Posted on 09/16/2001 4:26:53 AM PDT by sarcasm
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:06:48 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
EW YORK - Accused terrorist Osama bin Laden and associates in his Al Qaeda organization have tried several times to buy nuclear weapons, including one 1994 attempt to buy uranium, according to federal prosecutors.
Since then, several Arabic newspapers have reported that bin Laden, now considered the chief suspect by the Bush administration for last week's attacks in New York and Washington, has succeeded in obtaining nuclear material.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
1st mention I've seen of bin laden's "poppy field" concession.
If I were running the CIA we'd have dozens of operations (using ex-KBG, current KBG or anyone else) selling bogus "Soviet" nuclear material, booby trapped stingers, biological agents that couldn't give you a cold but would set-off detectors at immigration stations. That's what I can think of in two minutes. Give me time and I could really make life hard for these chumps.
Not only would this divert the terrorist resources, it would let us keep track of (and assassinate) them and plant grave suspicions in their minds about any real offers.
By Michael Moran
MSNBC
NEW YORK, Dec. 22, 1999 — It’s rare for the United States and China, Israel and Iran, China and Russia, Egypt, France and India to find a common interest, let alone a common enemy. In the 1950s, Hollywood script writers guessed it would take an invasion from outer space to create such unity. Yet that enemy is here on Earth, if U.S., Russian, Chinese and other intelligence agencies are to be believed. Afghanistan’s Taliban movement is widely accused of sheltering terrorists plotting attacks on Americans, on Indians, on Russians and others. If so, why has this powerful coalition of states done nothing to change this?
THERE IS hardly a power on Earth that isn’t currently looking at Afghanistan’s grab-bag of terrorists, Islamic zealots and heroin-producing poppy farms as the source of a major threat to their national security. For the United States, of course, the threat has been embodied by Osama bin Laden, the banished Saudi exile accused of plotting and/or bankrolling some of the most grievous terrorist attacks of the past decade - most directed at American military or civilian targets. U.S. officials suspect bin Laden may be linked to an Algerian national arrested with a trunkload of bomb material as he tried to cross into the state of Washington.
The Taliban, an overly zealous Islamic movement that captured most of Afghanistan in 1996, has steadfastly refused to hand over bin Laden. In what should have been taken as a warning to the regime, the United Nations Security Council mustered a rare unanimous vote in October to slap an economic embargo on the Taliban.
HEEDING NO ONE
The Taliban, like all religious zealot groups, falls back on “God’s will” when temporal powers like the United Nations make inconvenient demands. It justifies its protection of bin Laden by pointing to his years as an anti-Soviet resistance fighter during the Afghan war.
They also point to the enormous damage done to their nation by the Soviets and the West. The Central Intelligence Agency, using Saudi money and Pakistani territory, turned Afghanistan’s tribal and ethnic groups into small armies to battle the Soviet Union.
When Gorbachev finally pulled the plug on the Soviet travesty in 1989, the groups armed, trained and directed by the CIA changed were set loose on each other. In retrospect, the United States did little to ensure its arms fell into responsible hands. Among the CIA’s star pupils of the era, for instance, was one Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban has stonewalled on bin Laden ever since the United States accused him of bombing the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, attacks that took over 250 lives.
Just Monday, the ambassador to Pakistan - one of the few nations to recognize the Taliban’s rule, said, “He is just a guest. He cannot act against anyone.”
AU CONTRAIRE
U.S. intelligence agencies disagree, and of late they’ve received a lot of support from other powers. And it’s not just bin Laden. Groups advocating Kashmir’s separation from India, Chechnya’s independence, Islamic rule in former Soviet Central Asian states and independence China’s Muslim region, Xinjiang, all maintain training and organizational facilities in the Taliban’s realm.
Afghanistan’s regime also supports and protects the poppy growers and traffickers who turn out a majority of the world’s heroin.
More generally, some extremist veterans of the long war against Soviet occupation have returned to their homelands, notably Algeria and Egypt, and founded movements that have attempted to use terror to undermine their governments.
THE TALIBAN RAP SHEET
Even a short list of the charges leveled at the Taliban from outside the U.S. hints at the storm brewing against the regime in Kabul:
RUSSIA claims the Chechen separatists its army now surrounds in Grozny had received training and materiel from the Taliban. More seriously (and less substantiated), Russia has accused bin Laden of helping direct a wave of bombings in Moscow and other cities last summer that killed over 300 civilians.
