Times of India
By midday Monday hundreds of Afghans studying at Islamic religious schools in Pakistan had reached the border post at Torkham, ready to join their Taliban elders. "This is a test of our faith. I don't care if I die. I will defend my country and my religion," said 15-year-old Khairullah, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. The apparent willingness to die for their cause is bolstered by the belief that if they die for their faith, they will go to heaven.
The massive steel border gate was chained and padlocked and the would-be fighters - none of them armed - were turned away. On the other side of the border, Taliban soldiers were preventing refugees fleeing the U.S.-led attack from reaching the gates
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10/09/2001 ||
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Washington Post
The United Nations appealed for the protection of civilians in Afghanistan after last night's airstrikes killed four security guards for Afghan Technical Consultants, which had an office in a village two miles east of Kabul. The office was near a Taliban communications tower that may have been a target, UN officials said.
Stephanie Bunker, a UN spokeswoman in Pakistan, said the guards hadn't been warned or told to relocate. "It was assumed they were safe where they were," she said. "Otherwise, they would have been relocated for sure."
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10/09/2001 ||
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Times of India
Afghans who left the Taliban say the so-called Afghan Arabs have become the military backbone of the regime and will put up a fierce fight against America and its allies too. "They are not afraid to die. They want to die," said Mullah Mohammed Hassan, who fought with the Taliban north of Kabul, the Afghan capital, before defecting to Pakistan this year. That sentiment is echoed by Western intelligence sources.
Most of the Arab warriors are wanted in their own countries for plotting to overthrow their governments. Bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman Al-Zawahri, was tried in absentia and sentenced to death for his activities in Jihad, the organization blamed for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The Arabs are joined on the battlefield by thousands of other Muslim fighters, most from Pakistan, but also from Uzbekistan, Chechnya and the Philippines.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Chicago Tribune Uli Schmetzer
In the wake of air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition, the search has begun for a viable successor to Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban regime, whose ragtag army and outdated arsenal are not expected to survive a protracted offensive by modern weaponry. The quest is not an easy one in the rugged Central Asian country, divided by the towering Hindu Kush mountain range and ancient squabbles among warlords who fight each other for the most banal of reasons...
"People in Afghanistan are not afraid of the American bombings but are afraid that the Northern Alliance, another brutal regime, is coming back into power," said Samhara Saba, who runs the foreign affairs committee of the women's organization called the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan.
Human-rights groups argue that allowing the Alliance to take power unchecked by a United Nations peace-keeping force is a dangerous move. In the first initiative of its kind, an umbrella organization of human-rights groups Monday announced the formation of a war-crimes committee. Its purpose is to gather evidence against Taliban commanders and the warlords who committed war crimes and human-rights abuses in Afghanistan over the past two decades. The evidence will then be submitted to the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Drudge Report
The Russian military has secretly positioned troops on the outskirts of Kabul for an assault on the Afghan capital together with the opposition Northern Alliance forces, the Russian weekly Moscow News said Tuesday. The weekly said Russian troops are operating tanks that had been given to the Northern Alliance as part of Moscow's military aid and are awaiting orders for an offensive against Kabul.
The maneuver is aimed at beating American forces in entering Kabul not only for the sake of Russian honor, but also to secure a role for Russia in shaping the post-Taliban order in Afghanistan, the weekly said. In addition to supplying vast amounts of weaponry to the forces fighting the Taliban government, Moscow has also sent "military experts, technicians and military advisers," the Moscow News report said. A precedent to Russia taking this type of action was seen in June 1999 during the Yugoslavia war when Russian forces surprised the NATO-led international force and occupied the airport at the Kosovo capital.
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10/09/2001 ||
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LA Times
As he drove out of the city, Khan Jan surveyed the bomb damage. He said U.S. forces had bombed the airport, a TV tower and the Hotel Continental north of the city near the Taliban front line. "Lots of Taliban commanders stay in that hotel," he said. "Maybe there were some civilians killed too."
Although the Taliban announced Monday that 20 civilians died when houses near the airport were hit, there has been no confirmation of that figure. Officials of the Northern Alliance, which opposes the Taliban, said they had no information on civilian casualties.
