"Osama El Far, an aircraft mechanic, is one of hundreds of Arabs and other foreigners detained in US jails at a time when the American public seems to have turned a blind eye to the once-volatile issue of race-based law enforcement. Black leaders for whom racial profiling, police action based on race and suspicion rather than evidence or probable cause, was a top issue have had little to say about foreigners snared in the racially defined dragnet tossed out after the attacks on New York and Washington. A Gallup poll released on Thursday by CNN and USA Today found that more than one in four Americans thought President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft had not gone far enough in restricting civil liberties to fight terrorism," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Attorney-General John Ashcroft is looking into relaxing restrictions on the FBI’s ability to spy on religious and political groups in the United States, the New York Times reported yesterday, citing as their source senior government officials," reported the AFP news sevice.
The US-led coalition against terrorism was under fire on Friday for ruling out an inquiry into the killing of hundreds of Taliban prisoners in northern Afghanistan this week. Amnesty International said, "Serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law may have been committed during the suppression of the armed Taliban uprising at a prison fortress in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif". But British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ruled out an inquiry despite calls for an investigation.
"Malaysia, which has reportedly been listed among countries targeted for Washington’s next assault, may not necessarily face military action. The US Embassy here said anti-terrorist efforts between Washington and these governments focused mainly on diplomatic measures, information sharing as well as political and economic co-operation. The US efforts at working closely with various governments around the world to curb terrorism would not necessarily involve military measures, embassy press officer Frank Whittaker said. He was commenting on a report in The Times of London on Monday that Malaysia was one of the countries targeted for Washington’s next assault against al-Qaeda terrorists. The report, among others, said: 'Scores of American intelligence and military agents have been deployed covertly across Asia and Africa to prepare the ground for Washington’s next assault against al-Qaeda terrorists'. Officials from the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and State Department have begun to lay ground for future actions in at least seven countries. Besides Malaysia, the other countries were reported to include the Philippines, Indonesia, Yemen, Somalia and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia," reported The Star newspaper of Malaysia.
"Kabul University flung open its doors to women for the first time in five years yesterday, doing away with the ban on female students imposed by the Taliban when they swept to power in 1996. Dozens of women flocked to the university campus in the west of Kabul to register for classes," reported the AFP news service.
"Talks on Afghanistan’s political future moved into a decisive phase yesterday after the Northern Alliance in Kabul said it was prepared to transfer power to a UN-backed interim council and allow an international security force, clearing the way for an agreement," reported the Associated Press news agency.
A coalition bombing raid in eastern Afghanistan yesterday destroyed a village and killed between 100 and 200 civilians, witnesses and survivors said. "Warplanes made four passes over Kama Ado village, 50km south of here, and dropped more than 25 bombs," said Lalgul, a 33-year-old farmer who claimed he witnessed the attack from a neighbouring village and helped rescue four survivors. Lalgul and other witnesses said all 30 mud brick and wooden homes in the mountain village were flattened.
US Vice President Dick Cheney said this week that, "Osama was probably in the cave-riddled Tora Bora area south of Jalalabad, where the Saudi-born militant is reputed to have built a fortified complex deep underground".
"Hamid Karzai said Mullah Omar, still believed to be holed up in the Kandahar area, had told his aides to buy seven camels, apparently in case he needs to flee across the desert, and was using a bicycle or motorcycle to move around to avoid detection from the air," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Some 150 workers in Washington D.C. engaged in the painstaking process of fumigating a US Senate office building with toxic chlorine dioxide gas, hoping to eliminate all traces of anthrax following recent bio-terror attacks," reported the AFP news service.
"The United States has asked Britain to help prepare military strikes against Somalia in the next phase of the global campaign against terrorism. US President George W. Bush indicated last week that Somalia, Yemen and Sudan were likely to be the next targets in the war on terrorism because of their links to al-Qaeda, the network of prime terror suspect Osama bin Laden, according to Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
"A handpicked group of British Special Forces operatives stormed one of suspected terror chief Osama bin Laden's mountain strongholds missing him by just two hours. Four soldiers from the elite Special Air Service (SAS) were wounded in a fierce battle in the caves of the Hada Mountains, southeast of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar," The Mail newspaper of Britain said yesterday.
"A white, US-born Taliban fighter, John Walker, was among the few Northern Alliance prisoners to survive the bloody uprising at a prison outside Mazar-e-Sharif," Newsweek magazine reports in this weeks edition. A Newsweek reporter who interviewed the fighter wrote that, "he was not a naturalised citizen or disaffected Arab-American, but rather a white, educated-sounding, apparently middle-class American."