INDIA, always suspicious of Pakistan’s decision to align itself with the Taliban, has since accused the Taliban of helping train Islamic militants who regularly infiltrate Indian-ruled areas of Kashmir. Multiple-death acts of terrorism are a weekly event in that region and one group trained on Taliban territory nearly touched off a full-scale war last summer when it occupied mountain passes claimed by India.
FRANCE has traced bin Laden funds to Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, which has engaged in a gruesome civil war with that North African nation’s military that has claimed up to 100,000 lives. Algerian-related attacks in France over the past five years have taken over 20 lives. CHINA has accused the Taliban of fomenting Islamic radicalism in its far western Xinjiang province and of supplying the region’s heroin syndicates to help fund the export of Islamic militant violence. Several fatal bombings in China, one on a Beijing bus, were blamed on these groups in 1998-99.
IRAN came very close to war with the Taliban last year after nine Iranian diplomats and a journalist were slain and mobs of pro-Taliban Sunni Muslims went on a killing spree of Shiites in the city of Herat. Mostly Shiite Iran views itself as a protector of the Shiite minorities in neighboring states. The Taliban’s rulers are Sunni Muslims.
WHAT NEXT?
Back in America these days, no thought of using American military force in a far-off land can escape this litmus test: Is is worth risking American lives? If the question were put to the American public, “Should the United States sponsor an international force to establish order in far off Afghanistan?” most people would answer with a resounding “no.”
But if there is real evidence that bombers trained and succored in Afghanistan are planning to strike at U.S. cities, the question changes. The West, which fought a war to rescue Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and Kosovo Muslims from Slobodan Milosevic, has made surprisingly little a threat to its own populations. Some are asking precisely what order of atrocity will it take for these great powers to put aside their differences and act together against the Taliban and the threat it nurtures. Would the destruction of the Seattle Space Needle have been enough? It’s hard to say.
For all but a tiny minority of this planet, the elimination of the Taliban would be viewed as a service to humankind. Human rights groups regard it as the most abusive regime on the planet. It’s perversion of Islamic law is imposed harshly; minorities treated miserably; women confined to lives approaching penal servitude. Meanwhile, its subjects live in abject poverty as the regime continues to battle the remnants of other Afghan factions who have never stopped fighting since the day the Soviet Union invaded.
Of course, many in the United States and elsewhere may say, “what goes on inside Afghanistan is none of my business.” Fair enough. But what slips out from its uncontrolled hinterland is the world’s business. The only question remaining is what the world’s great powers - always ready to denounce terrorism - are willing to do to prevent it.
The assassination attempt in Manila never got beyond the planning stages.
ABCNEWS has also learned that a key suspect in the U.S. embassy bombings, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, told investigators of yet another bin Laden plot to kill the president.
Odeh told investigators bin Laden ordered an attempt on Clinton’s life in February, when the president was due to visit Pakistan.
That attempt was foiled when Clinton’s trip was canceled.
Keystone Killers in Manila
Wali Khan Amin Shah—a former top aide to bin Laden—told FBI investigators that he and Ramzi Yousef were dispatched to Manila by bin Laden to plan and carry out Clinton’s assassination.
Yousef was later convicted as the ringleader in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000. Shah was convicted along with Yousef in a separate plot to blow up U.S. airliners.
Shah was charged with logistics in Manila, while Yousef was the designated trigger man.
The methods of death discussed included the use of explosives, a missile attack on the president’s motorcade and a sniper attack using mercury-tipped bullets.
The assassination attempt was called off when the pair’s makeshift bomb factory in Manila caught fire, forcing them to flee.
Bin Laden Indicted
A grand jury in the Manhattan U.S. District Court secretly indicted bin Laden on June 10.
The charges include financing terrorism and soliciting the murder of Americans.
The grand jury was convened after 19 U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia were killed by a terrorist bomb in June 1996—another attack in which bin Laden’s complicity is suspected.
Bin Laden has been under suspicion by U.S. officials since the World Trade Center bombing.
The charge of solicitation to murder can be brought against anyone who has incited others to commit violence or murder. The felony is punishable by life in prison.
But whether the indictment will ever result in the arrest, extradition or prosecution of bin Laden—who remains safely out of reach of traditional law enforcement methods in Afghanistan—is highly doubtful.
