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| Headlines NEWS November 25 to December 2 According to Commander Zaman of the Northern Alliance forces, Osama bin-Laden has been located "to a 90% certainty. Afghan representatives are "working" out the agreement for an interim government and tribal power at a special UN meeting. The interim government will include dominant delegations from the Northern Alliance and supporters of former king Zaher Shah. In his weekly radio address, President Bush told Americans to brace for tough times, warning them that the U.S. war on terrorism was far from over in Afghanistan and elsewhere. While military action in the US-led war on terrorism has been confined to Afghanistan so far, some officials have raised the issue of Iraq where they suspect President Saddam Hussein of developing weapons of mass destruction. While Northern Alliance leaders have said they would allow the United Nations to help build a new government, it was unclear how much power they would concede and what role women might be allowed to play. Under cover of darkness riding waves of helicopters from ships in the Gulf, US Marines occupied an airport that serves Kandahar, power base of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar... in preparations for the hunt or battles that will perhaps kill or capture the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden -- in a ground war. In America, President Bush's administration is making statements that indicate the war will escalate to include more countires. |
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Where is Bin Laden? According to Commander Zaman of the Northern Alliance forces, Osama bin-Laden has been located "to a 90% certainty" in a mountain fortress in eastern Afghanistan - Tora Bora, 35 miles south of Jalalabad. To encourage information, radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped from US planes are telling Afghans about America's offer of a $25m cash reward for Bin Laden's capture. This week the Pentagon confirmed for the first time that it is focusing its hunt for bin Laden and the Taliban leadership on Tora Bora, as well as on the southern city of Kandahar. "These are the places that we have been led to pay very close attention to,'' General Tommy Franks, the commander of US military operations in Afghanistan. Bin Laden is reputed to have built a fortress at Tora Bora 1,150 feet beneath the mountains, equipped with water, electricity and ventilation and guarded by hundreds or thousands of fighters ready to die for their leader. Ahmed Omar Abdel-Rahman, 35, is the son of Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted with nine other militants on charges stemming from the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Recently captured, he may be providing useful facts about the whereabouts of bin Laden and other useful information to save his hide. The Northern Alliance commanders still are holding him using him to get new information. |
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UN Call to Investigate War Crimes UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has said she would support an international inquiry into the killing of hundreds of pro-Taliban prisoners in a northern Afghanistan fort. The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has ruled out an inquiry, as has the spokesman for the US-led "coalition against terrorism", but Robinson said the killings had to be investigated. Mrs Robinson said an investigation was needed to respond to what she described as the "very disturbing" reports from Mazar, reminding all parties that "Geneva conventions apply." Afghanistan had long suffered from a "climate of no accountability", she said, stressing the need to set standards in the conflict. |
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Tribunals A number of Senate Democrats are questioning President Bush's decision to employ military tribunals similar to those used against Nazi spies during WWII against al Qaida terrorists. Bush and Ashcroft say that terrorists who are tried before a military tribunal won't have the same rights as American citizens, can be tried in secret and can be executed without the right of appeal. Assistant Attorney General Mike Chertoff testified about an al Qaida manual found in the rubble of the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa had lesson plans on the ins and outs of the American legal system, and taught the art of hiding messages during detention visits and taking advantage of public sentiment during an indictment and trial period. Authorities in Spain this week expressed reluctance to hand over eight alleged terrorists they have arrested if it meant the men would be put before a U.S. tribunal. |
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Relief? The UN World Food Program (WFP) said on Friday it had met its target for delivering aid to Afghanistan during November. Spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said WFP aims to get 52,000 ton of food into the country in November - enough to feed six million people for a month - and with one day to go it had already delivered 53,000 tons. However, getting that food to needy Afghanis is another matter. Fighting in the region continues to be a major block to giving relief to the needy population that remain in Afghanistan. There are perhaps 3 to 4 million needy Afghanis in the country. Another 3 to 4 million have left and are at the mercy of getting assistance. Increasing banditry along supply routes was also hampering operations. UN aid convoys have been ambushed and robbed, agency offices have been looted, and several journalists have been killed in apparent robberies. With winter, getting the food to the population will be an extraordinary feat. Some 500,000 people in the central highland areas of Bamiyan province stand to be cut off without supplies of any kind if aid does not reach them before the first snows of winter. |
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Military Developments US planes continue bombing Taliban positions at Kandahar. Local Pashtun military leaders - Hamed Karzai and Gul Agha - pressed positions into Kandahar. Meantime, Ismail Khan, the opposition commander that took Herat, says his fighters advanced on Kandahar from the west.