The US-led military coalition mustered for Afghanistan is fraught with ambiguity,with the Americans single-mindedly pursuing Osama bin Laden and their allies more concerned with peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. "There is no military coalition against terrorism in Afghanistan, it is an illusion," said a Western diplomatic source here. "As always, the Americans look only at their short-term interests. They (the Americans) don’t have a good understanding of the Afghan problem although they have been involved in this country for 20 years."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday declared, "war on terror" and said, "Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was directly responsible for the attacks on Israel’s citizens." Sharon said, "Israel would act with all the means at its disposal." He spoke in a televised address just before a Cabinet meeting was to decide on further reprisal for a series of suicide attacks and shootings by Palestinian militants that killed 26 people in Israel since Saturday.
"Palestinian security forces have jailed more than 100 militants amid massive pressure on Yasser Arafat to crack down on extremists or run the risk of a huge military response from Israel, security officials said yesterday. Officials said at least 77 members of the radical militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which refuse any ceasefire with Israel, had been arrested in the West Bank alone since Sunday. Another 35 had been jailed in the Gaza Strip," reported the AFP news service.
"Israeli missiles slammed into Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s helicopter compound near his headquarters in the Gaza Strip yesterday in response to the most devastating wave of Palestinian suicide attacks in years. Witnesses said the helicopter missile strike wrecked three of Arafat’s helicopters and damaged a hangar on the coast of densely populated Gaza City at around 4:30pm. People fled the packed streets in panic as columns of smoke rose into the air. Seventeen people were taken to hospital, and dozens of others suffered shock and trauma from the blast, medical officials said." reported the AFP news service.
"Israel launched massive air raids across the West Bank and Gaza City yesterday, piling pressure on Yasser Arafat with a rocket strike on a police post next to his offices, after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon branded his administration a 'sponsor of terrorism'. Israeli F-16 war planes launched a series of air strikes on Gaza City, while Apache helicopters fired rockets on Palestinian security offices in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip and on the towns of Salfit and Tulkarem in the West Bank, as well as Ramallah where Arafat has his offices. Two people were killed in the Gaza strikes and some 120 injured, half of them schoolboys, Palestinian security and hospital officials said. Yassar Arafat, who was in his office in Ramallah, was not injured in the missile attack on the security post just metres from his West Bank headquarters," reported the AFP news service.
"Israeli army spokesman Brig-Gen Ron Kitrey said Arafat was not targeted in the attack on the police post next to his offices. The attacks came as Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he did not believe Israeli forces would take direct action against the Palestinian leader. The strikes also came a day after Sharon, furious that Arafat had not stopped hardline Islamic groups who killed more than two dozen Israelis in devastating suicide attacks at the weekend, ordered his forces to blast symbols of his power. Gunships destroyed Arafat’s three personal helicopters in Gaza City while bulldozers ploughed up the runway at the Palestinian international airport. Palestinian leaders called Sharon’s campaign an attempt to topple Arafat and destroy his Palestinian Authority," reported the AfP news servivce.
Yassar Arafat himself told CNN television that Sharon was trying to torpedo his own crackdown on terrorism with the air strikes. 'He doesn’t want me to succeed, and for this he is escalating his military activities against our towns, our cities, our establishments. Sharon wants to destroy the peace process and then to destroy everything else. He thinks that by targeting the palestinian authority and its leader he will solve the problem, but he is mistaken."
"Sharon’s hard words and air strikes opened major divisions in his cross-party government, with left-wing Peres denouncing what he called a bid during Monday’s emergency Cabinet meeting 'to cause the downfall of the Palestinian Authority'. The region had been bracing for a huge Israeli retaliation after three Palestinian suicide bombers from the hardline Islamic movement Hamas killed 25 Israelis at the weekend in two attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa. Sharon made a national address after blasting Gaza City and Jenin in the West Bank on Monday, accusing Arafat of having 'chosen the path of terrorism,' and being 'the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East,'" reported the AFP news service.
"Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, speaking after Sharon’s speech on Monday evening, said the words amounted to a 'declaration of war'. He called on the United States and Europe to rein in the furious Sharon and dispatch international observers to oversee the spiralling conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives. Washington last week sent a special envoy to the region but the violence has only intensified since retired general Anthony Zinni arrived to seek ways of establishing a lasting ceasefire," reported the AFP news service.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a deliberate effort in his address to equate Israel’s fight with the US war on terrorism, putting Arafat firmly in the camp of "sponsors of terrorism". "Just as the United States is conducting its war against international terror, using all its might against terror, so will we. This struggle will not be an easy one; this struggle will not be short, but we will be victorious." Israel dismissed Arafat’s round-up of more than 100 Islamic militants after the suicide bombings as a show for the world media which did not net any of what Israel calls 'ticking bomb' suspects. Washington urged Arafat to do more, and appeared to largely endorse the strikes, launched almost as soon as Sharon rushed back from a meeting with President George W. Bush, saying "Israel had the right to defend itself.
