There are too many good links out there - the rest of you bloggers, stop being witty and interesting this instant! Anyway, I've redone my links so that only half are displayed at a time. If you're looking for one and it doesn't appear, just hit refresh a time or two and the second set will show.
I've also added a separate page for archives. I'll show only the past 30 days at a time on this page. I'm importing my Blogger archives, but a part of the process involves hand coversion so please be patient. Until it's done, Search results might be a little overweight.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Former Taliban foreign minister Abdul Wakil Mutawakel was helping authorities as he spent his second full day in US custody in Kandahar, local governor Gul Agha Shirzai said. "Mutawakel is cooperating with us. He has accepted the present Afghan set up and assured support to the present political process," Agha said in the Pakistani border town of Quetta. He'll be very valuable, if anything he says can be believed, since Taliban foreign policy consisted mostly of taking money where it was offered to allow the construction of terror networks. He should provide many fine details on the money pipeline and on who's standing in the shadows behind bin Laden and Co.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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With a bandoleer of bullets across his chest, Bacha Khan said he has 6,000 fighters ready to do battle again with forces loyal to the Gardez town council, or shura, who oppose his appointment as governor of surrounding Paktia province. "They are no town council," Khan thundered. "They are an al-Qaida council and a Taliban council." He added: "We are ready to fight al-Qaida today, tomorrow or any time." Gardez shura leaders deny being al-Qaida or Taliban members and accuse Khan of being unscrupulous and corrupt. Ummm. Yes. That sounds about right.
Hopefully this Neanderthal will be offered the chance to die for his cause soon. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/10/2002 4:03:55 PM
Unfortunately, it's usually not the head cheeses who get shot. Posted by Fred 2/10/2002 4:08:03 PM
Isn't the solution obvious? We just set up Khan and his followers with suspended-animation deep-range sublight spaceship... Posted by Kirok 2/11/2002 11:19:18 AM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani was quoted as saying the Bonn pact that sidelined him when it set up Afghanistan's new government was a scandalous trick by the United Nations. Rabbani also told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily that foreign troops would not be tolerated in Afghanistan for more than one year. "What happened was a scandal by all measures for it is shameful for any country that its government be formed outside its borders," said the former president of Afghanistan, who made a triumphant return to Kabul in November as political head of the Northern alliance. Rabbani was in a sense screwed by the process. The United Front government he headed was the recognized government of the country - Northern Alliance was simply the most important part of the United Front. On the other hand, the Dog-Eat-Dog erupted when Rabbani refused to step down from the presidency when he was supposed to, and provided the pretext for Hekmatyar to shell Kabul and impose his own brand of chaos. Rabbani hasn't been particularly graceful as an Elder Statesman.
Rabbani being head of the de jure Afghan government was an historical accident based solely upon the diplomatic chances of the decade of turmoil after the Soviet withdrawl. Unfortunately for Rabbani, his achievements over that tenure as "head of state" were both few and thin. At best he posed as the arbiter between the Dostums and Masoods of the NA, and at worst as the instigator of the Taliban's rise to power. Any neutral observer would conclude that Rabbani's renaissance as head of state today would be a step backwards to a prior state of anarchy and ethnic strife. So, I'd conclude that he deserved what he got in Bonn. In terms of historical balance, I'd cry over the political fate of Rabbani as I'd cry over the political fate of Charles Stuart the First, who stood foursquare in the way of English political progress and paid for his error with his head. Rabbani should count his lucky stars if he dies in his bed at a ripe, old and cantakerous age. Many of his compatriots haven't been so lucky. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/10/2002 4:01:50 PM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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"We shaved off our beards, changed our turbans from white Taliban to Kandahari [green or black with thin white stripes], got in cars and drove on the road across the border," says Maulana Abdullah Sahadi, the former Taliabn deputy defence minister, adding, "My beard was as long as this." He gestured down to his chest. The Pakistani authorities, he claims, turned a blind eye.
