A senior Taliban official said he approached U.S. representatives three years ago for help in replacing the hardline Islamic leadership, but was told Washington was leery of becoming involved in internal Afghan politics, the former official said Sunday. Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, a former Taliban intelligence chief and later Afghan deputy interior minister, said he met with U.S. diplomats Gregory Marchese and J. Peter McIllwain in Peshawar, Pakistan, in April 1999 and told them he wanted to oust Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar because of his support for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. Interesting story. Did anything ever come of it?...
The two Americans promised to contact Washington, Khaksar said. Later, he received a letter - which he showed to The Associated Press - from Marchese saying the United Sates was nervous about backing Afghan factions because of its experience supporting hardline Islamic movements during the war against the Soviets. "We don't want to make mistakes like we made in the holy war," Marchese said in the letter, written in Afghanistan's Pashto language and translated by Khaksar. "We gave much help and it later went against us." Marchese added that "my boss is interested" - without identifying him by name. However, Khaksar said that was his last contact with the Americans. Marchese, now posted in Washington, confirmed the meeting with Khaksar but refused to say what was discussed. "I can confirm that I met Mullah Khaksar, then the Taliban regime's deputy interior minister, at my home in Peshawar in April 1999," Marchese said in an e-mail. "I can't get into the content of the meeting, however." This particular tale has a ring of truth because of several factors. Marchese admits to the meeting, though he can't go into the content because it's probably classified Top Secret. Khaksar's got the letter. And most importantly, when the Talibs left Kabul in the dead of night with everything they could carry, Khaksar stayed put. No one seemed to turn a hair and there was never much of a splash afterward. This is the first time I've seen the guy's name in the press since. It's an opportunity the Clinton gang passed up.
It was unclear whether Khaksar's overture was relayed to the highest levels of the Clinton Administration. Nor is it clear whether the United States lost an opportunity to neutralize bin Laden and his Taliban protectors before the devastating attacks of Sept. 11. The State Department on Sunday said it had "no immediate comment" on Khaksar's comments. We can pretty well bet that it was relayed to the undersecretary level, and probably to Albright...
Khaksar, a founding member of the Taliban, said he contacted the Americans because he feared the Islamic movement had been hijacked - first by Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency and then by bin Laden and his al-Qaida group. Khaksar said he and others in the Taliban wanted to "keep Afghanistan for Afghans" but found themselves marginalized because of bin Laden's influence over Mullah Omar. Bin Laden donated suitcases full of money to finance the Taliban's war-effort against the northern-based alliance led by the late guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massood. Mullah Omar, meanwhile, had fallen under the influence of bin Laden and a clique of Afghan clerics who were graduates from Pakistani religious schools with links to Pakistani intelligence. "They told him he could be the leader of all the Muslims, bring all Muslims together," said Khaksar, who lives in Kabul. "What were they doing? It wasn't Afghanistan anymore. My thinking was that they would destroy my country." Seems like Khaksar had come to recognize the al-Qaeda thugs as an occupying power, just like the Sovs were, only more arrogant because they were so holy. As intel chief and then an interior ministry muckety-muck, he had to deal with the Paks and their proxies and didn't like it — bad enough to have an occupying power, but it must have galled him to have two of them. He couldn't have known for sure the Talibs were going to crash, must have doubted it, in fact, so our hats should be off to him for trying to do what he could under the circumstances.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 02:49 pm ||
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#1
(A rant). I agree that this is the sort of story that has the ring of truth. Somebody with hands-on experience who isn't calling the shots realizes that things are starting to turn sour, but they aren't taken seriously by the big players / decisionmakers when they come forward. Like Zhores Medvedev explained in his book on the nuclear accident at Chelyabinsk, when there's something really big going on, there comes a point where it starts leaving traces that can't be covered up. It will take a much larger investment of human attention span, above and beyond technological data crunching, to pick up these early warning signs. It will also require more tolerance for dissenting viewpoints. (No way will we spot anomalies if all we hear is the recycled opinions of irate warbloggers.) Naturally, this is exactly the moment when people start demanding cuts in funding for area studies programs. Can't have the taxpayers funding students or scholars to consort with the enemy! And yet, leaving area studies in the hands of American immigrants who maintain their old mother tongue can result in some pretty strange distortions of perspective ... We need fresh sets of eyes, and reports from the little people out digging rocks from the field, if we want to spot the really noxious weeds early. Not all of those unknown seeds and weeds turn into something, but every so often something catches on, like the cultish Bin Laden craze. The signs have been there, but the willingness to listen wasn't.
