[iwar] [fc:Afghans.Burn.Empty.U.S..Embassy.in.Kabul.U.N..Says]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-26 07:38:39
Next message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] I have always been amazed at how obvious the rhetoric is"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Pakistan.joins.US.crackdown.on.finances.of.groups.linked.to.terrorism]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Message-Id: <200109261438.HAA19269@big.all.net>
To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List)
Organization: I'm not allowed to say
From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 07:38:39 -0700 (PDT)
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Afghans.Burn.Empty.U.S..Embassy.in.Kabul.U.N..Says]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Afghans Burn Empty U.S. Embassy in Kabul U.N. Says 
By Tahir Ikram and Michael Conlon
Reuters

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Sept.  26) - Protesters in Afghanistan's capital
Kabul set fire to the deserted U.S.  embassy on Wednesday after a fresh
ultimatum to the ruling Taliban from President Bush's anti-terror
coalition. 

But on the borders of Afghanistan, the United Nations and others in the
humanitarian community focused on the plight of civilians there and
prepared for an exodus of up to 1.5 million frightened and hungry
refugees. 

Britain, Bush's staunchest ally, told the Taliban on Tuesday that the
coalition would treat them as its enemy if they did not hand over
Washington's chief suspect in the Sept.  11 suicide hijacking attacks on
New York and Washington. 

Witnesses in Kabul said tens of thousands of Afghans turned out to
denounce any attack over the Taliban's failure to hand over Saudi-born
Muslim militant Osama bin Laden.  They sacked and set fire to the U.S. 
embassy, which Washington abandoned in 1989. 

''Death to Bush,'' the protesters, mostly government officials and
students, shouted.  ''We will support Islam and bin Laden.''

The protesters burnt an effigy of Bush, ripped apart a U.S.  flag and
hurled stones at the gates and offices of the embassy before setting it
alight. 

War and hunger have already made Afghans the world's largest refugee
population -- a tally of about 3.7 million to date. 

Voices across the Islamic world have urged caution, the latest being the
United Arab Emirates, until last Saturday one of just three countries to
recognize the Taliban government. 

''I call on the United States to pause for reflection and give a chance
to diplomacy and all legal means before it resorts to military action,''
UAE Defense Minister Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum said in a
statement on Wednesday. 

''The international community must expect a human catastrophe whose
features have already started to emerge in the waves of Afghan refugees
flooding into Pakistan,'' he added. 

COALITION ULTIMATUM

Neighbor Pakistan, the only country recognizing the Taliban after Saudi
Arabia broke ties on Tuesday, said it had no plan to open its borders to
new arrivals, but did not rule out the idea. 

''Within Afghanistan, if the situation becomes untenable, or if there is
an attack, purely for humanitarian reasons, we will contemplate that,''
Abbas Sarfraz, its minister for the frontier regions, told a news
conference. 

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, firing the salvo in what is still a
war of words on Tuesday, extended the coalition demand on bin Laden to
members of other groups trained in Afghanistan. 

''Military conflict there will be unless the Taliban change and respond
to the ultimatum,'' Blair told a London news briefing. 

''It's not simply a question of them (the Taliban) yielding up bin
Laden, it is a question of them making sure that all those responsible
for terrorism are yielded up,'' he added. 

Little has filtered out about military preparations for what Washington
has renamed ''Operation Enduring Freedom'' -- critics of the initial
tag, ''Infinite Justice,'' noted that for Muslims only God, or Allah,
can mete out infinite justice. 

But the Pentagon has hinted that a major land attack on Afghanistan may
not be in the offing. 

U.S.  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke on Tuesday of an
antiseptic war.  ''There is not going to be a D-Day, as such,'' he told
a news conference at the Pentagon, itself a target in the September 11
attacks which killed up to 7,000 people. 

''The truth is this is not about revenge.  It's not about retaliation. 
This is about self-defense,'' Rumsfeld said.  ''The United States of
America knows that the only way we can defend against terrorism is by
taking the fight to the terrorists.''

