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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (649)	11/26/2001 6:16:22 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Nadine, Arafat is a terrorist not better than OBL and deserves the same destiny. Only the Hypocrites in Europe and US State Department keep him in power, to serve the interests of the most dangerous Arab nation Saudi Arabia and Egypt. There is a big question if any peace will be achievable in ME as long as the Saud Royal family will be in power. Personally I do not thin so. If not for the US support Saudi Arabia would be less of a danger. .......... as all other Arabs governments will follow suit.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (649)	11/27/2001 12:23:59 AM
From: Scoobah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Muslim Gunmen Take Scores Hostage in Philippines November 26, 2001 10:03 PM ET By Erik de Castro ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (Reuters) - Muslim gunmen loyal to a rebellious governor took scores of civilians hostage in the southern Philippines on Tuesday after they were pounded by helicopter gunships and bomber planes, Red Cross officials said. Residents in their night-clothes, many barefoot and muddy from slips and falls in the dark, fled in terror from the pre-dawn fighting on the outskirts of Zamboanga between the military and followers of Nur Misuari, witnesses said. Red Cross officials and residents said at least 160 people, including women and children, were seized. Repeated automatic and machine-gun bursts and mortar shell explosions jarred the city of 750,000 people awake around 3 a.m. By dawn, the gunmen had broken out of a complex of buildings they were holed up in to take the hostages and force an uneasy stand-off with the military, residents and officials said. Local radio said at least one civilian was killed and seven were wounded in cross-fire. There was no independent confirmation. "I saw gunmen right outside my house," said one woman, holding a baby in her arms and shaking with fear. A Reuters photographer saw four gunmen in fatigues holding civilians in front of them as human shields as they retreated from troops. Military officials said troops used helicopter gunships, light bomber planes and mortars to flush out guerrillas entrenched on a hilltop overlooking the mostly Christian city. Soldiers in trucks and armored personnel carriers were seen rushing toward the hilltop. Tanks with fitted machine-guns were also brought in. The officials said the fighting was between troops and a group of followers of Misuari, a former Muslim rebel chief who took up arms against the government again last week. Misuari was arrested in neighboring Malaysia at the weekend. On November 19, hundreds of his followers attacked a military post on the southern island of Jolo and at least 160 people were killed in the subsequent fighting. ULTIMATUM IGNORED Misuari's followers in Zamboanga, based in a cluster of buildings on the hilltop outside the city, have previously been quiet but had made no attempt to hide their heavy weaponry. Military officials said they were given an ultimatum to surrender on Monday which most ignored. "We must assert government authority here," Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes told local radio after the fighting broke out. "They have been threatening the city." In one part of the city, the gunmen had tied some 20 civilians together and had taken positions behind them. One woman, 63-year-old teacher Celestian Salcasantos, told reporters she was let go by the guerrillas to inform troops they had taken 60 people, including women and children, and were ready to negotiate safe passage. "My husband and my son and so many others are hostage," she said. "I am asking for your help, your prayers so that peace will prevail." Red Cross officials said about 100 people were in guerrilla captivity in another part of the city. "All they want is to be able to get out safely," said one man, Bong Bue, who escaped from the guerrillas but left behind four of his children. He said the gunmen threatened to kill the hostages if the military did not allow them to leave. Authorities closed down Zamboanga airport and canceled all flights from the city as the fighting continued. In Manila, security at government buildings, the suburban railway and oil depots was strengthened. Misuari's followers started last week's fighting in an attempt to disrupt polls to decide his replacement as governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The elections were held on Monday. Misuari had denounced the elections as violating the 1996 accord under which he had given up the rebellion in exchange for limited autonomy. The voting across the five provinces and one city comprising the ARMM was mostly peaceful. Results are likely to be known by the end of the week. Zamboanga, the headquarters of the Philippines' southern military command and the largest city in the area, is not part of ARMM but islands to the south, including Jolo, are. Misuari was head of the Moro National Liberation Front, whose guerrillas were largely amalgamated into the military and the police after the peace accord. The rival Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) then took over the fight for an Islamic homeland, but the government forged a cease-fire with the group this summer. The government has however made no attempt to reach a deal with the smaller but more radical Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, which it denounces as a group of bandits. The group, which the United States has said is linked to Saudi born militant Osama bin Laden, is holding an American couple hostage on Basilan, an island just south of Zamboanga.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (649)	11/27/2001 12:16:41 PM