#2
You raise some good points, though don't discount the value of technological data crunching. First you have to have information before you can evaluate it and do something with it. 'Tis the nature of bureaucracy that promotions are a desirable thing. That's one of the ways we reward people, and the primary way we reward our best people. In well-run bureaucracies - which isn't really a contradiction in terms - the talented are promoted, usually out of the areas in which they have talent and into the managerial chain. This has the effect of taking someone with talent in one field and putting him into another field in which he may or may not have any talent.
Your point about area studies is well taken. I would point out, though, that the number of people who are interested in area studies probably isn't as great as the number who drift into, say, peace studies and womyn's studies. I'm not up on university curricula, but in my day, back in the mesolithic, the school that offered an area studies concentration was rare indeed. It looks like it should be a soft-skill area, but you really have to know something, and anyone who says speaking, reading and writing a foreign language isn't a hard skill has never tried to become bilingual, much less multilingual. "I had some French in high school" doesn't cut it; somewhere you've got to pick up the words for "cyclotron," "base direction of fire," and similar things that are out of the "I have a red pencil" category. On top of that, you need to have a knowledge of history and a wide reading that skims the surface, at least, of technical fields; if you don't know what "anthropozoonosis" refers to, you can't attach any significance to it. And then, on graduation, area studies is found to be almost exclusively the area of interest of the government, so you can't get a high-paying job with IBM and you end up as a GS-5 in a basement cubicle somewhere near Washington, waiting for promotion.
Is that the way to do it? Probably not. On a business trip to Japan once, when I was working as an analyst and before seriously climbing onto the managerial track, I met with my counterpart in their office. We exchanged notes and ideas, and he knew his subject matter inside out and upside down. As well as he should have; he'd been working the problem since the early 1940s, and was officially designated a National Treasure.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/10/2002 7:42 Comments ||
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India and Pakistan have toned down their warlike rhetoric and sounded more conciliatory notes, but cross-border shelling persisted Sunday in Kashmir. International leaders have been urging a peaceful resolution, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who visited the region last week, said tensions have come down "measurably."
The Indian government said Saturday that Pakistan appeared to be making moves "in the right direction" and Islamabad said the "ice has broken." But India is insisting that Pakistan end cross-border attacks by Muslim militants who want Kashmir to be independent or merge with Islamic Pakistan. Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has pledged to end infiltration across the border. India indicated it would wait to see whether it can detect improvements in Kashmir.
"I think you couldn't say the crisis is over, but I think you could say the tensions are down measurably," Armitage said Saturday in Estonia, where he went after meeting with Musharraf in Islamabad and with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi. Armitage said the Indian leadership might return some diplomats it has withdrawn from Islamabad and had discussed "some ratcheting down of some sort of military tension." All this nicey-nice will last until the next time Qazi's proxies shoot up something important. As soon as the hubbub dies down, the Masked Avengers will resume swarming over the Line of Control, hot to get themselves some infidels. But nuclear war may not be in the offing in the next week, so that's probably a good thing.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 01:33 pm ||
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Two east Jerusalem residents will be appointed to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's new cabinet. Gassan Al Khtaib from the Palestinian People's Party and Sheikh Mohammed Hosan, presently the Temple Mount Mosque Imam, will be in charge of religious affairs. These are the guys who'll issue the fatwahs on whether it's okay to blow yourself up...
Salem Fayed and Dr. Samir Ghosheh will also be appointed, reports indicated. Fayed will be responsible for the Finance Ministry. Ghosheh, is a member of the PLO executive committee and affiliated with the Islamist movement. He will serve as a Cabinet minister, though his position is still unknown, according to reports. In 1998, Ghosheh helped establish computer training centers for young Palestinians in the territories. The centers are being used to train PA employees in the industry. The goal of his initiative was to develop the PA private sector and to increase the number of jobs for young Palestinians. And a damned fine job he did of it. The Paleostinians are dominating the IT market world-wide now, aren't they?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 01:33 pm ||
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Last night, a terrorist who arrived at the route circling the Yitzhar settlement, fired shots toward the caravan site that serves as soldier residence. The soldiers on scene returned fire toward the terrorist and a force under the command of the Commander of the Haruv battalion scrambled to the site. The commander and his soldiers killed the terrorist. At the "Abu-Dhabi" television station, it was said that the "Independence Companies", the military arm of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, have taken responsibility for the incident at the military installation at Yitzhar. Ho hum. Another day's stoopid and pointless violence as the Armed Struggled continues.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 01:33 pm ||
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An Israeli citizen was lightly wounded by Palestinian gunfire near the community of Neveh Dekalim. The terrorists opened fire at his truck as he passed an IDF outpost. Army medics treated the man at the site of the shooting. I guess that's a "man bites dog" story — instead of a victim of a drive-by shooting we have the shooting of a drive-by victim.