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10/09/2001 ||
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NY Times
On Monday, B-2 stealth bombers flying from the United States joined carrier-based aircraft to strike targets in Afghanistan as anti-American demonstrations began to roil Muslim capitals and Bush administration officials stepped up planning to oust the Afghan regime.
Monday's bombing campaign sent aloft only about half the planes that President Bush ordered launched on Sunday in the first military response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. American warships loosed Tomahawk cruise missiles in blazes of light over the Arabian Sea, and B-1 bombers flew sorties from the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
The United Nations said today that four of its workers were killed and four others were injured near Kabul in the bombing by the United States against Afghanistan. It was the first independent report of civilian deaths resulting from the United States-led military action since the attacks began on Sunday.
At a news conference in Islamabad, the Pakistan capital, a spokeswoman for the United Nations said that the workers were killed when a missile destroyed a building housing Afghan Technical Consultancy, the agency that oversees mine clearing operations in Afghanistan. The building is several miles east of Kabul, the Afghanistan capital.
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10/09/2001 ||
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IRNA
An informed source told IRNA late Monday night that Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the commander of Taliban militants' air force got killed during one of the Monday air raids of the American-British forces. Ahmad Nourzehi, who has received the news by phone from Afghanistan added that another Taliban high ranking military official, Genral Umar Ataie, the commander of Nangarhar's First Battalion, too, has been killed during the same air raid.
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10/09/2001 ||
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CNN.com
In al Qaeda's first statement since the September 11 attacks, a spokesman for the terrorist network said "the storm of airplanes will not stop" until the United States ends what he said were attacks on Islam. "There are thousands of young people who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to living," said al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu-Gheith in a videotaped statement broadcast by Qatar-based al Jazeera, the leading Arab news network. He ordered all Muslims to join in a jihad, or holy war, against the United States for airstrikes in Afghanistan in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Abou-Gheith did not claim al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks, but he did praise the hijackers for their "good deeds."
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10/09/2001 ||
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Jack Brennan Orlando Sun-Sentinel
WESTON -- Five Broward County firefighter-paramedics and a Weston family were under quarantine today after they were exposed to a powdery substance that had been sent anonymously through the mail. Initial testing of the substance did not show it to be on Broward County's list of hazardous materials, but further testing was being done at a Miami-Dade County laboratory. "We're not sure at all what we're dealing with," said Todd Leduc, spokesman for Broward County Fire-Rescue.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Orlando Sentinel
Two puzzling cases of anthrax exposure in South Florida likely did not occur "without human intervention," the nation's top disease-control expert told U.S. Sen. Bob Graham on Monday. The FBI launched an investigation into the possibility that the cases resulted from terrorism or a criminal act.
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10/09/2001 ||
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WSJ Best of the Web Today
Federal officials now suspect foul play in the case of Bob Stevens, a 63-year-old Florida man who died over the weekend of an anthrax infection. Ernesto Blanco, a Stevens colleague at supermarket-tabloid publisher American Media, has now tested positive for anthrax infection. Stevens was photo editor of the Sun tabloid; Blanco works in the mailroom. Only 18 cases of anthrax were reported nationwide in the 20th century, the most recent in 1976 in California.
The company's offices are in Lantana, Fla., and the Associated Press notes that "Stevens lived about a mile from an airstrip where flight school owner Marian Smith said hijacker Mohamed Atta rented planes. Several other hijackers also visited a crop-dusting business in Belle Glade, 40 miles from Stevens' home in Lantana."
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10/09/2001 ||
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TNR Idiocy Watch
"I don't know how you wage war against one person; it doesn't make sense. I can imagine a commando-type raid to capture Bin Laden, then a trial, with evidence, before the world court. But that would not address the vast global inequalities in which terrorism is ultimately rooted. What is so heartbreaking to me as a feminist is that the strongest response to corporate globalization and U.S. military domination is based on such a violent and misogynist ideology." --Barbara Ehrenreich, The Village Voice Ummm... The Taliban is not violent and misogynist? And we are?