While US special forces based in Kandahar continue to go on daily operations in the Afghan mountains searching for al-Qaeda and Taliban, just across the border it is an open secret that senior Taliban ministers are sheltering in madrassas and houses. Among those are Turabi, the Justice Minister, Abdul Razzak, the Interior Minister, Qadratuallah Jamal, the Culture Minister, and the spokesman for Mullah Omar.
According to Sahadi, bin Laden was still in Afghanistan when the Taliban fell at the end of last year, and he laughed at the Americans' failure to catch him. "I spoke to him on the telephone the day we surrendered Kandahar and he was in Paktia and he was fine. I briefed him and he wished me Godspeed. Now we think he is in Saudi or Yemen."
"Thank God this war happened because now we really know who is with us and who is against us," Sahadi adds. "Karzai went to the other camp. Once he pretended he was with us, but now we see he just wanted power. They will all be brought before justice and punished according to Islamic law." Yeah, yeah. Save your Taliban money, boys, 'cuz the Pashtuns are gonna rise again. That's Afghanistan, and everybody changes sides so fast the eye can't follow it. The cycle only has to stop once.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Baghdad would defeat any U.S. military action against his country. "America has revealed its hatred against the Arabs and Muslims and this arrogant (Bush) understands concession as weakness," Ramadan told reporters after opening an exhibition of Syrian products in Baghdad. Ramadan rebuffed comments by Secretary of State Colin Powell this week that President Bush was considering military action against Iraq in its war on terrorism. "America has been saying that over the last 12 years and those who defend their sovereignty and country will defeat the aggressors such as the arrogant Americans." Quick vitriol analysis: North Korea - incoherent. Iran - cliched, alternating with confused. Iraq - monotonously belligerent.
In re: Iraqi reaction.
Remember the Black Knight at the bridge in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"? Not that the result there was pretty either. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/10/2002 4:49:59 PM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Iranian authorities have closed down the offices of dissident Afghan guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in a move seen as trying to prove Tehran's goodwill toward the interim government in Afghanistan. Newspapers said the strongly anti-American Hekmatyar had acted against Iranian national security. Iran vehemently denies U.S. charges it is trying to destabilize the fragile peace in Afghanistan by arming groups hostile to Hamid Karzai's interim administration. "Iran decided to close down Hekmatyar's offices because he did not consider the country's security policy," the official Iran newspaper quoted police chief Hossein Zare-Sefat as saying. "It's a green light to the world and the Americans that shows Iran's foreign policy is based on dialogue and friendship," Tehran University politics lecturer Hamidreza Jalaipour said. A little more light makes its way through the murk of Iranian policy. Not only are they split between their own wimpish moderates and the raving religious hard-liners, they've also been sheltering Hekmatyar for a few years. Hekmatyar isn't so much anti-American as out for the main chance, which involves personal power for himself, regardless of the price to anyone else. He commands a network of proxies and allies within Afghanistan and it's more likely they, rather than the moderate end of the government or - at least without plausible deniability - the ayatollahs, who are working actively to destabilize Afghanistan. The Iranian heirarchy's denials could even be sincere, since Hekmatyar's a very small frog in the Persian pond.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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North Korea has called off a visit by a group of former U.S. ambassadors. The delegates, who included four former ambassadors to South Korea, had planned to meet senior North Korean officials later this month. They attributed the cancellation to President Bush's criticism of North Korea in his State of the Union speech. Robert A. Scalapino, professor emeritus at the University of California, agreed. "The use of incendiary language is not fruitful," he said. Scalapino helped organize the trip and planned to go himself. Well, what the hell is fruitful, cheddarhead? We tried being nice. We sent them groceries when their people were eating grass and stones and they fed the army. We tried negotiating. We tried giving them money. Now maybe we'll try punching them in the nose.
