Who trained the terrorists ?
Kambiz Iranpour
From L.A.TIMES
at http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS
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Sunday, August 4, 1996
COLUMN ONE
Cold War Incursion Sows Seeds of Terror
By JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG, Times Staff
Writer
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan--A fierce
wind blew down from the barren Khwaja
Amran mountains, whipping up a stinging
sandstorm, so Maulvi Abdul Samad and his
band of fighters, some only in their
teens, took shelter in a crumbling
house. They sat on the floor of pounded
earth, cradled their assault rifles in
their arms and shared slabs of
unleavened bread. The fighters listened
with silent respect as Samad, their
fork-bearded elder, spoke of what more
than a decade and a half of warfare had
taught him.
"How can you conceive that a
country that was almost nothing smashed
the world's greatest power, the Soviet
Union, into pieces?" asked the former
commander of moujahedeen (Muslim holy
warriors) in a district of Afghanistan's
Kandahar province. "Yes, people did give
us dollars and Stinger missiles. But who
can use them? Only God.
"The Soviet Union, which was a
superpower, is now gone," he went on,
the awe evident in his voice. "It is the
Afghan nation and land that is now the
superpower."
The superpower--or, as some say,
the monster that has turned against
those who thought they could master it.
It has been more than seven years
since the pullout of the last of the
110,000 Soviet troops from Afghanistan
and four years since the collapse of the
Kremlin-backed puppet regime of
President Najibullah in Kabul. Yet the
consequences and side effects of the
Afghan War and its aftermath are still
making themselves felt.
From this remote, landlocked and
war-ruined Asian nation, weapons and the
battle-hardened men to use them have
ranged as far afield as Kashmir and the
Balkans.
Thousands of young men from
throughout the Islamic world who flocked
to Afghanistan and underwent military
training or participated in combat here
have sown a whirlwind of terror that has
buffeted Asia, Europe, Africa and North
America.
In an investigation conducted over
four continents and focused on some of
the individuals whose lives were forever
altered by their experiences here, The
Times has found that from Morocco to
Manila to Manhattan, governments and law
enforcement officials have confronted
these unforeseen consequences of the
Afghan conflict:
* Terrorism and insurrection.
* Networks of Muslim extremists
that for the first time transcend
national boundaries.
* Inflamed and expansionist
Islamic radicalism.
New Generation of Militants
In countries as diverse as
Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and France,
alumni of the Afghan War also have
helped spawn a new generation of
militant Islamists and terrorists.
"We have created a monster,"
summarized Nabil Osman, director of the
state Information Service in Egypt, one
of the largest suppliers of Arab
volunteers to the Muslim holy war waged
in Afghanistan against the Soviets.
Their involvement in Afghanistan
has even boomeranged against the old
Cold War adversaries who used one of
this continent's poorest lands as an
arena for battle. The Kremlin poured in
tanks and troops; the United States
spent billions of dollars to equip and
train anti-Communist insurgents in the
1980s.
When, for example, terrorists on
June 25 used a mammoth truck bomb to
demolish an eight-story barracks at the
King Abdulaziz Air Base in Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. airmen and
wounding more than 250 others, suspicion
immediately fell on Islamic radicals
trained in Afghanistan.
"Recently we have seen growth in
'transnational' groups comprised of
fanatical Islamic extremists, many of
whom fought in Afghanistan and now drift
to other countries with the aim of
establishing anti-Western,
fundamentalist regimes by destabilizing
traditional governments and attacking
U.S. and Western targets," Gen. J. H.
Binford Peay, head of the U.S. Central
Command, told hearings last month of the
Senate Armed Services Committee looking
into the Dhahran bombing.
On Nov. 13, five Americans died
when a white pickup truck stuffed with
explosives detonated outside a
three-story building in Riyadh, the
Saudi capital.
The terrorists' target was a U.S.
Army program that provides military and
civilian advisors to train the Saudi
national guard. Three of the four Saudi
militants arrested for that attack
admitted to having received firearms and
explosives training in Afghanistan and
to having participated in combat here.
"We were planning on carrying out
similar operations, but we were
arrested," Abdul-Aziz Fahd Nasser, 24,
said in a televised confession. On May
31, he and his accomplices were
beheaded; fellow militants vowed to
avenge their deaths.
Repercussions of the Afghan
conflict had reached the United States
even earlier. A van crammed with
explosives was driven into the parking
garage under the twin 110-story towers
of the World Trade Center in Manhattan
on Feb. 26, 1993. When it exploded, it
killed six people, injured 1,000 and
caused half a billion dollars in damage.
The "hands-on ringleader" of this
blow at the heart of the American
financial system, U.S. investigators
found, was a Brooklyn taxi driver from
Egypt who fought in the Afghan War
against the Soviets. The cabby, Mahmud
Abouhalima, has been sentenced to 240
years in federal prison. The alleged
mastermind of the bombing, Kuwaiti-born
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, also has numerous
Afghan connections.
The Russians too have been
bedeviled by further fallout from a war
that cost them the lives of 14,500
soldiers and sapped the economy of the
now-defunct Soviet Union. In March, one
month before Russian forces located him
in the mountains of Chechnya and killed
him, Chechen independence leader Dzhokar
M. Dudayev admitted for the first time
that he had sent guerrillas to
Afghanistan for military instruction.
"To tell you frankly, I do not
give a damn about what Russia and the
West think," Dudayev said in an
interview in a safe house in the village
of Shalazhi. "Yes, I did send some
well-trained groups to Afghanistan to
exchange experience and get some
training there. I did this because
Afghanistan had been able to
resist--almost with bare hands--one of
the world powers and one of the
mightiest armies in the world."