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10/09/2001 ||
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TNR Idiocy Watch
"In a war on Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden will either be left alive, while thousands of impoverished, frightened people are bombed into oblivion around him, or he will be killed in a bombing attack for which he seems quite prepared. But what would happen to his cool armor if he could be reminded of all the good, nonviolent things he has done? Further, what would happen to him if he could be brought to understand the preciousness of the lives he has destroyed? I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love."--Alice Walker, The Village Voice Ain't that sweet? Stupid, but sweet.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Boston Globe, by Douglas Belkin
Heading the growing list of US foreign policy decisions that are infuriating and disgusting peace activists since Sept. 11: the food packages being dropped in Afghanistan. ''It's a cynical, cynical ploy,'' Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, of the Alliance for a Secular Democratic South Asia, told a group of about 400 at a peace rally on City Hall Plaza yesterday. ''It's a sop for the American conscience.''
There are 7 million people starving in Afghanistan, she said. America is dropping enough food to feed about 37,500 people a day. The government is spending $324 million for humanitarian aid. It costs $2.1 billion to build a B-2 bomber. We would need to multiply this aid by 100 to really help these people,'' Seshadri-Crooks said. ''Why isn't that happening? Why?''
Carrying signs bearing such slogans as ''No more victims anywhere,'' ''Honor them with peace,'' and ''Precision bombing is a lie,'' the crowd chanted and applauded as speakers criticized decisions being made in Washington, calling them cruel and misguided.
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10/09/2001 ||
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WSJ Best of the Web Today
The Madison, Wis., school board has banned the Pledge of Allegiance. "The 3-2 board vote came after several parents and teachers complained that the pledge, which contains the line 'one nation, under God,' is a religious oath that doesn't belong in public schools," the Wisconsin State Journal reports. A state law that took effect Sept. 1 requires schools to start the day with either the pledge or the national anthem. Madison opted for the anthem--but banned the lyrics. Only an instrumental version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" will be played in the schools. School-board president Calvin Williams calls it the "least intrusive and least offensive" way to comply with the law.
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Cynthia Boyd, St Paul Pioneer Press
As U.S. bombs fell Monday on Afghanistan, about 300 people marched in Minneapolis to protest the action. College students, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant on leave, a 19-year-old from Slovakia, as well as those who have been calling for peace for generations marched along a sidewalk in front of the federal courthouse, chanting and waving placards with anti-war messages.
"Hands off Afghanistan; hands off the world!'' yelled Alan Dale, 43, in leading off the rally called by Women Against Military Madness, the Anti-War Committee and Students Against War. The crowd joined the chant. "This is important, people speaking out against policies of their government,'' Dale said.
Peace demonstrators yelled "Bush says war; we say no,'' and waved anti-war signs. "War is an act of terrorism'' stated the hand-lettered sign carried by Jan Humaj, a 19-year-old Macalester College freshman from Slovakia and one of dozens of college students bused to the rally.
"I'm here to lend support,'' explained bystander Daniel Hegle, a 32-year-old self-described performance artist who wears earrings, reads poetry and drives a cab. Sixty-two year-old John Sherman of Veterans for Peace called for judicial, rather than military, action. Northwest flight attendant Carolyn Gergin, 41, of Minneapolis, took donations in return for strips of red licorice to finance another rally. "I've always thought war was insane,'' she said.
Bart Schempp, 47, of Mendota Heights saw the demonstration on his way home from work. "I just hope they're not in the next building that goes down. People have to get behind efforts to fight terrorism,'' he said.
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10/09/2001 ||
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By Patrick Orr The Idaho Statesman
John Vonk, a Boise State University student attending the vigil, acknowledged that being a pacifist was not exactly popular right now. But he and others at the coalition felt they needed to be heard. ... "Some people will call us pacifists," Furqan M. Mehmood, a Muslim living in Boise, told the crowd. "You are the bravest of the brave. It takes a brave person to stand up for their beliefs." No, the bravest of the brave are the men and women who are facing Evil and fighting it. It actually takes courage to point at Evil and call it by name. To travel with Evil, to apologize for it, to be its friend, is to become one with Evil.
