-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.debka.com/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.debka.com/";>DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terro…</A> ----- America’s War Coalition Flip Flops 24 September: DEBKAfile’s expertsoffer a short guide to the maneuvers surrounding America’s attempts to build an international bloc of supporters for its war against terrorism. First-line backers: Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Russia, Turkey and Pakistan. Second-line Support (nations rendering military, intelligence, logistic and medical aid and rear bases to the first-line members): Israel, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, India. Where Are the Arab Nations? As the hours slip by, the Arab nations are increasing the distance between themselves and President Bush’s war on terrorism, for a variety of reasons: Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia’s denial of support is the bitterest setback Washingtonsuffered since deciding on its military operation, forcing the Bush administration to put its planned assault on Baghdad on hold. Suddenly, the Americans had to cast about for new forward bases in place of the new combined air operations command center at Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, which was to have been the central command post for directing air attacks from bases around the region in the Gulf and Southwest Asian regions. The Saudis feared an US offensive against Iraq, launched from a base on their soil, would expose their cities to strikes by Iraqi missiles bearing chemical, biological and even possibly nuclear warheads. As the Gulf linchpin, the Saudis forced Arab Emirates, such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman who were willing to join forces with the United States, to follow their lead and back out of the US-led alliance. America is to be allowed to maintain military forces in their territory and carry on staff functions – but not to launch attacks. Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak has from the first objected to the war coalition being led by the United States and demanded it be placed under the aegis of the United Nations. This was a pretext. Mubarak’s rationale for staying out of the war alliance is simple: He knows that at some point in the campaign, Egypt, like other Arab nations, will be handed a list of domestic radical Islamic terrorist groups – led by the Egyptian Jihad Islami, Osama Bin Laden’s senior partner – to which will be attached an American demand to terminate their operations. This Mubarak cannot afford to do, because any such move would unite all of Egypt’s teeming Islamic militant groups and sects in active opposition to his regime. Syria: Syria has the same problem as Egypt. The United States has already handed President Bashar Assad an ultimatum to be met if Syria wants to be removed from the list of states sponsoring terrorism. Before anything else, he must sever his economic and military ties with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq - which is deemed a terrorist state – and with the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah. In the second stage, Syria will be asked to extradite to the United States Hizballah leaders and operations chiefs, as well as activists of the Palestinian radical and Islamic groups - the Fronts, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami - while outlawing those groups. Feeling his back was to the wall, Assad hurried over to Egypt and Saudi Arabia over the weekend to demand their support for defying Washington’s demands. Palestinians: Yasser Arafat understands he is cornered. He knows perfectly well that the groups he activates in his campaign against Israel – the Palestinian Authority’s “Preventive Security” services, his own Fatah-Tanzim, Force 17, the Jihad Islami and the Hamas, qualify as terrorist organizations by US standards and therefore targets to be crushed. Arafat hoped that with the help of Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres, he could sanitize his terrorist groups without halting their war against Israel; once Washington accepted the Palestinian Authority as a partner in its coalition, those groups would be safe. The Saudi withdrawal upset Arafat’s applecart. Now, he dare not line up with Washington in the opposite camp to the Saudi-Egyptian-Syrian grouping. His tactics for survival entail a low-key terror campaign against Israeli targets that is careful to fall short of provoking a strong US or Israeli response, while leaving him squarely within the inter-Arab consensus. Iran: The dual problem with the rulers of Tehran is their active sponsorship of one of the most powerful, effective and zealous terrorist groups in the Middle East, the Hizballah, plus the fact that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, personally runs what the Iranians call intelligence agencies, but which the Americans regard as terrorist groups, pure and simple. One of Khamenei’s key “intelligence” aides is also one of America’s deadliest enemies, the