Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov Turkmenbashy announced the decision made together with Hamid Karzai to make the border between their countries "a border of eternal friendship and benevolence." The two leaders had met on Thursday in Ashgabat. During the afterâtalk briefing, Niyazov named that issue as one of their primary subjects. The Turkmen President thanked Karzai for rendering various aid to ethnic Turkmens living in northern Afghan provinces. Things must be relatively quiet at home, so Hamid can continue his tours of neighboring states to mend fences. It's good for the country, they feed him well, and he's less likely to get shot.
But these foreign jaunts are possible only due to the presence of British "mercenaries" propping his interim government up in Kabul. Take away the Brits and Gen Dostum rolls his tanks south to get some legislation passed by a new loya jirga. Karzai's only going to work out if he can ride about the capital as the Man on the White Horse, the New Saviour of Afghanistan. Maybe he'll be given some travel time before having to do the Father of His Country schtick, but the sooner he gets to business setting up a functional government (and terminating some warlord's careers "with extreme prejudice") the better. Posted by Tom Roberts 3/16/2002 1:29:51 PM
Our problem is that Karzai doesn't have the power to do anything other than run the machinery. What Afghanistan "needed" was Dostum (since Masood was dead) - a tough guy with a vision, willing to cause "unfortunate accidents." What it required was a compromise candidate, offensive to as few as possible. Karzai has all the disadvantages of a compromise candidate, starting with a lack of gunnies who're loyal to him. Posted by Fred 3/17/2002 12:10:24 PM
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Hundreds of turbaned tribal leaders from the deserts and mountains of southern Afghanistan converged on Kandahar in an emergency "jirga" Saturday to warn against attempts to separate their returning king from his loyal supporters. They said the exiled Mohammad Zaher Shah should come to this old royal city if the reception is cold in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Here people "will have total and free access to meet the father of the nation," the elders declared. The joint declaration was to be sent to U.N. and U.S. officials, accused by some here of intending to restrict the ex-monarch's activities in Afghanistan.
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Russia made clear that it would not pull out of the coalition against terror even if the United States launched a unilateral strike against Iraq. Igor Ivanov, the Foreign Minister, said that Moscow opposed any US strike on Baghdad which would cause turmoil not only in the Gulf but throughout the Middle East. A strike would deal âa serious blowâ to the coalition. But he stopped short of any threat to cut off Russian help for the anti-terrorist campaign, which he insisted Russia supported. âIt would not be expedient to issue any ultimatums to say that we would withdraw from the coalition,â he said. âParticipation in this coalition is not some present or gift to give to someone, but in our own interests. We have common positions with Britain on this.â That's because the bastards started blowing up Moscow before they got to New York.
All the Russians want is their old arms bills to be paid. The next Iraqi regime will have more than enough oil money to do this as well as to rebuild the country. Don't be surprized if the Russians swing to support us as soon as some of these financial details get "ironed out". Posted by Tom Roberts 3/16/2002 1:32:16 PM
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An Iraqi dissident group said that Saddam Hussein's government executed six military officers earlier this month for subversion. The Center for Human Rights, an affiliate of the Iraqi Communist Party, said three of the officers had served at Saddam's presidential retreat at Tharthar, 100 miles northwest the capital Baghdad. It named the other three but did not say where they had been stationed. Their bodies were delivered to their families, who were forbidden to hold funerals.
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Of the more than 2,000 workers of the banned jihadi outfits detained after the recent crackdown on militants, 809 have been released after scrutiny. The Ministry of Interior puts the total number of detainees at 2,167, only 494 of them held during the recent crackdown while 1,673 detained after the initial ban on jihadi groups. Of these, 1358 remain in custody after the release of 809. "Heat's off. You can go home now. We'll let you know if we need you again."
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Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. military's Central Command and commander of the war in Afghanistan, discussed regional security and the war on terrorism with top Ethiopian leaders Saturday. The visit by Franks, whose sphere of responsibility includes Ethiopia and other Horn of Africa nations, came amid concerns among U.S. and Ethiopian officials that neighboring Somalia could become a center for terrorist activities.