Taliban: Clinton Should Be Stoned to Death
Taliban militia leader Mullah Omar Tuesday rejected a U.S. offer of talks and demanded an apology and compensation for last Thursday’s U.S. attacks on Osama bin Laden’s camps in eastern Afghanistan.
“We told them that after the missile attacks, there was nothing to discuss. There is no subject to discuss. The missiles finished everything,” Omar told Afghan Islamic Press.
U.S. President Bill Clinton deserves to be stoned to death for ordering the attack, Omar added.
The Taliban government rejects U.S. allegations that bin Laden was responsible for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley told reporters Monday the U.S. has long had contact with the Taliban and stands prepared to hold further dialogue about bin Laden and other terrorist threats.
“We’ve made clear that the Taliban should not harbor terrorists on the soil of Afghanistan, and that they ought to take action to shut down his (bin Laden’s) capabilities,” he said.
But during a Sunday interview with the BBC, Omar expressed unhappiness with bin Laden’s calls for Muslims to attack the United States.
And a Taliban spokesman said bin Laden’s travel was being restricted to the Taliban-held parts of Afghanistan.
The family of Osama bin Laden reportedly is bankrolling two fellowships at Harvard. The Boston Globe says bin Laden’s family has sponsored two fellowships at Harvard since 1992. Both are in Islamic studies.
The Khyber connection was put on the map after Osama Bin Laden exported his brand of death and destruction from Afghanistan, through Pakistan to West Africa.
In December, a Bin Laden associate was arrested in Peshawar—a Pakistani town near the border of Afghanistan—on charges of masterminding a New Year's Eve plot to attack Americans overseas.
Clinton is pushing General Musharraf to use his influence with Afghanistan's leaders—the Taliban—to bring Bin Laden to trial.
When asked if Bin Laden be extradited from Afghanistan, Musharraf told Roberts, "Well, he needs to be extradited certainly, and whatever proof is there, he needs to be tried."
Even if Musharraf could convince the Taliban to give Bin Laden up, there is an abundance of anger, frustration and weapons in the region, left over from the Afghan war, when thousands of extremists came together to bring a superpower to its knees.
Talal Hussein, an editor at the Pakistan News, says, "There are lots of militant groups which operate on their own. They are free wheelers. It's not a question of removing one Osama Bin Laden from the scene and thinking that you've done your bit."
That militant network has built up in this region over two decades of conflict. The president believes America must get deeply involved in South Asia to crack the terrorist problem, a process Clinton continues throughout this week.
Copyright 2000, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved.
I think my congressman, Marty Osama Bin Meehan, can tell you that that was just hype.
INTRO: President Clinton has condemned human rights violations by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, and has announced new aid to Afghan refugees who flee what the United States describes as the Taliban's repressive policies against women. Mr. Clinton made his comments at a ceremony Monday commemorating the 51st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this week. Correspondent Deborah Tate reports from the White House.
Text: The Clinton administration has long been concerned about what it sees as the Taliban's denial of women's rights to employment, health care, freedom of movement and security, and the President Monday stepped up his call to the muslim fundamentalist movement to end the abuse.
He left it to his wife - First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a long-time women's rights advocate - to detail the administration's concerns.
// H-Clinton actuality //
It is a violation of human rights when women are beaten because their ankles are showing under their burqas, it is a violation of human rights when women are barred from working -their means of supporting their families stripped away, along with their dignity, it is a violation of human rights when girls are kept from classrooms, when their voices are silenced, and when their presence is erased from public life.
// end act //
Joining the Clintons at the White House ceremony was Belquis Ahmadi, a 27-year-old Afghan rights activist who fled her country shortly after the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996. She movingly recalled how one woman died from a minor injury at the gates of a hospital because the Taliban had suspended medical services to women.
// Ahmadi actuality //
I felt I had no hope at all. I hated to be a woman. I tried to understand what was happening. I asked myself if the world cared about Afghan women. Would the world community take action if all men in Afghanistan could not go to the hospital anymore?
// end act //
Ms. Ahmadi appealed to the United States to make every effort to find an end to the conflict in Afghanistan - arguing that an end to 20 years of war in her home country is the only long-term solution to restoring human dignity there.
