July 2002

ABC TV (AUS): World in Focus [transcript]

WORLD IN FOCUS Interview with Michael Ware
Interviewer: Jennifer Byrne

Michael Ware is TIME Magazine's correspondent in Afghanistan. With the hunt for Osama bin Laden continuing, and renewed speculation about whether or not he is still alive, Jennifer Byrne talks to Ware about the Afghanis, their government, aid agencies, and the involvement of the U.S. military.

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TIME: Why Afghanistan's Leader Wants American Bodyguards

By MICHAEL WARE

To keep your friends close but your enemies closer is a difficult thing to do in Afghanistan, where it can often be hard telling one from the other. For President Hamid Karzai there can be no room for error, and so this weekend he dismissed his Afghan bodyguards and replaced them with 46 American soldiers. It's an ominous sign. "There are currently very credible threats against the President," says a Western diplomatic source.

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TIME: A Man with Many Enemies

By MICHAEL WARE / KABUL

"I will be in the car soon," Haji Abdul Qadir told his nephew over the phone. "I'm coming in maybe 15 or 20 minutes." But Qadir, one of Afghanistan's five Deputy Presidents, as well as its Minister of Public Works, never made it home for lunch. In fact, he never made it to the street. Witnesses later said that two gunmen had been waiting outside the ministry compound's gates for half an hour. As Qadir's green Toyota Land Cruiser nosed its way out, the men, dressed in the clothing of Qadir's home province, leaped out of the bushes and opened fire. Qadir's driver floored the accelerator as bullets sliced through the windshield and panels of the car, hitting Qadir in the head. As the car collided with some metal poles lining the driveway, the gunmen continued firing into the rear window. When the vehicle finally crashed into a concrete wall, the men jumped into a taxi parked up the road and roared away.

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TIME: Losing the Peace?

By MICHAEL ELLIOTT with MICHAEL WARE / KABUL

The Afghan province of Uruzgan, north of Kandahar, is brutal territory. Its villages have been racked by decades of war, and the summer heat can reach an inhospitable 120[degrees]. A few weeks ago, Abdul Rahim, a local chieftain in Uruzgan's Deh Rawod district, reclined on a pillow in the shade of a thatch awning and spoke of what it would take to bring hope to this blighted land. It's a simple list, really: a few roads, schools and hospitals. "Rebuilding this country is the way to deny it to al-Qaeda," he told TIME.

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TIME: Afghans Say U.S. to Help Wedding Victims

By MICHAEL WARE / KABUL

Although the U.S. military remains tight-lipped over any liability for the July 1 incident in which a number of Afghan villagers were killed at a wedding celebration in the remote mountain district of Deh Rawood during an American air attack on suspected Taliban positions nearby, Washington may be letting its money do the talking. "Verbally, at least, the Americans have admitted the attack was a mistake," says Afghan cabinet minister Mohammed Arif Noorzai, the man who headed the joint U.S.-Afghan investigation into the killings. And, he says, in a meeting earlier this week with Afghan officials in Kabul they did much more than that — they promised cash to allow the victims to be compensated.

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TIME: A Killing in Kabul

By MICHAEL WARE

At a little after noon on Saturday in Kabul Yusuf Khan called his uncle, one of Afghanistan's four deputy presidents, to ask when he would be home for lunch. "I'll be in the car soon," Abdul Haji Qadir told his young relative. "I'm coming in maybe 15 or 20 minutes." True to his word Qadir drove out of Kabul's Ministry of Public Works — his new cabinet portfolio — at 12:40 p.m. But he never made it on to the street. Two assassins with AK-47assault rifles were waiting in the bushes shrouding the driveway. As Qadir's dark blue Land Cruiser nosed out of the white grill gates they leapt up and opened fire. Two minutes later the gunmen were gone, Qadir lay dying and the country was once again in turmoil.

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