Afghans

At 11 a.m. PDT, Los Angeles Times editor Davan Maharaj will take part in  a live discussion of the L.A. Times story about U.S. troops posing with body parts from Afghan suicide bombers. The story , and the two photos that accompanied it, outline how a unit of the 82nd Airborne Division posed with remains when sent on two missions to attempt to get identification of the dead bombers. The Pentagon has denounced the behavior depicted in the photos and has launched a criminal investigation.

At this year's Los Angeles County Fair, volunteers for a Claremont church group collected 3,000 knitted or crocheted squares that will be used to make afghans for local homeless people. Our Lady of the Assumption volunteers worked on piecing together the afghans at tables in the fair's Home Arts Building, where many fair-goers stopped by to bring donated squares or pick up donated yarn to make the squares. The group collected more than twice as many squares this year as it did at the 1993 fair.

Khalid Fazly arrived on U.S. soil last month carrying his mother's homemade cookies, a prayer rug, dried dates and thousands in $100 bills tucked into his trousers. He was pretty certain he was prepared for America. Except for a car trip to Pakistan, Fazly had never been outside Afghanistan. Now he almost certainly is the only freshman at Indiana's Ball State University who has been threatened with death by the Taliban, survived insurgent ambushes and braved roadside bombs. In Afghanistan, Fazly worked as a translator and "fixer," or problem-solver.

Pakistan ordered the deportation of about 50,000 Afghan refugees in an insurgency-racked tribal region amid a major military offensive against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The government said it was expelling all Afghan refugees in Bajaur, alleging that many have links to militant groups. Police in Bajaur arrested 25 Afghans and said they would soon be deported. "The orders have been issued to the tribal police to push all of them [refugees] out," said local government official Abdul Haseeb, adding that their homes would be bulldozed.

A wave of violence swept across Afghanistan on Saturday, leaving five American troops and dozens of Afghans dead and underscoring the Taliban's growing reach. The bloodshed comes as Western allies try to shore up stability amid an election process increasingly marred by fraud allegations. Militant attacks had long been concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the troubled nation, but in recent weeks have spread to the normally quieter northern and western regions, with Saturday a case in point.

The number of Afghans at risk of starving this winter far exceeds the number of Americans likely to die in any number of terrorist attacks in coming years. International aid agencies have called for a pause in bombing so that enough food can be delivered before the heavy winter snows. We need to heed this call, even if it delays achieving our military objectives. To ignore it would be to justify those who preach hate against America. It would guarantee the next generation of terrorists and doom our country to years of terror and war. The Bush administration needs to pause the bombing.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday sought to reassure an anxious public that security will not be compromised when the bulk of U.S. forces leave next year, saying the country needs American aid, not troops, in order to take over the fight against the Taliban. Karzai said he expected the U.S. to continue training, equipping and paying Afghan national security forces. "Afghanistan will be more secure after the foreigners leave," Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul.

In the country where the Sept. 11 plot was hatched and its Al Qaeda masterminds found shelter, public knowledge of the link between the devastating events of a decade ago and today's war has grown hazy. Nearly half of all Afghans are under the age of 15, too young to have a firsthand recollection of that day, or the U.S.-led invasion that began less than a month later. Among older people, even those grateful that the invasion ended Taliban rule, there is a sense that the conflict has moved far beyond its original impetus.

Re "Surprise! The Soviets Nearly Won Afghan War," Opinion, Dec. 26: After nine years of brutal warfare in which more than 2.5 million Afghans (mostly civilians) were killed or maimed and 14,453 Soviet troops were killed, Mark Kramer has the audacity to claim that the Soviets "almost" won their war in Afghanistan. Though the Soviet experience may demonstrate that close does indeed count in hand grenades (especially when deployed against civilians), the real lesson is that even the most drastic and damnable practices will not lead to victory over a stubborn insurgency.

I was a navigator in the 8th Air Force in World War II, and when we got to London I saw the damage from German bombs and rockets. It was evident that the bombing was counterproductive. The more bombs, the more the British resolve to fight back. I wondered why the German people let their Nazi leaders use such dumb tactics. Now I know! Our leaders are using the same Nazi tactics against Afghanistan. British reporter Jason Burke, writing to the Guardian Unlimited from Peshawar, Pakistan, has a sensible proposal: "The instinctively moderate, flexible nature of the vast majority of Afghans can be used to our advantage if we stop forcing them to take sides.