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U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni continues talks on Sunday with Israelis and Palestinians aimed at brokering a cease-fire. Israel signaled an apparent early breakthrough in Zinni's mission by announcing on Saturday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would take part in trilateral truce talks on Sunday. But Palestinians swiftly denied they would attend any talks before a full Israeli troop withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas occupied in recent days during operations Israel says are necessary out to flush out militants. The Palestinian denial prompted an Israeli "clarification" less than an hour later, with Sharon's office saying "no decision has been made regarding the holding of a meeting." Geraldo says the talks are on...
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Army troops attacked leftist rebels inside a former rebel safe haven in southern Colombia on Saturday, killing 17 guerrillas, the army said. Soldiers had been pursuing rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the region for days after the guerrillas set up a roadblock and detained buses and 42 people, the army's 4th division commander Gen. Arcesio Barrero told local radio.
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Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel have frequently been targeted by fellow Palestinians during nearly 18 months of bitter fighting with Israel, but in recent days, the pace of these vigilante-style killings has picked up sharply. Seven suspected collaborators have been slain by Palestinian gunmen in the past week alone, compared to about two dozen until then. The killings echo a grim pattern established during the first Palestinian uprising against Israel, which lasted from 1987 to 1993. In those years, more than 800 suspected collaborators were slain by fellow Palestinians -- about one-third of the total Palestinian deaths in that intefadeh.
The latest killings -- many of them chillingly gruesome and highly public in nature -- appear calculated to terrorize any Palestinian contemplating cooperation with the Israeli security services. Palestinian militiamen behind the slayings promise their anti-collaborator campaign will intensify. Collaborators "are very dangerous -- they're more dangerous than the Israelis," said Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Brigades, a Palestinian militia group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, which claimed responsibility for at least five of the recent killings. "They're the enemy you don't know -- they're within, they're among us." It's like they're... they're... terrorists?
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A man named by President Bush as one of the 22 most dangerous in the world has been captured in Sudan. Abu Anas Al-Liby, described as a senior al Qaeda thug, was being held at a high-security prison in Khartoum.
Abu Anas was accused of plotting the 1998 American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. "He is one of nine militants seized in Khartoum and now being handed over to U.S. authorities," the Sunday Times quoted a source close to the CIA as saying. The newspaper said that in the days after the September 11 attacks on the United States, between 30 and 40 al Qaeda members were secretly rounded up in Sudan and flown to Egypt. A further 10 were arrested last month, including Abu Anas.
The suspect lived in Manchester, northern England, before fleeing Britain two years ago as an arrest warrant was issued for him by the United States, the paper said.
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As important as it may be to wipe out infrastructure like Al Qaeda's, the behind-the-scenes work of building up the global capacity to fight terrorism will determine the success of a war declared barely six months ago. "In many ways, our most important impact is going to be in helping to build the capability of nations around the world to confront this threat," says Frank Taylor, the State Department's head of counterterrorism. "We will close the seams in which these groups operate â and by that I don't just mean the physical places, but the cracks where intelligence isn't shared and [where] countries don't cooperate." That means much of the work against terrorism will come through such less-telegenic campaigns as enhanced intelligence work, information sharing, and checks on financial operations. No matter how good the military arm is, without intelligence to direct it, it has nowhere to go. The reason Shah-i-Kot looked so quagmirish is because they didn't know the details of what they were fighting and had to thrash around trying to find the enemy. Someone's assembling all these bits and pieces of information we've been picking up in the past six months - more than we've ever had before, by orders of magnitude - into a detailed picture. The overview conforms to what we knew before in most cases, but with the detail cleared up they can do better prioritization. I'd bet that's why Yemen and Somalia have dropped from being areas of real concern to being side jobs. We might even see the "ground forces" used in the war shift from soldiers to cops.
I always wondered why we didn't use MP brigades to do the Balkans pacification bit, rather than 82nd AB troopers who never met a stranger they didn't want to shoot. This would be a great way of using the Americorps volunteers also.
But seriously, the role of the military is being radically redefined, and the current recruiting goals are indicative of this: the Army asked for a growth of less than 10% to fight this war and the other services are less than 5%. Where the money is being spent is not on numbers of personnel, but on the infrastructure to support short term but very violent interactions with national enemies. About the only country I could see occupying for an extended period of time is Iraq, and that would be solely due to the fact that de Baathizing the political infrastructure there is going to require another MacArthur treatment. The rest of the military is spending heavily on intelligence and logistics, and only to a limited extent on upgrading weapons systems. Posted by Tom Roberts 3/16/2002 1:55:14 PM
Draining the ba'ath is going to be similar to getting the mafia out of Sicily.
