The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Thursday, October 4, 2001, Chandigarh, India

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TRIBUNE SPECIAL
USA sets up bases in Pakistan
Rajeev Sharma
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 3
Pakistan has allowed the USA to set up intelligence gathering bases in the country to facilitate the Americans to gather real-time and point-specific intelligence about the exact location of Osama bin Laden who is believed to be constantly shifting his hideouts in remote mountains of Afghanistan.

The American intelligence gathering bases, the work on which has already started, are at secret locations in and around Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta, Chaman and FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas), well-placed sources here said today.

This decision was taken at military-level talks between the USA and Pakistan which concluded in Islamabad last week.

The Pakistani decision is at once crucial and sensitive from the political and diplomatic points of view. Politically, it is bound to trigger off an avalanche of protests from the jehadi and fundamentalist outfits based in Pakistan. Diplomatically, it may complicate Pakistan’s relations with its close ally China, though it is highly unlikely that Islamabad would have granted this concession to Washington without taking Beijing into confidence.

Sources said the latest intelligence-gathering gadgetry installed by the USA in Pakistan would enable the American officials to intercept wireless communications between Pakistan-based terrorist and fundamentalist networks and establish their links with Osama bin Laden and his outfit Al-Qaida.

American officials believe that a majority of jehadi organisations, including Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Sipah-e-Sahiba of Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which are operating from Pakistan, have direct and indirect links with Bin Laden and Al-Qaida. The Americans believe that on the basis of the intercepted conversations, it should not be difficult to get a lead about the exact locations of Bin Laden and his hideouts.

Sources said the moment the Americans get information regarding Bin Laden’s whereabouts, it would be passed on to the US Navy’s Central Command which would order air and missile attacks on targeted locations.

The US Navy has already deployed its Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Fleets at strategic locations around Afghanistan and its aircraft carriers like “Kitty Hawk” and “Enterprise” are armed with Tomahawk missiles which have any target in Afghanistan within its range.

Sources said though the operation to install hi-tech intelligence gathering systems was being kept a closely guarded secret, the Taliban got wind of it last weekend itself.

Taliban’s moles inside Pakistan alerted Afghanistan’s ruling militia about some “unusual” vehicles carrying a deadly cargo — the ‘firangis’ (a slang normally used to describe Americans and British).

The Taliban retaliated and sounded a symbolic warning to Pakistan when they launched four rocket-propelled grenades (RPG-7s) which landed unexploded near Chaman border on Sunday, September 30.

Pakistan Army officials have gone on record confirming the firing of RPG-7s but reported no loss of life or damage.

Desperation in Taliban ranks

Islamabad, October 3
A leading expert on Afghanistan and its ruling Taliban regime has warned of increasing desperation within the Taliban leadership, with major splits appearing and a flood of defections as they realise the seriousness of the US threats of military strikes.

But despite this, the handover of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, remains highly unlikely.

According to Ahmed Rashid, a Taliban expert and author of “The Taliban”, which was published last year, the Taliban were getting increasingly desperate and beginning to show signs of softening their rigid stance.

“They’re now talking about negotiations with the USA and they clearly feel that something very serious is about to happen to them and they’re trying to be flexible in their own way”, Rashid said. But he also stressed that none of this would be acceptable to the USA. ANI

Musharraf invites ex-king’s emissary for talks
End of Pakistan-Taliban nexus?

Rome, October 3
Pakistan’s overture to the former king of Afghanistan was welcomed by the monarch’s family today as communication problems hampered efforts to form a transitional government they hope will replace the Taliban.

Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf told Italy’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs earlier that he wanted an emissary of ex-king Mohammad Zahir Shah to come quickly to Pakistan to discuss the future of Afghanistan.

Zahir Shah’s entourage has previously accused Islamabad of seeking to prevent the king from returning home from exile in Italy, but the crisis sparked by the attacks last month on the USA is leading to an apparent thaw in relations.

