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U.S. TROOPS WAIT TO MOVE INTO AFGHANISTAN
UZBEKISTAN -- More than 1,000 U.S. troops stationed in southern Uzbekistan are waiting to move into Afghanistan once Northern Alliance troops capture Mazar-i-Sharif, a city some 30 miles south of the border, U.S. sources told United Press International.
Once the Northern Alliance takes the town, U.S. forces, which have been in Uzbekistan for more than two weeks, would have a risk-free route into Afghanistan. The alliance forces are fighting in the name of the still internationally recognized government of Afghanistan although the Islamist Taliban controls some 90 percent of the country.
Uzbekistan has not allowed the U.S. troops to launch an attack on Afghanistan from Uzbek soil but it has allowed Termez, on its southern border, to be used as a staging area for the U.S. forces.
Northern Alliance forces, commanded by the Uzbek warlord, Abdul Rahman Dostum, has been trying to take Mazar for the past week but has been repulsed by the Taliban. The loss of strategically placed Mazar, the country's second largest city, would have a powerful effect on the morale of both sides, boosting that of the alliance and depressing the Taliban.
In an interview given to the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti, Uzbek presidential press secretary Rustam Jumayev said that had made its airspace available to the U.S. Air Force, and allowed U.S. transport planes and helicopters to land at one of Uzbekistan's military air bases.
"No permission has been granted for air strikes to be launched from Uzbek territory, nor for ground operations to be conducted against Afghanistan from this country," Jumayev said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week Washington would provide air support and ammunition to help the opposition move on the capital, Kabul, and Mazar-i-Sharif.
"What's different today is that they (the Northern Alliance) are going to have some help: They're going to have some help in food, they're going to have some help in ammunition, they are going to have some help in air support and assistance," Rumsfeld said.
U.S. aircraft Sunday struck Taliban front lines north of Kabul and near Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghan opposition sources said. The bombings marked the first time U.S.-led airstrikes hit Taliban troops and defensive positions surrounding the two cities for the first time.
Western analysts said that U.S. aid to the alliance has been restrained by political considerations. The U.S. is dependent on Pakistan to be able to conduct operations in Afghanistan and the alliance and the Pakistani government are hostile to each other.
Pakistan heavily backed the Taliban with military equipment, advisers and militia recruits until President Pervez Musharraf switched policy following the kamikaze attacks on U.S. targets on Sept.11. Pakistan does not want the alliance to conquer and enter Kabul until a broad based government has been prepared that will include important Pashtun elements friendly to Islamabad.
In Washington, President Bush returned early Monday from attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai, China. During his five-day trip, Bush focused his efforts on consolidating support for an international coalition against terror as well as promoting a lowering of trade barriers.
Bush also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin who reaffirmed his support of the U.S.-led airstrikes against suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan.
"The thing that's really bound us together most right now is our common desire to fight terrorism," Bush said.
Meanwhile, there were no reports of airstrikes in Afghanistan Monday -- the longest lull in raids since air attacks began on Oct. 7.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States hopes to resolve the crisis before the start of winter in Afghanistan. In an appearance from Shanghai on Fox News Sunday, Powell said the weather and Ramadan -- the month-long Muslim period of fasting which begins in mid-November -- will affect the military campaign.
"I think it would be in our interest and the interest of the coalition to see this matter resolved before winter strikes and it makes our operations that much more difficult," Powell said.
U.S. FACES UNCERTAINTIES, CHALLENGES
UNITED STATES -- The roadmaps for war--and peace--in Central Asia and Afghanistan remain shrouded in uncertainty, according to Heritage Foundation pundit Ariel Cohen.
The harsh winter is quickly approaching, the think tank analyst points out, and two weeks into the war, politicians and military commanders in Washington and in the region are facing confusion and challenges almost as insurmountable as the towering peaks of the Hindu-Kush and the Pamir mountains.
Proposed solutions are as contradictory and fraught with risk as the regional politics in and around Afghanistan have been for centuries. But, Cohen warns, if solutions are not found -- and quickly -- the United States may bog down in the mountains of Afghanistan for months, if not years to come, while new terrorist challenges are likely to flare up at home and elsewhere.
The United States has not presented any vision for a post-Taliban Afghanistan, much less a vision which would be acceptable for the ethnically diverse Afghans and for the regional powers -- Pakistan, Russia and Iran.