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10/09/2001 ||
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NJ.com, by John Curran, Associated Press
PLEASANTVILLE, N.J. (AP) -- Anti-war activists opposed to the United States' bombing of Afghanistan were snubbed Tuesday before their planned protest got off the ground. First, a church where they planned to rally told them to find somewhere else to do it. Then police broke up the event because the group didn't have a permit. Carrying signs that said "Peace is patriotic," "Stop the cycle of violence," and "Our grief is not a cry for war," about 10 members of the Linwood-based Coalition for Peace and Justice showed up at St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church to stage their protest. But the Rev. Ronald Falotico, who had given permission for the event believing it was to be a prayer vigil, reconsidered when he saw the protesters carrying signs. Peace be with you. Now get the hell out.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Cox Interactive Media , by Saeed Ahmed
It's a tough time to peddle pacifism. Yet for the second day in a row, anti-war protesters gathered at Woodruff Park downtown Atlanta Monday, calling on Americans to give peace a chance. And for the second day in a row, the 100 or so demonstrators were met with indifferent glances from home-bound office workers and the homeless. "We're swimming against the tide of popular opinion, no doubt about it," said Courtney Siceloff, 79, a civil rights activist who said he protested World War II and every war since. "But speaking out against the government's action when it's wrong and immoral is true patriotism." One might suggest that supporting one's country when its actions are correct and moral is true patriotism. Reflexive and unthinking opposition to one's government as it defends the commonweal could be considered treason, couldn't it?
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Come on, let's get some new ideas in here. Or even some good old ones. I go back to the much-agreed point that the most successful American foreign policy of the 20th century was the Marshall Plan. The United States helped rebuild Europe with that plan, including Germany -- a place of which we then had no reason to be fond. But it was very smart of us.
-- Molly Ivins Is Molly Ivins dumber than dirt, or do they pay her to write that way? For the Marshall Plan to work, it was first necessary to bomb Germany, Italy and Japan into rubble and occupy their countries with ground troops. The Germans had, of course, similarly demolished France and the Benelux. The leadership of the enemy either committed suicide or were hung. Once those tiresome tasks were out of the way, they could be rebuilt. If this is what Ivins is proposing, few could argue with her. However, it seems that "peacemongers" invariably propose advancing to the ultimate steps -- and they do so love the Marshall Plan! -- before completing the initial steps. This would be, as we always say in Texas, plumb stoopid.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Idaho Statesman, by Tim Woodward
Afghans living in Boise said Monday they support the American and British airstrikes against the Taliban, even if it means losing loved ones in their homeland. Ahmad Yama Shefa and his family left Afghanistan because of the Taliban. He has lived in Boise for 14 months. His grandfather and an uncle are still in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. "I don't want them to die, but it's good that the U.S. is doing this," he said. "It's better for the future of Afghanistan. It's better to have a few people die in a short period of time and bring peace than having 100 people a day dying for a long time of hunger and disease."
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10/09/2001 ||
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By Laurence McQuillan, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON â White House officials gave a name Monday to the rules of engagement driving the U.S. war on terrorism â the "Bush Doctrine." The policy makes any nation or group that tolerates terrorists a potential target. As the second day of U.S.-led airstrikes hit targets in Afghanistan, administration officials said the results sought by Washington involve more than Osama bin Laden, his followers and the Taliban government in Kabul. They said their words were designed as a warning to other nations that they should not allow bin Laden or members of his terrorist network to take refuge within their borders as the attacks in Afghanistan escalate. "The mission is defined by the adversary in some ways," said Karen Hughes, White House counselor to the president, in defining the administration's policy.
"A country that harbors terrorists will either deliver the terrorists or share in their fate. ... People have to choose sides. They are either with the terrorists, or they're with us."
As officials in Washington were explaining the policy, John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, sent a letter to the members of the 15-member Security Council driving home the same point. "We may find that our self-defense requires further actions with respect to other organizations and other states," he said.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Kevin Galvin and John Hendren Seattle Times
Breaking bipartisan solidarity on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jim McDermott yesterday criticized the U.S.-led attacks on military targets in Afghanistan, questioning whether President Bush had "thought this action out completely or fully examined America's cause." The Seattle Democrat issued a two-paragraph statement that suggested Bush and his military advisers reacted too quickly to the Sept. 11 suicide jet attacks against the Pentagon and World Trade Center. The statement was the first public criticism of the retaliatory strikes by a federal lawmaker...