notorious Hizballah hostage-taker of Lebanon in the eighties, Imad Mughniyeh. For the moment, it suits American diplomacy and the goals of secretary of state Colin Powell to put a good face on the process of co-opting Arab partners and Iran to the anti-terrorist coalition. After all, no one wants to burn America’s bridges to the Arab world and the Persian Gulf. A useful device for preserving this facade is to lean on Israel to meet the Palestinians halfway. This is no more than a charade, because the Bush administration has little time to spare for this local conflict when it is deep in the first skirmishes of a world war. Indeed, Washington was quick to replace the Arabs and the Gulf Emirs with Russia and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, marginalizing the Middle East and its complexities. This region will recover its importance when the Americans recover from the Saudi blow and decide to turn back to dealing with Baghdad. The decision by President Bush on this may be no more than a week, ten days off, but in making it, he will be influenced – not by what happens between Israelis and Palestinians, but by the progress of the combat in Afghanistan _____________________________________ US Bereft of Arab Coalition After Saudi Arabia Backs out 22 September: The United States has delayed the start of its offensive against Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden, in retaliation for the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington, because of a dramatic turnaround of Arab support in the Middle East, DEBKAfile’s Gulf and Washington sources report. Saturday afternoon, it became clear that events in Riyadh had dealt the final deathblow to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s failed efforts to create an Arab front to bolster the Bush administration’s world war on terror. The reason for King Fahd secret exit from Saudi Arabia, followed by a large royal party (see earlier DEBKAfile World Exclusive on this page), is believed by our most reliable sources to be a palace revolution sparked by differences in the royal family over support for the US offensive against Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden’s terror network and other rogue targets. King Fahd and his Sudeiri faction, including defense minister Sultan, were in favor of letting the US place assault forces in forward bases on Saudi soil; the conservative, religious Crown Prince Abdullah, who runs the kingdom since King Fahd became ill, overruled him, backed by the religious establishment. As a result, Saudi Arabia refused to let the US use the kingdom’s new combined air operations command center at Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, after Air Force Lt. Gen Charles Wald had been dispatched to the base earlier this week, to take command of US air forces assigned to the Middle East and Southwest Asia. His mission was to run the air war from the new, sophisticated air base opened this summer, a base linked to Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates and Seeb in the Sultanate of Oman. The Saudi base was also to have been the central command post not only for the 175 aircraft already based in the region for patrolling south Iraq’s no-flight zone, but also for directing attacks from other bases in the region in the new war offensive. When General Wald landed in Saudi Arabia with his top aides on Tuesday, September 18, he was told he had no command base. That was when the feuding inside the royal house over its role in the American war against terrorism reached its climax. The monarch’s defeat in the argument inside the palace was apparently the main reason for his abrupt departure the next day, Wednesday, September 19. The Pentagon has since then been casting about for replacement bases of operation and holding up the onset of the scheduled US campaign. DEBKAfile’s military sources believe that one of General Wald’s options for his command post is the Bahrain. Some of the fighter craft due to have been based in Saudi Arabia have been moved to Incerlik, the big air base in South Turkey, after Anakara made all its bases available for the American war effort, and the Uzbek military airport of Tuzel, 15 km. from Tashkent. Large-scale air and commando forces also landed Saturday in Tadjikistan, on the border of Afghanistan. The American forces are now laboring to catch up with their schedule for the operation. The upset in Riydah also sent the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat racing to Riydah to meet Crown Prince Abdullah and update his own strategy with the turn of events in the royal house. DEBKAfile’s Palestinian experts expect Arafat to turn tail and back out of the accommodations he broached under US and European pressure – including his commitment to a ceasefire. According to DEBKAfile ’s Washington sources, the Bush administration realizes it has been let down by the Arab world, chiefly the Saudis and President Mubarak of Egypt, in its first steps to launch an international campaign to defeat world terrorism. It will go ahead, but