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| Afghan nurses psychological scars of war KABUL, Dec 30: Bilal was a normal, healthy boy until a midnight rocket attack near his . ...more Blair
pledges to root LONDON, Dec 30: British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to root out followers of militant Osama bin ....more C’Wealth
Secy Gen LONDON, Dec 30: Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon hopes that 2002 will not be a year ....more Saddam back in cross hairs WASHINGTON, Dec 30: With the year drawing to a close and the Afghanistan military....more |
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Afghanistan to ‘reunite’ as workers clear tunnel KABUL, Dec 30: The road linking Northern and Southern Afghanistan is now only for the desperate or the ......more Taliban
leaders airlifted DOAB (NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN), Dec 30: Several senior Taliban leaders were airlifted by......more US likely
to use Indo-Pak WASHINGTON, Dec 30: The US is likely to dangle the threat of an imminent Indo-Pak war to....more US Govt
never took terrorist NEW YORK, Dec 30: US anti-terrorist experts understood the apocalyptic designs of Osama bin Laden for....more |
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Afghan nurses psychological scars of war KABUL, Dec 30: Bilal was a normal, healthy boy until a midnight rocket attack near his home in Kabul four years ago. He is now 11, but doctors say he has a mental age of about three. Nervous and distracted, he spends his days at home in silence, a victim of the psychological trauma which doctors say affects up to 70 per cent of the population in the Afghan capital in some way. "If he doesn’t take his medicine, he falls over and blacks out the whole time," said his mother Mommana, surrounded by her three other children. "If the war continues, I worry that all the others will be the same." As Afghanistan starts to repair the physical damage from more than two decades of war, mental health experts say they are only just beginning to understand the depth of the psychological scars the conflict has inflicted on the nation. "After 23 years of war, and five years of cruelty under the Taliban, almost all our people have some psychological problems, but especially our children," said psychologist Abdul Mannan Haqyar, head of the Kabul Mental Health Hospital. The most common symptoms among children are distrust of adults, a lack of hope in the future and an obsession with traumatic experiences. "When children witness a traumatic event like a rocket or bomb attack, their minds can become obsessed with that incident, especially when they are alone or asleep," said Haqyar. "If it happened at school, they will avoid going to school. They feel human life has no value, they lose hope and they become depressed." Five years of the Taliban’s public executions and beatings of those who violated its extreme interpretation of Islamic law have compounded the psychological damage. Haqyar cited one case of a young boy who witnessed a man being hanged by the Taliban from a tank in the city centre. "He was always dreaming about that man," he said. "He couldn’t sleep, he became depressed and he didn’t want to go out." Women bear perhaps the deepest scars from the Taliban, which banned them from work and school, allowed them out of the house only in the company of a close male relative and forced them to wear the head-to-toe robe, the Burqa. "Those who were taken out of school can face anxiety and depression," said said Abdul Ahad Awara, a psychiatrist and deputy head of the hospital. "But school is not the only problem. Hiding under the burqa, staying in the house all day like a prison, you see no hope in the future and you have no social relationships." Afghan men have suffered from the lack of contact with women other than their mothers and close relatives under Taliban rule, Awara said. "They cannot make a healthy relationship with the opposite sex because they had no contact with female teachers or colleagues," he said. "When a man faces a woman for the first time, some of them suffer from a lack of basic knowledge. This can create sexual problems in the future." Many Afghan men are unable to have a sexual relationship with a woman until after the age of 30 because they spend most of their time fighting with male comrades away from home, he said. And with no education and few skills other than those of warfare, finding a role in a peaceful society can be as traumatic for men as the violence they leave behind, he said. Ironically, it is only during peacetime that many of these problems come to the surface, said Awara, whose hospital treats about 80 new patients every day. "When people face a lot of hardship, they do not take these personal problems seriously," he said. "But once their lives are secure and stable, they will start to think more about their abnormalities and psychological problems. "Then we expect to see 10 times as many patients at the hospital." (AGENCIES) |
