Afghanistan News September 12, 2004

September 12, 2004

Two Killed in Afghan Protests Over Ousted Governor
Sat Sep 11, 4:10 PM ET By David Fox
KABUL (Reuters) - Two people were killed in clashes on Saturday between U.S. and Afghan forces and stone-throwing protesters angered by President Hamid Karzai effectively axing a regional governor, hospital officials and witnesses said.

Karzai, who has pledged to rein in regional warlords, chose the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States to launch his manifesto for an election on Oct. 9 -- the first direct presidential poll in Afghan history.

A statement from his office said Ismail Khan, powerful governor of the western city of Herat and long a thorn in Karzai's side, had been "promoted" to minister of mines and industry and a replacement named. Khan turned down the post.

A crowd gathered outside Khan's residence shouting "Death to America" and "Death to Karzai."

Later shots were fired after a convoy of U.S. and Afghan forces was pelted with stones, witnesses said.

Hospital officials, witnesses and police said two people were killed, four wounded and four arrested in the clashes.

A U.S. military spokeswoman said she had no information on the incident.

TROOPS STATIONED IN CITY
Herat residents said several hundred U.S.-led coalition troops and 400 newly trained Afghan police were stationed at key positions in the city, including the airport, and were disarming Khan's forces.

Khan, who earned the nickname "Lion of Herat" for his struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and had twice previously declined cabinet positions, rejected the ministerial post he was offered by Karzai.

"I am an employee of the government and consider accepting government orders as my duty," said the silver-bearded Khan.

"But as I am a military person, I do not see in my capacity the position (of mining minister) and so I do not accept. I apologize to the head of government and want to stay in my home."

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, a close confidant of Karzai, earlier said he had discouraged all concerned from any action that might threaten security.

Relations between Khan and Karzai have soured since the Herat strongman's son, Civil Aviation Minister Mirwais Sadi, was killed in a clash with government troops.
Herat has also been the scene of recent bitter fighting between forces loyal to Khan and an old rival, Amanullah Khan.

Ismail Khan is an ethnic Tajik, while Karzai and Amanullah are both Pashtuns, the traditional rulers of Afghanistan.

Karzai, named interim president in 2002 after a U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban as punishment for protecting Osama bin Laden 's al Qaeda, faces 17 rivals in the Oct. 9 vote.

THREATS AND TAUNTS
The run-up to the poll takes place amid renewed threats by the Taliban to step up an insurgency and taunts from al Qaeda that the 18,000-strong U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were "holed up in their trenches" and fighting a losing battle.

In his first speech since official campaigning began on Tuesday, Karzai told supporters he had no intention of forming a coalition government if, as expected, he won the election.

Karzai's speech to an audience of several hundred at the state television center contained little that had not been said before and focused on continuity and security.

But his rivals have also offered little new in the way of initiative in a slow start to the October poll and the election seems sure to be fought on personality rather than policy.

U.S. troops expect to be in Afghanistan for the long haul despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying, during a visit last year, that their role had moved from major combat.

"We have all seen that in Afghanistan the road to freedom can be a hard struggle," Major-General Eric Olson, operations commander of the U.S.-led force, told a ceremony marking Sept. 11 at the main U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul.

U.S. servicemen seemed committed to the task.

"I am proud to be part of it," said Major Andy Preston, a 25th Infantry Division ranger who was working in the Pentagon when the Sept. 11 attackers flew a plane into the building.

"It's an important time to remember those who were lost and why we are here. We have to prevent future ceremonies like this and future 9-11s."

Afghans marked the anniversary with mixed emotions.

Haji Abdul Razaq, a 50-year-old resident of Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border, said Washington had not fully succeeded.

"Sept. 11 paved the way for the ouster of the Taliban and brought some hope but there has been no improvement," he said.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in BAGRAM, Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL, Saeed Ali Achakzai in SPIN BOLDAK and Saeed Haqiqi in HERAT)

Afghan Leader Checks Rival on 9/11 Anniversary
Reuters 09/11/2004 By David Fox
KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai chose Saturday's third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States to launch his election manifesto and effectively dismiss a powerful governor just hours after pledging to rein in regional warlords.

Karzai, named interim president in 2002 after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban as punishment for protecting the alleged architects of the attacks, faces 17 rivals in the Oct. 9 vote -- the first direct presidential poll in Afghan history.

It comes amid renewed threats by the Taliban to step up their insurgency and taunts from Osama bin Laden 's al Qaeda network that the 18,000-strong U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were "holed up in their trenches" and fighting a losing battle.

In his first speech since official campaigning began on Tuesday, Karzai told supporters he had no intention of forming a coalition government if, as expected, he won the election.

Hours later, a statement from his office said Ismail Khan -- the powerful governor of western Herat city and long a thorn in Karzai's side -- had been "promoted" to minister of mines and industry and a replacement governor named.

Residents of Herat said a group of several hundred U.S.-led coalition troops and 400 newly trained Afghan police had been stationed at key positions in the city -- including the airport -- and were peacefully disarming Khan's forces.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, a close confidant of Karzai, said he had discouraged all concerned from any action that might threaten security.

THE "LION OF HERAT"
The silver-bearded Khan, who earned the nickname "Lion of Herat" for his struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and had twice previously declined cabinet positions, accepted his replacement but turned down the new post.

"I am an employee of the government and consider accepting government orders as my duty," Khan told Reuters.

"But as I am a military person, I do not see in my capacity the position (of mining minister) and so I do not accept. I apologize to the head of government and want to stay in my home."

Relations between Khan and Karzai have soured since the Herat strongman's son, Civil Aviation Minister Mirwais Sadi, was killed in a clash with government troops.

Herat has also been the scene of recent bitter fighting between forces loyal to Khan and an old rival, Amanullah Khan, who quickly welcomed the change of governor.

"Alas, this decision should have been taken two years ago, and had this decision been taken two years ago, a lot of blood would not have spilled," he told the Afghan Islamic Press agency.

Ismail Khan is an ethnic Tajik, while Karzai and Amanullah are both Pashtuns, the traditional rulers of Afghanistan.

Karzai's earlier speech -- to an audience of several hundred at the state television center -- contained little that hadn't been said before and focused on continuity and security.

But his rivals have also offered little new in the way of initiative in a slow start to the October poll and the election seems sure to be fought on personality rather than policy.

BUSH SEEKS ELECTION FILLIP
President Bush is hoping a peaceful Afghan election will offset negative publicity from Iraq and provide a fillip for his own re-election chances in November, but analysts said he could not yet claim Afghanistan as a success story.

"Unlike Iraq, the tragedy is that this could have been a success story and three years on it's not," said Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit think tank.

