They are not direct quotes, but they certainly are accurate representations of the official statements. But we'll leave it at that difference of opinion.
You can skip the one below; it's along the same general topic.
washingtonpost.com
U.S. Warplanes Sent to Rescue Afghan Rebel
Exiled Tribal Leader Was Seeking Defectors
By Walter Pincus and Molly Moore
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 3, 2001; Page A01
U.S. warplanes were sent to the aid of an Afghan opposition leader who came under attack by the Taliban on Thursday in southern Afghanistan, a senior U.S. government official said yesterday.
Navy fighter-bombers fired on Taliban forces that were attempting to capture Hamid Karzai, a prominent Afghan tribal leader from the dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Karzai, 43, who has lived in exile in Pakistan since the mid-1990s, has been working inside Afghanistan since Oct. 8 to persuade Pashtun leaders to turn against the Taliban, according to his relatives.
Karzai and a group of armed supporters were attacked by Taliban troops as they left a meeting with tribal elders in the south-central province of Uruzgan. U.S. warplanes based on aircraft carriers were immediately sent to help, the U.S. official said.
"There was a battle going on, and U.S. aircraft came in from the sea to provide support," the official said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, en route to Russia yesterday, confirmed that the United States had assisted Karzai.
"We provided some supplies to him yesterday, if I'm not mistaken, probably ammunition, maybe food as well," he said, adding that "it would not be wise for me to describe the numbers of people he has with him."
Karzai's exact whereabouts were not known, but Rumsfeld said, "The last I heard, he was alive and well."
Karzai's brother, Ahmed Karzai, who said he had spoken with Hamid Karzai by satellite telephone yesterday, said: "They managed to fight off the Taliban and they have escaped."
Speaking in the Pakistani border city of Quetta, Ahmed Karzai said his brother and several supporters had taken refuge in the surrounding mountains. Karzai's relatives said he is familiar with the terrain in Uruzgan province, having served with guerrillas in the war to oust Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s.
"They are being chased," Taliban deputy consul general Abdul Rahim Siddiqui said yesterday in Quetta.
Another brother, Qayum Karzai, said Hamid Karzai had told him by telephone yesterday that he was unharmed and well protected in the mountains.
Qayum Karzai disputed reports that U.S. planes had sought to help his brother, saying: "We have engaged the Taliban on our own terms and defended ourselves. We sought no help and no help came. We have been in a fight with the Taliban since 1995, and know how to deal with them."
Karzai's mission to provoke defections in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's power base, is part of a larger effort, backed by the United States and Pakistan, to undermine the Taliban and ensure that any replacement government includes Pashtuns. Last week, a well-known former guerrilla commander, Abdul Haq, was captured and killed by the Taliban on a similar mission south of Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The U.S. official contrasted Karzai's efforts inside Afghanistan with those of Abdul Haq, who he said, "went into Afghanistan with 19 men and four weapons and in communication with [former national security adviser Robert] McFarlane." Karzai apparently was better armed, had been in contact with U.S. intelligence officials before leaving Pakistan and had made his plans known to them; Abdul Haq had contacted the U.S. consulate in the northwestern Pakistani town of Peshawar before his mission, but apparently had made no arrangements for assistance if he ran into trouble.
"We are in periodic communication with [Karzai]," the U.S. official said. "When the U.S. military becomes aware of the need for assistance, they provide it." The U.S. military keeps warplanes airborne in the region so that they can quickly respond to such situations, the official said.
The rapid response of the Navy aircraft shows the degree to which the CIA and U.S. military can support Afghan opposition commanders with whom they have established relationships, according to former intelligence officials. "This was a really well-coordinated operation," said one former CIA case officer with experience in Afghanistan. "You don't get caught in an ambush and then call for help without prior arrangements on what could be done to protect you."
Those arrangements normally include "what the Afghan commanders would agree to do, things we expect to provide them, and establishment of communications," the former officer said.
Under that type of arrangement, Karzai would have given the CIA daily information on where he would be, the times of any planned meetings and the routes he and his group expected to take, the former officer said.
The senior government official said that dispatching air cover for Karzai's operation was like "sending in the posses to fight off the bad guys."
Rumsfeld hinted that the United States may soon put troops on the ground to assist Karzai. "He's been on the ground there for a relatively short period of time," the secretary said. "We do not have forces with him as yet. Therefore, we're not in communication in a way that we can provide good targeting information to assist in their air support."
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press, a news agency with close links to the Taliban, quoted Taliban officials as saying that 25 of Karzai's followers were captured in the attack Thursday. Siddiqui, the Taliban's deputy consul general, said 15 of Karzai's supporters were killed in the gun battle.
Ahmed Karzai disputed those claims. "Nobody was captured or killed," he said.
Neither version of the events could be confirmed independently.
Both Karzai and Abdul Haq have had longtime associations with U.S. officials in Washington and Pakistan in their efforts to provoke international interest in overthrowing the Taliban. U.S. officials have denied direct sponsorship of either man's forays into Afghanistan, but American authorities have encouraged opposition Afghans in their efforts to engineer defections from the Taliban's ranks.
Abdul Haq -- in satellite telephone calls to his relatives in Peshawar before his death -- said he had been encountering stiff resistence in his attempts to turn local leaders against the Taliban. He reported that the bombing campaign had hardened local residents against defecting from the Taliban.
Karzai's friends and family acknowledge his mission is a risky one, and he and his supporters in Afghanistan have been careful to avoid the kind of large meetings that Abdul Haq attended -- and which may have led to his detection. Ahmed Karzai said Abdul Haq's capture and execution have frightened Taliban opponents from actively supporting his brother.
"People are scared," he said. "They know they can get killed for opposing the Taliban."
But Ahmed Karzai said that his brother considered his foray into enemy territory a "necessary risk" to help form a new government.
Karzai, who served as a deputy foreign minister in a pre-Taliban government in the early 1990s and who had been living in Quetta, secretly entered Afghanistan on Oct. 8, according to his relatives.
Relatives and associates said he has been promoting the idea of an Afghan national assembly, or loya jirga, to form a broad coalition government to replace the Taliban. Karzai, a descendant of a family that once ruled in what is now the Taliban heartland, has worked with Afghanistan's former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who lives in exile in Rome and has been promoting the idea of such a council.
Moore reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Quetta and staff writers Marc Kaufman in Washington and Vernon Loeb in Moscow contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company |