McDermott, who voted against authorizing then-President Bush to use force in the Persian Gulf War a decade ago, last month voted in favor of authorizing the younger Bush to respond to attacks that left nearly 6,000 dead. The only member of Congress to oppose the measure was Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
"He's a hypocrite," said Chris Vance, Washington state Republican Party chairman. "I can understand the left standing up against past military actions in Vietnam and Panama and even the Gulf. But here, the president is striking back against people who physically attacked America, and even then Jim McDermott doesn't want to use military force."
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10/09/2001 ||
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David Pryce-Jones, writing in National Review:
For the past half century and more, the Muslim world has been free and independent, with every opportunity to organize as it wishes. And this is the heart of the issue: The Muslim world is a political and social disaster for all to see. With the arguable exception of Turkey, it consists of a series of despotisms, each with an absolute ruler whose ultimate justification is his strength and will. A family or a clique gathers around the ruler under the protection of the state apparatus of secret police and military repression. To the powerful, the spoils; to the weak, submission. No rights, no freedom of expression, no loyal opposition, no rule of law, no redress except through violence, conspiracy, a coup, and ultimate civil war.
Whose fault is this? The huge majority of Muslims understand that they are responsible for themselves.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Washington Post
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) gave the bombing campaign a vote of support, telling "The Early Show" on CBS, "We've got the right tone. We've got the right understanding of the complexity and the seriousness of this challenge. We're going about it in a concerted and a very successful way."
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10/09/2001 ||
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Thousands of angry demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday to protest against the U.S.-led missile strikes on Afghanistan. "Down... Down America", tens of thousands of demonstrators chanted as they moved through the heart of the city. "Down... Down with American terrorism on Islamic and Arab world", read one banner. "USA twin towers... You reap what you sow", said another.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Guardian Unlimited, by Jonathan Steele
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned the American air strikes on Afghanistan yesterday even as Iranian diplomats sat down in Geneva with their US counterparts to discuss options for the country if the Taliban regime falls. ... "We condemn the attack on the country and the people of Afghanistan," state television showed the ayatollah telling clerics at the prayer hall at his residence in central Tehran yesterday. "Death to America, death to Israel," the congregation chanted. "How is this oppression justified? How can you allow innocent civilians to be killed or injured and many more to be forced to leave their homes to take refuge in the wilderness, starving without food?" Mr Khamenei asked, adding that Washington's aim was not to combat terrorism.
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10/09/2001 ||
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STRAITS TIMES INDONESIA BUREAU
On Thursday, the Indonesian government vowed to act firmly against radical groups threatening to act against US-led strikes on Afghanistan. It also promised to curb demonstrations by these groups and arrest those who intimidated foreigners in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. The President said: 'What we will or will not do to this problem will determine the future of our nation.'
But some of these groups have remained defiant, with one, the Islamic Youth Movement (GPI), dismissing the government's ban on sending volunteers to fight in Afghanistan. It said that nearly 700 people had already registered to fight.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Reuters
Arabs across the Middle East on Monday angrily criticized the U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan and two protesters were shot dead in Gaza at a rally supporting Osama bin Laden. Witnesses said Palestinian police killed the demonstrators, but police said masked gunmen killed the 21- and 13-year-olds at the protest in Palestinian-ruled Gaza City. A third protestor was clinically dead on life support in hospital.
In Egypt, security sources said 20,000 students protested at universities across the country, some calling the attacks a ''war against Islam.'' ``U.S. go to hell, Afghanis will prevail,'' students shouted at Alexandria University. ``Bush Bush, you mean man, the blood of Muslims is not cheap,'' chanted others.
In the conservative Gulf Arab state of Oman, college students marched in the capital Muscat protesting the strikes.
Arab governments that spoke out were divided. Iraq slammed the attacks as unlawful. Lebanon said the U.S. campaign was doomed as long as the Arab-Israeli crisis was unsolved. Sudan said it opposed all forms of violence and the cabinet expressed concern that the attacks targeted ``Muslim people.''
