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Afghanistan

Blast in convoy of 'mourners' kills 7 in Kabul

2018-09-10

[ARABNEWS] An kaboom in Kabul on Sunday killed seven people in a convoy of mostly gunnies marking the death anniversary of Ahmad Shah Masood, one of Afghanistan’s legendary figures. Meanwhile, ...back at the Council of Boskone, Helmuth ordered the entire 614th quadrant searched. The Green Lensman must be found!... scores of security forces bit the dust in a spate of attacks by Taliban ...Arabic for students... combatants elsewhere in the country. Police said the blast was caused by a jacket wallah who had mingled in one of the long convoys of vehicles and cycle of violences in which the gunnies drove for hours in Kabul’s streets. He opened fire into the air in a sustained manner and created panic among tens of thousands of people in the city. The incident caused lawlessness, disorder and disrupted businesses and people’s lives, and the blast led to the drastic reduction of firing and disbursement of the button men, residents said. Before the blast, security forces early in the day said they shot and maimed another suicide bomber who wanted to detonate explosives on his body among another crowd of marchers near the monument of Masood outside the US embassy. The protracted firing, mostly into the air by the marchers, left behind 13 people maimed, public health ministry front man Waheed Majorh told news hounds. The Emergency Hospital said it had received 34 injured patients. Kabul police front man Hashmat Stanekzai, in a message, said seven people were killed and 20 maimed in the blast. The chaos lasted for more than eight hours and showed the inability of security forces and government to block it. "There were lots of young men and kids who drove in vehicles without number plates, wielding knives and guns. We were all shocked," Said Sameer, a Kabul resident, told Arab News.

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Africa North

NY Times: Top Tunisian 'Jihadist' Killed by US Strike in Libya

2015-07-04

[ALMANAR.LB] A top Tunisian terrorist and associate of late Al-Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now beyond all cares and woe... was killed by a US Arclight airstrike in Libya last month, the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... reported. Seifallah Ben Hassine, Tunisia's most wanted Jihadist, who criminal masterminded a campaign of liquidations and terrorist attacks, including one against the United States Embassy in Tunis, was killed mid-June in an Arclight airstrike that targeted a top Al Qaeda-linked terrorist, the paper said. Ben Hassine, also known as Abu Ayadh, is believed to have coordinated a string of liquidations, including the killing of famed Afghan anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Masood in 2001. He was one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants and the leader of the outlawed group Ansar al-Sharia ...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet... h in Tunisia. He had been based in Libya since 2013, according to reports, and ran training camps and a network of bad boy cells across the region. Tunisian officials also accused Ben Hassine of directing the killings of two secular Tunisian politicians in 2013, the paper reported. "His death, if confirmed, would be an important victory for Tunisia in its struggle to contain a persistent insurgency in its western border region and a growing threat to its urban centers," New York Times said. Moreover, Tunisian station Radio Mosaique first reported Ben Hassine's death, which the US paper said it had confirmed with an official in Washington. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential military assessment, said Ben Hassine died in a strike that targeted Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a top Al Qaeda-linked bad boy believed to have criminal masterminded a deadly attack on an Algerian gas plant in 2013. Libya's government reported at the time that Belmokhtar was killed in the attack but Al Qaeda's North Africa branch denied it. Hassine had been on a United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... blacklist since 2002 over his links to al-Qaeda. He was imprisoned in Tunisia in 2003 but released under an amnesty after the ouster of ex-President-for-Life Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ...who departed by popular demand in January, 2011, precipitating the Arab Spring... in 2011. He fought alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan in 2001 before travelling to Pakistain and then The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... where he was tossed in the clink You have the right to remain silent... and extradited, the newspaper reported.

