"They realised that the Americans had no real interest in returning this country to law and order They knew that the Americans were going to fail So they got out as soon as they could The Americans say they want peace and stability. So why don't they let Isaf (the international force in Kabul) move into the other big cities of Afghanistan? Why do they let their friendly warlords persecute the rest of the country?"Far more disturbing are persistent reports from northern Afghanistan of the massacre of thousands of Pashtuns after the slaughter at General Dostum's Qal-i-Jangi fort last November These mass murders, according to a humanitarian worker I have known for two decades – he played a brave role in preventing killings in Lebanon in 1982 – went on into December with the full knowledge of the Americans. But the US did nothing about it, any more than they did about the 600 Pakistani prisoners at Shirbagan, some of whom are still dying of starvation and ill-treatment at the hands of their Northern Alliance captors."There are mass graves all across the north, and the Americans, who know about this, have said nothing," my old friend said "The British intelligence people knew this, too. And the British have said nothing."There are those in Kabul who suspect that the Americans are now in Afghanistan for secondary reasons: to operate in and out of Pakistan, rather than in Afghanistan itself. "They've had plenty of muck-ups in Afghanistan and they could not base thousands of their soldiers in Pakistan," a Western officer in Kabul said. "They're safer here, and now they can go in and out of Pakistan and keep the pressure on Musharraf from here – and on the Iranians too."Last week, The Independent revealed that FBI officers have been seizing Arabs from their homes in Pakistan and bringing them across the border to Afghanistan for interrogation at Bagram.It was the Special Forces man in the south who saw things a little more globally. "Perhaps the Americans can start withdrawing if there's another war – if they go to war in Iraq But the US can't handle two wars at the same time.

They would be overstretched." So to end America's "war against terror" in Afghanistan – a war that has left the drug-dealers of the Northern Alliance in disproportionate control of the Afghan government, many al-Qa'ida men on the loose and absolutely no peace in the country – we have to have another war in Iraq.As if the Israeli-Palestine conflict is not enough. But when Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of State, can identify only a "so-called" Israeli-occupied territory on the West Bank – the occupation troops there presumably being mistaken by the Pentagon as Swiss or Burmese soldiers – there's not much point in taking a reality check in Washington.The truth is that Afghanistan is on the brink of another disaster. Pakistan is now slipping into the very anarchy of which its opposition warned And the Palestinian-Israeli war is now out of control. So we really need a war in Iraq, don't we? More from Robert Fisk. There's a rather tired pub at the end of my road in Brixton, south London. Normally there's just a few hard-core drinkers barely talking. The sun fights to get through the dust on the windows and the faded brown velvet curtains are pulled at closing time, leaving the hard core inside.

According to one statistic, every five seconds someone somewhere around the world will be getting up in jump-suit and cloak to sing his songs It may be sad, grotesque even But it is fantastic. No other figure in the history of popular music has sold as many records, earned as much money or spawned so many imitators.Buddy Holly may have been a better musician, the Beatles more creative, Motown easier to dance to. But Elvis just was, and that astonishing voice – whispering, stretched and reeking of desire – expressed more intensely what people felt than any of these others.The problem with all the discussion (and the 25th anniversary of his death is not until Friday, in case you were confused) about his place in rock, his debt to black music, the originality of his songs, his entry to the army, is that it misses the point.The Beatles, Buddy Holly and the rest cheered, created, influenced But they never threatened. You could object to the noise and the behaviour around them, even the drugs (although it seems pretty pathetic to claim smoking pot in the Buckingham Palace lavatories as a great act of rebellion), but not the music.