2A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, October 24, 1996 NATION/WORLD Afghan Taliban gunners shel foes Los Angeles Times HUSSEIN KOT, Afghanistan - Pushed back to within 15 miles of the Afghan capital's heart, the Taliban yes- terday showered their foes with artillery shells, rockets and tank rounds in a stubborn bid to bar the route to Kabul, the Islamic militia's greatest prize. On this barren, dun-colored moon- scape north of Kabul, Taliban gunners fired throughout the morning on troops loyal to Ahmed Shah Masoud, the oust- ed Afghan government's defense chief, and into hamlets of mud-brick homes where the inhabitants have revolted against the Talibs' severe version of Sharia, or Islamic law. "The people of these villages are with them," admitted Mullah Faisal Mohammed, 24, one of the Taliban's ;tmior commanders, as he swept his hand across the horizon, where explod- ing shells sent up plumes of smoke and dust. "But we are not afraid of them, since new fighters from other provinces are coming to join us." As the guns thundered, hundreds of residents of Hussein Kot and other rural villages fled south to Kabul on foot or in lurching, overloaded trucks. On a parallel road to the east, Taliban artillery men, tank gunners and crews of multiple-barrel mounted rocket bat- teries poured a hail of steel and shrap- nel onto Masoud's positions around the strategic Bagram air base, which had fallen to the former government's forces Saturday. Despite a string of recent battlefield setbacks, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban's information minister, declared at a news conference in Kabul yesterday that the army of Muslim purists will never quit the cap- ital. The failure of the Taliban's main for- eign backer, Pakistan, to broker an end Two Taliban fighters clean the barrels of th kilometers north of Kabul yesterday. to the latest round of fighting presages continuing armed strife in a country where more than 1 million people have1 already perished in 17 years of warfare. Masoud, who may have fewer than 5,000 men, now appears to be too weak to storm the capital, while the Taliban'sI northward momentum has been broken and reversed: The strategy of the cagey Masoud, probably the most famous of the mou- jahedeen leaders to have fought the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, appears to be to bleed the Taliban by drawing as many of their fighters into combat as possible while encircling Kabul and cutting some of its main road links. As well as blocking the main high- way leading north from Kabul to the Amu Darya river and the former Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, Masoud's forces were also reported to have taken some of the high ground east of the capital yesterday. This would let them bombard the main land artery linking Kabul and Pakistan via the Khyber Pass. The ultimate intentions of the third player in Afghan's bloody power politics, the Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, are the X factor in the equation that will determine Afghanistan's future. Dostum, a former general in the Communist regime ousted in 1992, elr multiple rocket launch AP PHOTO her about 15 signed a defense alliance this month with Masoud and has apparently sup- plied him with ammunition, fuel and artillery cover in the latter's campaign against the Taliban. But Dostum's well-equipped militia, believed to number up to 30,000 men, appears to have played no major part to date in the battles against the Taliban; Dostum is being ardently wooed by the Islamic fundamentalists as a potential ally. The Taliban, a die-hard Muslim mili- tia that arose two years ago in mosque schools along the Afghan-Pakistani bor- der, rolled into Kabul on Sept. 27, putting forces loyal to Masoud and President Burhanuddin Rabbani to flight. Within days, the Talibs, mainly mem- bers of Afghanistan's dominant Pushtun ethnic group, were masters of three- quarters of the country. It was their high-water mark. In fighting that followed as they drove north of Kabul toward the snow-dusted Hindu Kush mountains, the Taliban may have lost 1,500 of their most expe- rienced fighters and commanders. Masoud attacked his enemies on the road to the Salang Tunnel, 60 miles north of Kabul, and split them into small pockets. Informed sources in Kabul said hundreds of Talibs were killed, wounded and captured; at least 17 armored vehicles were abandoned. Protester sets herself on fire at U. Penn PHILADELPHIA (AP) - For years, Kathy Change tried to bring attention to her message of world peace by dressing in tight T-shirts and thong bikinis, wav- ing flags and playing music around the University of Pennsylvania campus. No one seemed to listen. On Tuesday, the students couldn't help but notice. On that day, the 46-year-old Change calmly walked to a large metallic peace symbol in the heart of the campus, doused herself with gasoline and set herself on fire. The suicide, carried out in front of 50 people, was meticulously planned as a final, last-gasp attempt to draw atten- tion to her beliefs. "My real intention is to spark a dis- cussion of how we can peacefully transform our world," Change wrote in a statement she delivered beforehand. "I offer myself as an alarm against Armageddon and a torch for liberty." Students who for years had walked by her with indifference or vague unease as she ranted on couldn't stop talking yesterday about her spectacular suicide. They remembered little of her message, though. "It's a tragedy," said Justin Piergross, 22, as he sat a few feet from the shiny peace sculpture. "I think a lot of people just didn't give her any respect because she was a bit different." To 21-year-old Kate Saliba, a Penn junior, the almost daily performances were like a "show." "People would be sitting by the library and just cringe," she said. "What was she against? Everything," said Kyle Bartlett, a graduate student from Little Rock, Ark. "Destruction of the rain forest. Government with a cap- ital G." Throughout yesterday morning, peo- ple made their way across the College Green and paused before a shrine of sunflowers, purple lilies, burning can- dles and colored beads left at the 15- foot-high peace sign along with a bal- loon with the message: "In memory of one who lived and died in pain" Change was something of a mystery. About the only thing anyone knew about her is that she listed an address in the city's depressed Powelton section in West Philadelphia and that police said she was from Springfield, Ohio. It wasn't clear how she supported herself or whether she had any family, though in a radio interview she once said that her father was an engineer and her grandfather a Harvard professor. .,*'* I N . ATI, 5 9 6 INS corruption let illegal aliens acquire