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Afghanistan

Afghan Interior Minister Escapes Assassination Attempt

2011-10-24

[An Nahar] A jacket wallah launched Sunday a failed liquidation attempt on Afghan Interior Minister Bismullah Khan in Parwan, north of Kabul, a front man for the ministry told Agence La Belle France Presse. "I can confirm a failed liquidation attempt on the minister, a suicide bomber was involved, no casualties," Siddiq Siddiqui said, giving no further details. Governor of Parwan province Abdul Basir Salangi said the attack took place at 3:30pm (11:00 GMT) on the road between Sayed Khail and Gulbahar districts. He said the minister was not there at the time, but did not give his whereabouts, telling AFP only that: "He was in Parwan. He is safe." "The minister's convoy had parked for prayers, a suicide kaboomer hiding under a bridge approached the convoy. The bodyguards saw him and shot him. He had a boom jacket on, but the explosives didn't explode," Salangi added. Khan is an ethnic Tajik former anti-Soviet commander who fought the Taliban alongside Afghanistan's northern hero Ahmad Shah Masood and was appointed to the interior ministry post in June last year. The failed attempt Curses! Foiled again! on his life is the latest in a string of violent incidents to take place in the north of the country, which over the past decade has been relatively insulated from the Taliban-led insurgency. The minister is a member of the Jamiat-e-Islami political party that was led by the former president Burhanuddin Rabbani ... the murdered legitimate president of Afghanistan... , the chief broker for peace in the Afghan war until he was killed at his home in Kabul last month.

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Afghanistan

Grisly Afghan museum honors anti-Soviet jihad

2010-04-26

The bloodied corpses of Soviet soldiers slumped over an armored tank. Burqa-clad Afghan women on a roof, cheering on fighters as helicopters burn in the sky above their heads. These are scenes from a panoramic pastiche of Afghanistan's war against the former Soviet Union's invading army, brought to life by plaster of Paris figures for the centerpiece of the country's first museum dedicated to the Mujahideen. "This is for the future generations so they can understand and see what their fathers did to defeat the invaders," said Sayed Abdel Wahab Qattali, the founder of the People's Museum, or Manzar-e Jahad, in Afghanistan's western Herat city. "I was in the war, I saw a lot of dead Russian soldiers. It was a very hard time ... when you're compelled to fight, you may be compelled to kill," Qattali said. A long, well-lit corridor holds portraits of about 50 dead commanders. The final scene is a 360 degree diorama re-enacting the Mujahideen's triumph over the Russians in the city of Herat, with fighters marching down one of its central boulevards. The history ends with the Soviet pullout and does not go on to illustrate the brutal civil war that followed, in which competing Afghan factions fought each other, killing thousands of civilians in the process. Qattali was himself a Mujahideen fighter in Herat and at age 19 joined the legion of mutinous ethnic Tajik Afghan-army- commander-turned-militia-leader Ismail Khan, who recaptured Herat after the Soviet Union's defeat, becoming its governor. The museum is partly funded by Khan, but Qattali, who lost eight members of his family in the war, has paid for most of it using earnings from his own construction and security companies. In one large room, Qattali has diligently displayed a huge collection of photographs of other fighters and commanders. The familiar faces of Khan and anti-Taliban Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Masood -- who was assassinated by al Qaeda agents two days before the September 11 2001 attacks and is revered by many Afghans -- are easily identifiable. "I have many memories. For 10 years I was with the jihad to make sure we could keep our country. I want to make sure that Afghanistan does not go in that direction again," Qattali said, standing before a picture of himself as a fighter in his early twenties with a bullet belt and an AK-47 rifle -- a contrast to the two-piece suit and crisp white shirt he now wears. "I'm sad and concerned that all the forces that are here now can't seem to have the same power that the Mujahideen did. It's not so much that the Taliban have more power now but that the government is so weak," he said. Rows of Russian rifles, clusters of grenades and an impressive collection of plastic land mines fill glass cases in the museum's foyer. "The Afghan security forces today don't even have this level of equipment," Qattali joked. The gardens of the museum display some of his most prized memorabilia: Russian helicopters, fighter jets and rocket launchers, all captured by the Mujahideen and on show, framed by well-kept rose bushes. Although the museum will not be open to the public until next year, visitors, particularly officials and foreigners, are welcome to take a tour of its gardens and unfinished exhibits. The museum's guestbook contains messages of thanks and gushing admiration from U.S. congressmen, as well as the deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, British Lieutenant General Sir Nick Parker. "The forces that here now are here to help," Qattali said. "But the ones that came from Russia, they came to hurt us and damaged the country."

