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Laden
network is a BEIRUT, Oct 22: The eyes of the world opened on September 11 to a new nightmare ......more Are shocked Americans longing for Christmas? CHICAGO, Oct 22: A shocked nation weary of terrorism scares and unsettled by an ..more ‘US
intercepting NEW YORK, Oct 22: More than a month after the terror attacks on New York and Washington,....more US
concerns over ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: The United States has said that despite Pakistan’s ......more |
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Taliban dismiss US claims KABUL, Oct 22: Taliban today dismissed US claims to have inflicted serious damage on its military infrastructure and Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan. .....more Pakistan detains Islamic Party workers before anti-US rally ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: Police detained workers of Pakistan’s Main Islamic Party and banned its leader from entering southern Sindh province, officials said today, a day before a planned protest in a town where....more
Powell
hails Palestinian WASHINGTON, Oct 22: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell today welcomed the Palestinian leadership’s decision to outlaw the armed wing of ......more |
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Laden network is a new form of enemy BEIRUT, Oct 22: The eyes of the world opened on September 11 to a new nightmare — a modern, sophisticated enemy that differs from the deadly muslim fundamentalist groups the west has recognised as "terrorists" over the past two decades. Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda (the base) network is a confederation of like-minded religious zealots, an organisation with the resources and ruthless capacity to kill using any means — including nuclear weapons if they can get them. But unlike other Islamists, who have had only national aims and drew members from the disenfranchised, the Bin Laden network has given notice that it wants to defeat the entire western civilisation it deems an enemy, with its own modern tools. "Some people in the network had the skill, the knowledge and the experience to do this sort of attack. They know how the modern world works, they grew up in it, they were educated in it," said George Joffe, a Middle East expert at Cambridge University. And, experts say, the group draws on Bin Laden’s significant financial resources and transnational ties to unite disparate militant movements into a coordinated global struggle. "What makes him unique is that he globalised terrorism, therefore he can use different individuals with different skills. This enables him to confront the world. All the other groups are local," analyst Magnus Ranstorp from St Andrews University in Scotland told Reuters. "It’s like the privatisation of terror. He recruits from everywhere so he can tap into the vast reservoir of people to strike at his enemy," he added. The clandestine organisation targets middle class, educated and well-travelled students, as well as former Arab volunteers who fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. They recruit them, train them and test their dedication and commitment to pitiless killing by assigning them daring and risky tasks over a period of time to check their performance, blind faith and secrecy, experts say. The 44-year-old Bin Laden, a Muslim who sees himself as waging a war sanctioned by god, imported fighters to Afghanistan with Washington’s blessing in the 1980s a decade later he started exporting them back to strike at what he perceived to be "the enemy of Islam." Al-Qaeda, a network of Islamists formed by fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, has mushroomed into dozens of cells around the globe. It comprises Egyptians, Saudis, Yemenis, Afghanis, Pakistanis and Algerians. Experts said Bin Laden looks for individuals with certain psychological characteristics, including high intelligence and religious zeal to manipulate and influence them. A Charismatic figure, skilled in propaganda and psychological warfare, he presses all the right buttons for those who feel oppressed by the United States. "He’s like a virus that infects and multiplies and spreads randomly," Ranstorp said. His aim is to overthrow existing regimes in the Middle East and South and Central Asia. His message is tailored to spark the Muslim conscience and mobilise the Muslim community, he said. He seeks to reform the muslim world with his own vision of Islam, the Wahhabi creed associated with Saudi Arabia, where he was born into a wealthy family but which has now stripped him of his citizenship. Until Al-Qaeda was founded, all violent Islamist groups such as Egypt’s Al-Jihad, the Gama’a Islamiya and Algeria’s armed Islamic Group (GIA) were fighting local battles aimed at installing a purist Islamic state. Bin Laden has taken them all under his wing. Other groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the occupied Palestinian territories and Hizbollah in Lebanon, have carried out suicide attacks against targets in Israel or Lebanon. They see themselves, and are largely seen locally, as resistance groups to Israeli occupation. Bin Laden and the anti-Soviet Afghan movement