1 - 7 November 2001
Issue No.558
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 1 - 7 November 2001 Issue No.558 |
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Americans expect more terror
Americans are warned of a possible new wave of terror attacks as US warplanes continue bombarding Afghan cities
While US warplanes continued bombing Kandahar, Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif yesterday, Americans were told to prepare themselves for a possible second wave of terror attacks, as US authorities warned that "credible" intelligence suggested Osama Bin Laden's network was preparing a strike in the near future.
US aviation authorities introduced new restrictions on flights near nuclear power installations and there was tightened security at the Yankee Stadium in New York, where US President George W Bush was watching the opening of the World Baseball Series on Tuesday. Bush, sending the message that Americans should go on with their lives as normal, threw out the first pitch wearing a Fire Department of New York jacket and a bullet-proof vest.
Meanwhile, a B-52 bomber yesterday carried out two raids on Taliban frontlines 50 kilometres north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. It was the first time the use of a B-52 has been acknowledged in raids north of Kabul, where the Taliban has assembled up to 6,000 hardened fighters to face the Northern Alliance.
Two waves of US warplanes also flew over the southern Afghan city of Kandahar -- stronghold of the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohamed Omar early yesterday. Kandahar has been an almost daily target of US raids.
Rumsfeld said a "very modest" number of US forces -- less than 100 -- are in northern Afghanistan, working with specific units of the Alliance. He also revealed other US forces had been "in and out" of southern Afghanistan to work with the Taliban opposition there.
Rumsfeld did not identify which US troops are in Afghanistan or how long they have been there, but from his description of their missions it seems likely they include the Army Special Forces, known as the Green Berets.
The US presence on the ground was limited, Rumsfeld said. "It is true we do not have anything like the ground forces we had in World War II, or in Korea, or in the Gulf War, but nor have we ruled that out."
The US and its allies received a major blow last week following the announcement by the Taliban that they had captured and executed Commander Abdel-Haq, a key figure in the Afghan opposition. Abdel-Haq was reportedly on a mission inside Afghanistan aimed at convincing pro-Pashtun tribes to shift their allegiance.
In the face of the ongoing bombardment, the Taliban leadership remains defiant, and there are few signs of any fracturing among its supporters.
"We don't have anything for the bombs to destroy," Amir Khan Muttaqi, education minister and spokesman for Mullah Omar, told the Associated Press in an interview yesterday conducted in the war-shattered capital.
"We are not a country with a sophisticated computer system, a big, important telecommunications system or modern aviation system to destroy," he said. "In Afghanistan, we have no infrastructure for the bombs to destroy and cause our country to collapse."
For the first time since the US campaign started on 7 October a poll, conducted by the New York Times and CBS News, indicated that the American public may be losing confidence in the stated aims of Bush's war on terrorism. That said, Bush's own approval rating remained sky-high, at 87 per cent.
The poll, conducted before the new warning was issued on Monday night, revealed growing public doubt about the ability of the US to either capture or kill Bin Laden, or protect its citizens from further attacks from biological agents such as anthrax.
Bush has said he would "not be surprised" if Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was behind the anthrax outbreaks, unnamed FBI and CIA officials have been quoted as saying the attacks can be sourced to neo-Nazi groups operating in the US.
While most analysts agree that the air war has had little apparent success in weakening the Taliban, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said he detected splits that could open the way for a political end to the conflict.
"I do see that Afghanistan has suffered... the people are suffering so much that I am reasonably sure there are many people who question the wisdom of their suffering for the sake of somebody who is there and not an Afghan, like Osama Bin Laden and his people," Musharraf told Reuters in an interview.
Musharraf said he accepted that the military campaign had to continue and he would not press Bush to halt bombing during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan that begins mid-November.
British Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon met with Rumsfeld on Tuesday to discuss the future of the campaign. Hoon told a joint news conference it would not be wise to limit the aerial bombardment during Ramadan.
"It wouldn't make military sense to announce up front what our intentions are during that period," Hoon said. "It certainly wouldn't make military sense to afford the Taliban regime, which has been under very considerable pressure in recent times, the opportunity of regrouping and reorganising during a predictable period of time."
In the joint news conference with Hoon, Rumsfeld, however, seemed to soften the stance a bit, saying the United States was "interested in the views and opinions and sensitivities" regarding Ramadan and that "each country has their own circumstance and their own neighbourhood they live in."
In a related development, the Taliban claimed that the United States has hijacked its radio frequencies and started broadcasting messages and music, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported yesterday. The Taliban radio station, that banned the broadcast of music soon after Taliban assumed power, had been destroyed in an earlier US raid.
Compiled from wire dispatches by Khaled Dawoud
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