"Afghan militia forces have launched a major operation to encircle the Tora Bora mountain lair of Osama bin Laden after US warplanes wounded his deputy and killed his financial manager, a military commander said yesterday. Haji Mohammad Zaman, military chief of eastern Nangarhar province, claimed that Osama, wanted for the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, was still alive and hiding in Tora Bora, a remote and rugged area of eastern Afghanistan. In the south of the country, meanwhile, anti-Taliban forces have been held back in their quest to capture Kandahar airport after encountering heavy resistance from the Taliban, sources said. Zaman said Osama’s financial manager, Ali Mahmud, was killed and Ayman al-Zawahiri, considered Osama’s deputy, was injured on Monday in US airstrikes near the mountain fortress. Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician known as 'The Doctor' who founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was said to be the number two man in Osama’s al-Qaeda network. Some have also called him Osama’s mentor and the real brains in the movement," reported the AFP news service.
"Rival Afghan factions struck a breakthrough deal yesterday on a UN blueprint for a new broad-based interim government for their war-battered land but are still haggling over Cabinet posts. After a week of gruelling talks in a top-security hotel outside here, and with many delegates observing the daylight Ramadan fast, the four Afghan groups finally backed an accord to establish a power-sharing government," reported the Reuters news service.
"Announcing a terrorist alert during the holiday season, the Bush administration is urging Americans to be extra vigilant amid an increase in 'credible threats'. The FBI put 18,000 law enforcement agencies 'on the highest alert' on Monday because of threats culled from intelligence sources across the globe, said Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. The intelligence does not point to a specific target or type of attack either in America or abroad. It would be so much easier, admittedly, if there were a little more specifics we could refer to, but there are not, said Ridge," reported the Associated Press news agency.
"Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun tribal chief chosen to head the post-Taliban administration in Afghanistan, is unusually qualified to shoulder the huge task of trying to lead his war-torn country back to normal life. A mix of traditional ties and modern experience meant he won the support of delegates at UN-sponsored talks here even though he was absent, away with his tribesmen preparing for a final assault on Taliban-held Kandahar in southern Afghanistan," reported the reuters news agency.
"Two US special forces soldiers were killed and 20 injured yesterday along with an unknown number of anti-Taliban forces in a mistaken strike by an American B-52 bomber north of Kandahar in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said.," reported Reuters
US President George W. Bush said on Tuesday US troops might be used to carry out strikes outside Afghanistan as part of the administration’s expanding war against terrorism. "Strikes will be incredibly important, and there may be a need to use military troops elsewhere," President Bush said in an interview for the ABC News programme 20/20 that aired yesterday. Asked if he wanted Osama dead or alive, Bush said: "I don’t care."
"Detained Filipino Muslim leader Nur Misuari should be added to the US list of suspected international terrorists who pose a threat to American interests, President Gloria Arroyo said yesterday," reported the AFP news service.
A senior Indian minister said a man arrested on suspicion of being linked with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network confessed to plans to carry out suicide attacks in Britain, Australia and India after Sept 11. "We arrested this person about a month ago in Bombay and he made some very shocking confessions," Home (Interior) Minister L.K. Advani told a meeting of business and industry leaders here yesterday, reported the Reuters news agency.
"Four Afghan factions signed a pact yesterday to create a new administration headed by an anti-Taliban battlefield commander, concluding a historic agreement aimed at restoring peace and stability to the war-ravaged nation. Hamid Karzai, a moderate Muslim whose fighters are part of the push to oust the Taliban from their last stronghold in Kandahar, was chosen to head the interim administration to replace Taliban rule after the Northern Alliance won control of most of the country," reported the Associated Press news agency.
"US Marine trucks armed with anti-tank weapons tore into the desert from a Marine base in southern Afghanistan yesterday to chase down an 'unidentified vehicle' which turned out to be a camel." reported the Reuters news agency.
"Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who had urged his men to die rather than surrender, agreed yesterday to give up his last stronghold. The announcement came after negotiations between the Taliban and Hamid Karzai, the tribal leader named to head a new Afghan government, and followed relentless US bombing in and around Kandahar, once the site of a fort built by Alexander the Great. As part of the agreement, Omar’s life would be saved, a Taliban spokesman said. The White House said it opposed any amnesty and wanted Mullah Omar brought to justice," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Afghanistan’s precarious power-sharing deal began to fray almost as soon as it began yesterday. Two powerful anti-Taliban leaders spoke out against the agreement, with one saying he would boycott the new Afghan government. Ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose forces dominate a swathe of northern territory including the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said that his mainly Uzbek Junbish-e-Milli faction was not fairly represented under the accord signed in Bonn on Wednesday. 'We are very sad,' Abdul Rashid said by satellite phone from the north. 'We announce our boycott of this government and will not go to Kabul until there is a proper government in place'," reported the Reuters news agency.