"It reminds us how important it is for the international community to engage for the long term and it's clear that three years on it has yet to do that."

U.S. troops expect to be in Afghanistan for the long haul despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying, during a visit last year, that their role had moved from major combat.

"We have all seen that in Afghanistan the road to freedom can be a hard struggle," Major-General Eric Olson, operations commander of the U.S.-led force, told a ceremony marking Sept. 11 at the main U.S. base at Bagram to the north of Kabul.

U.S. servicemen seemed committed to the task.

"I am proud to be part of it," said Major Andy Preston, a ranger with the 25th Infantry Division who was working in the Pentagon when hijackers flew a plane into the building.

"It's an important time to remember those who were lost and why we are here. We have to prevent future ceremonies like this and future 9-11s."

Afghans marked the anniversary with mixed emotions.

Haji Abdul Razaq, a 50-year-old resident of Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border, said Washington had not fully succeeded.

"Sept. 11 paved the way for the ouster of the Taliban and brought some hope but there has been no improvement," he said.

2 suspected Taliban remnants killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- Two suspected Taliban fighters were killed and an American soldier injured in two separate engagements over the last two days in south Afghanistan, a US military spokesman said Saturday.

"Coalition forces came in contact with enemy forces in Zabul province yesterday. They engaged the enemy killing two and capturing four others," a US military spokesman Scott Nelson told journalists here.

"A US soldier suffered shrapnel wounds in an attack in Uruzgan province Thursday night. The soldier was evacuated to Kandahar airfield and is in stable condition," added the spokesman.

During the fighting, the suspected Taliban operatives attacked with rocket-propelled grenade, small arms fire and machine guns.

Remnants of the former Taliban regime and their al-Qaeda allieshave intensified their activities over the last few months.

The suspected militias in their latest assault to disrupt the upcoming Oct. 9 presidential elections in the post-Taliban nation fired five rockets Thursday night to the capital city, injuring at least two civilians.

Zabul, Uruzgan and the adjoining restive provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the former stronghold of Taliban, have been the scene of increasing security incidents for last nine months during which over 300 civilians, rebels, Afghan and US troops have been killed.

Taliban Head Told U.S. Official Clinton Should Be Ousted
By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 11, 2004; Page A09
Two days after U.S. missiles struck Afghanistan in retaliation for al Qaeda's bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the head of that country's Taliban government told a State Department official that Congress should force then President Bill Clinton to resign "in order to rebuild U.S. popularity in the Islamic world," according to documents released yesterday.

The suggestion is contained in a newly declassified State Department cable recounting the first and only direct communication between the U.S. government and Mohammad Omar, the reclusive Taliban leader who was reaching out in the wake of the U.S. strikes on alleged al Qaeda facilities in his country and Sudan.

The cable was among more than a dozen Taliban-related documents released late yesterday by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act request and posted them on its Web site, www.nsarchive.org.

In the Aug. 22, 1998, telephone conversation with U.S. diplomat Michael E. Malinowski, Omar "parroted" many of the hard-line views of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who had been given sanctuary in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Omar said he "was aware of no evidence that bin Laden had engaged in or planned terrorist acts while on Afghan soil" and warned that the missile strikes "could spark more, not less, terrorist attacks," according to the cable.

Omar also offered a political suggestion to Malinowski, who then was head of the State Department's Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh desk. "He said that in order to rebuild U.S. popularity in the Islamic world and because of his current domestic political difficulties Congress should force President Clinton to resign," according to the cable.

Clinton at the time was the target of an investigation by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr in connection with the Monica S. Lewinsky affair and would soon face impeachment in the House. Some Republican leaders had openly suggested that Clinton had ordered the strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan to divert attention from his troubles, an allegation that the Sept. 11 commission recently declared an unfounded "slur."

Although the phone conversation had been described previously, the release of the Omar cable and others provides the most detailed accounting to date of U.S. efforts to pressure the Taliban into denying bin Laden safe haven. State Department spokesman Kurtis A. Cooper said the conversation with Malinowski is the only one that occurred between Omar and the U.S. government.

The other records released yesterday include a September 1998 cable recounting the comments of Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the Taliban envoy to the United Nations, who told a U.S. official that Omar "is the primary reason" that bin Laden continued to enjoy sanctuary in Afghanistan. The envoy was reported as saying that "80% of Taliban officials oppose this [sanctuary] policy."

Osama adds weight to Afghan resistance
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times (Hong Kong) September 11, 2004
CHAMAN, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border - Since the disintegration of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001, the Afghan resistance has endured, managing, if nothing else, to keep US-led occupying forces and the Afghan National Army engaged in small pockets.

But much bigger things are planned.

The Taliban are commanded from within Afghanistan by the likes of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Mullah Dadullah and Saifullah Mansoor. And significantly, according to Asia Times Online research, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, along with other senior al-Qaeda figures, are no longer in Pakistan but orchestrating the Afghan resistance from within Afghanistan, remote from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It was not exactly "politicking" when Pakistani officials claimed recently that they were close to finding "high-value targets" in the country. Under US pressure, efforts have intensified over the past few months to reel in such people. The most recent operation took place near Shawal, in an area called the Bush Mountains. (This is technically Pakistani territory, although the border is fluid at best. And "Bush" has no US connotations, the mountains have been named so for many years.)

Last Sunday a Pakistan army convoy, along with several gunship helicopters, besieged the residence of the chief of the Shawal tribes, Zarma Jan, who assured the officers of his full cooperation. Contingents of the Pakistani military and paramilitary troops combed the areas of Mangaroti, Darey Nishtar and the Bush Mountains, on land and from the air. After 11 hours, though, they could not find a single foreign militant.

According to sources in the Taliban who spoke to Asia Times Online, the operation came too late - foreign militants and high-value targets had already left for Afghanistan.

Enter one Mullah Mehmood Haq Yar. He was sent by Mullah Omar to northern Iraq to train Ansarul Islam fighters before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Ansarul Islam is a Pakistani militant group. Mehmood returned to Afghanistan only a few months ago and was inducted into a special council of commanders formed by Mullah Omar and assigned the task of shepherding all foreign fighters and high-value targets from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan.

The Taliban sources obviously would not disclose where Mehmood's charges have been taken, but reading between the lines they could be in Paktia province in the care of legendary mujahideen commanders Mansoor and Haqqani.

Mansoor is the son of Nasrullah Mansoor, one of the most respected Afghan guerrilla leaders from the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, who terrorized Soviet troops around Gardez. Saifullah Mansoor's reputation as a chip off the old block was cemented when in April 2002 he led a raid in which 18 US soldiers were killed in a guerrilla attack at Shahi Kot in the Zarmat area.

