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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (41403)	9/12/2001 1:24:48 PM
From: Nick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

The world's most wanted terrorist trains his guns on India and gives a dangerous edge to militancy in Kashmir. Security forces scramble to meet the new threat. By Jason Burke in Islamabad and Harinder Baweja Head west out of Amritsar and keep going. The drive may not be very comfortable but at least finding the route is straightforward. It'll take you a few hours to Lahore and then it is a fast three-hour run along the new motorway to Islamabad. Go on up to Peshawar, the bustling and violent Pakistani frontier town, through the Khyber Pass, across the border into Afghanistan and then, keeping the Kabul river on your right, drive for another three hours. After a 100 more miles and a dozen checkposts you'll be threading a way through the bazaars of Jalalabad. Turn left at the main intersection and aim for the dusty hills on the southern horizon. Cross a bridge and drive up to the two Taliban tanks dug in on the crest of the ridge. If you're sensible, you'll stop here. If you are not then keep going along a straight flat road with lines of tall cypress-like trees on either side. After about five miles you'll see the overgrown orchards and dilapidated huts of Farmihadda, once a Soviet-style collective farm and now the place where Osama Bin Laden -- the world's most wanted terrorist -- has built his new home. It is from here that Bin Laden is believed to have issued his threat of September 16, which appeared in Jang, the mass circulated Urdu daily published from Pakistan. Calling for an all out jehad against India for the first time, Bin Laden declared: "India and America are now our biggest enemies ... all mujahideen groups in Pakistan should come together now to target India ... we are always ready to help the Kashmiri mujahideen." Even before the chilling statement came from Farmihadda -- where Bin Laden has established a new communications, training and logistics centre -- senior Indian officials had been concerned that a dangerous nexus may be building up between Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Saudi terrorist. During the Kargil war, there were rumours that Bin Laden's fighters were among those pouring fire down from the heights of Tololing and Batalik. One Indian intelligence report claimed that Bin Laden's personal bodyguards were at the forefront, helping keep the supply routes open. And also that the Stinger missiles used to bring down two Indian aircraft may have come from his armoury. Now a senior official in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) says, "We don't need to hear from Farmihadda to know that a lethal cocktail is being brewed. We already knew. The coming together of the ISI, Bin Laden and his hosts, the Taliban, is serious." Their worst fears are, in fact, coming true. India appears to have become a target of the man the Americans, and now ironically the Russians too, see as their single biggest security problem since the end of the Cold War.