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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (7982)	10/28/2001 9:16:51 PM
From: SirRealist	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 281500

Let's go with debka a bit here: Will US Setbacks Bring Nuclear Option Nearer? 28 October: The United States-led Afghanistan campaign is facing grave difficulties as it enters its fourth week, notwithstanding the many tons of ordnance dropped on key Taliban targets. Saturday, the Taliban claimed to have repulsed an opposition offensive backed by US air strikes in the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sherif. While Kabul suffered its heaviest US air pounding yet, the Taliban claimed to have captured and hanged five opposition Northern Alliance commanders, a day after executing the Pashtun guerrilla leader Abdul Haq. This was a serious blow to US plans for Afghanistan’s post-war government. Haq’s body will be handed to his relatives in Kabul who will take it to Peshawar Sunday for burial. In another tribally-related event, thousands of Pakistani Pashtuns, whose cousins dominate the Afghanistan Taliban, attempted to cross into Afghanistan Saturday to join the war against the United States. They crossed paths with the millions of Afghan refugees heading in the opposite direction away from the fighting. By mistake, US warplanes blitzed the third Red Cross food relief store. In these circumstances, the strategists in Washington plotting the next stages of the war are, according to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence experts, considering the possibility of turning to tactical nuclear weapons and assigning Russian troops a larger Russian battlefield role. Friday, October 26, Russia launched its newest military satellite, Molniya (Lightning), which is equipped for military communications as well as intelligence gathering and surveillance, a necessary appurtenance for the introduction of large-scale Russian forces into Afghanistan via Tajikistan. Saturday, October 27, British premier Tony Blair spoke of the danger of Osama bin Laden acquiring chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. The British leader is unlikely to have raised this dire possibility spontaneously, without prior consultation with the White House. The events leading up to the contemplation of nuclear warfare in Washington and London include also the spreading of anthrax contamination and the rising menace of further terrorist strikes inside the United States. The four central difficulties facing the US-led campaign as it goes into its fourth week are: A. Two obstacles in the military sphere: The intense bombardment – by bomber and missile - of the Taliban’s political and military backbone has proved ineffective. Physical structures were demolished, but the regime’s political and religious leadership, its military command, its fighting strength and its arsenals, remain virtually unscathed. Notwithstanding the massive concentration of troops around Afghanistan, the United States and its allies are clearly short of the ground strength for conducting a full-scale military campaign inside Afghanistan. US military strength in its present field strength has no way of “smoking the terrorists out of their holes” as President Bush promised the nation at the outset of the war. B. One intelligence obstacle: The United lacks a sufficient number of counter-intelligence agents inside Afghanistan – or even competent professionals in the surrounding countries, Pakistan and Central Asia. The Al Qaeda network and the allied Egyptian Jihad Islami field double as many intelligence operatives, or spies, as the West can muster in the target areas, enabling their leaders to stay one or more steps ahead of the United States. DEBKA-Net-Weekly ’s terrorism experts, in special report, describes how the bin Laden counterintelligence apparatus functions: In addition to Afghanistan, bin Laden runs agents in Somalia, the Comoro Islands, the Hadramauth region of Yemen , Kosovo, Chechnya, the Ferghana Valley of Central Asia, the Philippines and Lebanon. As approved charities, many of apparently innocent Islamic societies subsist on local public funds, municipal and national – or even international allocations as UN-approved non-governmental bodies. As such, these Islamic societies appoint representatives or envoys, who act secretly as bin Laden’s liaison agents with the undercover operatives he maintains on the staffs of various international bodies. DEBKA-Net-Weekly ’s terrorism experts reveal that bin Laden’s spy networks operate under cover at UN Headquarters in Manhattan and Geneva. US and Pakistani intelligence are certain that the many of the relief workers in the Afghan refugee camps are clandestine Al Qaeda agents, who exploit international food, medical care and personnel carriers to transfer people and messages to sensitive corners of war-struck Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the 1993 Somali civil war, Bin Laden took advantage of UN and US relief programs around the country to move his fighting strength from region to region, feed them and provide them with medical care.