Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
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America's overreaction - alienating its slavish following and banishing
the mythical notion of an "international community" with Washington at
its NATO-enforced head - is probably the only ultimate good that could
ever possibly ensue from Bush's deplorable rabble-rousing in the wake
of events in New York and DC on September 11th 2001. Right now, the
US teeters on the very brink of doing just that and bringing its beloved
New World Order temple down about its own ears.
The trouble is, the President's advisors are likely to have calculated that,
deciding that massive strikes against the poor, indescribably destitute
population of an indescribably poor and impoverished country could be
terminally counter-productive for the NATO alliance. And thus they may
take a far more cynically calculating approach...
With the Western media in their pockets, what's to stop US forces from
making just one or two televisually spectacular but relatively muted
strikes into the remote badlands of Afghanistan... then announcing to the
whole world that "Our attacks were successful! In one fell swoop our
vialiant forces have not only decimated the Taliban but killed bin Laden
and finally removed the threat of his Al Qaeda terrorist network forever"... ?
It may or may not be true - but that wouldn't matter. What can the Taliban
do? - short of further terrorist outrages against the West, which are not
likely in the short term? And, anyway - if and when that need arises - can
easily be put down to other factions... of which there's never going to be
any shortage.
Certainly, bin Laden - even if he were left alive and foolish enough to try -
would hardly be able to emerge convincingly out into the open and publicly
announce the fact...
John Jay
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From: Miroslav Antic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], BALKAN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, NATO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Siem-News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, SNN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "'SNN-Yahoo'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: SIN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: US May Confront Its Own Arms, Experts Say [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]
Date: Sun, Sep 23, 2001, 4:23 pm
Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
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Published on Sunday, September 23, 2001 in the Boston
<http://www.boston.com/globe> Globe
'Blowback'
US May Confront Its Own Arms, Experts Say
As US military planners prepare the final details of a retaliatory
strike inside Afghanistan, they seem keenly aware of what's known in the
intelligence community as ''blow-back.''
Defined as US-made weapons and military expertise that are turned
against US troops, ''blow-back'' is a distinct possibility - perhaps an
inevitability - in Afghanistan, according to US intelligence sources,
military analysts and weapons specialists.
<http://www.commondreams.org/images/startquote.gif>
Americans ought to learn about this phenomenon of blow-back because it
is likely to end up killing Americans.
<http://www.commondreams.org/images/endquote.gif>
William Hartung
Director of the World Policy Institute's Arms
<http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/> Trade Resource Center
During the Cold War in the 1980s, billions in weaponry and military
training was funneled by the CIA, through Pakistan, to the Afghans
fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Out of that CIA-backed resistance emerged the Taliban, which today
controls most of Afghanistan and the sprawling terrorist enterprise
controlled by Osama bin Laden, whom the Taliban is believed to be
harboring.
Equipment as crude as machine guns and as sophisticated as antiaircraft
Stinger missiles are now believed to be in the hands of the Taliban
regime's military, and quite possibly in the clutches of the heavily
armed militias that surround Osama bin Laden.
If US forces undertake a ground operation, that US-supplied weaponry and
training could cause US casualties.
''Is there concern about that? Yes,'' said an intelligence official in
Washington. ''There are a lot of weapons awash in that part of the
world, and they are American-made weapons, for sure, and lots of weapons
made elsewhere.''
''Steps have been taken to try to get them under control, but we can
never be certain,'' the official said, referring to the CIA's efforts to
recover some of the more advanced weapons, such as the Stinger missiles,
which are accurate, and which, if operational, could take down a US
helicopter over Afghanistan. ''We cannot rule out the possibility that
some might work.''
The Afghan resistance eventually ended up in a bloody civil war that
left the country in ruins and resulted in the emergence of the Taliban,
a group known for its centuries-old interpretation of Islamic Law. The
Taliban's rise to power allowed bin Laden to sharpen his terrorist
network known as Al Qaeda.
The weaponry and training in the 1980s fulfilled the US Cold War
geopolitical strategy by helping the Afghan resistance against the
Soviet Union. The Soviet retreat in 1987, many historians say, may have
presaged the Soviet collapse two years later.
The CIA-backed Afghan resistance included factions that now form the
military of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It also included the
brigades that gravitated to bin Laden. CIA officials insist that there
was never any direct link to bin Laden.