While Pakistan -- with Saudi help -- created and supported the predominantly Pushtun Taliban, Russia and Iran have boosted the Northern Alliance, which is dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks. The Pushtun plurality in Afghanistan will not accept the Northern Alliance capturing Kabul and taking the country by force. Moreover, the Northern Alliance appears not to have the power to achieve a decisive victory in the battlefield.
One possible solution, declaring the deposed King Zahir Shah, an ethnic Pushtun living in exile in Rome, a constitutional monarch, and having him assemble a loya jirga (a grand tribal conclave) is still under discussion.
"Getting Afghans to agree is like herding cats," says one U.S. diplomat, who is pessimistic about the chances of having such a congress before the Taliban leadership is eliminated.
In the meantime, senior U.S. policymakers with responsibility for finding a political solution in Afghanistan are apparently busy elsewhere, while United Nations envoys have made the United Nations lack of interest in policing an Afghan peace settlement quite clear.
The Central Asian states and Russia are watching the international political maneuvering with apprehension. Russia is of two minds. It wants to support its client, the Northern Alliance, but Moscow's top leadership also realizes that the Pushtun plurality needs to be accommodated.
Russia would be willing to settle for a neutral Afghanistan, provided the Taliban's export of its witch's brew of militant Islam and drugs is stopped. The Taliban currently supports radical and violent organizations in Central Asia, notably the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which pledges to depose Uzbek President Islam Karimov, formerly a Communist Party boss who now runs a secular, repressive and corrupt regime. U.S.-Pakistani talk about integrating "moderate" Taliban into the post-war Afghanistan's political structure makes Moscow furious.
For now, the principal challenge facing Russia, the Central Asian states, and their ally, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan is the military situation on the ground. Since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the Northern Alliance promised military advances against the Taliban.
However, attempts to take the strategic town of Mazar-i-Sharif and the Bagram airfield near Kabul have so far failed due to the alliance's weakness and because of political calculations in Washington and Islamabad. The lack of desire to see the northerners taking Kabul prevented the U.S. Air Force from pounding the Taliban positions in the north hard enough to allow the alliance to break through the Taliban lines.
Moreover, the leaders of the Northern Alliance, lacking an effective liaison with Washington that has kept them at arm's length, are split in their attitudes toward the king and the U.S. military operation. Some northern commanders scoff at Zahir Shah's potential leadership role, while others take seriously Taliban propaganda about the necessity to unite and fight the infidels.
Some military analysts now argue that unless the United States becomes willing to train, supply, and support the Northern Alliance, occupation of important parts of Afghanistan by anti-Taliban forces, and significant local support for U.S. Special Forces will remain impossible. That would impede and frustrate Washington's primary war aims in Afghanistan: the destruction of the al Qaida terrorist organization and the capture or killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden. And the longer the hostilities remain, the greater the tidal wave of refugees will become.
The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan directly affects Central Asia and Russia's allies there. On Friday in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, Russia and Central Asian former Soviet republics held a summit dedicated to humanitarian challenges.
Mirkho Zieev, Tajikistan's minister for emergencies, told Russian television his staff was ready to open three centers for humanitarian aid but stressed that Tajikistan has no funds to pay for humanitarian assistance.
Large areas of the Tajik countryside have been affected by a severe drought, and international aid organizations have declared that many in Tajikistan are on the verge of starvation.
IN OTHER NEWS
TALIBAN DEPLOYS ARABS TO CONFRONT U.S. FORCES
AFGHANISTAN -- A force of some 3,500 Arabs are making preparations to fight U.S. forces to the bitter end in Afghanistan, according to the Wall Street Journal Monday.
The newspaper reports that since Sept. 11, some 1,500 Arabs have joined 2,000 already in Afghanistan, according to Afghan, Western and Pakistani officials.
The Taliban is placing the Arabs at strategic positions around the country to confront U.S. ground troops. The Arabs, the forces most closely aligned with bin Laden, are some of the most formidable fighters in the region.
Hostile to the West and often trained in camps sponsored by bin Laden in Afghanistan, these men frequently have nowhere else to go and are devoted to fighting to the end, according to people familiar with their movements. "The only ones who will fight (against U.S. troops) are the Arabs. They are there to die. This whole ideology of martyrdom has been locked in their heads," said an anti-Taliban leader from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.
The new arrivals traveled to Afghanistan overland, passing through Iran with many crossing into the country at a border point near Heart in western Afghanistan, Western and Pakistani diplomats said.