The Taliban, who espouse a purist form of Islam, are more isolated than
any government in Afghanistan has been. 

Pakistan, which has pledged full cooperation with the coalition, and the
Taliban embassy in its capital Islamabad remain their only diplomatic
link with the outside world. 

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has been sheltering bin Laden
in the face of U.S.  extradition demands after earlier attacks on U.S. 
targets around the world, urged the American people to question the
motives of their government. 

''You should know whatever incidents and sorrow you suffer ...  are a
result of the erroneous policies of your government,'' he said in a
statement faxed from his headquarters in the southern Afghan city of
Kandahar. 

SECURITY VERSUS CIVIL LIBERTIES

But his comments, like Taliban assertions that they cannot find bin
Laden, cut little ice in the United States. 

As workers in New York removed the last shattered remnants of the walls
that once sheathed the gleaming twin-tower World Trade Center, Bush said
that those responsible for the attacks ''may be planning further acts''
within the United States. 

Police in Britain said that three men arrested in the central England
city of Leicester on terrorism charges had been linked with plans to
launch a wave of attacks in France and Belgium. 

Police in Spain said they had arrested six members of a group with
suspected links to bin Laden. 

Bush, enjoying 90-percent approval ratings in the opinion polls for his
handling of the crisis, pressed for expanded powers to detain people in
a home-front war against terrorism. 

He urged Congress to give law enforcement officers expanded powers to
tap telephones, conduct searches, seize assets and detain suspected
terrorists. 

''Now that we're at war we ought to give the FBI tools to track down
terrorists,'' he said at FBI headquarters. 

On the fiscal front, the House of Representatives approved a $344
billion defense spending bill for 2002 that shifts some missile defense
funds into antiterrorism programs. 

The White House told fellow Republicans it wants its package of
antiterrorism legislation passed by the end of next week. 

But Bush's proposals have drawn a firestorm of criticism from civil
liberties groups. 

Civil liberties groups in Europe expressed similar concerns about
hard-won European laws on protecting personal data. 

RISK OF ISLAMIC BACKLASH

On the diplomatic front, a senior U.S.  official said that Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz would on Wednesday outline steps NATO
allies could take in the war on terrorism -- adding that military help
was ''not the primary piece.''

The United States, which has repeatedly urged Moscow to investigate what
it calls credible reports of atrocities by Russian forces fighting
Muslim separatists in Chechnya, indicated support for Russian President
Vladimir Putin on his home front. 

Putin has said Moscow will step up arms supplies to opponents of the
Taliban. 

Though Putin kept his options open and ruled out direct Russian military
involvement, he has said Moscow will not stop Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
other Russian allies in Central Asia allowing aerodromes to be used for
humanitarian flights. 

''We believe that President Putin made a sincere proposal to the Chechen
side,'' a senior State Department official said, expressing the hope
that the Chechen separatists would play their part in working for
lasting peace in the Caucasus. 

Elsewhere, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that Bush would
attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai on
October 20 and 21, but had put off stops in Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul
until ''circumstances permit.''

China, which has backed the idea of a war on terrorism but wants the
U.N.  Security Council involved and any action based on evidence, said
on Wednesday that it understood the decision. 

Elsewhere, U.S.  and British insistence that war against terrorism is
not war against Islam may have fallen on deaf ears. 

Cries of jihad, or holy war, from militants in different corners of the
Muslim world highlighted the ever-present risk of a violent backlash
among the world's billion Muslims. 

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get your FREE VeriSign guide to security solutions for your web site: encrypting transactions, securing intranets, and more!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/XrFcOC/m5_CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

------------------
http://all.net/ 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Next message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] I have always been amazed at how obvious the rhetoric is"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Pakistan.joins.US.crackdown.on.finances.of.groups.linked.to.terrorism]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:50 PDT