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Masood's star fading in Afghanistan

2005-09-09

Four years after he was assassinated, portraits of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Masood still hang on walls throughout the Afghan capital Kabul. But many Afghans have turned away from the so-called “Lion of the Panjshir”, the once-revered national hero who now reminds many in this battered country of a violent time they would rather forget. On September 9, 2001, two days before the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Masood was killed by two men posing as journalists in a suicide bomb attack blamed on Al Qaeda. Masood, a hero of the anti-Soviet resistance and the fight against the hardline Taliban militia, led the Northern Alliance once based in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul. He remains popular in northern Afghanistan among the ethnic Tajiks. Each month hundreds visit his tomb atop an arid hill near the village of Bozorak, overlooking the Panjshir valley which Masood bitterly defended – first against the Soviet army and then the Taliban. “We will never forget him” said Abdul Mahmood Daqiq, Afghanistan’s attorney general who was once part of Masood’s close circle. On the anniversary of Masood’s death Friday a ceremony is expected to be held at his small mausoleum – one of three to take place throughout the country. But Masood’s iconic status – largely created by the foreign media and influential Panjshiris – is in dispute elsewhere in Afghanistan. “He is not the figure here that he is in France. He is regarded as a great combatant by the Tajiks but as an enemy by others,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul. “He was powerful and intelligent, with a vision of a democratic national union that was still very much Islamic, but others regarded him as dangerous.” The painful memories of violence at the hands of his mujahedin (holy warriors) during the 1992-96 civil war still haunt many in the capital. And many still link Masood to the power grab by his former comrades-in-arms from the Northern Alliance following the US-led ousting of the hardline Taliban in late 2001. “Masood was nothing more than a chief of one of the factions that plundered as much as it could. He symbolises a time which destroyed the country and which Afghans want to forget,” said Ahmed Joyenda, director of the Foundation for Civil Society, a non-governmental organisation promoting education in Kabul. Masood’s skill as a military strategist has never been questioned. But as Afghanistan struggles against an increasingly deadly Islamic insurgency before the first post-Taliban polls later this month, many still see him as a key factor in the unrest that continues to trouble the country today. “He took part in the civil war and the destruction of Kabul, and he is hated by the Pashtuns and Hazaras,” said a former classmate at the Esteqlal French College of Kabul. “Masood was a war hero for the Panjshir but not a hero for Afghanistan.”

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Europe

Masood murder accomplices sentenced in Paris

2005-05-18

A French court sentenced four Islamist radicals to up to seven years in jail Tuesday for helping the men who killed Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Shah Masood two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks. The defendants stood accused of providing logistical support to the two Tunisians who, posing as journalists in Afghanistan, detonated a bomb hidden in a camera on September 9, 2001, killing Masood. Investigators traced the fake Belgian passports found on the two Tunisians that killed Masood back to a network run from Belgium by Tarek Maaroufi, who was sentenced to six years in prison in Brussels in 2003. Adel Tebourski, 41, who admitted to belonging to an Islamist group led by one of Masood's two Tunisian assassins, Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, was sentenced to six years in prison. Tebourski reportedly said he exchanged up to 30,000 French francs (4,500 euros, 5,800 dollars) into US currency for Dahmane before the Tunisian left for Afghanistan in May 2000. The court handed Abderahmane Ameroud, a 27-year-old Algerian, a seven-year prison sentence, while Mehrez Azouz, 37, who has dual French and Algerian nationality, was sent to jail for five years. Youssef el-Aouni, a 31-year-old Frenchman, was sentenced to two years in prison. All four stood accused of criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise, and faced a maximum of 10 years in prison. Khellaf Hammam, 37, who was not implicated in the Masood affair, was sentenced to two years in prison for organizing paramilitary boot camps aimed at selecting recruits to go to Afghanistan. The training was alleged to have taken place in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris, the coastal Normandy region and in the French Alps. "France, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Courtesy phone, France." Two other defendants - Ibrahim Keita, 38, and Azdine Sayeh, 32 - were acquitted. An eighth man linked to the group, who stands accused of living illegally in France and faces a lesser punishment, was to be tried separately after theatrically clutching his chest falling ill at the start of the trial.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Afghanistan's Karzai meets chief rival over new cabinet post

