Representatives of Afghanistan's ethnic, religious and political groups in Bonn have resumed work on a plan to form an interim government. On the fifth day of discussions, U.N. officials said delegates were meeting and talking informally. The Northern Alliance has promised to produce a list of names by Saturday of candidates to represent it in a transitional government.
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12/01/2001 ||
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80 foreign Taliban fighters emerged alive from a bunker inside Qali-i-Jhangi. They included Yemenis, Chechens, Pakistanis, Saudisand one who said he had been born in the United States. The American, is native-born, named Abdul Hamid. He is white, educated-sounding, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a convert to Islam who came to Afghanistan six months ago to help the Taliban build a âtrue Islamic state.â Good job, Abdul. See you in Guam. Gen Atta Mohammed, a Tajik whose forces entered Mazar with Gen Dostum, said that foreign prisoners would be handed over to the United Nations.
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12/01/2001 ||
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The 60-strong SAS Sabre squadron that captured a cave complex near Kandahar last month has been told to prepare for hunting down Bin Laden in his Tora Bora stronghold.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef claimed that the Taliban had downed an American jet over Kandahar during heavy U.S. bombardment. The U.S. military denied the report. The Taliban also claimed to have killed five US special forces soldiers in a suicide attack in Kandahar province. The five were killed during an attack near an airstrip about 20 kilometers out of Kandahar city, claimed the Taliban's commander of frontier affairs Maulvi Aminullah.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Some of the Pashtun chiefs who have received funding from the United States have held on to much of the money instead of using it to win over commanders and pay fighters' salaries. "Without money, it is impossible to get people to fight against the Taliban," said Abdur Rehman Jinnabi, a tribal elder who was a major recruiter in Pakistan for opposition forces during the Soviet occupation.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Abdul Razol Bezad has reopened his bookstore on the corner of Flower Street in Kabul after years of hiding his stock at home. "If I had tried to sell these books the Taleban would have accused me of being a Christian," said Bezad, displaying dictionaries, scientific manuals in English and Novels by popular Western writers. He picks up an Atlas of Afghanistan whose cover carries a photograph of three women on a donkey. "Just a few days ago I was prohibited from selling this book," Bezad said in a reference to Taleban objections to the depiction of living beings. "I've kept these books at home for years. Things are different now."
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12/01/2001 ||
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Mullah Mohammad Omar told his forces it was better to die with dignity than live with humiliation. According to Afghan Islamic Press, "Mullah Omar has advised and instructed everyone to fight to the death and not to bow down in front of brutality and blasphemy." Interfax quoted Shamsulak Orienfar, an official of Northern Alliance's embassy in Tajikistan, as saying that nearly 13,000 Taliban fighters and 6,000 foreign members of Al-Qaeda were entrenched around Kandahar.
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12/01/2001 ||
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A report in the Washington Post has details of a secret offer by some top Taliban commanders to surrender to the Northern Alliance. Opposition negotiators have been dispatched to the south, even though the offers are viewed with suspicion.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Kabul University opened its doors to women for the first time in five years, doing away with the ban on female students imposed by the Taliban. Dozens of women, most wearing the burqa, flocked to the university campus in the west of Kabul to register for classes.
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12/01/2001 ||
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At the urging of New York Community School District 3 board member Larry Sauer, the board voted unanimously to defy an edict from the central Board of Education requiring schools to conduct a daily recital of the Pledge of Allegiance. Said Sauer: "Requiring students to blindly repeat the pledge is no different than the Taliban requiring children to memorize the Koran and repeat it by rote, without understanding why or what they are saying." Chelsea-based District 2 - which last year formally prohibited students as young as 4 from "sexually harassing" other kids - wants to follow suit in defying the flag.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess grandmaster, has broken years of silence to support the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Fischer gave an interview to Radio Bombo in Baguio City, in the Philippines hours after the events on September 11. In his interview Fischer said: "This is all wonderful news. It is time to finish off the US once and for all. I was happy and could not believe what was happening. All the crimes the US has committed in the world. This just shows, what goes around comes around, even to the US. I applaud the act. The US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years. Now it is coming back at the US."
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12/01/2001 ||
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Almost a thousand Greek anti-war protesters gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Athens to demonstrate against NATO and the war in Afghanistan following calls from the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and an anti-globalization organization. Some 300 young followers of the "Genoa Initiative 2001" movement marched through the city center to celebrate the second anniversary of the first anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle in 1999. They were later joined near the embassy by almost 500 KKE supporters.