Haqqani also earned his reputation fighting the Soviets, and defeated Afghan communist forces in 1991 in Khost, the first Afghan city to fall to the mujahideen after the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989.

Neither Mansoor nor Haqqani left Afghanistan - unlike other commanders who sought exile in the chaotic period leading up to and after the Taliban takeover in 1996 - and maintained their field forces. Haqqani's "playground" is Khost and Paktia, but Mullah Omar has empowered him to help devise a military strategy for the whole of Afghanistan.

The latest strategy

Since his return from Iraq, Mehmood has convinced the Taliban leaders that they need to adapt their strategy to take into account limited human and material resources. At present, the Taliban face manifold problems. In particular, they cannot conduct a widespread, coordinated guerrilla movement as their communications have been crippled - all telecommunications are closely monitored by the US.

Mehmood's blueprint includes:

-- Recruit highly trained Arab fighters and give them a lead role, as in the jihad against the Soviets.

-- Arab fighters are particularly adept at developing improvised weapons. During the US invasion, for example, Arab fighters were able to turn unexploded cluster bombs into effective improvised weapons. Such tactics will be adopted to the full.

-- Arab fighters, especially those fluent in Pashtu, will be spread in key Afghan cities, such as Jalalabad, Khost, Kunar, Logar, Herat and Kabul, where they will infiltrate the population and administrations and spread the Taliban word.

-- Once these few hundred Arab fighters, along with Afghan counterparts, establish themselves, they will target US forces in their region.

-- The movement of US forces is already restricted because of their commitment to providing security for the October 9 presidential elections. But if they do conduct operations, two things will happen: the election process will become vulnerable as resources will be stretched, and the militants will carry out limited retaliation against US-led forces that venture out against them.

In addition to this, Haqqani and Dadullah will keep up the heat from the outskirts of major cities.

Mehmood's strategy is aimed specifically at destroying administrative systems in key cities and disrupting routine life. As this tactic takes hold, the Taliban will step into the vacuum and expand the war front.

At present, Afghan and Arab fighters fully committed to the resistance number only a few thousand. It is believed, though, that once the spade work is completed, the vast silent majority of the Taliban will rise up, especially from the madrassas (seminaries) of Quetta and Chaman in Pakistan, to join hands with the Taliban in Afghanistan, as they have done in the past,.

On the three-and-a-half-hour journey from Quetta to Chaman in Balochistan province on the Afghan border, one can see dozens of new madrassas built in the past few years, in addition to others that have been expanded to take more students.

And if graffiti are any indication, support for the Taliban and bin Laden is widespread. Many walls sport fresh markings, such as "Amirul Momeneen" (leader of the faithful - Mullah Omar), "Ameerul Mujahideen Osama bin Laden" (commander of the faithful), "Long live the Taliban movement" and "Long live al-Qaeda". This type of graffiti never existed when this correspondent traveled on the same route about a year ago.

Most roadside shops play pro-Taliban Afghan national "songs" (without the music) on tape recorders. Some even have music - songs by Abdullah Makai, a famous Afghan singer, are available, such as "O Kabul, your princes are now beggars in Karachi", and a co-singer (female) adds a curse on those who cut their long beards for US dollars.

From Chaman to Kandahar in Afghanistan, products bearing bin Laden's face are guaranteed to sell well.

"The situation is going from bad to worse," says Malik Nabi, district president, Chaman, of the anti-Taliban Pashtunkho Mili Awami Party. "The numbers of Taliban and their supporters are increasing with every passing day. You take a ride to Chaman and you will find black and white turbans everywhere, a sort of propaganda tactic to show their strength. Just go to a football stadium in the evening and you will find hundreds of black turbans, a hallmark of the Taliban," Malik Nabi adds.

Nowadays, as far as the Taliban are concerned, there are two types of Taliban: those who are on the frontline battlefields, and those who are waiting for a call to become cannon fodder once the word goes out for a mass mobilization.

As far as al-Qaeda is concerned, a new, dispersed, generation of cells are involved in plotting attacks worldwide.

The "old" brigade, meanwhile, including bin Laden and Zawahiri, are concentrating their efforts on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Syed Saleem Shahzadis bureau chief, Pakistan, Asia Times Online.

Afghans Mark 9/11 Anniversary with Mixed Feelings
Sat Sep 11, 7:26 AM ET By David Brunnstrom
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan remembered the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in somber fashion Saturday, conscious that the war on terror will be a long one.

It is more than a year since Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on a visit to Afghanistan that U.S. forces had moved from major combat to stabilization and reconstruction.

Since then, the Taliban insurgency has picked up rather than slowed, with more than a 1,000 people killed in militant-related violence in the past year. Soldiers with the 18,000-strong U.S.-led force on the ground expect no quick victory.

"We have all seen that in Afghanistan the road to freedom can be a hard struggle," Major-General Eric Olson, operations commander of the U.S.-led force, told a Sept. 11 commemoration at the main U.S. base at Bagram to the north of Kabul.

The sprawling Bagram base was developed by the Soviet Union in the 1980s during its doomed 10-year occupation of the country.

The ceremony was attended by around 200 U.S. soldiers and representatives of allied forces involved in the pursuit of Taliban, al Qaeda and other militants in Afghanistan.

They saw video footage of the attacks on the World Trade center and the Pentagon and heard speeches extolling the virtues of honor, courage, freedom, sacrifice and faith, before a concluding chorus of "God Bless America."

U.S. servicemen seemed committed to the task.

"I am proud to be part of it," said Major Andy Preston, a ranger with the 25th Infantry Division who was working in the Pentagon when hijackers flew a plane into the building.

"It's an important time to remember those who were lost and why we are here. We have to prevent future ceremonies like this and future 9-11s."

But the troops are under no illusions about the task ahead.

Command Sergeant Major Franklin Ashe, the senior enlisted soldier with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said they were making progress on all fronts and improving tactically every day.

"Nobody expected this to go fast," he said. "This is a global war and it's going to take many years to win."

"THREE YEARS NOT VERY LONG"
Asked how long, Ashe replied: "I couldn't begin to imagine. I don't think three years is very long, but I hope we get it right before the next generation of Americans and our coalition partners have to come here to fight."

Afghans marked the anniversary with mixed emotions -- some glad of the U.S.-led intervention that toppled the Taliban after Sept 11, but others deeply suspicious of Washington's intentions.

Three years on, the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the world's worst act of terror, are still unknown and his al Qaeda group and Taliban guerrillas taunt the United States from the rugged Afghan interior.

The Taliban have vowed to disrupt Afghanistan's first ever direct presidential elections to be held on Oct. 9 and boast of attacks that have U.S. forces pinned down in their bases.