2004-12-03

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has met his chief election rival Yunus Qanooni to discuss a possible role for him in the new government, an official close to the president said. Karzai, who will be inaugurated as Afghanistan's first democratically elected president on December 7, is expected to form his cabinet the following week. He met Qanooni late Wednesday and they discussed the cabinet, the official, who asked to not be named, told AFP the same day. "There is a strong possibility that Qanooni will join the new cabinet," he added. That'd be a good thing, I think. Qanoodi's one of the good guys. Karzai, who won 55.4 percent of the vote in the October 9 election, faces a tough challenge picking a government to tackle regional warlordism, an insurgency led by the former Taliban rulers and a burgeoning drug industry, which threatens to turn Afghanistan into a narco state. Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, must also ensure that the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities are represented in his new administration. Karzai has repeatedly said he does not intend to appoint a cabinet of warlords or people with a brutal military past — and many ordinary Afghans voted for him in hopes he would end the rule of the gun in the war-torn country. Qanooni, who resigned, as education minister in Karzai's US-backed transitional administration to run against his former boss, is an ethnic Tajik. He was a lieutenant of assassinated resistance hero Ahmad Shah Masood and has close ties to the Northern Alliance group of commanders who ousted the hardline Islamic Taliban regime in conjunction with a US-led air campaign in late 2001. Although Qanooni came a distant second to Karzai in the polls, winning only a little over 16 per cent of the vote, he represents an important power block. He hails from the resistance stronghold of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul along with Defence Minister Marshal Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. Karzai did not win strong support in parts of northern Afghanistan, drawing his votes mainly from the Pashtun-dominated south and east of the country. I'd guess most of Qanooni's support came from the north... Qanooni could not immediately be reached for comment. But an official close to him confirmed to AFP that he had held a private meeting with Karzai in the president's heavily fortified palace. "Yes, I can confirm that the meeting took place," the official told AFP declining to give further details.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Spy plane crashes into French school in Kabul

2004-12-02

How do you say "Oops" in Pashto? An unmanned spy plane believed to be operated by a US security firm crashed into a school in the Afghan capital Kabul without causing any casualties, an eyewitness and sources told AFP Thursday. The unmanned 1.5 metre (yard) long drone smashed into a window at the French-funded Istiqlal high school close to President Hamid Karzai's palace, according to a senior official at the school. DynCorp, a private US security company that guards [Karzai], uses drones to survey the grounds around the palace, a source close to Karzai told AFP. "It crashed shortly after 1:00pm (0830 GMT) on a window of the centre which was broken and nobody was injured," said the director of the school's cultural centre Daniel Massat-Bourrat. Two heavily-armed Americans wearing capes in plain clothes jumped the wall of the palace into the school grounds and removed the wreckage, offering to pay for repairs, Massat-Bourrat said. "They presented themselves with a codename: planet," Massat-Bourrat said. "L'eclair c'est bleu!" "Ahah! Planet!" "Cheeze!" "Frommage!" "What's all that mean?" "Nothin'. But it entertains the kiddies." The drone did not belong to the US military, spokesman Major Mark McCann said. Three US military unmanned craft have crashed in Afghanistan this year, with the last coming down on November 24. DynCorp maintains a heavy presence in Kabul and trains Afghanistan's fledgling police force. In August, a bomb outside the company's office in the capital killed nine people including four of its employees. The Istiqlal school, which has 5,600 pupils, is jointly financed by the Afghan ministry of education and France. Its alumni include Ahmad Shah Masood, the resistance hero killed by suspected Taliban in September 2001.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Interview with President Musharraf