“Talks now would be a very good idea. It is very important for us to speak to Pakistan. We have to sit down and resolve our problems,’’ said the ex-king’s youngest son, Mir Wais Zahir.

“We do not want them to feel threatened by our new government,’’ he told newsmen.

The former king struck a deal on Monday with Afghanistan’s main opposition force, the Northern Alliance, to set up a broad-based coalition they hope will replace the ostracised Taliban regime in Kabul and open the way for free elections.

Under the terms of the accord, the two parties said they would convene a traditional grand assembly of elders — the so-called Loya Jirga — to nominate a new government and leader.

However, Mir Wais Zahir said organising the event was proving difficult.

“Communications are so hard. Poor things. So many of these people are in the middle of nowhere. They don’t have faxes or telephones. We’re going back centuries in technology here, which is complicating matters,’’ he said.

The USA has vowed to punish the Taliban unless it hands over Osama bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan and is suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks.

Pakistan was previously the leading backer of the Taliban, but Musharraf said this week that its days appeared numbered.

The looming power vacuum has pushed 86-year-old Zahir Shah into the limelight, with western politicians saying that only he had enough authority to unite his disparate people.

The king’s advisers say that Islamabad has tried to keep Zahir Shah out of the picture in the past because it feared it could not exert any authority over him, but international pressure was forcing Pakistan to change its tune.

Monday’s accord with the Northern Alliance called for the creation of a “Supreme Council for National Unity’’ which would appoint a provisional Afghan government ahead of the “Loya Jirga”.

Mir Wais said this supreme council would have a maximum 40 members and was expected to meet in Rome in two weeks.

Earlier, a daily, The News said the President has “enthusiastically endorsed” the idea that exiled king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah should be invited to take up residence in Pakistan and convene a tribal assembly to decide the fate of his nation. It quoted former President Sardar Farooq Khan Leghari as saying that he wants to become a bridge between King Zahir Shah, who now lives in Rome, and President Musharraf.

The former President had a lengthy meeting with General Musharraf in Rawalpindi and discussions with top army generals on the Afghan crisis.

Mr Leghari, whose Afghan connections and links are well-known, also claimed to have devised a plan to “obviate the US urge to put its diplomatic chips on the Northern Alliance to the exclusion of other political forces (of Afghanistan).” The Leghari-scheme could “enable General Musharraf to formally ditch the Taliban,” the newspaper said.

Being a son of a Pathan mother, Mr Leghari is fluent in chaste Pushtu. His wife also hails from a Pushtun family. But to the Afghan elite, he is connected through a cousin of his who is married into the famous Gillani family, which is very close to King Zahir Shah, The News said.

It said the exiled king intended to appoint Pir Syed Ahmad Gillani as Prime Minister of the interim government he wants to set up immediately after the fall of the Taliban regime.

Meanwhile, reports from Afghanistan today said weary Afghans were unanimous in their cry for the return of the ex-king.

“I agree with bringing back the Shah,” said Jamakhan, a 40-year-old salesman selling scarves and Afghan hats in a stall in the primitive marketplace. Reuters, UNI

France supports USA, S. Arabia denies facility

Paris, October 3
France said today that it would give the USA logistical support for a possible military strike against Afghanistan, but set down markers for its longer-term involvement in the US-led war on terrorism.

Addressing parliament, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin voiced full support for President George W. Bush’s quest to punish those responsible for last month’s hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington and dismantle global terror networks.

He said France had agreed to the US requests to allow its military aircraft to use French airspace, subject to advance notice, and that French ships would help supply and protect a US naval force in the Indian Ocean.

Beyond that, however, Mr Jospin made clear that if asked by Washington, France would commit its forces to a direct role in any US-led military action only in return for a full say in its conduct and objectives.

DUBAI: Saudi Arabia is firmly opposed to allowing the to use a key air base in the kingdom as a command and communications centre for possible anti-terrorism strikes, a senior gulf official said on Wednesday. Reuters, AP