not forget in a hurry. _____________________________________ Saudis in Flight 22 September: King Fahd Bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia has been secretly flown out of the kingdom to his palace in Geneva, Switzerland. DEBKAfile reports this breaking news exclusively from its Gulf and Middle East sources. The royal mobile hospital fitted aboard Boeing 757 HZ-HMED landed in the private VIP section of Geneva airport Wednesday afternoon, September 19. A palace conclave led by Crown Prince Abdullah, who effectively rules the kingdom, decided to remove the chronically ailing monarch to safety, fearing he might be stranded in the middle of a military crisis arising from the impending US offensive in the region. The royal hospital plane was accompanied by another craft of the royal flight carrying the king’s family and entourage. The possibility of a major terrorist attack on the royal palaces being sparked by the outbreak of hostilities was also taken into account in Riyadh. A group of princes was therefore carried to a safe place in the additional fleet of 10 royal aircraft that ferried members of the Saudi royal family to Geneva. More than a dozen Mercedes waited on the tarmac of Geneva International Airport to collect the royal arrivals. According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the Saudi royal airlift, which began Tuesday night, September 18, is still in progress. Two more private royal planes are expected in the VIP section of Geneva airport Saturday. ______________________________________ War Preparations in Israel 21 September: Without a word to the Israeli public, national emergency war preparations went into high gear Thursday afternoon, September 20. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that hospitals were placed on the ready and medical teams ordered to stay on call. The military authorities warned hospital directors to prepare for a heavy intake of casualties. There was no answer to questions about whether the casualties would come from inside or outside the country – Israeli victims of military operations or enemy attack, or American troops injured after America’s war against terror is launched. Israeli civilian airfields were also instructed to close down for civilian air traffic as of today, Friday, September 21. Israeli airlines, including the national carrier El Al, were ordered to begin transferring some of their aircraft to the military authorities. Israel’s strategic supplies are also in the process of being moved to prepared underground shelters – especially the central oil, gas and petrol depot at Gelilot depot in North Tel Aviv, which is very close to densely inhabited residential areas and army bases. A direct missile hit on that location could cause many casualties. Since September 11, shortly after the attacks in New York and Washington, Israeli air defense systems and units, including two kinds of anti-missile missiles – the new Israeli Arrow and the American Patriot missiles, have been held at a high level of preparedness. These measures are summed up by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military experts under the heading of defensive preparedness against medium-range missile or air attack. In the case of Iraq, Israeli is also preparing for the appearance of its L-29 drone that is capable of carrying a chemical or biological warfare payload. The traffic of applicants for gas masks increased markedly before and after the New Year festival this week. Drumming up Anti-Israel Feeling as a Diplomatic Device 24 September: The attempt by the British foreign secretary Jack Straw to curry favor in Tehran by playing on his hosts’ violent anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli emotions will not endear him to Israelis. His turn of phrase and message show he shares their feelings about the country, Israel, he proposes to visit Tuesday, September 25: “…one of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in the region feel at events over the years in Palestine,” he said. Palestine? And the venomously implied linkage of the events in that unmentionable place Israel with the atrocities in New York and Washington? The Israeli foreign ministry, instead of telling Jack Straw he was not welcome in “Palestine”, rushed forward to explain that the foreign secretary’s sentiments were not shared by prime minister Tony Blair. Straw’s is not the only tainted innuendo coming out of London. This line has been taken often by the BBC in recent months. The campaign to have Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon indicted as a war criminal for the murder of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians in Beirut 19 years ago is driven and funded by International Amnesty head office in London, which blows up the flames each time they die down. The anti-Jewish infection has rippled outward to hands more than willing to exploit the horrors inflicted by terrorists on America. More than one respectable publication in the United States has picked up an unfounded report appearing in the Pakistani press