2004-04-08

EFL MARK DAVIS: President Musharraf thanks very much for your time. PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: You’re welcome. "Wanna touch my turban? You can't!" MARK DAVIS: You are right in the middle of an assault on the tribal regions of Pakistan. It’s been fairly obvious for a couple of years that this region has almost become the terrorist capital of the world. Why has it taken you so long to act decisively there? PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: I wouldn’t call it the terrorist capital really. "Perhaps a major adminsitrative and banking center..." I think whatever is happening in Afghanistan is mainly happening from inside Afghanistan. It’s very clear. If you see where the operations are taking place, the vast majority is taking place in areas, which are not bordering Pakistan, inside Afghanistan I’m talking about. "Well, maybe they do border Pakistan, but not very close. Or we don't think of them as being very close..." However, yes, there are people here. We can’t really define whether this is. . . I mean I certainly am very clear that everything in Afghanistan is not happening from here, not even 50% of it is happening from this end. "But even if it's 90 percent of it, that's not all, so it's not our fault, is it?" But yes, they were here and we didn’t know. You see the issue is that they are not holding areas deployed as forces. They are hiding in various places, in valleys and hills. "That's an entirely different thing. I'm not sure how, but it is. Somebody told me it was, anyway. I think." MARK DAVIS: Well let’s talk about those early days, that’s quite interesting to me. After September 11, George Bush offered you a fairly stark ultimatum, either you abandon the Taliban and join with the US, or you would be effectively regarded as an enemy of America. Now that must have been a very difficult choice for you to make. PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Well, it was difficult certainly, the way things developed and all of a sudden you have to break off relations, but let me tell you it wasn’t all that difficult because we here in Pakistan, the Pakistan Government never was in favour of the Taliban way of governance. "We're more feudal brutality-oriented than religious brutality-oriented..." Nobody in Pakistan ever wanted Pakistan to be governed or Pakistan to have the perceptions of Islam as the Taliban in Afghanistan had. "Qazi did, of course. And Fazl. And Sami. And all those loons that flock to Jhang. And the Bugtis. But nobody of substance. Nobody in uniform, anyway. Hardly. Except for Hamid Gul. And Aslam Beg. And..." I am very clear on that. "At least I think I am..." Every government was in fact trying to moderate on the Taliban to leave extremism, to come to a moderate understanding or moderate view of Islam. "They just wouldn't listen, though. It's sad, really. They had such promise. And so many weapons. And they all had turbans..." MARK DAVIS: They never showed any sign that that was ever going to happen and that’s why Pakistan was so broadly criticised, that Pakistan had gave birth to the Taliban and that there was absolutely no ability for them to. . . PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: No, nobody, let me assure you I have frankly no love lost for the previous governments in the ’90s, but nobody gave birth to the Taliban, let me assure this thing. "The fact that they erupted out of Pak madrassahs and that many of them were Paks, that's just pure coincidence. Could happen to anybody..." They emerged out of the circumstances there. After the Soviets left, there was total chaos, breakdown of law and order. "So who better to govern than our own Pashtun hillbillies?" Every group, every tribe was fighting each other there was the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masood, there was the Hazaras, there were the Uzbeks, there was the Pashtun and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and many others, they were all fighting among themselves, they were destroying the whole country. "I mean, Hek was the guy that rocketed Kabul and all, and the others were all allied against him, most of the time, but if they'd just surrendered, think of all the problems that could have been avoided..." In these circumstances, with all the atrocities committed by each one of them against each other, these people emerged, they emerged among themselves. "When you've got atrocities being committed left and right, who's gonna care about a few more, especially when the intentions are good and the perpetrators have turbabs?" But then they swept up Pakistan so fast, that any government in Pakistan had no other alternative being the only Pashtun representatives, and we have a Pashtun government, Pashtun population here to recognise that, because 90% of Afghanistan was held by them. How could Pakistan, how could any government in Pakistan ignore them? "I mean, it's not like we could have declared them bandit gangs and continued recognizing the Northern Alliance, like the rest of the world did..." MARK DAVIS: We’ll move on from the Taliban, but let’s look at the extremists within Pakistan, and this is of great concern to America, indeed the whole world. It seems that it’s a very dangerous balancing act, that you are having to engage in. If you don’t go in hard enough, if you like, against the extremist groups here, you are in danger of alienating America. If you do go in too hard, you are in