"A London-based Egyptian Islamic activist denied in an interview published yesterday that a key aide to chief terror suspect Ayman al-Zawahri was a casualty in Afghanistan. But Hani al-Siba, director of the Maqurizi centre for historical studies, told the London-published Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat that Zawahri’s wife Azza, his son Mohamed and two daughters Khadiga and Nabila, had been killed in a US air raid on Kandahar," reported the AFP news service.
President George W. Bush and top Pentagon aides on Wednesday wrestled with the fate of a US citizen who signed up to fight for the Taliban, unsure how to handle the case of a man many Americans consider a traitor. John Walker Lindh, 20, was handed over to US forces in northern Afghanistan after emerging on Saturday from a week of fierce fighting between Taliban prisoners and Northern Alliance forces at a prison fortress near the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. But the US tabloid The New York Post, which often issues scathing right-wing commentaries, made its feelings clear about Walker’s fate. "He is a rat," the paper’s top headline read on Wednesday. And one of the paper’s columnists began her commentary: "Why is it so hard for our leaders to call the snake who is John Walker what he so obviously is,a despicable traitor?"
"The US government is violating the Constitution and federal law by withholding basic information about some 1,000 people picked up by police since the terror attacks, the first lawsuit challenging government actions in the detentions alleged on Wednesday," reported the Associated Press news agency.
"Muslims from northwest China fighting with the Taliban have been captured in Afghanistan but the United States will not hand them over to Beijing because they are not deemed terrorists, a senior US official said yesterday," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Clayton Lee Waagner, one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives and the prime suspect in mailing hoax anthrax letters to women’s health clinics, was arrested in the Cincinnati area, US law enforcement officials said on Wednesday. They said Waagner, who claimed responsibility for sending more than 280 letters purporting to contain the potentially deadly bacterium to East Coast clinics that perform abortions, was taken into custody by local law enforcement authorities," reported the Reuters news agency.
"The emotional strain caused by the Sept 11 attacks and threats of bio-terrorism has led more Americans to seek treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, according to a study released on Wednesday. The study was done by the National Centre of Addiction and Substance Abuse,' according to the Reuters news agency.
"US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave then Indonesian strongman Suharto the green light for the 1975 invasion of East Timor that left perhaps 200,000 dead, according to previously secret documents made available yesterday," reported the Reuters news agency.
"At least 16 US soldiers landed in the southern Philippines yesterday, as local troops battled extremists holding two American missionaries 20km away. It was unclear why the Americans were dispatched amid an ongoing clash with Abu Sayyaf rebels that left at least three guerillas dead and one captured since it began around dawn," reported the Associated Press news agency.
"Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in remarks published yesterday he had little hope that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was interested in negotiating an end to 14 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence," reported the Reuters news agency.
"The United States said on Thursday that the rest of the world should pay the bulk of the billions of dollars needed to rebuild war-ravaged Afghanistan. There is every good reason in the world why the bulk of the resources ought o come from other countries. The United States had done the lion’s share of the work in the first stage of the campaign, by defeating the Taliban and targeting terror suspect Osama bin Laden," reported the AFP news agency.
"Israeli warplanes bombed the Palestinian Authority’s main police headquarters yesterday, wounding at least 18 people in fresh retaliation for deadly suicide attacks in the Jewish state," reported the Reuters news agency.
The Taliban was surrendering Kandahar, yesterday, its final bastion and birthplace, but America’s two most wanted men in Afghanistan appeared to have slipped away. A local news agency said black-turbaned fighters of the hardline Islamic movement handed in weapons to tribal chiefs, but supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had gone. US officials have warned Afghan opposition groups that American support would be cut off if they let Omar go free. "If you’re asking, would an arrangement with Omar, where he could, quote, ‘live in dignity’ in the Kandahar area or some place in Afghanistan, the answer is no," U.S. Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. "If Omar is not killed in the fighting, the United States would strongly prefer that he be captured and handed over to the Americans," Rumsfeld said.
"The US navy is actively seeking as many as 23 merchant ships owned or controlled by the al-Qaeda organisation, blamed by the United States for the deadly Sept 11 suicide attacks," ABC News reported on Thursday.
"The UN’s senior peacekeeping official said yesterday he wanted a multinational force to begin deploying in Afghanistan by Dec 22, when the country’s interim government takes power. Jean-Marie Guehenno said that it was important that the force, which would act as a stabilising influence under UN authority, was put in place as soon as possible. He suggested it operate along the lines of the Australian-led force sent to East Timor under UN mandate in 1999," reported the AFP news service.