Mr. Clinton vowed to to continue to work toward bringing about an Afghanistan with a government that reflects the will of its people - and, in the meantime, he offered new assistance to Afghan women and children refugees.
// Clinton actuality //
I am pleased to announce we will spend next year at least two million dollars to educate and improve the health of Afghan women and children refugees. We are also making an additional one- and-a-half million dollars available in emergency aid for those displaced by the recent Taliban offensive, and we are dramatically expanding our resettlement program for women and children who are not safe where they are.
// end act //
Mr. Clinton also called on the US Senate to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
// rest opt //
The President singled out other areas in the world where he is concerned about about human rights violations - including Chechnya, where civilians have suffered casualties and been forced from their homes by Russia's bloody military campaign against Islamic insurgents there.
He also took issue with Beijing's crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, and urged the government to respect freedom of conscience and association. He said the only way China can maintain stability at home is by meeting the growing demands of its people for openness and accountability.
Mr. Clinton used the occasion to honor five human rights leaders - including the Reverend Leon Sullivan, whose `Sullivan's Principles encouraged companies working in South Africa to take steps to end apartheid, and Sister Jean Marshall, a Dominican nun in New York city, who founded a center to help immigrants find employment and social benefits.
(Signed)
NEB/DAT/PT
06-Dec-1999 18:26 PM EDT (06-Dec-1999 2326 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America .
By TERENCE HUNT AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton has imposed financial sanctions against the Taliban religious militia that rules Afghanistan in retaliation for its reputed support of Osama bin Laden, the alleged international terrorist. Clinton signed an executive order yesterday imposing the sanctions, a senior administration official said today.
Bin Laden was placed on the FBI's ``Ten Most Wanted List'' last month with a $5 million reward offered for information leading to his arrest. In practical terms, the impact of the sanctions probably will be modest, the official acknowledged, speaking on condition of anonymity.
It is not clear what assets might be affected, the official said, but declared that the action sends a clear message that the United States will not tolerate those who shelter international terrorists. U.S. trade with Afghanistan totaled $24 million in 1998.
The order freezes any property of the Taliban within U.S. jurisdiction. It also prohibits transactions and trade with the Taliban or in territory controlled by the Taliban, preventing any U.S. investment. The United States demands that the Taliban expel bin Laden to the United States for trial or to a third country where he would face justice for alleged crimes.
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said that American intelligence had also turned up "very specific" information that the bin Laden network was planning additional attacks, which Thursday's missile launches were designed to prevent.
In addition, the United States had information that top leaders of bin Laden's network were to meet in Afghanistan Thursday. Berger said that "influenced our planning" for the attack, which was authorized by the president last Friday.
By Warren P. Strobel and Richard J. Newman
The target: terrorist nonpareil Osama bin Laden. The force: a Russian-American armada of helicopter gunships, combat aircraft, and special-forces commandos poised to strike bin Laden's terrorist network deep inside Afghanistan. D-day: anytime. Reports of a joint U.S.-Russian offensive against bin Laden from bases in Central Asia swirled through the world's press last week. The bold-sounding plan had only one drawback: It wasn't true. But Washington let the rumors fester, for good reason: They rattle bin Laden and his hosts, the fundamentalist Taliban, which rule most of Afghanistan.
It will take more than psychological warfare to crush bin Laden, who U.S. officials increasingly believe played a role in the October bombing of the USS Cole, killing 17 U.S. sailors. President Clinton and his advisers are weighing retaliatory options, from a cruise missile attack to a broader military campaign against bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to a diplomatic blitzkrieg against the Taliban.
Pinpointing the Saudi exile will be even harder than it was in 1998, when U.S. cruise missiles, fired to avenge the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, just missed him at an Afghan base. The strikes forced al-Qaeda to spend half its resources on defensive tactics, says a top Pentagon official, leaving less time for terrorist operations. "They're on the move all the time," he says. Communications go by courier instead of electronically, to avoid U.S. eavesdropping.
Delayed strike. Another cruise missile strike is a live option but carried out with the lessons of 1998 in mind. That attack might have killed bin Laden, U.S. News has learned, but the Pentagon delayed launching Tomahawk missiles at Afghanistan until workers at another target–a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant two time zones away–ended their shift. The goal was to reduce civilian casualties in Sudan, but by the time U.S. missiles hit home, a terrorist confab in Afghanistan between bin Laden and top lieutenants had broken up. "We might have gotten him," a Pentagon official says.