were Pan-Islamic in their origin, and conceived as such by their backers — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States — who together armed and trained volunteers, including many Arabs. Once billed by the United States as cold warriors, they saw themselves as holy warriors. After their victory against the Red Army, Al-Qaeda became autonomous and found reasons to turn its wrath against the west. The target, experts say, is western intervention: US troops in Saudi Arabia, US backing of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, the US-led sanctions imposed on Iraq. But despite his stated aims, Bin Laden came to identify his enemy as an entire civilisation — polarising "Muslim believers and (western) infidels" in a videotaped message after last month’s attack on the United States that killed nearly 6,000 people. Bin Laden and his Arab volunteers attribute their Afghan victory to a combination of religious zeal and advanced western technology, a formula they see as key to Israel’s success against the Arabs. They believe they can repeat the feat. "There is a lesson to learn from this for he who wishes to learn," Bin Laden said a 1999 interview. "The Soviet Union entered Afghanistan in the last week of 1979, and with Allah’s help their flag was folded a few years later and thrown in the trash, and there was nothing left to call the Soviet Union." But more than god’s help was behind that victory — it was the deadly US-supplied stinger anti-aircraft missiles that turned the tide of the war against Soviet soldiers. Bin Laden is also conscious of the power of the media, and television in particular, to spread his message and incite Muslims across the world to rise up. Just as the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution distributed audio tapes to rouse his followers, Bin Laden has been similarly skilful in disseminating his views through videotapes he supplies to the Qatari-based international Al-Jazeera television. The man, who shook the world with apocalyptic images of the US attacks, also raised the prospect of future attacks with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Asked in a 1999 interview if he was acquiring such weapons, he said: "If I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty." Many may wonder at his ability to convince others that they share the obligation of holy struggle, but Bin Laden has made it clear that he believes the fight is a matter of religious duty. "We should fully understand our religion. Fighting is part of our religion and our Sharia (religious law). Those who love god and his prophet and this religion cannot deny that. Whoever denies even a minor tenet of our religion commits the gravest sin in Islam," Bin Laden once summed it up. (REUTERS) |
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Are shocked Americans longing for Christmas? CHICAGO, Oct 22: A shocked nation weary of terrorism scares and unsettled by an uncertain war may embrace the coming thanks giving-to-Christmas season with special fervor, according to behavior experts. With Christmas more than two months away, electric candles are already burning in some windows, a traditional Christmas symbol some have taken up as a memorial to those who died in the attacks on New York and Washington. Shelves full of Christmas decorations, which appear earlier every year, are already in place in small-town hardware shops and big-city department stores. And the tragedies of Sept. 11, together with the rocky economy, could affect gift-giving, both in style and substance. "After trauma, you do hear people say they learn what is important in their lives, they take greater care to have good relations with their loved ones," said Roxane Cohen Silver, a Professor of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. "These kinds of events put mundane concerns in perspective," she added — and if that leads to a desire to be closer to friends and family, it could play out in the holidays. "But a person who has suffered an immediate and direct loss may experience (during the holidays) a resurgence of pain perhaps as raw as when they first heard their loved one was missing," Silver said, referring to those close to the nearly 5,400 people killed in the hijacked-airliner attacks on New York and Washington. "It would make sense to me if there is an early rush" to embrace both thanksgiving and Christmas, said Martha Haun, an Associate Professor in the school of communications at the University of Houston. "We enjoy them, and they reflect the values that are so important," she added, saying she had already done some christmas shopping herself because she ran into a sale and "found myself thinking what this person or that would want." Contemporary accounts of Christmas 1941, weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor left more than 2,300 dead and pulled the United States into the second world war, speak of family reunions and cherished customs carried on in the face of bans on outdoor lighting in some places and a future darkened by death and destruction. Wade Silverman, a clinical and forensic psychologist in Coral Gables, Florida, who specializes in children and families, said thanksgiving, on Nov. 22, would have a special flavor this year. "When we are