Taliban official Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rehmani repeated its line that Sept. 11 was a pretext for invasion and that Washington had not proved it was the work of al Qaeda.

"America has proved it is a terrorist by killing thousands of Afghans through barbaric bombing. Even if Taliban government had sent Osama bin Laden out of the country the Americans would still have attacked Afghanistan," he told Reuters.

Haji Abdul Razaq, a 50-year-old resident of Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border, said Washington had not fully succeeded.

"Sept. 11 paved the way for the ouster of the Taliban and brought some hope but there has been no improvement."

President Bush is hoping a peaceful Afghan election will offset negative publicity from Iraq and provide a fillip for his own re-election chances in November, but analysts said he could not claim Afghanistan as a success story.

"Unlike Iraq, the tragedy is that this could have been a success story and three years on it's not," said Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit think tank.

"It reminds us how important it is for the international community to engage for the long term and it's clear that three years on it has yet to do that."

US marks three years since 9/11
Saturday, 11 September BBC News
America is marking the third anniversary of 9/11 with a solemn public reading of victims' names in New York and ceremonies across the nation.

Relatives of the 2,749 people killed in the New York attacks have gathered at Ground Zero along with dignitaries.

The moment of impact of both hijacked airliners and the fall of each of the Twin Towers will be marked by silences.

A wreath is being laid at the Pentagon in Washington and bells will be rung in Pennsylvania to mark two other attacks.

Nineteen al-Qaeda Islamist militants hijacked four US domestic airliners on 11 September 2001. They flew two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed short of its target.

"Every day is hard but this day is a little bit harder," Nancy Brandemarti, whose son Nicky was killed at the age of 21, told the Associated Press.

"This day is just a day to think about him."

Mrs Brandemarti is due to read out a poem for Nicky at Ground Zero.

Tradition

Church bells could be heard tolling in the distance in New York before silence fell at 0846 (1246GMT) - the exact time the first plane struck one of the Twin Towers.

At Ground Zero, the site of the fallen towers, the moment was marked by silence. Three other moments of silence are being observed - at 0903, 0959 and 1029 - reflecting the second impact and the fall of the skyscrapers.

In what has become an anniversary tradition, the names of the victims will be read out - this year, by parents and grandparents of the dead.

Last year it was children who recited the names.

Families will be allowed to walk down into the towers' "footprints", ground once combed for the tiniest fragments of human remains. The remains of about 40% of the New York victims have still not been identified.

At sundown, light beams representing the towers will be projected into the sky and remain on through the night.

At the Pentagon in Washington, where 184 people died, officials - including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - and relatives will lay a wreath and observe a minute's silence.

In Pennsylvania, where the fourth plane came down with the loss of 40 lives, bells will toll across the state.

At a ceremony on 4 July, the cornerstone of the future 541-metre (1,776-foot) Freedom Tower was laid on the Ground Zero site.

The skyscraper is due to be completed by 2009.

Why al-Qaeda is winning
THE ROVING EYE
By Pepe Escobar Asia Times (Hong Kong) September 11, 2004
Three years after September 11, President George W Bush's crusade is a failure. "War on terror" is a meaningless myth: you can't combat a supple attack machine like al-Qaeda with shock and awe. What should have been a long, meticulous police operation was turned by Bush - instigated by his foreign policy adviser, God - into an illegal, preemptive attack on a nation that had nothing to do with terror.

This policy has actually increased terror attacks around the world. Last year in Cairo, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Sheikh Yamani, a man who knows one or two things about Arabs, violence and oil, said the invasion would produce "one hundred bin Ladens". They are here, and they have no one else but Bush to thank.

Bush's mission from God

Bush's key perceived strength - apart from his dynastic family name and extra-profitable connections - is his carefully polished image of a strong, straight-shooting, tough-talking commander-in-chief during times of war.

It should be very easy for the slumbering John Kerry campaign to smash that armory. Before Iraq turned into a quagmire - before the 1,000th dead American soldier, the 7,000th wounded American soldier, the 14,000th or maybe even 22,000th dead Iraqi civilian - Bush kept insisting that Iraq was "the new front in the war on terror". Now Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are doing everything in their power not to make the connection - because a majority of Americans seem to view Bush as relatively strong on terror, but a failure in Iraq.

Two related facts are undisputable: more Americans are facing death and destruction in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was captured than before; and now there are increasingly more global terrorist attacks than when Bush proclaimed his "crusade", or "war on terror". The Bush administration always sold the war on Iraq as part of the "war on terror". Reminding Americans about it is to fully certify Bush's overall failure.

In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in New York, Bush said that "the government of a free Afghanistan is fighting terror; Pakistan is capturing terrorist leaders; Saudi Arabia is making raids and arrests; Libya is dismantling its weapons programs; the army of a free Iraq is fighting for freedom; and more than three-quarters of al-Qaeda's key members and associates have been detained or killed".

But consider this: Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar have not been "smoked out" or captured - "dead or alive", or otherwise - and most likely are still very much active in Afghanistan. And now al-Qaeda, in its delocalized mutation, is thriving around the world. There's nothing "free" about Afghanistan: the Taliban are back, controlling vast areas of the country, in the south and southeast, and the rest is controlled by warlords. In the Afghan presidential election next month, Hamid Karzai will be certified, at most, as the mayor of Kabul. In Pakistan, President General Pervez Musharraf - known as "Busharraf" - barely survives multiple assassination attempts as dictator-in-charge.

And there's nothing "free" about Iraq. Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani - who wants direct elections - and the militant Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr - who wants the end of the occupation now - are the most popular figures in the country. Former US asset turned American-imposed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi barely controls a few Baghdad neighborhoods. The 1,000th dead American soldier pales in comparison with the Bush administration losing the whole Sunni triangle to the Iraqi nationalist resistance. This loss is proof that the war is unwinnable. It also reduces the January 2005 Iraqi elections - if they ever happen - to a joke.

The bottom line: since Bush proclaimed his "crusade" or mission from God against terror, the United States, the Middle East and the world are immensely less safe.

Bush-Cheney '04 are afraid US voters will start making these connections as the November elections draw closer. For the apocalyptic Cheney - as on the campaign trail in Iowa - there's nothing left but the language of fear: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again." So this is how it works: If you vote Bush, al-Qaeda won't strike. If you vote Kerry, al-Qaeda will strike. Kerry, therefore, is a threat to the US. The problem is, bin Laden votes Bush. Here's why.

The al-Qaeda makeover

Al-Qaeda is more of a multi-headed hydra than ever: the "global" head plus the "local" heads. "Global" al-Qaeda includes groups of multinational operatives striking in the US (as in September 11) or in Western Europe (Madrid's train blasts). These are above all Arab-Afghans, remnants of the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. "Local" al-Qaeda on the other hand strike in their native countries against Western targets (for example in Casablanca, Bali and Istanbul): these are all part of the big al-Qaeda franchising.

