of State will be remembered mostly for that fateful speech to the Security Council in February last year. Some condemn him for grossly exaggerating the dangers of Saddam's Iraq. Others, just as ardently, say the search for a second resolution allowed too much leverage to third-party agendas, notably that of France's Jacques Chirac.
Once Chirac dangled the threat of a French veto, the hard men at the Pentagon took up the running. Powell had failed to stop war in Iraq--but he was also failed by others.
Would a less grudging approach by Arab leaders at critical moments have helped buttress his efforts in the Bush Administration to keep the handling of Saddam on the UN track? Would more conciliatory noises from Israel have helped dampen tension?
To assess properly where American foreign policy finished under his stewardship, it is important to remember where it started. Back in Cairo. Intransigence at every turn.
Tony Parkinson
THEAGE.COM.AU

Arab solidarity should not blind us to what is going on in Sudan. Atrocities should not be condoned just because the perpetrators are Arab brothers in Sudan. It is welcome news from Kenya that the Sudanese government and southern rebels have pledged to end Sudan's long civil war by the end of this year.
While the Nairobi meeting produced an accord on the conflict in the south of the country, it could not come up with a breakthrough to end the strife in Darfur in western Sudan, an equally if not more pressing problem.
From the American and European point of view, the Darfur crisis could be solved through a deal similar to the one Khartoum has made with the southern rebels. However, it might not be as easy as that. If anything, the focused efforts of the US and Europe, as well as the Arabs, have not really achieved a breakthrough despite many meetings at various levels and grouping many parties.
The world faces a major challenge here. On the one hand, the Khartoum government argues that it is being targeted for ouster in the world effort to address the problem. It has assured the world that it is no longer supporting the Arab Janjaweed militia against the African tribes in Darfur. The world finds it hard to accept that argument since reports from Darfur indicate otherwise. Perhaps the Janjaweed militia has turned into a monster of Khartoum's creation, which has broken free from the control of its creator.
On the other hand, there is a steady flow of arms to the Darfur rebels that keeps fuelling the conflict. We find it hard to believe that some among those trying to pressure Khartoum are not behind the arms pipeline to the rebels. Again, that has to stop. Negotiations to end the conflict have not reached anywhere.
Obviously, Khartoum believes that granting autonomous powers to Darfur--similar to the deal with the southern rebels--would be another nail in the coffin of what it sees as the Arab Muslim domination of power in the country. Well, that is the crux of the problem. However, the Khartoum government needs to do some hard thinking, which would--and should--lead to the logical conclusion that sharing power with all groups is inevitable if the country were to remain a cohesive entity. Denial of people's legitimate rights would only prolong the conflict and pose continued threat to the country as a whole. That does not mean blindly entering any agreement for the sake of agreement. Khartoum has its priorities and concerns and they need to be addressed.
Again, that is where the international community and mediators have failed. The reasons for the failure are also clear: Khartoum fears that those arguing in favour of the Darfur rebels have hidden agendas that could lead to the eventual dismemberment of the country--the Christians and others in the south setting up their entity, followed by the tribes in Darfur in the west and then the Nubians in the east. Therefore, any international move to address the Darfur conflict should integrate iron-clad and enforceable guarantees to the Khartoum government that the hidden external players in Darfur and elsewhere in the country would stop their meddling in Sudanese affairs and respect the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity. That needs to be done in public with no ambiguity whatsoever. Only then there would be any real hope for progress to resolve the Darfur crisis and concerns about the plans of the Nubians in the east.
Musa Keilani
JORDANTIMES.COM

When the Wright brothers flew the first airplane 101 years ago next month, Orville traveled 10 feet a second for 12 seconds. When NASA flew its unmanned X-43A out over the Pacific from Edwards Air Force Base last week, it traveled 10,560 feet a second for 10 seconds. After humanity spent millenniums dreaming of flight, the invention of aviation by those Ohio bicycle makers opened the hangar on unparalleled changes. More are likely in store with the first flight of the X-43A, which used a revolutionary jet engine devoid of moving parts, called a scramjet, to attain a speed of Mach 10.
Thanks to this pioneering flight, the latest in a continuum of Southern California aviation advances, someday later this century airline passengers and military planners may look back on our 600-mph planes with the same patronizing nods we give to the Wrights' quaint early contraptions of canvas and wood: "Can you believe that in 2004, people took hours to cross the United States?"
NASA and Boeing engineers took a surfboard-sized wedge of carbon-coated tungsten, crammed it with chemicals and instruments, launched it by rocket from an aging B-52 to 111,000 feet, and flew the thing far faster than any airplane ever, an estimated 6,595 mph. That would go from City Hall to LAX in seconds.
They did it with an intriguingly simple jet-engine alternative, a supersonic combustion ramjet. Once thought unfeasible, the technology uses the craft's own high-speed airflow to provide the compression and oxygen necessary to burn hydrogen at an intensity to manufacture that familiar jet thrust, only on steroids. The idea of routine hypersonic flight intrigues commercial aviation companies, military planners and those pondering cheaper cargo lifts into Earth's orbit. Need a parcel in New Delhi by lunch? Troops to Turkey? Imagine less time flying to Europe than checking in and being screened.
Like most inventions, scramjets need work. Something--a rocket or standard jet--still needs to boost them to Mach 4 before they can operate. But research quietly continues; less than 24 years elapsed between Kitty Hawk's dune hops and Charles Lindbergh's first solo Atlantic leap.
Edwards AFB, 90 miles north of Los Angeles, is often at the center of aviation advances. The X-43A was built at Edwards, then airlifted 120 miles southwest of Long Beach and rocketed up 21 miles to shatter airplane speed records Wednesday, blasting over the Pacific at Mach 9.7. Even its 608-second descent into the sea 850 miles away provided priceless aerodynamic data.
LATIMES.COM