''We did not have a relationship with bin Laden, despite reports and
claims to the contrary,'' said the intelligence official, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity. ''We did support the `mujahideen,' or
`freedom fighters,''' as the Afghan resistance was called.
Other US officials remember bin Laden during that time.
''We knew who bin Laden was back then,'' said Milton Bearden, a former
CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, who directly facilitated the
CIA funding of the mujahideen. ''But I stayed pretty much away from the
crowd of Gulf Arabs who were doing the fund-raising in Peshawar,'' also
in Pakistan. ''Our sense was to leave them alone. They were not a major
part of the war.''
Some military analysts and specialists on the weapons trade say the CIA
has spent years covering its tracks on its early ties to the Afghan
forces. Those forces, they say, splintered after the Soviet Union
collapsed. One piece mutated into the network of terrorists who became
bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the group suspected in this month's attacks.
Despite the CIA's denials, these experts say it was inevitable that the
military training in guerrilla tactics, and the vast reservoir of money
and arms that the CIA provided in Afghanistan would have ended up
helping bin Laden and his forces during the 1980s.
''Americans ought to learn about this phenomenon of blow-back because it
is likely to end up killing Americans,'' said William Hartung, director
of the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade
<http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/> Resource Center, and author of a
1996 book titled ''And Weapons for All.''
If blow-back does occur in Afghanistan, it will not be the first time US
troops have faced it. In the post-Cold War era, where East-West tensions
have been replaced by sectarian conflicts, almost every conflict
involving the United States - Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Iraq, and Bosnia -
US troops have faced US-made weapons. But the issue may not have been as
pronounced there, analysts say, as it may be in Afghanistan.
US-made Stinger missiles, which were made by General Dynamics in the
early 1980s, were given by the CIA to the Afghan resistance, and ''may
still have utility,'' Hartung said.
US intelligence officials do not discount this possibility, but they
argue that the sophisticated circuitry, wiring, and even batteries would
have been very difficult to maintain over the years, especially in the
country's harsh conditions.
The United States also provided radio field equipment, and some
observers have voiced fear that this could assist Afghan forces in
monitoring US military radio traffic.
''Stingers, antitank missiles, night-vision, early laser-guiding
systems, military radio frequencies, all that stuff is going to come
into play if the US sends ground troops,'' said Joseph Trento, a
specialist on the international weapons trade for the National Security
News Service in Washington. ''The CIA has been ducking this for years,
and it is about to all come back to haunt them.''
There are other aspects of blow-back that may be aiding the Taliban and
perhaps even bin Laden today, analysts said.
The web of secret bank accounts and organizations that the CIA
established to fund the mujahideen, including charitable enterprises,
may have given bin Laden a blueprint for how to fund his Al Qaeda terror
network all over the world.
In a book published this year by Yale University Press, Ahmed Rashid, a
Pakistani investigative journalist, said that the very Afghan bases
where bin Laden is believed to have trained his Qaeda network were built
with covert CIA funding from the mid-1980s.
One camp in particular, near the region of Khost, has an elaborate
network of tunnels where tanks and a cache of weapons could easily be
stored. It is believed to be where bin Laden has been hiding out. The
Clinton administration tried unsuccessfully to target bin Laden in this
camp with cruise missles after the bombings at US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania in 1998.
Another book, titled ''Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and
International Terrorism'' by an ABC News investigative journalist, John
Cooley, tells how the CIA helped the Taliban establish a network of
Islamic schools that later became facilities to train terror networks,
including Al Qaeda. The CIA used Muslim charities and mosques as fronts
for recruitment of fighters in their war against the Soviet Union,
according to Cooley, and bin Laden used that for Al Qaeda.
Bearden defended the CIA's role in Afghanistan.
''Everyone wants to jump on this and say the CIA screwed it up, but it
wasn't that,'' he said. ''Should we not have gone into the Afghan thing?
I don't think so. Look at what it led to, the end of the Soviet Union.''
Hartung, however, cautioned that the very operation that contributed to
the collapse of the Soviet Union could have brought the terror that
struck the United States. Of particular concern, Hartung said, was the
possibility that US officials are now considering backing Afghanistan's
Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
C Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
###
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