Interesting cited article: the quoted academics, especially Scalapino, wail and moan most fervently, but the listed former ambassadors don't give a single quote and hold their diplmatic tongues. So let's look into these academics' curricula vitae and mirabile dictu! these fellows have been jet setting about the globe on such junkets for the past decade and earning a pretty good living off of basically stirring the bath water in between pompous speeches cut from the same cloth as Scalapino's quote. I'd give Scalapino and his academic brethren as much credence as I'd give a Teamster on a picket line complaining about how the management is oppressing the aspirations of the working man. Or as they say on the farm, when feeding the pigs, don't stand between the hogs and the slop or you might get run over. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/10/2002 4:44:00 PM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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National Kashmir Committee chairman Sardar Muhammad Abdul Qayyum Khan believes that no further action will be taken against any jihadi organization. He said the action taken against jihadi organizations would not affect the freedom movement. He also said the government did not take these organizations as its adversaries. He said the strategy adopted by these organizations had caused problems for the government and necessitated action against some of them.
The cited article was a great example of propaganda and wishful thinking. "We are all victims" threaded between "how about going back to the situation before 11 Sep 2001 when we could throw a few bombs and cry 'Jihad' and get away with it?" The fact that such faux moderates get any public standing in the Pakistani press [and The Dawn is fairly moderate] is indicative that Musharraf has a hard row to hoe in getting the jihadis in line so that any dialog with India can begin. The NKC chair actually said nothing about stopping cross border terrorism and blamed the lack of progress on BJP extremists, as if the BJP was attacking the Parliament building in New Delhi and shooting up Srinigar on a weekly basis. Until some Pakistani leader puts such nonsense in its place, the prospects for a real peace dialog are thin to none. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/10/2002 4:59:08 PM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Israeli troops scouring the West Bank for suspected militants shot their way into a refugee camp in Nablus at dawn to arrest three Palestinian brothers after a 78-year-old Jewish settler was killed in a drive-by shooting outside the city. He was, of course, a septuagenarian Mossad agent. Everybody knows that.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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A Qassam rocket - manufactured by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the radical Islamic group Hamas - landed in a field near a farming community in the northwest Negev desert. It had been fired from inside the Gaza Strip. Farmers were working their fields on tractors when the rocket hit, but none were hurt by the projectile. Initial army investigations suggest that it was the first time a Qassam 2 rocket was fired. The Israeli army intercepted eight Qassam 2's in the West Bank for the first time last week, raising fears Hamas could hit Israeli cities close to the Green Line dividing Israel from the Palestinian territories. It's amazing how a simple act of pointless violence can make some people feel oh, so heroic.
"Look, Hamid! I got a rocket! Where should we fire it?"
"How about over that way, Mustafah?"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Pakistani police have made two more arrests in the search for kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl but Sheikh Omar remained at large. Islamabad police said the two men were rounded up in the capital, bringing to around 16 the number of people arrested since Pearl went missing on January 23. The arrests relate to phone calls they made from a mobile telephone. Sheikh Omar's probably in Bahrain or Indonesia by now. The Paks shoulda kept better tabs on him - he used to be one of their fair-haired boys.
Pearl Case: No negotiations
Pakistan's interior minister ruled out any negotiations with the kidnappers of US reporter Daniel Pearl, who have eluded investigators for 17 days. "There is no negotiation and there will be no negotiations," Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told reporters when asked about the possibility.
Pearl Case: ISI incontinence
MuslimPundit discusses the wet pants syndrome which must be afflicting those ISI controllers associated with Sheikh Omar. "Now that all eyes are on the whereabouts and safety of Daniel Pearl, the ISI will have to rightly suffer the anguish of having their past record pried open even further."
Pearl Case: Auntie calls Sheikh Omar, sez the jig's up
An aunt of the main suspect in Daniel Pearl's kidnapping spoke with her nephew by telephone and pleaded with him to free the Wall Street Journal reporter. Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh and his aunt talked by cellphone last Tuesday, and she told him she was in police custody and urged him to turn himself in, Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said. "She said: 'We have been rounded up by the police and I think your game is out and we didn't know you were indulging in this. You better hand over yourself,' and after that his telephone went dead," Haider told reporters in Karachi. She also said the place where her knees used to be really hurt...
