Your front-page report of September 14 dealt with a proposal to introduce a system of quarterly fixation of fuel price on the basis of some formulae. The proposal appears to be reasonable. However, as the price will reflect the international price of particular types of fuel, the users of octane and petrol will be benefited. This will be very unfair. Ground realities, instead of international price trend, should guide the policy of fixing prices of fuel. In fact, the prices of petrol and octane could be locally inflated over the international prices to subsidise the prices of kerosene and diesel. This will benefit the rural poor who use kerosene for lighting purposes and diesel for agriculture. This will also keep down transport costs, benefiting the passengers of bus and launches and the people in general as lower carrying costs of food grains, vegetables and other commodities will help contain the price spiral of daily necessities.
   SA Mansoor
   Dhaka

Re ‘America in Afghanistan,’ by Najmuddin A Sheikh (September 12).
   When 80,000 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan to stop the America-supported Mujahedins from toppling the pro-Moscow regime in Kabul, they took up the fighting and did not equip and train the Afghan army. Soviet commanders were supremely confident that they could do the job themselves. The Soviet Union was a formidable superpower and the Soviet forces were backed up by fighter bombers, helicopter gunship, tanks and mechanised infantry divisions in full combat gear and the Mujahedins seemed to have no chance against such a mighty war machine. But the Mujahedins resorted to hit-and-run attacks using Pakistan’s tribal areas as their staging posts.
   The only way the Soviets could stop the Mujahedins was to take out their bases inside Pakistan. But Pakistan was an American ally and any attack on the Pakistani territory would have triggered a direct confrontation with the United States that was already supplying the insurgents with lethal weapons. As such, the Soviet forces were obliged to fight the elusive Mujahedins without much success and were forced to withdraw after suffering heavy casualties. Because they were busy fighting and did not equip and train local forces, the Afghan army was ill prepared to face the Mujahedin onslaught and fell like a house of cards immediately after the Soviet withdrawal.
   Similarly, today the Taliban/Al Qaeda are attacking the US and NATO forces using Pakistan’s tribal areas as their staging posts and although Pakistan is still an American ally, it will never allow the American forces to intrude the tribal areas in hot pursuit of the Taliban because it will enrage the tribal population. Today’s anti-American sentiments in Pakistan are far greater than the anti-Soviet sentiments of the earlier era and the Americans should be careful not to inflame it by resorting to military incursions inside Pakistan.
   The best way would be to equip and train the Afghan army to do the fighting. The American and NATO forces should provide logistic support, but the bulk of combat should be left to the Afghan forces. A well-equipped and well-trained Afghan army can do the job without creating any political crisis. America must not replicate the Soviet mission which failed because it did not create a combat capable Afghan army.
   Mahmood Elahi
   Ottawa, Canada