Uitgegeven: 24-9-2001 12:29
Laatst gewijzigd: 24-9-2001 12:52

MOSKOU/KABUL - Rusland bereidt zich voor op een nieuwe militaire campagne in Afghanistan als gevolg van de aanslagen op de Verenigde Staten van 11 september. Dat meldde de Russische krant Izvestia maandag.

Met de campagne wil Rusland volgens de krant bijdragen aan de val van het Talibanregime. Daarbij zou de regering de mogelijkheid van een directe militaire confrontatie niet uitsluiten. Volgens Izvestia hebben president Poetin en zijn ministers daarover zaterdag overleg gevoerd in Sotchi, in het zuiden van Rusland.

Ook de krant Vedemosti meldt dat het Kremlin overlegt over "deelname aan een oorlog met alle middelen waarover Rusland beschikt".

Hopelijk hebben ze wat geleerd in de tussentijd... (wellicht in Tjetjenie). Is wel gek trouwens want ze hebben in de jaren 80 in Afghanistan juist gevochten tegen de Noordelijke Alliantie waar de VS nu een bondgenootschap mee wil sluiten en toen militaire steun aan gaf tegen de Russen.

Plan militaire actie tegen Taliban ontstond eerder

Herald Tribune

Wednesday, September 26, 2001
Thomas E. Ricks

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WASHINGTON Pentagon officials and other military experts say an estimated 10 million land mines, buried in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, pose a grave threat to U.S. troops or other forces operating on the ground.

"They are going to be a tremendous worry," far more than the U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles in the hands of Afghans, said a retired Marine Colonel Edward Badolato, who helped manage the clearing of Iraqi land mines and other explosives from Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War.

He said that anti-personnel mines were widespread across Afghanistan.

In addition, he said, lightly armored U.S. Special Forces and other infantry units that the Defense Department might use in Afghanistan raids are particularly vulnerable to the shrapnel blasted by exploding mines. Afghanistan is the most heavily mined area of the world, according to reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.S. military forces.

"Anytime you have mines, it's worrisome," said a retired lieutenant general, R.L. (Sam) Wetzel, a former commandant of the army's infantry school. "I remember carrying five dead guys out of a minefield in Korea."

A study published by the U.S. Army this year noted that 16 UN employees had been killed and an additional 20 wounded while involved in tightly controlled, safety-conscious mine-clearing work in Afghanistan. Those workers removed a total of 13,542 anti-personnel mines and 636 anti-tank mines last year, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

The peril to people is even worse in wartime: About a third of the 68,000 casualties suffered by the Soviet Army in Afghanistan during its decade of fighting a largely guerrilla war there were inflicted by various kinds of land mines, according to a 1998 study in the U.S. Army's journal of military medicine. Almost all U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War are now retired from the military, so the military services have a shortage of medical specialists experienced in dealing with mine wounds, that 1988 study also observed.

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