The "historic" al-Qaeda is itself split in two: bin Laden's faithfuls, who have followed him since the Peshawar, Pakistan, days for more than two decades; and the new breed who "graduated" in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001. Many of bin Laden's faithful have been killed or captured - in essence by Pakistani, not US, forces: they include Mohammed Atef, Abu Zubayda, Suleiman Abu Graith and the alleged mastermind of September 11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

For a long time Western intelligence was prone to propagate the myth of al-Qaeda as a pre-September 11 organization with many heads, with sleeping cells occasionally galvanized into action. This is false. Al-Qaeda as a rule waits for no one - unless technical glitches occur, and these usually involve delays in recruitment, research, team-assembling and elaborate counter-security measures. The delays also prove that al-Qaeda is much less of a well-oiled organization than the Bush administration would like the world to believe.

Al-Qaeda subscribes to no political strategy, other than the strategy of total opportunism: as any kind of attack can happen any time, anywhere, it rules by fear - while at the same time demonstrating it is immune to any large-scale US war, from Afghanistan to Iraq. The rule-by-fear tactic also serves the Bush administration well, as fear is constantly used as a powerful political argument to justify the administration's policies ("Be afraid, be very much afraid, but you can count on us to protect you").

Unlike the Bush administration's spin, European intelligence experts in Brussels assured Asia Times Online that the Madrid bombing was only accidentally tied to Spain's national elections. It was not the case that "Spaniards had bowed to terror" (Washington's version), but that Bush ally Jose Maria Aznar's conservative government was mendacious enough to lie to the country, blaming Basque separatists when it already had evidence to the contrary.

The avant-garde brigades

The members of al-Qaeda's new elite were either born in Western Europe - many hold a legitimate European Union passport - or came to the West while still very young and then became radicalized. As Bush is a born-again Christian, they are sort of born-again Islamists. The most important fact is that this "return of the repressed" (Islam) is above all a political radicalization. The new breed's brand of political Islam is much more "political" than "Islam".

Very few of these new brigades come directly from Islamic countries. And their exile is one-way: they never come back to where their families come from. The classic itinerary was to sharpen the knives at a peripheral jihad - Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya - to become widely respected mujahideen, and then go back to Western Europe. They never went to fight in the Maghreb or in the Middle East - although the war in Iraq started to change this pattern.

In 1997, bin Laden obtained from his friend and admirer Mullah Omar monopoly control over the Arab-Afghan training camps in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Pakistanis and the Uzbeks maintained their own training camps. This means that every single jihadi who was not Pakistani or from Central Asia who went to Afghanistan between 1997 and 2001 was trained at an al-Qaeda camp.

Unlike the faithful, none of the new breed of Arab-Afghans is close to bin Laden. But they definitely inherited a legendary al-Qaeda esprit de corps. The best and the brightest were trained to come back to Western Europe, wait and then raise hell. But the majority stayed behind fighting alongside the Taliban: among these were the hundreds captured by the forces of commander Ahmad Shah Masoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, before he was assassinated exactly three years ago, on September 9 - al-Qaeda's "signal" for September 11.

The best and the brightest of this new al-Qaeda elite form the current backbone of bin Laden's organization - the people who have masterminded and carried out global attacks for the past two years. They remain a very tight bunch, although now thoroughly globalized; treason - and squealing - is out of the question; and most astonishingly, there's nothing to it of a secret society. They work as a band of brothers, sharing everything - apartments, bank accounts - even in the open. Al-Qaeda's joint chiefs, the command and control structure, the base cells and the complex networks, everything works like some family enterprise in northern Italy, based on personal relationships, be they nurtured in Afghanistan or in any other country. But then a complex process of deterritorialization sets in, and the virus spreads.

For al-Qaeda, this poses a tremendous problem. It's easy for Western intelligence (or for the Pakistanis, when they're up to it) to grab a bunch of operatives after identifying a single one of them - as with the recent arrests in Pakistan timed to coincide with the Democratic convention. And with no al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan anymore, there are no places left to meet: Chechnya is too dangerous, the tribal areas in the Pakistan-Afghan border are teeming with US troops, and the Shawal region that straddles Pakistan and Afghanistan is too remote and under constant satellite surveillance.

Brand recognition the name of the game

This is a key reason al-Qaeda mutated still further. To survive and prosper, it needed more converts, and it needed to strike an array of strategic alliances. An additional problem was that al-Qaeda was never a political movement: it is basically an attack machine. Jihad yes, always. But the local objectives involved could not be more disparate - from Chechens fighting Russian occupation to Iraqis fighting US occupation.

Franchising, anyway, worked wonders. As more people in more countries - and the Bush administration - started blaming al-Qaeda for any attack, the desired cumulative effect was the same: al-Qaeda is everywhere.

Local al-Qaeda alliances now include everybody and his neighbor: Jemaah Islamiya in Indonesia (the Bali bombing) and Southeast Asia; warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyr's jihadis in southeastern Afghanistan; the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (responsible for the Tashkent bombings in July); and perhaps even the mysterious, one-legged jack-of-all-trades, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, configured by the Bush administration as the new bin Laden in the Iraqi Sunni triangle.

Old-style al-Qaeda might well be pulverized by the Pentagon any time. But "al-Qaeda", the brand, lives, whatever the Bush administration spin. Zarqawi is the best example: he may not even be directly linked to bin Laden anymore, and he is now the sole boss of his own terrorist cottage industry.

Like a multinational product, "al-Qaeda" suits everybody. For President Vladimir Putin in Russia, Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan, even President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Philippines, "al-Qaeda" is the ideal excuse for any repressive or inept regime presenting its credentials as a full-fledged member of the "war on terror". For al-Qaeda's purposes, bin Laden remaining the supreme evil is an invaluable propaganda coup. And for al-Qaeda franchises - free to pursue their own initiatives - using the brand means guaranteed media impact.

"Al-Qaeda" the brand has now embarked on an inexorable logic of expansion - in flagrant contradiction to Bush's assertion that the world is safer. Al-Qaeda will keep deepening its alliances with ethnic and nationalist movements - with Shamil Basayev, the emir of the mujahideen in Chechnya and trainer of the Black Widow squadrons of female suicide bombers, or with sectors of the Iraqi resistance in the Sunni triangle. "Global" al-Qaeda in all these cases works and will continue to work as a sort of "Foreign Legion", as French scholar Olivier Roy puts it, a capable military vanguard that is useful for local purposes for a determined period of time.