benefits WASHINGTON - The Immigration and Naturalization Service has failed to go after thousands of illegal aliens who fraudulently obtained immigration documents from corrupt officials and used them to acquire a variety of federal benefits, an internal Justice Department investiga- tion has found. In a report completed in September and released yesterday by a congres- sional committee, the Justice Department's inspector general said the INS has "made little effort to locate or deport aliens" who obtained documents fraudulently and has not acted to prevent them from receiving benefits. Among these benefits, the report said, were permanent resident status, welfare payments, employment autho- rization, the ability to bring in relatives as legal immigrants and even natural- ization as U.S. citizens. The INS responded that it "concurs in part" and is developing a system to correct fraudulent entries in INS data- bases. INS officials said the system would be implemented within months. Marijuana smokers may prefer Kooli cigarettes WASHINGTON - Scientists for tobacco giant Philip Morris discussed a competitor's Kool brand in terms of its alleged popularity with marijuana users because of its high nicotine content, newly uncovered documents show. Anti-tobacco lawyers released the memo yesterday, filed as part . Mississippi's lawsuit against the toba - co industry. Philip Morris promptly released two additional documents filed with the court suggesting that higher-ranking scientists had rejected the marijuana discussions. "Although more people talk about 'taste,' it is likely that greater numbers smoke for the narcotic value that comes from the nicotine,' Philip Morris scien- tist Al Udow wrote in 1972. Biases may cause high blood pressure Racial discrimination, along with a person's strategy for coping with it, may be an important cause of high blood pressure in American blacks, a new study suggests. Furthermore, what constitutes an "unhealthful" response to racism may differ depending on a person's sex or social class. Keeping anger and resentment bottled up may raise a black working-class woman's blood pressure. Talking about it may do the same thing for a working-class man. These observations come from a provocative new study of blood pressure blacks and whites under the age of 30. Published today in the American Journal of Public Health, it's one of the few that has tried to probe the possible connection between racism and hypertension. High blood pressure is far more common in blacks than in whites, and is also more common in people of lower socioeconomic status. About 37 percent of black men over the age of 20 have hypertension, compared to 25 percent of white men. About 31 percent of black women have the potentially life-threatening disease, compared to 18 percent of white women. Various theories have been offered as an explanation for those findings, but none is proved. Diet, stress and lifestyle may increase the risk for working-class people. Diet and genetic predilection are possible reasons for the racial disparity of hi* blood pressure. ..4. 11 N D '4" * :: k", J L. D I 45%, Thursday, October 24, 7 p.m. University of Michigan Chemistry Bldg., Km. 1200 For more information contact the SEP: (313) 327.9421 Visit the SEP Web page at http://www.rust.net/-laborpub OPEN-MINDED BIBLE STUDY all denomint "onlc all faiths welcome all sexual orientations welcome all people welcome FRIDAYS 3:30-5:00 at Canterbury House Blue house past the Frieze Bldg. 721 E. Huron A lecture by David North National Secretary, Socialist Equality Party New Nicaniguan leader hope to end Sandnista legacy MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Conservative business executive Arnoldo Aleman, the unofficial winner in Sunday's presidential election, is fond of telling the story of how his archenemies, the leftist Sandinistas, turned him toward politics. As Aleman's wife lay dying of cancer in 1989, the Sandinista government placed him under house arrest. When she started hemorrhaging, Aleman was not allowed to accompany her to the hospital. The Marxist Sandinista gov- ernment, fighting a war against U.S.- backed Contra guerrillas, also confis- cated five of his farms. "That is what made me a politician, Aleman said in an interview last week. "The Sandinistas made me a politician." Aleman, 50, a heavyset lawyer who gives speeches like an old-time pop- ulist, promises to end the legacy of the Sandinistas here. He defeated former President Daniel Ortega, a leader of the Sandinistas, who had run Nicaragua from 1979, when they overthrew the right-wing Somoza dictatorship, to 1990, when President Violeta Chamorro won office in multi-party election. China unveils new Communist cartoons BEIJING - In the battle for the hearts and minds of China's children, the government is playing a new 'toon. Donald and Mickey are out; home- grown cartoons with Communist val. are in. A new campaign promotes cartoons with Chinese characters and themes. Among them: tales of Confucius, the life of a revered poet, and the fable of a sports hero who soars through obedi- ence and teamwork. In today's market-driven China, it also makes business sense to go after what a state-run newspaper called "the unchecked spread of foreign comics." - Compiled from Daily wire reports. SALES & MARKETING N Not a bad gig: Seize on immeasurable opportunity in the exploding consumer and sophisticated, multi-billion dollar business markets. Draw on the world-class technology, research and marketing power of IBM Corporation. Work with the industry's best third-party developers on applications, entertainment, reference and education products. Market and sell industry-leading hardware, software, multimedia, and on-line services worldwide, using the latest in multimedia, 3D graphics, and advanced video communications. We are taking the entire concept of computing to the Nth Degree. And unless you know something we don't, this is probably the best place on Earth to start your career. Recent graduates and young professionals with technical iOri The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745.967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are $85. Winter term (January through April) is $95, yearlong (September through April) is $165. On-campus sub- scriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of the Associated Press and the Associated Collegiate Press. ADDRESS: The Michigan Daily, 420 Maynard Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 481091327. PHONE NUMBERS (All area code 313): News 76-DAILY; Arts 763-0379; Sports 647-3336; Opinion 764-0552;. Circulation 764-0558; Classified advertising 764-0557; Display advertising 764-0554; Billing 764-0550. 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