Pearl Case: Ticket was cancelled
The PIA ticket reserved in the name of Daniel Pearl, was cancelled in the wee hours of Saturday, and the government was contemplating action against the ticket-issuing travel agency. According to the reports from the federal capital, the government had taken notice of the ticket issued in the name of Daniel Pearl, and would investigate into it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Six people were killed and one injured by an armed group south of the Algerian capital. The victims, all members of the same family, were found at a hamlet in Bougara. The latest killings came the day after the head of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), one of two main extremist groups in Algeria's civil war, was killed by security forces near the capital Algiers. Could be an "Our Leader is Dead, but We're Still Here" killing, or it could be one of those combinations of the business and personal. Likely the latter, since they're all from the same family.
A word of caution in regards to Algeria: the government and the Islamic fundies are both thugs. In a real sense, both sides are wearing black hats as the fellow selling the white hats to the good guys went out of business long ago and moved to San Jose. Posted by Tom Roberts 2/10/2002 5:02:52 PM
Aftab Ansari, accused in the American Center shoot-out in Kolkata on January 22, has admitted to having earned his money through kidnappings and arms deals and using it to establish a terror network across the country. Ansari was also financing some jehadis in Pakistan, chiefly Omar Sheikh, one of the three persons released by India following the Kandahar hijack. The CBI said that Ansari also admitted to forming a countrywide network of arms, narcotics smugglers for carrying out illegal activities in India. India appears to be doing at least half the work in breaking up al-Qaeda associated activity. Wish their cops were working the Pearl fiasco.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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A day after getting hold of Aftab Ansari, Delhi Police arrested three Pakistani nationals for their alleged links in the Kolkata shootout case. "The three are suspected to have links with Ansari", police said. The arrest was made on the basis of information provided by two other Pakistani nationals and a Bangladeshi arrested on Friday for their suspected involvement in the attack on the American Center on January 22. Cheeze. Don't Paks do anything but subvert and shoot up the countries around them?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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An Algerian Islamic radical arrested in France has proved a goldmine for investigators probing Osama bin Laden's network in Europe. Since his arrest in Paris last Monday 27-year-old Yacine Aknouche has revealed his links with several al-Qaeda suspects including "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui. And his address book has been revealed as a virtual Who's Who of hardline Islamic radicals and terror attack suspects, making Aknouche a vital link in a series of interlinked investigations. French investigators now believe that after key testimonies from a handful of well placed members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network the exiled Saudi extremist's secret organisation in Europe is unravelling fast.
Officers of the French domestic intelligence agency, the DST, arrested Aknouche and two other suspects based in a Paris-region flat as part of an inquiry into a thwarted attack on Strasbourg in December 2000. An Islamic commando based in Frankfurt was said to have planned a bomb attack on the city centre while a Christmas market was being held in front of the cathedral. But when officers began questioning the suspect they found he had information on many more figures in the Islamist underground. It's wonderful watching this structure fall apart. Between the hard drives and the singing hard boys, they actually stand a chance of cleaning those bastards out for good.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/10/2002 ||
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Muslims in a southern Egyptian town clashed with Coptic Christians after complaining that their new church bell was too loud, ending an eight-month period of sectarian calm. Police managed to put out a number of small fires that had been started in nearby cars and homes. A total of 11 people, including two policemen, were slightly hurt in the clashes near Minya. "Provocative elements from both sides, Muslim and Christian, got carried away in their reaction which led to friction between them and... resulted in the lighting of some fires in three cars and... five homes," a statement said. Muslims had pelted a Coptic church with rocks and Copts inside the church fired buckshot at them in response. Authorities arrested 43 people. The governor of Minya told state-run television that calm had returned to the town. Church bell was too loud, huh? Well, that's as good a reason for a religious riot as any. It's terrible how, everywhere there are Muslims, those awful Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Animists, Confucianists and Jains just pick on them for no reason.
A history of communal riots in India since partition is rife with similar flareups for completely nonsensical reasons. Posted by Suman Palit [www.palit.com/blogger.html] 2/11/2002 6:20:45 PM
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
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A googler led PhotoDude to a site purporting to feature nekkid Saudi women. Warning: presents the predictable pop-up with a dozen or so skin sites when you back out. Requires Adult Check(tm). No one under 21 admitted. Member SIPC... Uh, no, strike that last one.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
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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.