"Global" al-Qaeda may also even profit from the fact that national liberation movements, in desperation, decide to go on an all-out offensive, improving their alliances of circumstance with al-Qaeda. The al-Qaeda brand is also becoming attractive to scattered sectors of the extreme left, because more than appealing to radical Islam, al-Qaeda has succeeded in branding its image as the revolutionary vanguard in the fight against American imperialism. The cross-fertilization between radical Islam and disfranchised Muslim youth born and raised in the West is also performing wonders: when young people convert to Islam in a dreary suburb of Brussels, Paris, Hamburg or Madrid, it all has to do with political anger rather than discovering a direct line to Allah.

A nihilistic big business
At the Republican convention, while the Republicans were harping on September 11, Bush said the Iraq war was "his" war, part of a mission from God to bring freedom to the repressed. "Terrorists hate America because they hate freedom." Wrong: "terrorists" (in fact national resistance movements) hate America because America's imperial policies are the antithesis of freedom.

As nihilistic as it may be, al-Qaeda, from a business point of view, is a major success: three years after September 11, it is a global brand and a global movement. The Middle East, in this scenario, is just a regional base station. This global brand does not have much to do with Islam. But it has everything to do with the globalization of anti-imperialism. And the empire, whatever its definition, has its center in Washington. Bin Laden is laughing: Bush's crusade has legitimized an obscure sect as a worldwide symbol of political revolt. How could bin Laden not vote for Bush?

The clash of fundamentalists
By Ehsan Ahrari Asia Times (Hong Kong) September 11, 2004 COMMENTARY
The post-September 11 era has unleashed fundamentalists of all stripes who are not only blossoming, but are colliding with each other frequently, sometimes even ferociously, in the process keeping us on the edge. Fundamentalism is defined here as a feeling of self-righteousness, and of the correctness of one's cause and one's objective, which also convinces, with an equal fervor, the believer that others and their causes are wrong, and they should be defeated, and, in some instance, eradicated.

A fundamentalist belief system has little use for a contrary point of view. Perhaps the strong feeling of righteousness - or even righteous indignation - overpowers the inherent human curiosity and the need for inquiry. Eric Hoffer labels these fundamentalists "true believers", in his seminal work of the same title. His description of this personality type states, "It is the true believer's ability to shut his eyes to facts which in his own mind deserve never to be seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and consistency."

In this clash of fundamentals there are a whole slew of players; some of them are well known, while others are not. The level of transnational violence is on the rise, while the level of tolerance for different beliefs, different perspectives and different outlooks is going down. As a seemingly interminable outcome of this clash, the international community is living out that well-known Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

The most brutal and bloody phase of this clash of fundamentals started with terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, by Islamists affiliated with al-Qaeda. They were self-appointed warriors of God, doing his bidding by inflicting damage on their "super-infidel" arch rival, the US. In the process they killed thousands of human beings of various nationalities and practitioners of various faiths, including Islam. The sole fault of those victims was that they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

In response, President George W Bush declared a global "war on terrorism". The perpetrators of violence on the US were described as "evil-doers", a phrase that was rightly imbued with moral outrage. Ironically, however, al-Qaeda's attack on the US was also driven by a similar intense emotional expression of outrage. For Osama bin Laden, the US was the chief tormentor of Muslims all over the world and supporter of Israel, which was occupying the Palestinian homeland and butchering Palestinians. Bin Laden has another special reason to fight with the US: it was then "defiling" the birthplace of Islam by keeping its forces of "occupation" there. That was his reference to the fact that the US troops had been stationed in Saudi Arabia since the Gulf War of 1991. (Those troops were finally withdrawn in April 2003.)

The rationale underlying Bush's use of the phrases "evil one" or "evil-doers" was to unite everyone to condemn bin Laden and his methods in much the same way bin Laden was using similar phraseology to unite Muslims. In 1998, bin Laden issued a fatwa (religious edict), in which he stated, "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim." Bush's explanation of the reason al-Qaeda chose to strike at the US was that they "hate us for our freedom". Al-Qaeda's explanation was that the United States was the force of evil, an anti-Islamic force, which should be confronted and harmed everywhere in the world.

Bin Laden's use of the word "infidel" should be clearly understood in the context of a clash of fundamentalism. Even though the original meaning and intent of that word was only to describe a non-Muslim, the Wahhabi sect - of which bin Laden is a member - uses it to describe anyone, including Muslims, who do not subscribe to the cause and the world vision of al-Qaeda and its violent modus operandi.

In choosing the language of morality to characterize bin Laden, Bush was emulating his idol, former president Ronald Reagan, himself an ardent and effective practitioner of right-wing fundamentalism. Reagan's characterization of the former Soviet Union as the "focus of evil" and "the evil empire" has a special place in the voluminous chronicles of highly value-laden collection of normative and pejorative phrases of the Cold War years. Incidentally, those phrases were part of a speech that Reagan delivered in 1983 at the National Association of Evangelicals (a Baptist fundamentalist group). An interesting aspect of Reagan's phraseology was that it came at a time when the Soviet Union was already feeling the pressure of heightened US military spending initiated by none other than Reagan. In retrospect, a number of conservative American ideologues still recall that period of the Cold War competition with much nostalgia, since the Soviet Union collapsed soon thereafter.

Not to be outdone by his idol, Bush found another expression for his right-wing fundamentalism in his "axis of evil" speech, in which he denounced Iran, Iraq and North Korea and proclaimed that they would not be allowed to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Even though that depiction was not well received in "old Europe", Bush's seriousness of purpose was fully established when the US invaded Iraq for the explicit purpose of toppling Saddam Hussein and ridding that country of WMD.

Since then, the US is exercising something that can be described as "secular fundamentalism". This particular brand of fundamentalism is just as dedicated for the establishment of secular democracy in the Middle East, as are Islamists about creating Islamic governments. The only difference is that the secular fundamentalists had not waged war for the creation of a democratic government, until the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Not to be outdone by the US in this exercise of secular fundamentalism, France has exercised its own brand by banning the wearing of the hijab (scarf) by Muslim women, and other symbols by the followers of other faiths, in public schools. The notion of conformity has taken precedence over the fundamental right of an individual to wear his or her religious preferences. The overwhelming support of that collective exercise in idiocy among the French populace has established the fact that, despite having a highfalutin commitment to civility, even France is just as capable of indulging in an exercise in triviality as any other country, and in the name of secular fundamentalism (or even secular fanaticism).