alleging that 4000 Israelis worked in the twin towers in New York while only very few fell victim to the disaster because they were tipped off in advance. Who tipped them off? Who but the Mossad? The implication is clear. These unlovely smears fit neatly into a well-orchestrated effort in Europe and the Arab world – assisted by certain quarters of the United States and Israel - to pin the monstrous wave of international terrorism on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This claim provides a handy alibi for their failure to jump aboard the bloc of nations President George W. Bush is striving to assemble for his war against terrorism. It is far easier to deflect US demands of support by pointing the finger at Jerusalem as the coalition’s main stumbling block. Israel (excepting only foreign minister Shimon Peres) is presented as being gratuitously difficult about wiping Yasser Arafat’s thirty-year record as a terrorist clean, and accepting him as a respectable leader. Most unreasonably, Israeli refuses to save him, his organization and the radical Islamic terrorist organizations operating under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority from America’s anti-terrorist wrath. It is Israel’s fault therefore that Arab governments cannot join the American-led war coalition. The European governments, fearing for their trade with the Islamic world, are full of sympathy for their plight. In Jerusalem, Jack Straw proposes to follow up on the thesis he outlined in Tehran - that Israel is not the victim of terror, but its cause, and must therefore kowtow to the Palestinians, who are the victims not the terrorists – a topsy-turvy case the Europeans have been pushing anyway by singing along with the Arabs in stigmatizing Israel at every chance. ______________________________________ Knowing the Enemy 23 September: As US sea-air armadas, destroyers, air fleets and Special Service units speed east to make war on terrorism, the opposition makes its own preparations quietly and in the dark. The ex-Saudi terror master Osama Bin Laden is generally presented as being on the run, dodging with a small band from one hideout to another in the UruzgaMountains north of Kahandar and south of Hindu Kush, to escape the mighty force out to get him. Some reports place him in hiding in Somalia. The truth is that no one – including western intelligence agencies – knows where he is. What DEBKAfile’s intelligence and military sources can say is that Bin Laden and his senior commanders, far from giving up the flight, are in fact busy preparing their next offensive against the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, Egypt and Israel – all affirmed targets of the jihad he has declared against America and everything its stands for. Bin Laden and his ilk do not practice Western military doctrines. The concepts of military hierarchy, with its generals and colonels, general staffs and operational, air intelligence and naval intelligence branches, are all alien to Bin Laden and his band. This is quite deliberate. Bin Laden keeps his men untouched by Western military thinking and formats for two reasons: 1. To prevent his men’s exposure to Western culture, while creating a milieu in which any Western penetration agent will soon be spotted. 2. A preference for traditional Islamic fighting methods, mostly taken from the early days of conquering Islam - the 7th century, when the Caliph Omar prevailed over the Byzantine Empire, and the 11th century, when Saladin defeated the European Crusaders. Saladin, who was not an Arab but a Seljuk from Asia Minor, built his army around a very small command of adherents and a large international pool of reservists, who were called up for major battles by a dozen or so runners, who traveled to the different countries and activated local couriers in relays for posting call-up summons in the towns and villages. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that Bin Laden’s courier squad of half a dozen runners went into action on September 9, two days before the four hijacked airliners rammed the WorldTradeCenter in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. They spread out in two destinations. One group headed for the Islamic madrassas, Islamic schools and colleges of Afghanistan, where 40,000 of the more than one million students, Afghans and foreigners, have embraced the jihad mission under Bin Laden’s leadership. A second group went round the 10,000 madrassas of Pakistan, where Bin Laden can count on a further 70,000 jihad devotees. The conscripts were issued with their personal weapons early last week from central armories serving each cluster of madrassas. These schools are not colleges in the Western sense, but training and indoctrination academies breeding militant zealots for battle and self-sacrifice. These future recruits to Bin Laden’s Moslem internationale are subjected to rigorous training disciplines in guerrilla and urban combat, sabotage, the making and use of bombs, simple weaponry for use against planes, helicopters and tanks and endurance in harsh