danger of alienating your own Muslim support group here and possibly elements of the military. Is it possible to keep these two very contradictory forces happy? PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Yes, it’s very possible. Because there is this perception in one aspect of what you have said. Here, the extremists are not in the majority. Now I know what the magazines are writing, I know what they are thinking. I don’t at all accept this view. In Pakistan the majority is moderate, the majority is vastly with me. "That's why they spend so much time shooting at each other and planting bombs and raping their neighbords. Y'see, they only do it in moderation..." I know that, I know that 200%. If they were not with me, people would be out in the streets because all the extremists want me out. They would be out on the streets, nobody is out on the streets and I have been challenging them in my interviews to the local. . . come out, let me see what there is. "Where are the riots? Where are the fire-breathing mullahs? Are there no poor laws? Are the workhouses all full? MARK DAVIS: It’s a bit unfair, sir. They don’t have much of a chance to vote you out, do they? So it’s a bit hard to judge public sentiment on that one. PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: No, no, no. It’s absolutely clear on. . . . the people, the vast majority is satisfied with what is happening. They are in my favour. "I mean, the little people love me. Really. Take my word on this!" There is a very aggressive minority, now that minority is certainly aggressive, and there are terrorist elements in them. Now that is the danger, but that is not the vast majority. They cannot get rid of me or remove me to political power, political authority. Not at all. It is out of the question. "Unless they manage to kill me, of course..." They can, yes, they are trying to use terrorist means to eliminate me and with suicide attacks. Now that is the danger. So we should not confuse the issue. "That's my job!" This is a small minority who get involved with al-Qa’ida sponsorship, money being pumped in and they utilise these extremists to carry out extremist attacks. But if anyone thinks that vast population of Pakistan is extremist and they are against me, then they would be out on the streets, why are they not coming out? "NWFP, Balochistan, Punjab, those are only a small minority in this country! Karachi? A smidgeon! Less than a tenth of one percent!" MARK DAVIS: One of the groups you have banned is Lashkar-e-Tayiba. One of their graduates is of interest in Australia - Willie Brigitte was recently discovered in Australia, allegedly with plans to blow something up, again it’s widely believed and according to that ICG report, that Lashkar-e-Tayiba is still functioning in Pakistan. Now, you may say these groups aren’t threatening Pakistan, but they are threatening other countries. Is it acceptable that they can survive in any form? PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Lashkar-e-Tayiba has not been banned, this has not been banned. Lashkar-e-Tayiba is not threatening anybody. Who has told you that they are threatening anybody? It is Jaish-e-Muhammed which threatens and Jaish-e-Muhammed is banned. "There's a difference, see? And it's a very important difference: one group's got turbans, and the other... ummm... they've got turbans." MARK DAVIS: Willie Brigitte, who is now in French custody, allegedly had plans to. . . PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Who? "Who the hell are you? Have we been introduced?" MARK DAVIS: A man named Willie Brigitte, he’s now in French custody. He said he was trained by Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Pakistan, he was discovered in Australia, apparently with plans to blow something up. There’s another Australian, David Hicks, who is now in Guantanamo Bay. He trained with Lashkar-e-Tayiba. He says that he was given training by the Pakistani army in Kashmir. So these groups do seem to be growing rather beyond any Kashmiri or any Pakistani issues. PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: It is very clear as far as we are concerned. Let’s leave Kashmir aside. In Kashmir there is a freedom struggle going on and the people of Pakistan are emotionally involved with it. "Out of 90,000 dead, most of them are Paks. We've very distraught over that." This is a 50-year-old dispute and we better resolve it politically. Let’s leave that aside. We don’t think there is any terrorism going on there. "We call it Freedumb Fighting, you know..." Now if anybody is carrying out terrorism around the world, we certainly are against it and we would like to act against it. "We just don't consider what we do to be terrorism. It's... ummm... something else." Now the name that you are taking, frankly I don’t know about that. "And prob'ly don't want to." MARK DAVIS: I might just clarify that - it might be a pronunciation problem of mine - Lashkar-e-Tayiba - I mean this is not a banned group? PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: No, no, no, this is certainly not a banned group. "They're good friends of mine, in fact. Sturdy Freedumb Fighters, strong of arm! Fleet of foot! All around nice fellows, y'know?" MARK DAVIS: The American have just taken into custody a group of them in Iraq, outside of Baghdad, that they say, were operating. . . PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: No, I think we are mistaken there. I