The leftist critics of US global policies are creatures of old habits whereby they see everything big and powerful as an "empire", hence their current depiction of US as a practitioner of "imperial fundamentalism". The presidency of Bush added new wrinkles to that phrase, however. In the pre-September 11 phase of the Bush presidency, the US was accused, with much justification, of practicing "unilateral" foreign policy in refusing to abide by the Kyoto environmental treaty, and by its decision to pull out of the membership of the International Criminal Court, and in its abandonment of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In the post-September 11 phase, that unilateralism was to become more pronounced and militant. In the United States' military campaign against Afghanistan, Washington had much of the world's sympathy and support. However, divisions began to emerge with Bush's warning to the community of nations, which stated in the global "war on terrorism", "either you are with us or with the terrorists".

In the post-September 11 era, the Bush administration took the practice of unilateralism to new heights (or new nadirs, depending on one's perspective) when it decided to invade Iraq without final United Nations sanction. The imperial fundamentalism has created a new paradigm whereby the US was not only determined to create a sycophant government in Iraq in the name of inserting democracy, but the rest of the countries of that region were to be democratized by using the same US template. That template, to be sure, was about the creation of a Western-style secular democracy. One can only imagine the consequences of imposing democracy - an oxymoron - from without. But that is what the US appears resolute to do in the Middle East.

The right - to be precise, the neo-conservatives - applauded what the left generally condemned as imperial fundamentalism. Perhaps an apt phrase that the right would use to describe America's behavior is "hegemonic fundamentalism", whereby the hegemony of the US should be maintained at all cost. Since its military primacy and dominance are at an all-time high at the present moment, the neo-cons argued that the cost for the exercise of hegemonic fundamentalism to the US would be minimal. Iraq has proved that the neo-con calculation about the minimal cost to the US was dead wrong.

Stabilizing Iraq has already cost billions of dollars and more than 1,000 American lives. But there is no indication that the US will pull out of Iraq. Now the neo-con rhetoric, which Bush is reiterating during his stump speeches, states that the cost of getting out of Iraq at the present time would be too horrible to envisage. By being engaged in Iraq, according to this argument, the US is keeping the terrorists away from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Walla Walla, Washington. Needless to say, this type of rhetoric maintains the high fear level among the US populace.

Aside from America's global "war on terrorism", another major development of global implications of the post-September 11 era is the al-Aqsa Intifada (uprising) that erupted after the highly charged September 2001 visit to Jerusalem's Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon, then an opposition leader and an aspirant to the prime ministership. Even though Sharon's action is described as the event triggering the outbreak of violence, the failure of the Camp David summit between Yasser Arafat and the then Israeli prime minister Yehud Barak was the main underlying reason for the escalating frustrations of the Palestinians. Interestingly enough, the strongest support for Israel in the US came from a coalition of Jewish-Americans and Christian fundamentalists. The rationale for the latter group's support for Israel is cogently described as follows:

A growing number of Christians embrace the idea that in all history, Israel is on center stage. They say God has planned epochs of time ("dispensations") such as an "in-gathering" of Jews in the ancient land of Canaan. One epoch, they say, includes the present time when Jews are obligated to build a Jewish temple and re-institute animal sacrifice. Such epochs or "dispensations" are necessary, they say, before Christ can return. Ironically, while Christian dispensationalists place Israel as the most important nation in all the world, they do not respect or even like Jews - as Jews. Yet, because they believe Christ can only land in a "safe" area near Jerusalem, they make a cult of the land. They thus give total, unquestioned support to Israel.

Not to be outdone by that coalition, the Democratic supporters of Israel in the US - the secular fundamentalists - have their own rationale for supporting the Jewish state. The liberal Democrats were not only heirs to the strong feelings of guilt of their predecessors - the Roosevelt Democrats - for not doing anything to avoid the Holocaust of World War II, but they also view the Jewish state as a symbol of Western liberal democratic tradition that might be emulated elsewhere in the Middle East. The Palestinian cause, on the other hand, remains an orphan in the domestic arena of the US, looking for a powerful political group to adopt it.

In 2004, the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is dead. Prime Minister Sharon is convinced that he does not need to negotiate with the Palestinians, unless they change their leader to his liking. Bush very much supports Sharon on this point. Arafat has remained a prisoner in his residence for over two years, epitomizing the humiliation of the Palestinian nation, to which the US is also a party. The Palestinians are expressing their rage through suicide attacks, and Israelis through waging war on the Palestinian nation. Moderates in the Jewish and Palestinian nations are nowhere to be seen. The search for common ground has ended. In fact, in the churlish environment of clashing fundamentalists, even the common ground is soaked with the blood of innocent Palestinians and Israelis.

In the meantime, the Republican fear-mongering related to September 11 is numbing the US electorate. The most recent evidence of that was Vice President Dick Cheney's recent unfortunate observation that the US would come under terrorist attack if the American voters were to make a wrong choice in November, implying that the wrong choice would be a vote for John Kerry. The conscience of the world seems to have gone numb. The continuing violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chechnya seems to have created a collective (or even universal) frame of mind that cannot express outrage loud and clear enough for all the holy-rollers - religious as well as secular - to stop berating, humiliating or even killing each in the name of God or democracy.

Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.

The second wave of Americans hits Afghanistan: average age 74
Declan Walsh in Herat Saturday September 11, 2004 The Guardian (UK)
Car bombs, chaotic airports and the prospect of evening tea with a warlord might make most tourists a little queasy. Not, however, 84-year-old Gertrude Lysinger.

"It's been interesting", said the grandmother from Philadelphia as her tour bus whizzed through western Afghanistan, passing murals of mujahideen martyrs and an abandoned fighter jet.

While thousands of American soldiers are scouring Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden, for the past fortnight a dozen US tourists with an average age of 74 have been touring the country, after spurning warnings from their friends, family and the state department.

"My kids think we are nuts," admitted Richard Glenn, a 79-year-old retired college principal from Ojai, California.

Mary Lloyd, a housewife from Phoenix, Arizona, added: "My daughter said, 'You're flying into a war zone. I'm never going to see you again'. She asked for my last words."

Challenging the perception of Americans as a stay-at-home nation, the 12 are seasoned travellers. "We want to see Afghanistan before they start putting up Hiltons and McDonald's. We want to get out and smell the land," said Dr Glenn.

The tourists have encountered only generosity from ordinary Afghans. "We make quite a stir wherever we go," said Dick Bogart, a retired computer salesman from San Francisco and grandfather of 10. "It's been very touching."

On their second day of their tour, however, a car bomb exploded half a mile from their Kabul guesthouse, killing three people. "That was scary," admitted Mrs Lloyd.
Later they travelled west to Herat, where they discovered the city had nearly been engulfed in a battle between the governor and a rival warlord two weeks earlier. Undeterred, after touring the city, they had an audience with the governor, Ismail Khan.

"He told us he didn't want to be called a warlord," said Mr Bogart. "It was a very powerful experience."