There were other snafus military planners hope to avoid. The CIA already is compiling intelligence data to help justify a U.S. military strike–and neutralize the kind of criticism that followed the 1998 attack. Misstatements by top officials about the products made by the Sudanese plant, for example, still leave doubt about Washington's claim that it was linked to bin Laden. If Clinton uses cruise missiles again, the targets will get closer scrutiny–and likely be limited to one country.
Clinton, with less than 50 days left in office, hasn't decided whether to take a parting shot at bin Laden. If the Cole investigation uncovers irrefutable evidence of his involvement, Clinton may be forced to act. His other options:
A massive airstrike against bin Laden's camps, training grounds, and arms caches across Afghanistan. Downside: It would require acquiescence from neighboring Pakistan and could further inflame anti-U.S. sentiments in the Muslim world.
A covert mission by U.S. Special Forces to nab bin Laden, disrupt his operations, or snoop around his bases. "Special operations forces are much better than cruise missiles. Cruise missiles feel good at the moment, but in the longer term, their value is less clear," says John Parachini of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. While appealing, it may involve too much risk for today's political leaders. And while acting quietly may be more effective, "you haven't really sent a signal" to other would-be terrorists, says a retired general.
Diplomacy. This track is already underway. U.S. officials met with Taliban delegates in Germany last month and demanded they turn over bin Laden or face the consequences. They refused. The United States and Russia, which is alarmed by Islamic militancy to its south, are cosponsoring a United Nations resolution that would add an arms embargo and other prohibitions to existing sanctions on the Taliban. It is, says a U.S. official, "the diplomatic equivalent of a declaration of war." The resolution shows "the surprising international cooperation that is evolving on terrorism," says Parachini.
Finally, there's economic warfare. But the United States has been after bin Laden's financial network for years. "It's very, very hard to do," says a top Clinton aide. Ditto for getting the man himself.
© U.S.News & World Report Inc. All rights reserved.
Text of a Letter from the President
To the Speaker of the House of Representatives
And the President of the Senate
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
June 30, 2000
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. In accordance with this provision, I have sent the enclosed notice to the Federal Register for publication, stating that the emergency declared with respect to the Taliban is to continue in effect beyond July 5, 2000.
On July 4, 1999, I issued Executive Order 13129, "Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions with the Taliban," to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the actions and policies of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The order blocks all property and interests in property of the Taliban and prohibits trade-related transactions by United States persons involving the territory of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban.
The Taliban continues to allow territory under its control in Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven and base of operations for Usama bin Laden and the Al-Qaida organization, who have committed and threaten to continue to commit acts of violence against the United States and its nationals. This situation continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to maintain in force these emergency authorities beyond July 5, 2000.
Sincerely,
William J. Clinton
fschurmann@pacificnews.org
Prediction #73 for Tuesday, August 15th, 2000
Our New President Will Suffer Big Headache Due To War-Ravaged, Fiercely Islamic Afghanistan
Basis for the Prediction:
In a recent interview with Jane Perlez of the New York Times shortly before the Democratic national convention President Clinton described the region encompassing Afghanistan, Kashmir and the Central Asian heartland to the north as the most volatile in the world.
At first it seemed he was mainly pointing at Kashmir where the bloodshed rate is steadily rising. The Times' headline was Clinton urges Pakistan to go easy on Kashmir. But a look at the larger picture shows that presidential concern went beyond Kashmir. A major White House foreign policy is facing final collapse even as Clinton, at the convention, hailed the many successes of his eight years in office.
The dying policy was directed towards Afghanistan. During the last century the British, who ruled India and feared Russian expansion, were fond of saying "who controls Afghanistan controls the world." At the time the Anglo-Russian rivalry centered on Afghanistan was called the "Great Game." In the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union the term made a comeback. It appears that Clinton, voracious reader that he is, agrees that poor, war-ravaged but fiercely Islamic Afghanistan is at the center of today's Great Game.
In 1525 Babur Shah, descendant of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, launched his conquest of India from Kabul. Now there is fear in Moscow, New Delhi, Beijing, Islamabad and, of course, Washington that the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, styled Commander of the Faithful, could become another Babur, or worse, the Caliph Omar, the second to bear the title Commander of the Faithful. From 634 to 644 Omar's new Muslim soldiers brought down the Persian and gravely weakened the Byzantine empires.