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10/09/2001 ||
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NJ.com, by Ibrahim Barzak, Associated
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Embarrassed by anti-U.S. protests, Yasser Arafat's government took two unprecedented steps Tuesday: it closed Gaza City's universities to silence Islamic militants and barred foreign reporters from the Gaza Strip to prevent coverage of the events. The clampdown by the Palestinian Authority came a day after the deadliest internal Palestinian fighting in years, triggered by the militants' show of support for Osama bin Laden. Two civilians were killed and dozens of police and protesters hurt in a clash with guns, stones, clubs and tear gas.
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10/09/2001 ||
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MSNBC
In Quetta, Pakistan, an anti-American protester's hair catches fire as he tries to ignite an American flag. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
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Times of India Chidanand Rajghatta
WASHINGTON: Pakistan is being weaned away from its hard-line militaristic posture as a result of American and British pressure arising from the strong views India has expressed over their courtship of Islamabad. Washington's promise that it will hold Gen. Musharraf's feet to the fire appears to have some merit in it considering the military regime's moves over the past two days to sideline extreme elements from the country's political and military fabric. After agreeing to crack down on fundamentalist leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Sami-ul Haq, Musharraf has also undertaken a military reshuffle that is reported to have marginalised or retired generals with pro-Taliban views.
Among the "retirees" are ISI chief Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, who was in the US at the time of the September 11 terrorist attack and the Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt.Gen Usmani. Even more significantly, Lt Gen Mohammed Aziz, the seniormost general after Musharraf who played a major role in the Kargil debacle, has been elevated to the largely ceremonial post of Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. All three had played a key role in Musharraf usurping power in Pakistan and were vital cogs in the October 99 coup.
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10/09/2001 ||
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The Guardian Hugo Young
How the war will end is not possible to say. Our leaders give us not a single ground for optimism. They say it must go on and on. Their immediate aim, the elimination of Bin Laden, looks as elusive as their ultimate aim, the end of all world terrorism. Both are desirable, both perhaps unreal. The work has to be started. Bush and Blair had no choice. But, more than any other military engagement in the last 20 years, it defies confident explanation. The commentator is accustomed to making rational sense of things, pointing the way towards an outcome, admitting the reader to the mind of political leaders who know what they are doing. This time these leaders can be by no means sure. They know what they want, but have little idea how far or long they, or we, will have to go to get it.
Meanwhile, let's be clear about this one aspect. Though the danger is universal, the failings that provoked it are particular. The unforgivable act against humanity sprang from a version of Islam that only Islam can set about repudiating, so that among people of goodwill there can be no shred of misunderstanding. On the other hand, the context in which it happened, the target it was aimed at, is the residue of a history that America needs to recognise. Such truths are the start of making a better world hereafter - if the hereafter ever comes.
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10/09/2001 ||
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BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN WSJ
The U.S. and Britain are joined again in military purpose. Consistent partners in arms, they have stood alongside before--in the Gulf War, in the attritional Cold War, and in the two most destructive modern wars of all, the World Wars. In the latest pursuit of shared goals, Britain's unwavering political companionship is not merely a source of comfort for Washington: It also confers clear diplomatic and military benefits on the U.S.
In diplomatic terms, Mr. Bush has found an augmentative voice of support in Tony Blair, not merely the echo of a sidekick. And while there have been no signs of the president going "wobbly" on us--to use Margaret Thatcher's pithy description of Bush Sr.'s infirmity of resolve in the run-up to the Gulf War--Mr. Blair's blunt words on Sunday ensured that the West's aims were not understated by even a fraction. If anything, the British prime minister, not Mr. Bush, struck the truly Churchillian note.
Traditionally, Britain has regarded its diplomatic role as one of interpreting the world to America. However, in the buildup to the punitive assault on Afghanistan, Mr. Blair and his team took on the role of explaining America to world--or at least to those parts of the world which, by virtue of their contiguity to Afghanistan, needed a clear tutorial in the aims of the campaign, or a stiffening of resolve.