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Blair pledges to root out Bin Laden militants LONDON, Dec 30: British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to root out followers of militant Osama bin Laden and provide support to Afghanistan’s new Government, in his new year’s message released today. He also called for a new attempt to bring peace to the middle east. "The international community...Can be immensely proud of the way it responded to the attack upon humanity that took place on September 11, and the UK can be proud of the role we are playing on all fronts, military, diplomatic, humanitarian," Blair said in an advance copy of the speech. Blair warned that the threat posed by Islamic militants remained. "Many thousands of terrorists have been trained in the terror camps of Afghanistan and have long since left there." "They continue to pose a risk, and the international community must continue to be vigilant and determined in rooting them out and shutting down their networks. We will be," Blair said. Blair urged the countries that had come together following the September attacks on the United States to work for stability in the Middle East. "The international community has shown that by acting together with a sense of shared values and shared mission, it can be a force for good. Now is the time for a concerted effort to bring peace to the middle east," he said. He also signalled his wish for Britain to act as bridge between europe and the United States on the international stage. "I believe Britain has shown that in pursuit of a modern foreign policy we do not need to choose between Europe and America. We are stronger in Europe because of our closeness to the US. We are stronger with the US because of our growing strength in Europe," Blair said. Blair reiterated the Government’s belief that Britain is better placed than many to weather what could be a difficult year for the world’s economies. However, he struck a cautionary note. "The arrival of the euro comes at a very difficult time for the global economy, with the world’s three largest economic areas —the US, Japan and Europe — all slowing down at the same time, world trade growing at its lowest rate for a generation and unemployment rising across the globe," he said. Blair said many commentators were predicting Britain would be the fastest growing of the world’s leading economies in 2002. But he added: "There is no room for complacency. In today’s increasingly interdependent world we cannot insulate ourselves entirely from economic developments in other countries." Blair also stressed the Government’s commitment to public services, a major theme of his centre-left labour Government since it first came to power in 1997. He said schools, hospitals and law and order had all benefited from increased spending. But he said extra money was not always enough and pointed to the failure of Britain’s rail network operator railtrack which collapsed in October. "Proposals are being put together for a new, simpler, less bureaucratic system which will provide managers with stronger incentives to put the travelling public first," Blair said. Railtrack was created in 1996 when the then conservative Government broke up and sold off Britain’s railways. Blair also restated the Government’s commitment to bringing in the private sector to help London’s crumbling underground train system. (AGENCIES) |
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C’Wealth Secy Gen hopes
2002 will not be LONDON, Dec 30: Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon hopes that 2002 will not be a year of extremes, but a year in which the spirit of tolerance and the respect for diversity, will finally come of age. "Who would have thought that when our expectations were at their highest for a more cohesive world, our hopes would be shattered and our minds numbed by the aircraft that plunged into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania? McKinnon asks in an end of year message today. Quoting World Bank figures, he says as a sequel to the Sept 11 attacks, ten million more people will be thrown into poverty. "Tens of thousands more children will die worldwide," he says. Noting that the terrorist attacks have brought a sense of urgency to our lives, the Commonwealth chief says "we have come to realise that the problems our world is facing demand urgent attention. The challenges we were facing on Sept 10 -the fight against poverty, the promotion of democracy and the creation of olerance - are the same today. But the need for immediate action is more pressing than ever. The clock was always ticking. Only now it is ticking faster." He says the strength of the Commonwealth lies not in the power to deploy battalions, but in members’ common commitment to democracy, the rule of law and pluralism. "By bringing together people of different faiths and cultures from a diverse group of countries, large and small, rich and poor, the commonwealth can present a United Front against those who promote intolerance and