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| Afghanistan |
| Muttawakil Said To Have Warned US, UN Of September 11 |
| 2002-09-07 |
| Hey, it could have happened! 'Course, it appeared in The Independent, so it probably didn't... Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was planning a huge attack on American soil. The warnings were delivered by an aide of Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban Foreign Minister at the time, who was known to be deeply unhappy with the foreign militants in Afghanistan, including Arabs. That's why he led the charge to throw them out... Oh. Well, he was gonna, if we hadn't interfered... Mr Muttawakil, now in American custody, believed the Taliban's protection of Mr bin Laden and the other al-Qa'ida militants would lead to nothing less than the destruction of Afghanistan by the US military. He told his aide: "The guests are going to destroy the guesthouse." They thought they owned the guesthouse... The minister then ordered him to alert the US and the UN about what was going to happen. But in a massive failure of intelligence, the message was disregarded because of what sources describe as "warning fatigue". He means there were so many "warnings," pointing in so many different directions, that nobody took any of them seriously... Mr Muttawakil's aide, who has stayed on in Kabul and who has to remain anonymous for his security, described in detail to The Independent how he alerted first the Americans and then the United Nations of the coming calamity of 11 September. The minister learnt in July last year that Mr bin Laden was planning a "huge attack" on targets inside America, the aide said. The attacks were imminent and would be so deadly the United States would react with destructive rage. Mr Muttawakil learnt of the coming attacks on America not from other members of the Taliban leadership, but from the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yildash. According to the emissary, Mr Muttawakil emerged from a one-to-one meeting with Mr Yildash looking shocked and troubled. Until then, the Foreign Minister, who had disapproved of the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Bamian earlier in the year, had no inkling from others in the Taliban leadership of what Mr bin Laden was planning. "At first Muttawakil wouldn't say why he was so upset," said the aide. "Then it all came out. Yildash had revealed that Osama bin Laden was going to launch an attack on the United States. It would take place on American soil and it was imminent. Yildash said Osama hoped to kill thousands of Americans." So much for Binny's "wudn't me" argument. But those tapes were doctored. Everybody knows that... At the time, 19 members of al-Qa'ida were in situ in the US waiting to launch what would be the deadliest foreign attack on the American mainland. Whoa! Better act fast...! The emissary went first to the Americans, travelling across the border to meet the consul general, David Katz, in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, in the third week of July 2001. They met in a safehouse belonging to an old mujahedin leader who has confirmed to The Independent that the meeting took place. Another US official was also present  possibly from the intelligence services. Mr Katz, who now works at the American embassy in Eritrea, declined to talk about the meeting. But other US sources said the warning was not passed on. Kinda late now, I guess... A diplomatic source said: "We were hearing a lot of that kind of stuff. When people keep saying the sky's going to fall in and it doesn't, a kind of warning fatigue sets in. I actually thought it was all an attempt to rattle us in an attempt to please their funders in the Gulf, to try to get more donations for the cause." Go ahead. Tell 'em the story about the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf... The Afghan aide did not reveal that the warning was from Mr Muttawakil, a factor that might have led the Americans to down-grade it. That was stupid of him. Probably save Muttawakil's neck, but it was stoopid if he wanted to actually have somebody listen... "As I recall, I thought he was speaking from his own personal perspective," one source said. "It was interesting that he was from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but he gave no indication this was a message he was carrying." So they thought he was just some guy that walked in off the street... Interviewed by The Independent in Kabul, the Afghan emissary said: "I told Mr Katz they should launch a new Desert Storm  like the campaign to drive Iraq out of Kuwait  but this time they should call it Mountain Storm and they should drive the foreigners out of Afghanistan. They also had to stop the Pakistanis supporting the Taliban." "Well, sure, fellah. We'll drop everything and do that. What'd you say your name was again?" When Mr Muttawakil's emissary returned to Kabul, the Foreign Minister told him to see UN officials. He took the warning to the Kabul offices of UNSMA, the political wing of the UN. These officials heard him out, but again did not report the secret Taliban warning to UN headquarters. A UN official familiar with the warnings said: "He appeared to be speaking in total desperation, asking for a Mountain Storm, he wanted a sort of deus ex machina to solve his country's problems. But before 9/11, there was just not much hope that Washington would become that engaged in Afghanistan." That sounds about right... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 Pre-emptive strike on Afghanistan? Yeah, that would have been even less popular as a strike on Iraq. |
| Posted by: Craig Schamp 2002-09-07 21:22:20 |