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| Afghanistan |
| U.S. Troops Face Suicide Attacks? |
| 2002-09-26 |
| Alicia sends this, along with the note that "AP catches up with Rantburg". Heh heh... What the heck? It's only been a month or two... Taliban fugitives and Afghan fighters loyal to a former foe have allied and are getting arms and money from al-Qaida and Iran for planned suicide attacks on American troops in Afghanistan, one of their leaders says. Wotta surprise. Who'da thunkit? The new alliance is said to be based in eastern Afghanistan and involves men led by several former high Taliban officials and fighters of Hezb-e-Islami, a group headed by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar's force was one of the U.S.-aided guerrilla armies that fought the Soviets in the 1980s. He fled to Iran in 1996 after his group was defeated by the Taliban, but he has recently been seeking to incite a ``holy war'' against American forces in Afghanistan. October, a year ago, is "recently"? The new alliance is known as Lashkar Fedayan-e-Islami, or the Islamic Martyrs Brigade, a Hekmatyar military commander, Salauddin Safi, told The Associated Press at a secret meeting Wednesday in this frontier city. He means Peshawar. Where else? Well, maybe Quetta... ``There will be suicide attacks, ambushes by suicide attackers and bomb blasts against soldiers as they are moving from place to place and when they go out and disperse into smaller numbers, like in searches,'' he said. "We're gonna be a regular Hamas, just you wait and see..." The threat comes against a backdrop of unsolved bombings in Afghan cities, and there already have been sporadic attacks on U.S. military posts as well as on American troops patrolling the countryside. Safi said the alliance plans to attack only American military targets. He said the group had nothing to do with a Sept. 5 car bombing that killed 30 people and wounded more than 150 in Kabul, the capital. "Nope. Nope. Wudn't us. Karzai din't get killed, so it wudn't us..." Western intelligence sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed there is an alliance between the Taliban and Hekmatyar. They also said they believe the alliance is receiving money from a variety of sources, including the al-Qaida terror network and Iran. You However, neither Western nor Pakistani intelligence sources could confirm the existence of the new group or the formation of suicide bombing squads. Safi said the alliance's fighters are from the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami. ``Al-Qaida is not helping with men, but with money,'' he said. Iran also ``is helping with money and weapons,'' Safi said. And maybe a bit of training here and there. It's hard to believe Iran would be dumb enough to get involved in a half-assed scheme like this... ``Iran needs Hekmatyar because Iran is an enemy of the United States and Hekmatyar is too.'' Safi wouldn't give any specifics about the types of weapons or amounts of money. "Big weapons. Lotsa money... Washington previously accused Iran of trying to destabilize Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government by sending Iranian commandos to Afghanistan to incite tribal feuding and by supplying arms and money to opponents of his U.S.-backed government. Iran denied the charges. And the "Iranian agents" turned out to be locals... Another Hezb-e-Islami loyalist, who identified himself only as Abdullah, told AP in a separate interview that Khalil Saeed Deek, a Palestinian-American banished from Jordan last year on suspicion of links to Osama bin Laden, had brought money into Pakistan for Hezb-e-Islami. Abdullah said Deek, who was extradited from Pakistan to Jordan in December 1999, is living in Pakistan under the protection of Hezb-e-Islami. He refused to elaborate. So he's a money man, and a go-between with the al-Qaeda. Put him on the list, have a shootout, and send him to Guantanamo... Hekmatyar, who lived in Iran during the Taliban's six-year rule, was forced to leave by the Iranian government earlier this year after Washington demanded his expulsion. ``But the request for him to go was friendly. Still he travels back and forth between Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan and Iran,'' said Safi, who was interviewed in a house in a high-walled compound deep within Peshawar's old city, at the end of a sandy lane overrun by garbage and prowled by scavenging dogs. Sounds like a pretty classy class of people making this here revolution... After Afghanistan's Soviet-backed Marxist regime was defeated in the early 1990s, Hekmatyar and leaders of other Afghan factions plunged into a ruinous civil war that eventually provoked the rise of the Taliban religious army. ``The situation is not like it was before -- now we are united,'' Safi said. There's a certain unity among some — not all — Pashtun tribes. Knock off Paktia, Paktika, Khost, and Kunar and Afghanistan's not much more unstable than, say, Punjab. As the center of mass for the country's xenophobic, inbred, uneducated Pashtuns, clinging to jihad like a drunk to a gin bottle, these areas will represent a danger to the country for years upon years to come... He said Hezb-e-Islami commanders in Afghanistan's northeastern Kunar province forged the alliance with three top men in the ousted Taliban regime: Maulvi Abdul Kabir, vice president and the No. 3 Taliban official; Noor Jalil, a deputy interior minister; and Jalil Shinwari, a deputy justice minister. The alliance is strong in eastern Afghanistan, which includes Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces, he said. ``But in other parts of the country we are still trying to form alliances. There are some Taliban who don't want to work with Hekmatyar.'' I guess even Talibs have some pride... Safi came to Peshawar earlier this week with Hekmatyar's top commander in Kunar, Kashmir Khan. Khan's base was targeted by U.S. rockets last month. American soldiers have been operating in Kunar province for three months searching for Taliban, al-Qaida and Hekmatyar fighters, but with little fanfare. But lotsa bitching by the local Pashtuns... Hekmatyar has been circulating clandestine newsletters and audiotapes calling for jihad against American forces, and Safi brought out a new message. The one-page letter in the Pashtu language announced the formation of the Martyrs Brigade and it warned Afghans living near U.S. military bases to ``leave immediately lest you face any problem because we are going to start our struggle very soon against them.'' "Yeah, just leave your homes and move away, 'cuz we're goin' into action!" At a U.S. military base called Camp Salerno in southeastern Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Martin Schweitzer said they were aware of Hekmatyar and the threat posed by his loyalists and the Taliban. ``Bring it on,'' Schweitzer said. ``We're more than ready to handle any of the threats that are out there.'' Seems like he has a pretty good handle on the Pashtun threat. As I've mentioned a time or two, the Talibs beat up Hekmatyar, the Merkins beat up the Talibs. Now Hek thinks he's going to be able to beat up the Merkins. That makes sense. Not a lot of sense, but sense... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 The suicide attaks part.....I think it'll be a little different when those whom are attacked have guns and grenades and will blow the sh** out of the attackers, in the interest of helping them along to paradise, of course..... |
| Posted by: Budd 2002-09-27 05:09:56 |