An Iranian official denied that there was any such passage and said no one in the Iranian government supported or dealt with the Taliban regime.
After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, many Arabs who had gone there to fight Russian forces dispersed and fomented rebellions in countries like Algeria, Egypt and Yemen or joined a new popular multinational Islamic battle in Bosnia.
After spending much of the 1980s with a group of Arab fighters in Afghanistan, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia then moved to Sudan. In 1996 bin Laden returned to Afghanistan with about 150 family and followers. He formed a close relationship with Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose movement he helped finance.
Until recently, many of the Arab fighters apparently lived in camps around Jalalabad, Kandahar, Khost and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, analysts say. But they apparently scattered, leaving the camps mostly empty, after the U.S. first made it clear it planned to bomb Afghanistan.
One group of Arab fighters is now deployed 25 miles north of Kabul, where the Taliban's armed opposition, the Northern Alliance, or United Front, is waiting to move against the capital.
The Arabs are also situated very close to the front lines, according to Afghan leaders in this border city. Arabs, in addition to hundreds of Pakistanis, Chechens and Uzbekistanis, are also battling Northern Alliance forces in northern Afghanistan, analysts say.
HOUSE, SENATE OFFICES CLOSED BUT CAPITOL OPEN FOR BUSINESS
UNITED STATES -- House and Senate office buildings will remain closed Monday but the Capitol will be open for legislative business, officials said Sunday, as anthrax tests were ordered for more than 2,100 postal service workers in the Washington area following the diagnosis of inhalation anthrax in a postal worker.
Five other people with symptoms consistent with the disease were being monitored, reports said, citing Washington health officials.
Congressional office buildings have been closed since Thursday while security officials do a sweep for anthrax spores. Anthrax has been found in the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. in the Senate Hart Office Building, in the Hart mailroom, the mailroom of the House Ford Office Building and another postal site.
"We are taking this one day at a time," Capitol Police Lt. Dan Nichols said. He added Senate and House leadership met Sunday and decided the Capitol would be open and the "nation's legislative business will continue."
Nichols said the office buildings would remain closed until "definitive" scientific evidence showed no signs of anthrax.
D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams said the postal worker infected, whose name was not released, was "gravely ill." The survival rate for inhalation or pulmonary anthrax infection is extremely low once symptoms appear but the man was reported to be alert and watching football on television Sunday. Officials at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax, Va., said his condition was serious but stable.
The only death linked to the recent series of anthrax incidents in the United States was due to the same type of lung infection.
Dr. Ivan Walks, the chief health officer for the District, said the man checked into the hospital complaining of flu-like symptoms Friday. Because of the threat of anthrax exposure, additional blood cultures were ordered and on Sunday it was determined the man, who has been sick since Oct. 17, was infected.
More than 4,000 people have already been tested in connection with the finding of anthrax spores in congressional office buildings near the U.S. Capitol.
On another investigation front, the New York Post appears to have received two letters contaminated with anthrax. The Post reported Sunday a second letter containing anthrax had been found at the newspaper's offices.
The Post had begun segregating letters after an anthrax-laced letter was sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. When Post Editorial Page Assistant Johanna Huden tested positive for cutaneous anthrax on Friday, police asked for the segregated letters and found the one reported Sunday. This letter contained powder that tested positive for the bacteria.
Huden said, however, the letter given to police was not the one she opened. The letter found by police was postmarked from Trenton, N.J., as were ones sent to Brokaw and to Daschle. The addresses on all three letters had similar handwriting and contained the same threat, said the Post -- "Death to America, Death to Israel. Allah is Great."
U.S. Surgeon-General David Satcher said on Sunday the strains of anthrax studied so far were very similar, suggesting, but not guaranteeing, they came from a single source.
In all, at least nine people have been diagnosed with anthrax infection -- in New York, Florida, Washington and New Jersey. Three -- two in Florida and one in Washington -- have come down with the more deadly inhaled form, while the rest have the type that is contracted through cuts or abrasions on the skin.
Robert Stevens, 63, the photo editor for American Media's Sun tabloid in Boca Raton, Fla., died of inhaled anthrax infection Oct. 5 and remains the only fatality. His co-worker, Ernesto Blanco, 73, was hospitalized with a respiratory illness that later was determined to be anthrax infection. He is expected to recover. The Washington postal worker is the third inhaled anthrax case. Some three-dozen additional people have been exposed to anthrax but have not developed an infection.