hatred," he says. Referring to various problems such as aid and debt, he says "social and economic conditions can be improved through promotion of democratic processes and institutions, human rights and the rule of law. Democracy not only empowers people and brings peace and social justice; it also creates the conditions for economic growth." The events of the past year have also brought into sharper focus the need for the promotion of tolerance and a renewed dialogue of cultures, he says. In an increasingly interconnected world, the ‘live and let live’ principle is no longer adequate. "True respect for diversity demands not merely that we accept, but also understand, other people’s identities and outlooks," he says. It is particularly fitting, therefore, that for commonwealth day, the golden jubilee of the head of the commonwealth and the Commonwealth Games in Manchester next year, "we will be celebrating diversity throughout the commonwealth," he says. Recalling historian Eric Hobsbawm’s history of the 20th century, ‘the age of extremes’, McKinnon says in many ways, 2001 has been a year of extremes - extremes of optimism and pessimism, of positive out look for the future and deep concern as we tried to come to terms with the horrific events of September 11. "We all hope that 2002 will not be a year of extremes, but a year in which the spirit of tolerance and the respect for diversity will finally come of age; A year in which the commonwealth, inspired by the report of the high level group, will ably meet the challenges our leaders put before us." (PTI) |
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Saddam back in cross hairs of US war on terrorism WASHINGTON, Dec 30: With the year drawing to a close and the Afghanistan military campaign wrapping up, US President George W Bush has warned that 2002 will be another year of war. While Bush has retired to his texas ranch over the holidays, the question that has bothered Washington is, war against whom? The favourite targets, the US media has speculated, are Somalia and Iraq, both countries in which Americans have fought before. Of course the list of potential targets is long. Radical Islamic cells are suspected to operate in scores of countries, from Sudan and Yemen to the Philippines and Russia’s Chechnya region. The US Afghanistan commander, Army General Tommy Franks, reportedly said last week that overt and covert operations are already "going on in a great many places". Somalia, more of a poverty-ridden anarchic battlefield than a nation-state, is among the places that have harboured terrorist cells of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, say US officials. A group of suspected US intelligence operatives were recently spotted in the country, and media from around the world have flocked to the horn of Africa, eager not to miss any possible action there. The other target of American military might after September 11 could be Iraq, which is still ruled by that Bush family Nemesis Saddam Hussein, who reportedly tried to kill the current President’s father with a car bomb in Kuwait in 1993. "The question is not if the United States is going to hit Iraq, the question is when," the magazine Newsweek quoted an unnamed senior US envoy in the Middle East as saying. Most Americans wouldn’t mind, according to opinion polls that found broad support for another attack against Iraq, even if it involved substantial US casualties. Speaking against another Gulf war are the same reasons that apparently deterred Washington from toppling Hussein the first time - the potential instability this would cause in Iraq and the oil-rich Middle East, and the fact that the ruthless dictator is believed to possess weapons of mass destruction. Just in case, though, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have long planned for a possible invasion of Iraq, in which 50,000 troops each could be sent toward Baghdad from the country’s North and South. Another scenario was devised three years ago by the new white house counter-terrorism expert, former special forces commander Wayne Downing, the Washington Post reported this week. The "downing report", reportedly again the subject of debate in US defence circles, was secretly presented to a Congress Committee but rejected by the Clinton administration as a recipe for another "bay of pigs" fiasco, the Washington Post said. Under the plan, which bears many similarities to the now-vindicated Afghanistan strategy, US air power and elite ground troops would back local opposition forces, Iraq’s Kurdish and Shi’ite minorities. Among the leading hawks in the Bush administration is Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Key Senators Joseph Lieberman, Trent Lott and John McCain have also urged Bush in an open letter to directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later. And National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has in the past pointed to Hussein and the issue of weapons of mass destruction and said, "We’ll deal with that situation eventually." Former CIA chief James Woolsey has also long pushed for attacking the Iraqi regime, which he has claimed was involved in the September 11 attacks. Posing the question "should we use the war against terrorism to get Saddam is parallel to asking, ‘should we, as of December 7, 1941, use the war against fascism to get Hitler?"’ he recently said. Among the voices urging caution over Iraq have been Secretary of State Colin Powell, his Deputy Richard Armitage and Current CIA Chief George Tenet. Powell, who oversaw almost 170,000 combat troops in the 1991 Gulf war, is weary of attacking an enemy that has 20 times the troop strength and 10 times as many tanks as the Taliban did. "They are two different countries with different regimes, two different military capabilities," he has said. "They are so significantly different that you can’t take the Afghan model and immediately apply it to Iraq." The Iraqi opposition, based around the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in London, is also weaker and even more fractured than Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, critics point out. In 1996, a CIA and INC-backed Kurdish rebellion in Northern Iraq failed, as have half a dozen US-backed coup attempts over the past decade, the group’s President Ahmed Chalabi has told the post. Powell, in his role as the top US diplomat, also worries that a second Gulf war could split the fragile alliance he has assembled in the Moslem world in the new war on terrorism. Officials from Turkey, whose premier Bulent Ecevit is due to meet with Bush in mid-January, have voiced concerns, worried that a new Iraq war could fuel the separatist campaign of Turkey’s own Kurdish minority. Since September 11, European allies and Russia have favoured stepping up so-called smart sanctions against Iraq and pushing for resumed United Nations weapons inspections, which Baghdad halted three years ago. Analysts fear that Hussein, who has used poison gas against his rebel forces, still possesses biological and chemical weapons. The latest available UN report indicated that in the past Iraq also possessed missiles with biological warheads and stockpiles of anthrax and botulinum. Earlier this month Bush issued another ultimatum for Hussein to let weapons inspectors back into Iraq. Asked what would happen if Hussein refused, the President said, "he’ll find out." (DPA) |
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Afghanistan to ‘reunite’ as workers clear tunnel KABUL, Dec 30: The road linking Northern and Southern Afghanistan is now only for the desperate or the brave, willing to walk nearly three km through an icy pitch-black tunnel bored through the high Hindu Kush. But Russian engineers, French and British charities and teams of Afghan day labourers with bulldozers and welding torches are working to let cars and trucks pass through the legendary Salang tunnel, dynamited shut several years ago by Northern Alliance guerrillas fending off the Taliban. The route will bring life-giving aid to hungry millions, carry refugees home and open a trade link between central and southern Asia, providing a peace dividend not just for Afghanistan but for the wider region. "It’s the key link between the north and south of the country," said Sebastian Trives, Chief of Mission of French Charity acted, which has teams working on the north entrance. "It’s not just important because of the economics and facilitating the travel of people. This is a sign of the destruction of Afghanistan, a sign of 30 years of war. When this is rehabilitated, you can say that Afghanistan is taking a step forward and reuniting itself." Beg Murat and his family, refugees returning home to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday from three years exile in camps in Pakistan, could not wait. "We heard our city is free and we can now go home," he said. His group of five Burqa-clad women, seven men and seven exhausted small children were huddled in a bitter wind outside the tunnel’s new entrance, where engineers had blasted a hole through the mountainside to bypass rubble and reinforced concrete blocking the mouth. Their belongings were few and their clothes far too thin for the cold. They had paid about 30 dollars per person for a three-day bus ride to the Salang. After walking through the tunnel they would have to find another bus home and pay still more. But without the tunnel, the trip would be all but impossible in winter. When the tunnel is finally opened to traffic, goods and passengers will be able to drive from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif in about eight hours, year round. The alternative route now takes four days and is closed in winter. With the Taliban gone, Uzbekistan has reopened the friendship bridge north of Mazar-i-Sharif, the main link between Afghanistan and the ex-soviet states of Central Asia. When the salang is clear, Uzbek and Tajik goods will be able to reach Kabul in a single day, or Pakistan in two. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, Britain’s Halo Trust Charity and acted say they can get the tunnel clear by the end of January. Teams are working from both ends, cutting debris loose and hauling it out. The project has special meaning for the Russians. Soviet engineers built the tunnel between 1956 and 1964, and many thousands of Soviet troops died trying to protect the main supply route during the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Salang river is still choked with the wreckage of soviet tanks and armoured personnel carriers. But Afghans crossing on Friday had nothing but praise for the Russians now working to reopen the route. "We get along really well with the locals," said Shamsudin Dagyrov, head of the Russian Salang team, which doubled in size to 32 people with the arrival of a second group on Friday. They are billeted at a Soviet-built mountain base occupied for years by Northern Alliance troops. "Many of the local workers still speak Russian, they haven’t forgotten the language. They are determined to reopen the Salang with us." The walk through the diesel fume-choked tunnel is rough going. At the entrance, babies cried in their parents’ arms. One boy, probably about 11 or 12, teetered under the weight of four car tyres strapped to his back. Another clutched a live chicken. But in a country where people have been divided and dispersed by decades of war, there are plenty who are delighted to make the journey. "I have been waiting for seven years to be able to go to Kabul and see my brother," said Aziz Agha, who had made the trip from Puli Khomri, the first major town on the north side of the tunnel. "Seven years. I’m so happy, I can’t wait to get there." For nearly all of the last decade his trip would have taken days. When the tunnel is fully open, it will take four hours. "Just a month ago, we were fighting here," said Habibullah, a Northern Alliance commander who fought for the past 10 years and now commands brigades of workers in the tunnel. "Now we can stop and rebuild the roads. That’s peace." (AGENCIES) |
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Taliban leaders airlifted by Pak, says prisoners DOAB (NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN), Dec 30: Several senior Taliban leaders were airlifted by Pakistan while hundreds of Taliban soldiers escaped to that country during the 15-day siege of Kunduz by the Northern Alliance (NA) in November. The siege, led by Commander Dawood, lasted about 15 days which gave enough time to the leaders and soldiers to escape to Pakistan. This was disclosed to UNI by Taliban militiamen who have been imprisoned in this non-descript village in Panjsher Valley on the foothills of the Hindukush Mountain, about 125 km North of Kabul. The jail, not a conventional prison but a small complex of mud rooms on the banks of the Panjsher river, houses 320 Taliban prisoners from several countries who have been arrested from various parts of Afghanistan. The prisoners include two Chinese, three Iraqis, four arabs, ten Pakistanis, three Burmese and an Yemenese. They also include two Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) ultras, one Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HUJI) man and one from Islamic Mahaz, a fundamentalist organisation of Myanmar. Six of the ten prisoners said they had come to Afghanistan to establish Islamic rule and would go to Kashmir whenever released. One can get to the jail after an arduous five-hour, one-way drive along the mountainous track in the Hindukush ranges, to get to the ‘barracks" one has to cross knee-deep snowy waters of the Panjsher river. The prisoners are conspicuous by their attire - black turbans, long beards, and long robes and ‘Kajal’ in their eyes. Noor Mohammad, a Taliban prisoner from Kashgar in China, said he had came to Afghanistan in 1998 to join the Jehad. He said he met a ‘Pakistani Ustad’ (teacher), who asked him to go to Afghanistan to establish Islamic rule. Noor (30), sporting a flowing beard, said in broken Urdu that he was arrested in Jabul-us-Seraj, near Doaba by the Northern Alliance. He said he had undergone "training" in Quran in a Madrasa in Pakistan. Asked where would he go if set free, Noor said "Turkey or Kashmir." Another prisoner, Salauddin Khalid, said he belonged to Chagai district in Baluchistan and had come to Afghanistan in 1995 to establish Islamic rule. The bespectacled soft spoken Khalid claimed that he had killed 50 of the Northern Alliance men and injured many before he was captured in Jabul-us-Seraj. He said he had a master’s degree in Islamic studies. "We wanted peace in Afghanistan. Now we might go to Kashmir if set free," he said. A Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) terrorist Abdul Jabbar (20) said he came to Afghanistan in 1999. He said he would go to Kashmir "if needed." Another HuM terrorist Mohammed Ishar, from Pakistan, and HUJI leader Ali Akbar, from Multan in Pakistan, said they came to Afghanistan about two-and-a-half years ago. Both said the wanted to go to Kashmir after they were released. Only four Arabs from among the 320 Taliban prisoners were in chains. When asked why they were in chains, they said with an angry look "ask them" (the Northern Alliance guards). Meanwhile, ‘Engineer Darkhail’ who claimed that he was a colleague of Northern Alliance Commander Ahmad Shah Massood while he was studying engineering in Kabul University, told UNI that hundreds of Taliban escaped to Pakistan and divided into two groups. Darkhail, a Northern Alliance leader said while one group remained loyal to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the other group changed its name to Shoora-i-Furqan and some of its activists went to Muzaffarabad in PoK to step up the ante in Kashmir. (UNI) |