But fighting around other major cities, banditry along key supply routes, the continuing impact of drought and the race against the onset of winter are still posing grave challenges for relief workers getting in place to give relief to a suffering population. Thus far the military continues at not participating to provide any solutions. |
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More War? Iraq Has Bio-Weapons and Terrorist Intent Iraq's vice-president told al-Jazeera that his country will defend itself, if the United States would launch military strikes against Iraq. He repeated denial that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or ties to Osama bin-Laden. Newsweek estimated in the mid-1990s that Saddam had enough chemical and biological agents to kill every man, woman and child on earth four times over - if only he had the means to deliver them. An agent of Iraqi intelligence reportedly met with 9/11 airplane hijacker-terrorist murderer Mohammed Atta six months before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the U.S. faced a clear challenge in dealing with the threat of biological weapons. "The horrific attacks on September 11 could have been far worse if weapons of mass destruction had been used," Annan said. "In recent weeks, the world has seen the use of biological agents to create chaos and terror violating the international norm." Though they agree that biological weapons have to be curtailed or stopped, the conference members are at odds about how to do so. Bush demanded that all 144 countries that have signed the treaty enact "strict national criminal legislation" against violations of the treaty and apply strict extradition requirements. Under the proposed protocol, there would be a limited number of inspections of biotech industries and defense facilities. |
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Statues Destroyed BBC confirmed that the central Afghan town of Bamiyan was totally destroyed by the Taliban before they fled over the weekend. The statues were priceless pieces of Buddhist heritage. |
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Terrorist List The USA added several Palestinian groups and factions to the State Department list of 'foreign terrorist organizations' facing heightened financial scrutiny after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the PFLP-General Command are all included. |
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Sharing Power - Afghan Failures Recent development in talk of power sharing fail to sort out a solution for the problem of different factions and views on governing. A U.N. spokesman said talks among Afghan factions in Bonn on forming a post-Taliban administration were expected to produce an agreement by Saturday. A top Pashtun delegate abruptly left the talks and a Shi'ite Muslim Hazara leader complained that Hazaras and ethnic Uzbeks were under-represented. And in Kabul, the nominal head of the Northern Alliance cast doubt on parts of the expected deal. |
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al Qaida Security services in dozens of countries are reported to have arrested hundreds of people with alleged links to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaida network. In the United States, more than 1,100 people have been detained as part of the war on terrorism declared by President George W Bush. Security experts say the arrests and the freezing of bank accounts in different countries have severely disrupted al-Qaida. Liban Hussein, the operator of Barakaat North America Inc., was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Toronto. Investigators believe tens of millions of dollars a year flow overseas through Al-Barakaat. The funds are sent by Somali residents of the United States to relatives, with the network skimming money off for al Qaida through exchange fees, according to US investigators. The al-Qaida is a network of fairly autonomous cells, security experts say. So, it is virtually impossible in short-order to put them all out of action. Washington is reported to have co-operation with Egyptian intelligence services. Several suspects arrested in other countries have been sent for interrogation or trial to Egypt. On human rights, Egyptian security services have been accused of torturing suspected terrorists. In the United States, police chiefs appear divided over the need to investigate the 11 September attacks and the concern that a plan to question thousands of men of Middle Eastern origin seems like racial profiling. |
About
2,000 US Marines are now in place at a desert airfield near the city, but
there are no signs of a preparation for an assault.
The
United States accused six nations of making biological weapons, including Iraq
and North Korea. Other nations identified as sources of concern were Iran,
Libya, Syria and Sudan. The announcements came from undersecretary of state for
arms control John R. Bolton while he was addressing a conference of the 144
nations that have signed a 1972 Biological Weapons Convention agreement. Bolton
said the United States believes North Korea had a dedicated, national-level
effort to achieve a biological weapons capability and that it has
"developed and produced, and may have weaponized" biological agents. He
said Iraq has used three years with no inspectors to concentrate on biological
weapons. Iraq's bio-warfare program could make it a target in the U.S. war on
terror. "We do not need the events of September 11 to tell us that (Saddam
Hussein) is a very dangerous man who is a threat to his own people, a threat to
the region and a threat to us because he is determined to acquire weapons of
mass destruction," Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security
adviser, said.