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10/09/2001 ||
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Munir Ahmad Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Fearing unrest could spread, Pakistan stepped up security in its capital Tuesday and detained three Muslim clerics who organized anti-American demonstrations. Three people, including a 13-year-old boy, died in new violence. The crackdown followed a daylong riot Monday in the Islamic fundamentalist stronghold of Quetta, where protesters burned cars and a police station and looted a bank to demand an end to the U.S.-led attack on neighboring Afghanistan. That was the most violent protest in Pakistan since the start of the bombing against strongholds of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and his allies in Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia - admired by Pakistani religious extremists who object to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's support of the international anti-terrorism coalition.
Despite large, sometimes raucous protests in some cities near the Afghan border, most of Pakistan has been quiet. Musharraf wants to keep it that way. "In an Islamic society, there is no room for extremism and violence against any other religion or group," he said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. He said support of his government now is part of "supreme national interests."
Security forces placed sandbags around police positions at key government installations here in the capital Tuesday, and military vehicles with machine guns were seen patrolling major streets. Three people were shot and killed killed when up to 400 baton-wielding Afghan refugees attacked a police station in the small town of Kuchlak near Quetta, authorities said. One of the victims was identified by doctors at the hospital in Quetta as 13-year-old Hamid Ullah. The police superintendent in Quetta, Abid Ali, said the refugees first attacked a bank and post office in Kuchlak. They turned to the police station when officers tried to break them up.
Quetta police chief Abid Ali said 75 people were arrested. Protester Mohammed Aman said the demonstration was peaceful and the police gunfire unprovoked.
In the eastern city of Lahore, several hundred pro-Taliban demonstrators stoned police, blocked roads and chanted slogans against President Bush and Musharraf for his support of the United States. Protesters sounded similar themes without violence in two other cities - 5,000 in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, and several hundred in the northwestern city of Peshawar near the Khyber Pass border area.
Two of the clerics who drew police concern were placed under house arrest for three months, the Interior Ministry said. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, had already been under house arrest twice since Sunday after leading demonstrations in the days before the strikes began. Azam Tariq, chief of the Sipah-e-Sahaba party, was detained at the Lahore airport en route to Islamabad for a meeting of religious leaders and escorted back to his home in southern Pakistan. The whereabouts of a third cleric, Samiul Haq, the pro-Taliban leader of the Afghan Defense Council, were not known. Police would only confirm he had been detained, and his spokesman, Yousaf Shah, said he was taken "to an unknown place, and we are not in contact with him."
Spokesmen for the parties condemned the action against their leaders. Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam spokesman Riaz Durrani, whose party claims millions of followers, gave the government 24 hours to release Rehman or "be responsible for the consequences."
Tariq's spokesman, Maulana Mujibur Rehaman, had a message for Musharraf: Talk with the party leaders and explain how Pakistan benefits from supporting the United States. "You convince us, and we will stop agitation. But if we convince you, you should support the Taliban," he said.
This article starring:
AZAM TARIQ
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
MAULANA FAZLUR REHMAN
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam
MAULANA MUJIBUR REHAMAN
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
Protester Mohammed Aman
Quetta police chief Abid Ali
RIAZ DURRANI
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam
SAMIUL HAQ
Afghan Defense Council
SAMIUL HAQ
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam
YUSAF SHAH
Afghan Defense Council
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/09/2001 ||
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Newsweek reports Mohammad Atta, the likely Sept. 11 ringleader, met twice in Prague with top Iraqi intelligence officials. The first meeting, in June 2000, had been previously reported, but this is the first report of the second meeting, in April 2001. The latter meeting was with Farouk Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey and former deputy head of Iraqi military intelligence.
--Wall Street Journal On-Line, Best of the Web Today
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/09/2001 ||
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MURRAY WEISS NY POST
October 9, 2001 -- About a dozen of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may not have known they were part of a suicide mission, The Post has learned. After nearly a month of tracking the hijackers around the world, the FBI has uncovered hard evidence that only about six of the terrorists - all with pilot training - left behind hard clues suggesting knowledge of their imminent death. The evidence was gleaned from documents left by the hijackers and from interviews conducted with relatives and friends, who recalled the terrorists ominously indicating they were on a mission and would never be heard from again.
"These pilots leave behind letters or tell their family that, for all intents and purposes, they are going to die, to meet Allah," one well-placed source said. "The others did not tell family they would die, at least there is no evidence so far."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/09/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