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US likely to use Indo-Pak tensions to fight terrorism WASHINGTON, Dec 30: The US is likely to dangle the threat of an imminent Indo-Pak war to force Islamabad to move against Al Qaeda and Taliban elements that have crossed over to Pakistan, according to an analytical forecast on the Indo-Pakistan situation. The threat of an imminent Indo-Pak war or heightening tensions between the two nuclear weapon states would be used as a lever that Washington so badly needs to move Islamabad, Strategic Forecast (STATFOR), which provides consultation and analysis on geopolitics, said. "There are significant differences between what President Pervez Musharraf has said, what he intends to do and what he actually can accomplish in the promised fight against terrorism," it said. With Al Qaeda and Taliban elements taking refuge in Pakistan, the US will continue to grapple with strategic problems concerning its traditional ally, Pakistan, the forecast said. The present debate in the US on the next course of action towards the eradication of Al Qaeda misses the point entirely — "the next country on the agenda is Pakistan." Like the Taliban Government in Afghanistan which had provided Al Qaeda a secure operational base, the United States continued to praise the issues of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is inconceivable that the Taliban would have been able to develop its relationship with Al Qaeda without the knowledge of Pakistan’s intelligence services and Government, strafor said. It is difficult to imagine that they had not given at least implicit approval, it added. It is unclear whether Bin Laden is in Pakistan or has traveled elsewhere but it is clear that many of his forces as well as Taliban leaders went to Pakistan and that a vast majority of them remain, STRATFOR said. And apart from the native support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, those elements in Pakistan are supported, if not by the Government, certainly by elements in the Government and powerful political forces, it said. In such a situation, the United States would face problems in destroying Al Qaeda. Ideally, the United States would like Musharraf to use his security and military forces to destroy Al Qaeda’s forces and hand senior leaders over to the United States. Though this was something that Musharraf had assured the united states of, "it is not clear whether he is in a position to deliver on his promise and his orders are being obeyed. Nor, frankly, is it clear that he wishes to see these orders carried out," it said. The December 13 attack on India’s Parliament which was carried out by Pakistan-based terrorist organisations give us a clear picture. There were two explanations for the attack, it said. The first is that Musharaff knew about plans for the attack and sanctioned it. The second is that he neither knew of nor sanctioned the attack. Either explanation raises serious questions about the course of Afghanistan and creates a strategic crisis for the United States. The fundamental goal of US was to defend its own territory against Al Qaeda attacks and the global destruction of Al Qaeda. With Al Qaeda taking refuge in Pakistan — historically an ally of the United States — launching a military campaign in Pakistan is possible but requires much greater resources than in Afghanistan, as well as the destruction of Pakistan’s nuclear capability. Rather than use direct military action, the United States would prefer a more subtle lever, STRATFOR said and "the attack on india’s parliament provides precisely that lever." STRATFOR said the attack on the Indian Parliament was as "intolerable" for India as an attack on congress would be for the United States. In its determination to react, India sees itself as having an unprecedented opportunity to deal not only with the Kashmir issue but with the entire issue of the nature and future of Pakistan, it said. However, Pakistan’s alliance with the United States has placed severe limits on how far India could go. But a "profound schism" is developing between Washington and Islamabad as post-September 11 events evolve, STRATFOR said. Although the US and Pakistan are doing everything to avert an open breach, it is clear that if it became undeniable that Pakistan was harbouring