Transportation, not terrorism, has been the greatest challenge, said the tour leader Gary Wintz, 57, who last visited Afghanistan in 1978.

"This is one of the most difficult countries on earth," he said. "But I think this is an exceptional group."

The tour also prompted reflections on America's image abroad; many were openly anti-Bush.

"My main object in life is to get Bush out of the White House," said Connie Pencall, a retired teacher. "He is a terrible, terrible man. We are not welcomed anywhere any more."

Janet Moore, an Englishwoman who runs a tour company in California, had the idea of bringing the first Americans to tour Afghanistan.

Her stepfather, Peter Sanders, was a colonial officer who lost an army to Pashtun tribesmen in 1939. After his death last year she travelled to Afghanistan, accompanied by her 70-year-old mother and five-year-old daughter. They were overwhelmed by the hospitality of the people.

After initially filling 20 places for the Afghan tour, at $6,340 (£3,562) each, eight people dropped out after violence escalated in the run-up to next month's Afghan presidential election.

The travellers' adventure ends today when they cross the Khyber Pass into Pakistan's North-west Frontier province. "Don't worry", joked Mr Wintz. "We'll be okay. And if we pass Osama, we'll give him a ride."

To boldly go: Extreme tours

· Baghdad Last October, seven British tourists visited Iraq with Hinterland Travel. Cost: £1,300

· Chernobyl Ukraine travel agents offer day trips to region devastated by 1986 reactor explosion. Cost: £150 (includes breathing apparatus)

· Ethiopia UK company Journeys by Design offers trips to former famine-stricken country. Cost: £2,000-£3,000

· Northern Ireland Travellers with US company Global Exchange stay with families on Falls Road, Belfast, and tour army bases. Cost: £1,100

· West Bank and Gaza Strip Visit refugee camps, holy sites and security wall. Cost: £1,100

· A trip into space US millionaire Denis Tito became the first space tourist in 2001. Cost: £14m

Katy Heslop

US sorry for holding BBC reporter
Friday, 10 September, 2004 BBC News By Andrew North BBC correspondent in Kabul
The US military in Afghanistan has apologised for detaining a BBC World Service reporter and interrogating him at its Bagram air base near Kabul.

Kamal Sadat, an Afghan who also worked for Reuters, was taken from his home in eastern Afghanistan by US soldiers late on Wednesday.

The US military said it had received information he was a threat, but officials released him early on Friday.

The US holds hundreds of alleged terror suspects without charge at Bagram.

Mr Sadat is a well-known reporter in Afghanistan for the BBC's Pashto and Dari language services.

Based in the province of Khost near the Afghan-Pakistan border, he has worked for the corporation for almost two years.

'Misunderstanding'

Late on Wednesday night, he said, US soldiers burst into his home, breaking down the door.

Weapons were pointed at members of his family.

When the Americans asked for him he said he told them he was a BBC journalist and showed his identity card and another issued by Reuters.

But after searching the house and removing equipment and several notebooks, soldiers took Mr Sadat to a nearby US base.

There, he says, he was blindfolded and put on an aircraft, but not told where he was going or why.

On Thursday, the US military confirmed to the BBC in Kabul that Mr Sadat was being held at Bagram.

Speaking after his release, the reporter said he was never told where he was.

He said he was kept in a small, windowless cell, blindfolded most of the time and interrogated by an American official about his work.

Late on Thursday night, the US military told the BBC that Mr Sadat's detention was the result of a misunderstanding and in a statement apologised to the reporter and his family.

The BBC says it is very concerned about the incident and is making representations to the US military authorities in Afghanistan and Washington.

Pakistan's undeclared war
Friday, 10 September, 2004 BBC News By Zaffar Abbas BBC correspondent in Islamabad
For Pakistan's powerful military and the rugged Pashtun tribesmen, the South Waziristan region, near the border with Afghanistan, is a virtual war zone.

The vast mountainous region remains out of bound for non-locals. Journalists have been barred from the area, and the main town of Wana looks like a military garrison.

Almost daily skirmishes, landmine explosions, and use of heavy artillery and occasional aerial bombing, makes it a deadly conflict zone.

The latest military offensive in which air force bombers and gunship helicopters pounded an alleged training camp of suspected al-Qaeda militants, has resulted in heavy casualties. And it has taken the conflict to an area that until now had remained relatively peaceful.

This was the third time in recent weeks that the military bombed suspected militant hideouts. It has given a new and a more serious dimension to the security operation within the country.

Until now, aerial bombing has never been used to crush an armed insurgency in the country.

No end in sight

The military may not have suffered any serious casualties in the latest offensive, largely because it used air power and long-range rockets. But since the present conflict began in March, scores of soldiers have been killed, including officers.

Dozens of foreign and local militants have also been killed. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the victims of this undeclared war are the local tribesmen and their families, who have been caught in the crossfire.

In some ways it suggests that the military's assessments about the fighting strength of the militants, and the risk to civilians, were wrong.

So what will be the outcome of this bloody conflict, which does not seem to have an immediate end? No-one seems to have an answer.

The military offensive had been part of the overall war against al-Qaeda.

The US-led forces have largely been operating across the border in Afghanistan, and Islamabad admits, have also been assisting the Pakistani troops in surveillance and communication.

The co-ordinated effort is largely aimed at capturing top al-Qaeda leaders Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. The men, and many of their close associates, are widely believed to be hiding in and perhaps operating out of the area.

Tribal groups angry

Since the start of operation, the military authorities have firmly established that a large number of Uzbek, Chechen and Arab militants were in the area.

Battle-hardened tribesmen have taken the military action as an attack on their sovereignty, and have been putting up stiff resistance.

Most parts of the semi-autonomous tribal region have traditionally resisted the presence of foreign forces, including Pakistani troops.

It was in July 2002 that Pakistani troops, for the first time in 55 years, entered the Tirah Valley in Khyber tribal agency. Soon they were in Shawal valley of North Waziristan, and later in South Waziristan.

This was made possible after long negotiations with various tribes, who reluctantly agreed to allow the military's presence on the assurance that it would bring in funds and development work.

But once the military action started in South Waziristan a number of Waziri sub-tribes took it as an attempt to subjugate them.

Attempts to persuade them into handing over the foreign militants failed, and with an apparently mishandling by the authorities, the security campaign against suspected al-Qaeda militants turned into an undeclared war between the Pakistani military and the rebel tribesmen.

Some analysts say it is a no-win situation for the Pakistani troops. They cannot abandon the operation half-way, but are now having to use bombers and gunship helicopters against what was earlier described as a "handful of foreign militants and some local miscreants".

Relations between the authorities and local tribesmen have deteriorated to such an extent that the troops may remain bogged down long after all the foreign militants have been eliminated or flushed out of the region.