I sure hope the CIA is spending a lot of money building up its covert ops end, because a lot of the targets they're coming up with aren't going to be comfortable to go after with miliary resources. Posted by Fred 3/17/2002 12:13:34 PM
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Martha Crenshaw, a noted terrorism expert at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, says that "at least as significant" as the smashing of Al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan is the breaking up of its interests in Western Europe through intense police and intelligence work. "It's important to remember that Sept. 11 was planned in Germany and other Western European states," she says. But such upbeat appraisals of the war on terrorism aren't shared universally. Critics say that as the campaign has progressed, the US seems to be targeting any terrorism anywhere.
Martha Crenshaw is Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, author of Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954-1962 (Hoover, 1978), and editor of Terrorism, Legitimacy, and Power (Wesleyan, 1983).
I usually yawn and move on to the next article when I see a "noted terrorism expert" associated with a university. I'll make an exception in this case and agree with her.
The term "mission creep" was used to denote how terrorism is being attacked globally. This argument is one of smoke and mirrors. What the global intentions of the US amount to isn't a case of strategic overextension, with its attendant "mission creep", but rather a case of concentrating on the priority missions such as destroying elaborate al Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan while performing economy of force efforts in the Balkans, Yemen, and the Philipines. Notably, the vast majority of the deployable forces of the US are still in strategic reserve, and most of these side theatres are either being drawn down or defined as being sole training missions with few combat assets in direct support.
Until the "mission creep" aficiandoes can show how subordinate missions are detracting from priority missions in a substantive manner, I'd say that Crenshaw and Bremer are spot on, and "creepy" Pena is waffling about undefined issues. Posted by Tom Roberts 3/16/2002 1:46:21 PM
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The US indictment of the key suspect in the kidnapping of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl will not hasten his extradition to the United States, Pakistani officials said Friday. A US court indicted Muslim extremist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh on Thursday out of concern that Pakistani authorities might release him. He'll probably never set foot on American soil. It's in the interests of Certain Elements in the Pak government that he not do so. If by some mischance there was a move to ship him to the USA he'd meet with an "unfortunate accident." But it probably won't come to that. They'll try and set it up so that we're still "discussing the matter" when all our grandkiddies are little old men and women in nursing homes.
But Pakistan says it reserves the right to prosecute Saeed before considering whether to allow the United States a chance to try him. First and easiest method. "We can't turn him over to you. We're building our own case."
âInvestigations are going on,â Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said. âOnce the investigations are completed, it would be decided whether he has to be tried here or to be extradited.â Pakistan does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, although officials of the two governments are considering ways he might be handed over. And will continue with no resolution until three weeks after Doom's Day.
The issue is unlikely to cause any friction between the two countries because Pakistan is a principal ally of the United States in war against terrorism... We're being polite. They're mistaking that for good relations.
Saiful Molook, Saeedâs lawyer, said the U.S. indictment was âunfairâ because no crime was committed on American soil and that under Pakistani law, a person cannot be extradited who faces criminal charges in Pakistan. Daniel Pearl was the guy the "unfairness" fell upon. And he was an American citizen. If killing an American on foreign soil grants you immunity from American prosecution, it would also seem to take away your immunity from invasion and occupation.
Pakistani investigators have failed to bring charges against Saeed despite holding him in custody for over a month, Molook said by telephone from the eastern border city of Lahore. âNow they are trying to fabricate charges against him,â Molook said. No need to fabricate charges when the case is pretty much open and shut. Prove he didn't do it in the face of the evidence and his confession and his insider's knowledge of the crime.
Raja Quereshi, the chief prosecutor, said he hasnât received any papers regarding Saeedâs indictment in the United States. Or if he did he didn't pay any attention to them. Probably thought they were more junk mail.
The decision to extradite Saeed will be taken purely by the government, he said. Yeah. In consultation with the ISI and with the terror network string-pullers in clerics' turbans.
On Tuesday, a defiant Saeed told a judge in Karachi that Americans will suffer if he is sent to the United States. No doubt about that. We should handle the investigation and killing of the next batch directly.
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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.