Meanwhile, a mortar was fired earlier at another Jewish settlement in Gush Katif. There was no damage or injuries reported. IDF units opened fire in the suspected direction of the launching. Well, that certainly sounds... desultory.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 01:33 pm ||
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Palestinian Authority police in the Gaza Strip have arrested Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah Shami, according to Palestinian sources. A second Islamic Jihad member was also taken for questioning in Gaza City about last week's suicide car-bombing at Megiddo Junction. Seventeen Israelis, 13 of them soldiers, were killed in that attack. Meanwhile, PA sources in Ramallah said searches were also carried out there for Islamic Jihad members, although none were found. Ain't that unusual? Don't expect they'll actually get serious jug time, but it might stop tank rounds from zipping through Yasser's bedroom for awhile.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 01:40 pm ||
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Security forces arrested a Palestinian Authority Presidential Guard Force 17 member responsible for numerous shooting attacks against Israelis in recent months, the IDF spokesman said this evening. The man, Bashar Hatib, who was arrested during the course of Operation Defensive Shield, confessed to killing several Israeli civilians and soldiers. That makes the streets a little safer...
Elsewhere, senior Hamas operative Yusef Malchi, wanted by Israel, and two Force 17 members, were killed as the explosive devices they were planting near the Sufa Crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip late Friday night prematurely blew up, the IDF revealed this evening. Another work accident. Gosh, don't ya just hate it when that happens?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 01:45 pm ||
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Chairman-for-Life Yasser Arafat (1929-2002?)'s Palestinian Authority announced a sweeping reorganization of its cabinet aimed at silencing criticism at home and abroad that it was corrupt and inefficient. The moves to restore international confidence in the Palestinian leadership came as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was in the United States trying again to dump Arafat as a player in the peace process. So it's timed to upstage Sharon. So is it going to change from a general staff of sorts to a government?
The reorganization cuts the number of cabinet posts from 31 to 21. "This transitional government will have the task of preparing the municipal, legislative and presidential elections, slated for the end of 2002 and the start of 2003," information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told a news conference. But there was no sign the 72-year-old Arafat was ready to step down as head of the PA. Saeb Erakat, chief Palestinian negotiator who retained his post as minister of local affairs, brushed off speculation Arafat could be given a purely ceremonial job. "That's not being discussed," he told CNN. It's not healthy to discuss such things...
Among the new offices to be created was the ministry of interior, at the head of which will be General Abdel Razak al-Yahiya, a former negotiator with Israel, who will spearhead the reform of the Palestinian Authority's many police and intelligence services. He is stepping in for Arafat who has held the portfolio since the Authority's establishment in 1994. He will head a slimmed-down security apparatus, merging the dozen different police and intelligence services whose powers conflict and whose chiefs are in constant rivalry. As well as making them more effective, he will have to respond to criticism by Israel and the United States that some of their elements were deeply involved in anti-Israeli attacks. The guy's 73 years old. It'd be a pretty good guess that he's expected to be a figurehead...
The post of finance minister will be filled by Salam Fayad, West Bank head of the Arab Bank and the former representative of the International Monetary Fund in the Palestinian territories. He will be tasked with weeding out corruption and installing transparency in the PA. That one's no surprise...
In addition to Erakat and Abed Rabbo, the other major players to stay in the Palestinian government include Nabil Shaath (international cooperation) and Maher Masri (economy, trade and industry). Looks like there was something to the prediction of the rise of the Gaza Gang of Five...
Arafat pledged on May 15 to undertake a radical shake-up of the PA, and called on the Palestinian parliament to prepare for elections. Parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei said later local elections would take place before the end of this year and legislative elections in 2003. "The objective of this new government will be to render the different ministries more active and to reconstruct what the Israeli occupation has destroyed and to prepare for elections," Abed Rabbo said. He said the first meeting of the new cabinet would be held on Monday and from now on only ministers would attend. Previously, members of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization sat in on the meetings. Cheeze, I hope Yasser doesn't pull a rod on anybody. That's always so embarrassing...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 07:22 pm ||
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FoxNews reports the IDF has moved into Ramallah again. Paleostinians say it's without provocation. Yasser's compound is surrounded, but not under attack. Israelis say they're busting Bad Guys. Nibil Abu Rdainah is on and complains them awful Jews is damagin' the "peace process." Come back, come back to the negotiating table! Wonder if they're going to take the Islamic Jihadis arrested today away from the Palestinocops?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/09/2002 07:31 pm ||
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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.