From: Scoobah	Respond to of 32591

Mystery of Disappearing al-Qaeda Soldiers 27 November: While US troops scour the mountains and caves for Osama bin Laden, the bulk of his al Qaeda army has also disappeared. It was found to be missing when the Northern Alliance seized control of the northern Taliban enclave of Konduz-Khanabad on Monday, November 26. Roughly 1,500 of bin Laden’s men are reported still holding out outside Konduz. A similar number is unaccounted for. First the figures: At the peak of the battle of Konduz, Northern Alliance spokesmen estimated that 10,000 “foreign fighters” were in the town, a figure which DEBKAfile ’s military experts rate an exaggeration. The true figure was no more than 6,000. It included several thousand young student volunteers from the Islamic medressas (Islamic academies) of Pakistan, who were told to go and fight America with very little army training or weapons but for their blind hero-worship of the ex-Saudi terrorist. However, mixed among these eager students, were several hundred Pakistani army officers and soldiers in civilian dress, as well as some 120 Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI service agents, representing Pakistan’s secret intelligence and logistical support for the Taliban. Most reached Afghanistan before the American offensive was launched on October 7; some entered later and, in a bizarre twist of the Afghanistan war, may even have given US special forces useful inside intelligence on the Taliban and al Qaeda. According to DEBKAfile’s military experts, 3000 of these men, some injured, were evacuated from Konduz in a secret nocturnal Pakistani airlift, run before the Taliban enclave fell to the Northern Alliance. Left therefore in the Konduz-Khanabad sector were no more than 3000-3500 al Qaeda fighting men, roughly the same number present before the siege of Konduz. Around 500 or 600 surrendered last week - together with a group of Taliban fighters who switched over to General Dostum’s Uzbek force - only to engage their captors in a suicide battle in a fortress-prison near Mazar-e-Sharif. Several hundred were killed in the fighting, but they also killed at least one American agent and injured a group of US special forces troops. After that batch is deducted, a total of 2,500 to 3,000 at most should have been found in the Konduz-Khanabad sector – Saudis, Gulf Arabs, Egyptians, Jordanians, Somalis, Yemenis, Chechens and Palestinians. Intelligence estimates before the Konduz siege put the Saudi extremist component fighting with al Qaeda at 500-700. That is roughly the missing number, over whose whereabouts speculation is rife. DEBKAfile groups the various surmises under four main headings: A. Correspondents who entered Konduz with the Northern Alliance quoted local inhabitants as reporting that two nights before the town fell - and immediately after the Pakistani planes flew in - heavy Russian Antonov air transports touched down at Konduz airport and gathered up the al Qaeda “Arabs” – with their weapons. DEBKAfile’s military sources, after checking on this lead with army intelligence sources in the Indian subcontinent, present this explanation of the mystery as the most plausible. Those Antonovs were chartered by the Pakistani ISI to lift the al Qaida contingents together with a few Taliban units out of Konduz in north Afghanistan into north Pakistan. And that was not the end of the transfer. It is still going on. Our sources report that al Qaeda and their Taliban allies are streaming out of Kandahar in the south and crossing east into Pakistan. The two forces have thus far grouped some 4000 fighting men on the Pakistani side. According to DEBKAfile ’s intelligence sources, the United States hurriedly injected Marines to the south on Monday in direct response to the enemy’s redeployment. That too is why the first US troop engagement was with a Taliban convoy approaching the Pakistani frontier. For the US Marines’ immediate objective is not to join the Northern Alliance offensive for the capture of Mullah Omar’s bastion of Kandahar, but to block off the continuing passage of Taliban and al Qaeda units across the highly porous frontier. B. They took advantage of the turmoil and confusion of battle to creep away to the Hindu KushMountains. There is no evidence of this happening, but it accords with their commanders’ original plan; if it came to be, the suicide battle in Mazar-e-Sharif prison will not the last to be staged in Afghanistan. B. The Tajik warlord Mohamed Daud of the Northern Alliance encircled the al Qaeda contingent and slaughtered its members then and there - or after taking them prisoner. Whichever theory turns out to be fact, bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar clearly remain operationally viable. But questions must be asked about the operational capabilities of the Northern Alliance. If their siege of Konduz was as effective as described, why did they fail to prevent a max exodus of enemy troops? For a realistic summing up of the last ten days’ successful battles against the Taliban and al Qaeda, DEBKAfile’s military sources point out that the 15,000-strong Northern Alliance could never have pulled off these complex feats on their own. Their tanks may proudly fly their green-and-white flags, but Russian special forces generals, in command of ethnic Uzbek and Tajik fighters, managed the Northern Alliance tank war in close conjunction with US special forces.