anxious, we turn to our beliefs and our faiths," he said. In general, any crisis, including the current one, "makes the good relations better and the bad ones worse," he said. Joan Lindsey-Mullikin, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Babson College in Massachusetts, said "it’s an interesting thought" that people may rush toward Christmas as a diversion, "something to get us to stop watching television around the clock." She said corporate gifts this Christmas would lean toward understatement, with an emphasis on family values, and personal gift-giving could also be more simple, given the layoff-racked economy and uncertain future. "People are worried about saving their money," she said, though they have been generous so far in giving to attack-related relief efforts. American neighborhoods are already alive with halloween lights and decorations in advance of that Oct. 31 observance. Lucy Bregman, Professor of Religion at Temple University and an expert on grief, said the impact on thanksgiving and Christmas would be determined by what is happening right then. She said she was hoping that the events of Sept. 11 would tame the increasingly ghoulish displays that have marked halloween, but even that is still uncertain. "We don’t know what developments will be going on by then," she said of the year-end holidays. (REUTERS) |
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‘US intercepting communications among Osama Bin Laden’s men’ NEW YORK, Oct 22: More than a month after the terror attacks on New York and Washington, the United States and its close allies are still intercepting communications among terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden’s associates, and are convinced that more attacks are coming, intelligence sources in several countries have revealed. While American officials have been warning of another attack, the foreign intelligence officials stress that they base their analysis and conclusions on what their own agencies have gathered and not on intelligence they are getting from the United States, a newspaper here said. Media reports over the past week quoted intelligence officials in six countries in the Middle East and Europe as saying that they were unsure where to expect the attacks or whether they would be with explosives or with chemical or biological weapons. But, they said, their intercepts and other tools convinced them that a second and possibly a third wave of attacks were planned. There is no evidence yet linking the recent anthrax-tainted letters to Osama Bin Laden, said intelligence officials from two european countries that have been working closely with the US. But if the letters are Bin Laden’s work, then it is likely to be only the beginning of more attacks, the ‘New York Times’ quoted them as saying. Still, arrests in the US and the disruption of suspected terrorist plots abroad may have bought some time in the battle against terrorism, American officials said. Since Sept 11, foreign secret services have arrested and interrogated hundreds of suspects, and they claim to have disrupted at least four separate plans to attack American and allied institutions in France, Belgium, Jordan and Turkey. The paper said interpreting intercepted communications, which are cryptic and in code, and sorting through all the rumours present a formidable challenge. One intercept before the Sept 11 attack was, according to two senior intelligence officials, the first early warning of the assault and it set off a scramble by American and other intelligence agencies. In that call, Bin Laden advised his wife in Syria to come back to Afghanistan. That message, which was intercepted by the intelligence services of more than one country, was passed on to the US, officials from three countries said. The US and allies began looking hard at possible targets outside the US in the Persian Gulf, in Europe "and in other corners of the world," a senior intelligence official said. Now the United States and its allies find themselves in a similar quandary. They know something is coming but not when or where. In the past, officials noted, there had been two years gap between the 1998 Embassy bombings in East Africa and the attack on the destroyer Cole last year in Yemen. But this time the follow-up attacks are likely to come much sooner because Bin Laden had probably set them in motion before September 11, the officials added. They said that they were confident Bin Laden had anticipated the US would respond with war, and that he was ready with counterattacks. Intelligence agencies in Europe and the Middle East were quoted as saying they continue to monitor some communications between Bin Laden associates despite the fact that they are aware of the intercepts. (PTI) |