don’t think Lashkar-e-Tayiba has come out anywhere. That is not the reality, I don’t think so. "I mean, it might look like them, but it's prob'ly imposters. Maybe even Zionists. You know how they are." Maybe you are talking of Jaish-e-Muhammad, which is the main troublesome organisation which has been. . . "Are you rolling your eyes, Mr. Davis? You really do that quite well. Have you ever considered accepting the True Religion? You seem to have an aptitude for it..." MARK DAVIS: Let’s move on to Afghanistan, although we have discussed it earlier. Do you take any responsibility for the reported resurgence of Taliban in Afghanistan. PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Now where are they operating from? Let me tell you, most of them are operating from within Afghanistan. "Not very far within Afghanistan, of course, but on that side of the border. The fact that they have breakfast is Pakistan is purely coincidental." If I was to show you a map of all the operations that are going on, and we know that, they are inside of Afghanistan, well inside, out of our border, so this is a misperception, as if every Taliban is coming from Pakistan. "Maybe a few of them, perhaps. But certainly not many..." They are doing that inside Afghanistan themselves, and Americans know it by the way. Ask the US, ask General Labisset, he’ll tell you where they are operating from. "I know nothing! No-thing! Tell them, Hogan!" MARK DAVIS: ...I can’t have an interview with you without discussing the hot topic at the moment, which is the nuclear smuggling. In the current war on terror, America is being very kind, indeed tolerant of Pakistan, were you concerned that that relationship was going to snap when the news of the nuclear smuggling allegations came out? PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Again, there is a difference, let me tell you. I interact with the State Department, I interact with Secretary Colin Powell, or with President Bush, all the senators and the Congressmen who come here. They are very clear, they have always been clear, and we have always been onboard with all that we are doing, they have been clear, they have been convinced by us that these are individuals who have acted and not the government and the army. "No, no! Certainly not the government and the army! We'd never do anything remotely like that!" MARK DAVIS: Are these your lips, sir? It is unfortunately the media, which tries that they are not convinced and they are under pressure, every time when I see Colin Powell, a lot of people think that he has come to pressurise me. He hasn’t come to pressurise me at all, he didn’t pressurise me at all. He is fully convinced that the government is not involved. "A remarkably easily convinced man, in fact, is Colin Powell. He has an aptitude for the True Religion, too, y'know? I've often seen him rolling his eyes, just like you are..." MARK DAVIS: Given the circumstances, shouldn’t the media be concerned? I mean, you refer to Dr Kahn as a hero, now given that is actions threatened the entire world, whatever America says, don’t you think you are being a little too kind to him? PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Yes. Well here a lot of people say that because, yes, he has proliferated, there is no doubt in our minds, and we have found that, we have the evidence, right. "After all, the Americans gave us the evidence, you know. And the Brits. And the UN. And the Samoans. And some Equimeaux came by, and they had some folders, too..." So therefore he is a culprit, but however this was a very sensitive issue. "After all, he's our culprit. True, his actions could have resulted in nuclear holocaust such as the world never wanted to see, such as could possibly destroy the entire world, certainly would destroy civilization of we... ummm... you know it..." Its sensitivity is to the extent that he is a national hero, he is a national hero to anybody walking in the streets of Pakistan. "Even if we were all incinerated as a result of his actions, he'd still be a national hero..." You talk to anybody and you will find that he is a national hero. He is a symbol of the sovereignty of the state, a symbol of a person who has given us this nuclear power. "The fact that he stole the basic knowhow, that he lied, cheated, connived, and aided the enemies of the West, that's kinda Pakistan all over, isn't it? Brings a tear to my Islamic eye..." He’s a danger to the world, so he’s not a hero to anyone else. He might be. . . We have to tackle the international perspective and the national perspective. Therefore, you have to do a little bit of a balancing act here, which was required, and also there was in 1954, the US nuclear technology was passed to the Soviets by one Mr Robert Heinberger - that was the name I think - and nothing happened to him. He was left scot-free, he went into that detail also. In 2002, there was a Dr Lili who passed nuclear secrets to China and the Soviet Union, he was left scot-free. There were 60 charges against him. 59 were absolved and he didn’t get any punishment. "So we're just saving a bit of time and money by not even charging Abdul Qadeer Khan..." At the end of the interview, the President conferred with his staff and advised that Lashkar-e-Tayiba is a terrorist group and that it is banned in Pakistan. "Oh, yes. Them! Thought you were talking about somebody else of the same name. Yes, of course they're banned. Always have been. Always will be..."

