American forces 'at Afghan border' Richard Norton-Taylor Thursday September 27, 2001 The Guardian
Over 1,000 US airborne troops were reported yesterday to have been deployed to Uzbekistan and Tajikstan in preparation for a ground operation against Osama bin Laden's bases and Taliban forces in neighbouring Afghanistan. A force of 1,500 troops was said to have arrived in the two former Soviet states, with 8,000 US marines also being deployed in the region from ships in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The unconfirmed reports came as the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ignored evidence of a military build-up by making a defiant statement yesterday. "There is less possibility of an American attack," he said. "America has no reason, justification or evidence _ Therefore [Afghans] who have been displaced are instructed to return to their original place of residence." It is widely assumed that airborne troops could be dropped into Afghanistan to capture and hold key air bases following missile strikes. Bases that have been used by Bin Laden would also be targeted. Yesterday the full extent of Bin Laden's bases and al-Qaida support network in Afghanistan were reported by Reuters in what it called a Russian memorandum sent to the UN security council. It said Bin Laden had at least 55 bases in the country, and recruits including Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens, and Filipinos. In addition to his own supporters, about 3,500 fundamentalist Pakistanis were in the country as well as Pakistani soldiers and diplomats working as advisers to the Taliban, according to the report. The memo, dated March 9 2001, said most of Bin Laden's facilities were in or around the main cities of the capital Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sherif. Most were at former Afghan army bases, on large former farms and in mountain caves. About 150 men are based in Bagh-i-Bala, the hilltop restaurant that was once Kabul's most fashionable dining spot. A cover note from Moscow's UN delegation said the memo responded to a 1999 Security Council appeal for information "on bases and training camps of international terrorists in Afghanistan" and on foreign advisers to the Taliban. It named 31 Pakistanis, from generals to diplomats, it said were working as advisers in Afghanistan. The memo said the focus of Bin Laden's forces is at the former headquarters of the Afghan army's 7th Division at Rishkhor, where 7,000 fighters, including 150 Arabs, as well as a Pakistani army regiment are based. A nearby camp has instructors from Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. Further south in Charasyab, at a former base for the anti-Soviet mojahideen, troops included 50 Filipinos and 40 Uighurs from the mainly Muslim Xinjiang region in China. The memo reported that at least 2,560 Chechens were serving or training with the Bin Laden network. Czechs and Bulgarians were reported to be active at a base in Logar province south of Kabul. Kandahar, the southern city which is the Taliban's spiritual centre, was mentioned six times in the report, but without any major military installations. Around Jalalabad, Bin Laden units were based in two large Soviet-built state farms and at former army posts close to the Pakistani frontier. The memo said six Pakistanis had senior posts in the Taliban military. It said a Pakistani Awacs reconnaissance plane, of the type originally provided by the US to monitor Soviet and Afghan air activity during the war in the 1980s, was based at Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan to survey the borders with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The memo did not reveal the source of the information. Moscow had close ties with the Afghan Khad intelligence service during the 1979-1989 Soviet war and trained thousands of Afghan leftists at Soviet universities at that time. ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ---- Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ---- In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
