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Ventura County Star To print this page, select File then Print from your browser URL: http://www.insidevc.com/vcs/international/article/0,1375,VCS_124_1443615,00.html Afghan foes join to plot U.S. troop attacks Al-Qaida, Iran aid suicide bombing plans, leader says By Kathy Gannon, The Associated Press September 27, 2002 PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Taliban fugitives and Afghan fighters loyal to a former foe have allied and are getting arms and money from al-Qaida and Iran for planned suicide attacks on American troops in Afghanistan, one of their leaders says. The new alliance is said to be based in eastern Afghanistan and involves men led by several former high Taliban officials and fighters of Hezb-e-Islami, a group headed by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar's force was one of the U.S.-aided guerrilla armies that fought the Soviets in the 1980s. He fled to Iran in 1996 after his group was defeated by the Taliban, but has been seeking to incite a "holy war" against American forces in Afghanistan. The new alliance is known as Lashkar Fedayan-e-Islami, or Islamic Martyrs Brigade, a Hekmatyar military commander, Salauddin Safi, told The Associated Press at a secret meeting Wednesday in this frontier city. "There will be suicide attacks, ambushes by suicide attackers and bomb blasts against soldiers as they are moving from place to place and when they go out and disperse into smaller numbers, like in searches," he said. The threat comes against a backdrop of unsolved bombings in Afghan cities; there already have been sporadic attacks on U.S. military posts and on American troops patrolling the countryside. Safi said the alliance plans to attack only American military targets. He said the group had nothing to do with a Sept. 5 car bombing that killed 30 people and wounded more than 150 in Kabul, the capital. Western intelligence sources confirmed there is an alliance between the Taliban and Hekmatyar. They also said they believe the alliance is receiving money from a variety of sources, including the al-Qaida terror network and Iran. However, neither Western nor Pakistani intelligence sources could confirm the existence of the new group or the formation of suicide bombing squads. Safi wouldn't give any specifics about the types of weapons or amounts of money. Washington previously accused Iran of trying to destabilize Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government by sending Iranian commandos to Afghanistan to incite tribal feuding and by supplying arms and money to foes of his U.S.-backed government. Another Hezb-e-Islami loyalist, who identified himself only as Abdullah, told AP in a separate interview that Khalil Saeed Deek, a Palestinian-American banished from Jordan last year on suspicion of links to Osama bin Laden, had brought money into Pakistan for Hezb-e-Islami. Abdullah said Deek, who was extradited from Pakistan to Jordan in December 1999, is living in Pakistan under the protection of Hezb-e-Islami. Hekmatyar, who lived in Iran during the Taliban's six-year rule, was forced to leave by the Iranian government earlier this year after Washington demanded his expulsion. "But the request for him to go was friendly. Still he travels back and forth between Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan and Iran," said Safi. After Afghanistan's Soviet-backed Marxist regime was defeated in the early 1990s, Hekmatyar and leaders of other Afghan factions plunged into a ruinous civil war that eventually provoked the rise of the Taliban religious army. "The situation is not like it was before -- now we are united," Safi said. He said Hezb-e-Islami commanders in Afghanistan's northeastern Kunar province forged the alliance with three top men in the ousted Taliban regime. The alliance is strong in eastern Afghanistan, which includes Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces, he said. Hekmatyar has been circulating clandestine newsletters and audiotapes calling for jihad against American forces, and Safi brought out a new message. The one-page letter in the Pashtu language announced the formation of the Martyrs Brigade and it warned Afghans living near U.S. military bases to "leave immediately lest you face any problem because we are going to start our struggle very soon against them." At a U.S. military base called Camp Salerno in southeastern Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Martin Schweitzer said they were aware of Hekmatyar and the threat posed by his loyalists and the Taliban. "Bring it on," Schweitzer said. "We're more than ready to handle any of the threats that are out there." Copyright 2002, Ventura County Star. 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