Al Qaeda elements, a break would be inevitable. "This would give India the opening it has waited for 50 years. The United States would not only be unable to refrain from acting against pakistan, but also require Indian support and involvement to deal effectively," it said. India was eager to help the US in the war against terrorism from the beginning and now the United States would have no choice but to accept that help. The Us does not want an Indo-Pak war, but the ‘threat’ of such a war is precisely with what Washington ‘needs’ to move Islamabad, STRATFOR said. For Pakistan, the threat of a war with India in which the United States either stood aside or actively participated is the worst possible nightmare, it said. "By allowing the tensions to heighten, Washington has given Musharraf an opportunity to become more forthcoming. If he is in control but insincere, he would be shown the abyss. If he is sincere he would show the abyss to Islamic fundamentalists in his Government and bring them under control." The problem, STRATFOR said, was that many of the fundamentalists would actually welcome a war and even a defeat by India. The goal of the fundamentalists is to radicalise the Islamic world by demonstrating that Christians, Hindus and Jews have formed a vast alliance designed to crush Islam, it said, and a combined US-Indian attack would be "exactly what would be needed to demonstrate this to the world." (UNI) |
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US Govt never took terrorist threat seriously, say experts NEW YORK, Dec 30: US anti-terrorist experts understood the apocalyptic designs of Osama bin Laden for years before the Sept. 11 attacks but the top leaders of the country never put their full force to check them, a report has said. Dozens of interviews with current and former officials, the New York Times said, demonstrate that even as the threat of terrorism mounted through eight years of the Clinton administration and eight months of President Bush, the Government did not Marshal its full force against it. The defensive work of tightening the borders and airport security was studied but never quite completed. And though the white house undertook a covert campaign to kill Bin Laden, the Government never mustered the critical mass of political will and on-the-ground intelligence for the kind of offensive against Al Qaeda it unleashed this fall. The rising threat of the Islamic Jihad movement, the paper said, was first detected by us investigators after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The inquiry into that attack revealed a weakness in the immigration system used by one of the terrorists, but that hole was never plugged, and it was exploited by one of the Sept 11 hijackers. In 1996, the paper said a state department dossier spelled out Bin Laden’s operation and his anti-US intentions. And President Bill Clinton’s own pollster told him the public would rally behind a war on terrorism. But none was declared. By 1997, the threat of an Islamic attack on US was so well recognized that an FBI agent warned of it in a public speech. But that same year, a strategy for tightening airline security, proposed by a vice-presidential panel, was largely ignored. In 2000, the times reported, after an algerian was caught coming into the country with explosives, a secret White House review recommended a crackdown on "potential sleeper cells in the US." That review warned that "the threat of attack remains high" and laid out a plan for fighting terrorism. But most of that plan remained undone. Last spring, the paper said, when new threats surfaced, the Bush administration devised a new strategy, which officials said included a striking departure from previous policy - an extensive CIA programme to arm the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan. That new proposal had wound its way to the desk of the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and was ready to be delivered to the president for final approval on Monday, Sept. 10. The Government’s fight against terrorism always seemed to fall short, the times commented. The Sept. 11 attack "was a systematic failure of the way this country protects itself," said James Woolsey, a former Director of Central Intelligence, was quoted as saying. "It’s aviation security delegated to the airlines, who did a lousy job. It’s a fighter aircraft deployment failure. It’s a foreign intelligence collection failure. It’s a domestic detection failure. It’s a visa and immigration policy failure." The Clinton administration intensified efforts against Al Qaeda after two US embassies in Africa were bombed in 1998. But by then, the terror network had gone global," said Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official . Even so, the times said quoting documents, the Government response to terrorism remained measured, even halting, reflecting the competing interests and judgments involved in fighting an ill-defined foe. (PTI) |
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