conditions deprived of water and food for long periods. This is not a ragged rabble, but a well-drilled, dedicated Islamic legion of at least 110,000 zealots, raring to take on Western armies and unafraid of elite US Delta, Rangers and Seals or British S.A.S. commandos descending on their strongholds. Indeed some of the instructors teaching the students the arts of war may have received their own training at the hands of American Moslem commando instructors, attached at different periods to US 101st or 82nd Airborne Divisions. How these Moslem Americans reached the most violent Islamic training grounds in the world will be described elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the Islamic army congregating in Afghanistan under the Bin Laden banner is a fighting force as formidable in its own way as the military might the United States and the British are assembling to eradicate it. Some 3,500 hard core senior officers serving in Bin Laden’s training bases in Afghanistan have taken command of the gathering army. DEBKAfile’s military sources confirm at least one initial engagement between US elite forces who have crossed from neighboring Tadjikistan, a former Soviet republic, into southeast Afghanistan since Saturday, September 22. They were Led through the mountains by Russian intelligence officers familiar with Afghan frontier terrain and Tadjik and Pushtun smugglers associated with Russian intelligence. There was another brush Saturday, between British SAS units who entered Afghanistan from the north and linked up with the Afghan general Rashid Dustum, an Uzbek, and a Bin Laden band. Members of the British force penetrated Afghan military lines and reached the outskirts of Kabul. DEBKAfile’s military sources are quite clear that the coming war will be fought both inside and outside Afghanistan, and that its tempo, scale, arena and intensity will not be dictated by the Americans alone. Al Qaeda is an international association of allied groups operating in many parts of the world. Its top commanders are: YAMAN AL ZAWAHAR, head of the Egyptian Jihad Islami, who is Bin Laden’s senior deputy and heir apparent JUMMA MAMANGANI, an Uzbek, who was recently appointed Al Qaeda chief of operations. He is former commander of the Moslem Army for the Liberation of Kyrgistan. Three key Afghan training camps, at Jalalabad, Farmada and Daronta, are under his command. FATEH KAMEL, who leads the most militant cells of the extremist Algerian GIA. In the name of Al Qaida, he controls terrorist cells in the United States, Canada and Algeria. MUHAMMED ATIF aka SUBHI ABU-SITTAH, who is nominal chief of staff of the network and its brightest military brain. He comes from the Egyptian Jihad Islami IMAD MUGHNIYEH, the former Lebanese Hizballah hostage-taker and bomber, who is in charge of the combined terrorist campaign around the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Europe and Israel. On top of the 3,500 hard core commanders and 110,000 Afghan and Pakistani troops, Al Qaeda retains another 6400 commanders in 12 centers: North America, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Albania, Kosovo, Algeria, Chechenya, Tadjikistan and all the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, the Philippines, Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia. The numbers of Bin Laden can muster differs from place to place. In North America, together with his closest ally, the Egyptian Jihad Islami, some 2,500 hard core fighting men; in Yemen, where his family originated before migrating to Saudi Arabia – 2000 directly. But Bin Laden has a special relationship with the commanders of the 20,000-man strong irregular “Moslem Liberation Army, which hold a monopoly of the arms trade of the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and East Africa. Its reach sometimes goes as far as Iran. Bin Laden often serves as the MLA’s clearing bank and ready bankroll for arms deal. In Saudi Arabia, where the privileged and affluent Bin Laden clan lives, Osama commands some 200-250 hard-core commanders, but many more potential partisans among the disaffected tribes in the central and eastern provinces, especially the Nejd, as well as in the Saudi armed forces and national guard. An intensive Al Qaeda recruitment effort in those two Saudi forces could cause their collapse and drop in Bin Laden’s lap their arsenals, with some of the most sophisticated hardware in use today. According to conservative estimates, the millionaire-terrorist could most probably rally around the world roughly the same number of fighting men as those flocking to his flag in Afghanistan and Pakistan, namely an army of over 200,000 men. Many members of his overseas legions are available for both sustained and for one-time operations. In between, they simply go back to their normal pursuits and their homes in host countries. They are also available for terrorist operations on their home ground. Copyright © 2001 Debkafile. All Rights Reserved. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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