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US concerns over Pak nuke proliferation ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: The United States has said that despite Pakistan’s cooperation to fight against terrorism, washington continued to be concerned about Islamabad’s nuclear proliferation, democracy and human rights issues. "Our concern over nuclear proliferation, democracy and human rights is not going to change," visiting US Under-Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, Alan P Larson, said. The US "is a country that has a global responsibility and we are going to be concerned about the weapons of mass destruction. We have to ensure global security. We will be interested in world economy and at the same time we are interested in promoting human rights and democratic values," he said during an informal interaction with journalists at the the residence of US Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin. Larson also said that the Bush administration wanted to improve political and economic relations with both India and Pakistan. "We want to have good relations with both the countries." Replying to a question, Larson said he did not discuss Indo-Pakistan relations during his meeting with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. "We only discussed economic issues," he said. Larson met Musharraf last night after a prolonged meeting with Pakistan’s Finance Minister Shoukat Aziz. Referring to US-Pakistan relations, Larson said "it is important for Pakistan and the United States to make a break with past". He also assured that Washington will not once again abandon Pakistan after having achieved its objectives in Afghanistan. "For US Pakistan’s interest is very important because you have joined the world against terrorism," he said. At the end of this meeting with Aziz, Larson said the US would extend immediate and sustainable debt relief to service Islamabad’s 37-billion-dollar foreign debt. (PTI) |
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Taliban dismiss US claims its military, Al-Qaeda crippled KABUL, Oct 22: The Taliban today dismissed US claims to have inflicted serious damage on its military infrastructure and Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan. "The US attacks might have had some effect but not more than 10 per cent of our capability has been destroyed," the head of the militia’s information agency, Abdul Hanan Hemat, told AFP. He said Taliban troops had been barely touched by the attacks but admitted some damage to military buildings and the loss of two ammunition depots in Kabul and one in Kandahar. A fuel depot had also been hit. "After the first attack we knew what to expect and our people have been moving to safer places." On Bin Laden, he said: "No damage has been inflicted on Osama and his Mujahideen friends. "They have very strong centres and bases in secret locations and the US is not able to identify them." The Taliban’s claim to have been left largely unscathed by the US attacks came after the Chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said US forces had taken out Taliban air defences. "We’ve hit a lot of their military facilities, their tanks, their artillery, their vehicle support facilities, and some troop concentrations," Myers said in Washington yesterday. US claims to have cripped Taliban air defences were supported by the failure of the militia to fire at low-flying aircraft during in tense raids in Kabul yesterday. AP adds: The Taliban, meanwhile, denied a report that the US-led airstrikes had claimed the life of the 10-year-old son of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar early in the campaign. The British Broadcasting Corp reported the death yesterday, citing what it said was a claim by an Afghan doctor. "It is completely false. His son is fine. Mullah Omar is fine, Osama is fine, his bases are fine. Our morale is high," Taliban official Abdul Hanan Hemat said, according to the Taliban news agency. Hemat also said the US-led bombing raids have destroyed only 10 per cent of the Taliban’s military capability, although he didn’t elaborate. (AFP). |
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Pakistan detains Islamic Party workers before anti-US rally ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: Police detained workers of Pakistan’s Main Islamic Party and banned its leader from entering southern Sindh province, officials said today, a day before a planned protest in a town where US forces are using the airport. The arrest of the activists yesterday and today, and a ban on the entry of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed to Sindh was to prevent him from holding a protest in the small town of Jacobabad, whose airport is being used for logistical support by US forces attacking Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban. "The Sindh Government has conveyed to the Jamaat leader that his entry is banned in the province till further notice," an official of the Sindh province Home Department told Reuters. The ban was imposed late last week, the official said. But Ahmed had decided to defy the ban and go to jacobabad to hold what party officials said would be a peaceful rally on Tuesday to protest against the presence of US troops on Pakistani soil, a party spokesman said. "About 600 of our workers, organisers and provincial party leaders have been arrested by the police without any charge," spokesman Amirul Azeem told Reuters by telephone from Lahore, capital of Punjab province. He said Punjab police had told Ahmed he would not be allowed to board a flight from Lahore to Sukkur, 80 km south of Jacobabad, later today. "But we have decided to start a procession from mansura (the party’s head office) toward the airport