VIETNAM ASKS FOR CRACKDOWN ON EXILE GROUP IN CALIFORNIA
VIETNAM -- The Vietnamese government apparently has been using the renewed anti-terrorism fervor in the United States to press for a crackdown on a California-based exile group that Hanoi claims has been behind a string of bomb plots in Southeast Asia.
According to Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Vietnam last week called on the United States to collaborate with Vietnam in stopping and punishing the masterminds and those who plan terrorist acts against the Vietnamese government and its people.
U.S. authorities have refused to comment publicly on Hanoi's pressure against the Government of Free Vietnam, an Orange County, Calif., organization made up largely of former South Vietnamese soldiers and government officials. Orange County is home to a large Vietnamese-American population and has an area within its borders officially called "Little Saigon."
While the GFV bills itself as dedicated to the peaceful overthrow of the communist government in Vietnam, Hanoi alleges the organization has sponsored a number of attacks against Vietnamese targets, and has sought terrorism charges against its leader, 52-year-old former engineer Chanh Huu Nguyen.
"Vietnam has asked the United States to stop harboring, tolerating or supporting that group," Thuy Thanh Phan, spokesman for the Vietnamese Department of Foreign Affairs, told the Times.
Nguyen insisted that his organization is the legitimate successor to the independent Vietnamese government established in the 1940s when France granted Vietnam its independence. He also told the newspaper that training camps set up by the GFV along the Thai-Cambodia border were aimed at teaching Vietnamese citizens about democracy and free-market economics.
Other analysts said that investigations into terrorist groups in the United States often move slowly and are complex, making it nearly impossible for a crackdown against the GFV to come soon enough to please Hanoi, if at all.
There was, however, the recent arrest made of a man identified as an operative of the GFV who allegedly attempted to bomb the Vietnamese Embassy in Thailand last summer.
Van Duc Vo, 41, was picked up by the FBI, based on information from Thai authorities, at John Wayne Airport in Orange County on Oct. 12. Vo, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was being held Sunday on charges of using a weapon of mass destruction.
The FBI identified Vo only as a member of a Vietnamese opposition group, however Nguyen confirmed to the Times that Vo "reported to me," but insisted the bomb plot against the Bangkok embassy was a "bomb scare" and not an actual bombing.
VIETNAM -- The Vietnamese government apparently has been using the renewed anti-terrorism fervor in the United States to press for a crackdown on a California-based exile group that Hanoi claims has been behind a string of bomb plots in Southeast Asia.
According to Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Vietnam last week called on the United States to collaborate with Vietnam in stopping and punishing the masterminds and those who plan terrorist acts against the Vietnamese government and its people.
U.S. authorities have refused to comment publicly on Hanoi's pressure against the Government of Free Vietnam, an Orange County, Calif. organization made up largely of former South Vietnamese soldiers and government officials. Orange County is home to a large Vietnamese-American population and has an area within its borders officially called "Little Saigon."
While the GFV bills itself as dedicated to the peaceful overthrow of the communist government in Vietnam, Hanoi alleges the organization has sponsored a number of attacks against Vietnamese targets, and has sought terrorism charges against its leader, 52-year-old former engineer Chanh Huu Nguyen.
"Vietnam has asked the U.S. to stop harboring, tolerating or supporting that group," Thuy Thanh Phan, spokesman for the Vietnamese Department of Foreign Affairs, told the Times.
Nguyen insisted that his organization is the legitimate successor to the independent Vietnamese government established in the 1940s when France granted Vietnam its independence. He also told the newspaper that training camps set up by the GFV along the Thai-Cambodia border were aimed at teaching Vietnamese citizens about democracy and free-market economics.
Other analysts said that investigations into terrorist groups in the United States often move slowly and are complex, making it nearly impossible for a crackdown against the GFV to come soon enough to please Hanoi, if at all.
There was, however, the recent arrest made of a man identified as an operative of the GFV who allegedly attempted to bomb the Vietnamese Embassy in Thailand last summer.
Van Duc Vo, 41, was picked up by the FBI, based on information from Thai authorities, at John Wayne Airport in Orange County on Oct. 12. Vo, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was being held Sunday on charges of using a weapon of mass destruction.
The FBI identified Vo only as a member of a Vietnamese opposition group, however Nguyen confirmed to the Times that Vo "reported to me," but insisted the bomb plot against the Bangkok embassy was a "bomb scare" and not an actual bombing.