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Europe

French man held in connection with Masood’s murder

2003-11-20

A French man in his 30s has been taken into custody in connection with a French probe into the 2001 assassination of Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masood, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday. Sarkozy told parliamentary deputies that the man had been arrested on Monday, adding: “He is currently in preventive custody. He is linked with those who assassinated commander Masood.” The minister did not say where the man was being held, but court sources said he was in custody at the Paris headquarters of France’s counter-intelligence service (DST). Court sources said the suspect may not be directly linked with Masood’s assassins, but that he might have connections with a group that participated in terror training exercises in the Fontainebleau forest outside Paris.

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Europe

Belgium Al-Qaeda plotters sentenced

2003-09-30

A trial in Belgium of 23 suspected Al-Qaeda militants has ended with convictions for all but five of the accused. The chief suspect - Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who used to play professional football in Germany - was sentenced to 10 years in jail for plotting an attack on a military base housing US troops in 2001. A second Tunisian - Tarek Maroufi - was sentenced to six years in prison for organising the recruitment of al-Qaeda volunteers in Europe. Another 16 suspects received shorter sentences for a series of lesser offences - and five defendants were acquitted. Correspondents say the relatively modest prison terms reflect the fact that Belgium has no specific anti-terrorism laws. Memo to Belgium, you need to work on that. Trabelsi was charged with attempting to destroy public property, illegal arms possession and membership in a private militia. The BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner says the case is being closely watched by prosecutors all over Europe, and the verdicts will have implications far beyond the Brussels courtroom. The court heard that Trabelsi, 33, met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden several times in Afghanistan and asked to become a suicide bomber. He says he was ordered to go to Belgium, pack a bomb into a lorry and blow it up - with him at the wheel - next to the canteen of the Kleine Brogel military base outside Brussels. But Trabelsi was arrested in Brussels two days after the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the United States. "Everything points to the fact that on the evening before his arrest, he was determined to carry out this project," judge Claire Degryse said in passing sentence at the heavily guarded Brussels Criminal Court. Tarek Maaroufi, for his part, was accused of involvement in a fake passport ring linked to the 9 September killing of anti-Taliban Afghan military commander Ahmad Shah Masood. Massood died at the hands of two suicide bombers allegedly travelling on false Belgian passports. Must have been out of French ones. Some of the co-defendants were tried as part of the bomb plot; others with recruiting volunteers in Europe for al-Qaeda. The Belgian authorities decided to combine the two cases in one huge anti-terrorism trial - the country’s biggest ever.

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India-Pakistan

Pakistan helped Afghan al-Qaeda

2003-09-15

Hat tip LGF PAKISTAN helped al-Qaeda members launch their operations in Afghanistan in the 1990s and even secretly ran a major training camp used by Osama bin Laden’s terror network, according to US intelligence documents made public in the US. The documents, produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 and declassified in a censored version this past week, also indicate that legendary Afghan guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Masood may have been killed two days before the September 11 attacks because he had learned something about bin Laden’s plan and "began to warn the West." In its secret dispatches, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a non-profit research organization here, the DIA warns that the documents represent only raw intelligence. They nonetheless paint a complex picture of factional rivalry, in which Pakistan had tried to use the Taliban and al-Qaeda to promote its influence in war-torn Afghanistan - only to eventually lose control over both of them. I have my doubts over just how ’out of control’ they really got. Also, even when the Taliban were providing a base to dozens of sectarian terrorists responsible for the murder of hundreds of Pakistani Shias, the ISI used to put pressure on the Police and civilian government of the day not to make to many arrests, because it would demoralise "our boys"; by 9/11, the Army begun to see the Taliban as a fellow traveller, rather than just a proxy. "Taliban acceptance and approval of fundamentalist non-Afghans as part of their fighting force were merely an extension of Pakistani policy during the Soviet-Afghan war," said one of the DIA dispatches among US government agencies after the September 11 attacks but before US troops began their operation to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan. It said Pakistani agents "encouraged, facilitated and often escorted Arabs from the Middle East into Afghanistan." To make them a more viable fighting force, Pakistan even built a training camp located outside the Afghan village of Zahawa, near the border between the two countries. According to the DIA, the camp, target of a US missile strike, was built by Pakistani contractors funded by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), and protected by a local and influential Jadran tribal leader called Jalalludin. "However, the real host of the facility was the Pakistani ISI," said one of the documents, which added that this arrangement raised "serious questions" about early ties between bin Laden and Pakistani intelligence. The report doesn’t seem to mention that there have been over a hundred ’maksars’ or training camps operating within Pakistan for going on 2 decades, from which tens of thousands of Pak Jihadis have been trained. The US military fired a volley of cruise missiles into the camp in August 1998 in retaliation to the terrorist bombings earlier that year of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 257 people dead. The DIA said efforts by Islamabad to advance its interests through proxies had "seriously backfired" because it eventually lost control of the Taliban and bin Laden whose extremism was allowed "to grow unmolested." In an interview published Saturday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf denied that Islamic extremists had contacts within his country’s army. Musharraf told The News newspaper that only three army officers were currently under investigation for "abetting al-Qaeda elements." The US Central Intelligence Agency, in a recent brief, praised Pakistan’s cooperation in the war on terror. The agency also warned that "it should be assumed" that at least some of the hundreds of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft Stinger missiles shipped by the CIA to Afghanistan during Soviet occupation "are in al-Qaeda hands." Javid Nasir, the former Director-General of the ISI, bragged that he helped channel many stingers to Bosnia during the civil war there, that was one of the reasons the Americans had him forced to retire.

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