to be led by Ahmed," said Azeem, adding the Jamaat-e-Islami campaign was peaceful and the party would challenge the Government in court. Police officials in Jacobabad said by telephone they had detained about 80 workers of the party, which held a large rally in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, yesterday urging President Pervez Musharraf to end his support for the US strikes on Afghanistan. Party officials said workers and the provincial head of the party had been detained in towns and villages near Jacobabad in police raids today. Troops have been deployed in Jacobabad since US forces arrived to back up the strikes in Afghanistan and are carrying out daily exercises, officials and residents have said. The Pakistan Army has been deployed to back up paramilitary rangers and police who have thrown up a security cordon several kilometres from the airport, one of at least three in Pakistan where US military personnel are present as part of Islamabad’s pledge to offer Washington non-combat logistical support for its strikes on Afghanistan. Pakistan has promised logistical support to Washington but told the United States that it would not to act as a springboard for strikes on western neighbour Afghanistan. (REUTERS) |
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Powell hails Palestinian move after Zeevi killing WASHINGTON, Oct 22: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell today welcomed the Palestinian leadership’s decision to outlaw the armed wing of an organisation that said it killed Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi last week, and he urged both sides to make "whatever reciprocal moves they can." He also told reporters traveling back with him from an Asian visit that he had encouraged both Israel and the Palestinians to show restraint in the escalation that followed the Wednesday shooting. Powell said he had called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and a series of other key middle east players from Shanghai yesterday, "trying to see if we could not forget where we had been a week before." "I encouraged (Sharon) to exercise all the restraint that he could because we have to think about the day after, and I also encouraged Chairman Arafat to do all he could in order to arrest those who were responsible for this latest act of terror," he said. Powell reflected on what he described as encouraging signs, including an improvement in security consultations between the two sides, that he had seen in the days before Zeevi’s killing. The popular front for the liberation of Palestine said it killed the Israeli official in retaliation for the slaying of its leader in August. Powell said last week began with Israel opening crossing sites and pulling back its forces in "the most promising day I had seen in many months." Zeevi had decided to quit the Government precisely "because Mr. Sharon had been taking actions that were starting to move in a direction of trying to get the process going" toward implementing a peace plan drawn up under the chairmanship of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell. Israel’s army has taken over Palestinian-controlled land or tightened its grip around west bank towns and cities, including Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jenin and Beit Jala. Four Palestinians were killed in the latest bloodshed yesterday. Another died early today from wounds sustained during an Israeli helicopter strike last week. At least 25 Palestinians and one Israeli have died in fighting since Zeevi’s killing, which ended a brief lull in violence in the year-old Palestinian revolt. Israel has demanded that the Palestinians arrest and hand over the suspects. In a move that met one Israeli demand, the Palestinian authority’s supreme security council issued a statement yesterday saying it had outlawed the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigade, the military wing of the PFLP. "I heard that they were getting ready to do that, and I think that is a good move," Powell said. "I think Mr. Arafat had given instructions to his various organizations to implement a cease-fire, and if they don’t follow his instructions and violate that, it’s a challenge to his authority, and I’m glad to see that he is responding to that challenge," he said. Asked if he would encourage reciprocal moves by Israel when he met Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Washington tomorrow, Powell said, "I would hope that both sides would make whatever reciprocal moves they can in order to reduce tension." He added that Sharon intended to withdraw from the areas his forces had entered once he made arrests and the violence had died down. "He also gave me his assurance that he is still committed to the Mitchell Committee process, so I look forward to my conversations with Foreign Minister Peres," Powell added. He said he spent much yesterday working on the issue from China, where he was attending an Asia-Pacific economic meeting. He said he also called Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher European Union Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana, who is about to visit the middle east and Jordan’s king Abdullah. (REUTERS) |
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