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12/01/2001 ||
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In the wake of nationwide ridicule and razzberries, Kensington, Peoples' Republic of Montgomery County, Maryland, has backed down from its attempt to ban Santa Claus from its tree-lighting ceremony. Not everyone is pleased; said Mr Scrooge: "Are there no Poor Laws? Are the workhouses all full?" No word from Mr and Mrs Grinch, who seem to have decamped from Whoville Kensington.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Another test of the missile defense system is scheduled for today. The test, in which the dummy warhead and the "kill vehicle" were supposed to collide 144 miles above the South Pacific, is the fifth in a series of about 20 planned for the missile defense system.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Samir Kishk, an Egyptian suspected of links to Osama bin Laden, was arrested at Rome's Fiumicino airport. Kishk is under investigation for involvement in trafficking arms, explosives, chemicals and false documents. An Italian prosecutor issued a detention order against Kishk in October for his role in the bin Laden-linked radical Algerian group, "Salafite Cell for Preaching and Fighting."
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12/01/2001 ||
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Israeli security forces have occupied territory around Jenin and Nablus. The moves come as hundreds of Israeli mourners turned out to remember three people killed in a suicide bombing Thursday night. Israeli radio identified the bomber as a Palestinian member of the Islamic Jihad. Three explosions tore through the entrance to a crowded pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem, killing six and wounding more than 150 people. Rescue workers, fearing more bombs, raced to the scene to move people away as area hospitals called in volunteers. At least two suicide bombers detonated explosives near Zion Square. Either another suicide bomber or a car bomb exploded minutes later, apparently aimed to harm incoming rescue workers. A witness said the third explosion came from a car parked outside an ice cream parlor.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Military helicopters fired at hide-outs and training camps of Maoist rebels in midwestern Nepal, inflicting heavy casualties on the guerrillas. The military also foiled an attack by rebels on the water purification plant at Sundarijal, the only supply of drinking water to 1.5 million inhabitants of the capital. Eleven rebels were arrested by security forces in Khadbari village, about 320 kilometers west of Katmandu.
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12/01/2001 ||
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A bomb went off at the offices of a pro-government Tamil party in eastern Sri Lanka, wounding at least 15 people. The blast was at the offices of the Eelam People's Democratic Party in the town of Batticaloa. Initial reports suggested it was a parcel bomb attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
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12/01/2001 ||
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Six followers of Muslim leader Nur Misuari were killed, while nine soldiers and a civilian were wounded in separate clashes as the military stepped up its hunt for the rebels in the southern Philippines. Among those who took part in the latest battle in Jolo were members of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim group who were working with Misuari's forces. The government is looking into alleged links between Misuari and the Abu Sayyaf who have been kidnapping people and holding them for ransom for years.
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12/01/2001 ||
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The Kuwaiti daily al-Qabas quoted a high ranking security source saying that some 50 Kuwaitis in Afghanistan are expected to return to Kuwait in the next few days. The men are fighting beside other "Afghan Arabs" within al-Qaida. Security sources said that "arrangements are underway" with the UN and other parties for news of these Kuwaiti Afghans.
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12/01/2001 ||
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The United States has told opposition commanders in Afghanistan that it wants any senior Taliban or al Qaeda members captured to be turned over for interrogation by U.S. personnel and -- if ordered by President Bush -- trial by the U.S. military. "We're here to get these people," Rumsfeld said. "That's why we came. Then we're leaving."
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12/01/2001 ||
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A Shariah court sentenced a Saudi woman to one year in jail and 200 lashes for torturing her Indonesian maid who later strangled herself to death using an electric wire. Saudi authorities have arrested an Egyptian and a Syrian after they put white powder in an envelope mailed from the United Arab Emirates and addressed to one of their colleagues. The head of Shariah courts in Baha province, Mudhar Al-Qarni, warned earlier this month that those who spread rumors about anthrax will be flogged and jailed, even if the rumor was for "fun".
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12/01/2001 ||
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Turkey has bolstered its border with Iraq to prepare for any U.S.-led effort to topple the regime of President Saddam Hussein. The government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has become increasingly convinced that the United States will attack Baghdad. Turkish officials said they believe Washington will seek Ankara's support in any such campaign.
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12/01/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