Like the early Muslims a millennium and a half ago the Taliban hold that there are no nations, races or tribes, only those who believe in one God and those who do not. Many people in the region and beyond see this "fundamentalism" as a source of hope. It also enabled the Taliban to take over 90 percent of the country with minimal loss of life. Whenever the Taliban showed up the enemy troops deserted their warlord commanders and joined them.
What the American public most knows about Afghanistan is that the Taliban have given refuge to Osama Bin Laden, billed in the Western media as the world's number one terrorist. Last year the Clinton administration adopted a new Afghanistan policy based on one key premise: there was a way to pressure the ruling Taliban to hand him over to the US.
Osama Bin Laden comes from a prominent Saudi family. When he joined the Afghan Mujahideen to fight against the Soviet occupiers he was regarded as a hero throughout the Islamic world but also in Washington. When the Russians left, the Mujadhideen leaders turned into warlords battling each other. Osama left Afghanistan and sought refuge in fundamentalist Sudan. When the Taliban succeeded in routing all but one of the warlords and taking 90 percent of the country Osama was given refuge by Mullah Omar.
Washington's new policy centered on so isolating Afghanistan from the world community that simply to survive, feed their people and give them jobs that they would have no choice but to hand Osama over. But if they did that Commander of the Faithful the Mullah Omar would be shown as a pious fraud. The spirit would go out of Islamic revolutionary movements all over the world.
The one warlord who remained was Ahmed Shah Mas'ud. He held the strategic Panjsheer Valley only some 50 miles from the capital Kabul. From time to time he would lob shells into Kabul to show he was still a threat. What made him a credible threat was an Afghan "Ho Chi Minh" trail that went down to the Panjsheer from Tajikistan, now an independent nation but whose borders are still guarded by Russian troops. As a result Russian weaponry and supplies kept coming down the trail to Mas'ud's stronghold.
So confidant was the Clinton White House that Mas'ud could not be defeated that recently an official of the State Department upgraded the amount of terrain Mas'ud held from 10 to 15 percent. "There is no way Mas'ud can be defeated," he said publicly, a statement prominently cited in media serving the sizeable Afghan communities in the US.
If Mas'ud indeed had been in unshakeable control of that 15 percent the Taliban would have been in terrible straits. People are starving. There are no jobs. The great powers have cut one international Afghan link to the outside world after the other.
The Taliban are already besieging his stronghold on two sides. He cannot use the Russian-built tunnel leading to the north. That leaves only the trail. But now the Taliban have overrun the trailhead areas in the north leading to the Tajik border. And it is highly unlikely, given their disastrous defeat in Afghanistan, their "Vietnam," Russian soldiers will be sent in to reopen the trail.
The last of the warlords is on the ropes. Mullah Omar has asked Mas'ud to join the Taliban, the only condition being that he accept the Mullah as Commander of the Faithful. Without Mas'ud, the Clinton policy on Afghanistan is dead.
The Taliban's final victory will lead to even more bloodshed in Kashmir. A Central Asia wide Islamic movement is operating out of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Most worried is the region's biggest country, Uzbekistan. China is equally worried about Islamic fundamentalism in its far western Xinjiang province. The authorities recently carried out public executions of Muslim "separatists." And not only are the Russians once again bogged down in Islamic Chechnya but war is spreading to neighboring Islamic Dagestan. More and more Russians are worried about terrorist acts like the recent Moscow subway bombing.
In 1918, right after World War I, a powerful movement, atheistic Communism, spread out like a prairie fire from revolutionary Russia. In 1917 there were no communist parties anywhere. In 1919 scores were sprouting up all over the world. They preached there are no nations, races or tribes, only those who are workers or peasants and those who are not. In 1840 there was no Christianity in China. In 1850 a movement called the Taiping, the Great Peace, conquered two thirds of the country led by a man who considered himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The Taipings too preached absolute equality of all people.
Sometimes history does repeat itself.
so bin laden contols "a majority of the world's heroin."?? for those of you out there advocating carpet bombing, there's prolly more $$$ flowing out of afgan self sustaining poppy fields/ per acre than a comparable sized saudi oil field? bin laden couldn't be so lavish in his funding when this source of funding drys up.
thanx for the heads up, kcvl.
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