The drilling at the camps of
fundamentalist guerrilla chieftain
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami
group took place in 1994, before the war
with Russia broke out but when Dudayev
could already sense it coming, Chechen
sources said. The Chechen war rapidly
mushroomed into post-Soviet Russia's
gravest crisis, costing the lives of
30,000 Chechens and Russians; it still
rages.
Training Continues
The end of the jihad, or holy war,
against Soviet and home-bred Marxist
atheists in Afghanistan did not bring an
end to the training here of foreigners
who are seeking to learn the science of
handling firearms and explosives.
Russian officials estimate that
4,000 to 5,000 Muslim militants from
Tajikistan alone have passed through
camps in northern Afghanistan, then gone
back to the former Soviet Central Asian
republic to battle the pro-Communist
government that took power there in
early 1993.
Camps for military instruction
still are functioning, although at a
reduced level, in locales including
Paktia, Zabul, Nangarhar, Takhar and
Badakhshan provinces, Russian sources
with extensive contacts in Afghanistan
reported recently.
"We are creating our own monsters,
and then we cannot cope with them," said
a veteran Russian diplomat who blames
the old superpower rivals for plunging
Afghanistan into its present lawlessness
and chaos.
On Feb. 15, 1989, the day Soviet
Lt. Gen. Boris V. Gromov crossed the
bridge over the Amu Darya on
Afghanistan's northern frontier to
become the last Russian soldier to leave
this country, jubilant officials at CIA
headquarters in Langley, Va., exchanged
champagne toasts. One of the greatest
victories in the Cold War, it seemed,
had been won. The humiliating American
defeat by the Communists in Vietnam had
been avenged.
In retrospect, it is now clear
that the war in Afghanistan and its
aftermath were seminal events in the
development of Islamic radicalism,
perhaps the most important social and
political trend of the late 20th
century. The struggle was a rallying
point for Muslim zealots from throughout
the world and laid the groundwork for
future cooperation and support.
In the jargon of the CIA, which
orchestrated the covert campaign of
assistance to the Afghan moujahedeen,
spending roughly half a billion dollars
a year, what happened is known as
"blowback."
"This is an insane instance of the
chickens coming home to roost," said one
U.S. diplomat in neighboring Pakistan.
"You can't plug billions of dollars into
an anti-Communist jihad, accept
participation from all over the world
and ignore the consequences. But we did.
Our objectives weren't peace and
grooviness in Afghanistan. Our objective
was killing Commies and getting the
Russians out."
In radical Islam's rise, there
have been numerous contemporary
milestones, including: the 1979
fundamentalist revolution led by the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran; the
Palestinian intifada, or uprising
against Israeli occupation; and revolts
and terrorism against repressive regimes
in countries like Algeria and Egypt. But
in the opinion of many experts, no other
event has had the painful planetary
consequences of the Afghan War.
The Violence Spreads
The conflict against the Russians
and their allies in Kabul begat, by U.S.
estimate, at least 10,000 foreign Muslim
militants with some degree of military
training. In many cases, they went on to
sow terror or armed violence in other
countries. The Afghan War also gave a
significant boost to a hard-line
interpretation of Islam. Followers of
this version--inspired by the legacy of
radical clerics such as Abul Ala Maududi
of Pakistan and Sayyid Qutb and Abd
Salam Faraj of Egypt--have come to
advocate the proclamation of holy war
against pro-Western, "tyrannical" Muslim
governments.
"The pan-Islamic terrorist
movement is, thus, beginning to be seen
as the illegal offspring of the Afghan
conflict of the '80s," M. K. Narayanan,
the former director of India's
Intelligence Bureau, has stated.
In its latest report, the State
Department's Office of the Coordinator
of Counter-terrorism blames the Afghan
conflict in large part for creating a
new menace to the interests of the
United States and friendly governments:
the "transnational terrorist."
Drawing on global funding, savvy
about modern weapons and explosives,
able to take advantage of the most
up-to-date means of communication and
transportation, this new breed is "more
difficult to track and apprehend than
members of the old established groups or
those sponsored by states," the State
Department agency said this spring in
its annual report. "Many of these
transnational terrorists were trained in
militant camps in Afghanistan or are
veterans of the Afghan War."
Peay, in his Senate committee
testimony, said it is the ability to
operate across borders that makes the
new terrorists so hard to track and
neutralize. "Their small, cellular
structure and tendency to operate
independently of state sponsors
complicates monitoring of their
activities," said Peay, who is
responsible for U.S. military operations
in the Middle East.
If the charges leveled by the FBI
and U.S. prosecutors are founded,
Yousef--the terrorist suspect arrested
in Islamabad, Pakistan, last year and
deported to the United States--is the
most notorious example yet of this
lethal, unanticipated byproduct of the
Afghan War.
Yousef, 28, is on trial in
Manhattan Federal Court for an alleged
terror plot to simultaneously bomb about
a dozen Delta, Northwest and United
airlines jumbo jets over the Pacific. He
is due to go on trial in the World Trade
Center bombing later this year. In the
Philippines, the globe-trotting Muslim
militant is accused of plotting to
assassinate Pope John Paul II during a
January 1995 visit; in Pakistan, of an
aborted plan in 1993 to kill the current
prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, with a
bomb that, instead, blew up in Yousef's
face.
The exact steps of this
self-described "explosives expert" with
family roots in the Pakistani desert
province of Baluchistan still are in
dispute. But there is no doubt Yousef
had an Afghan link.
A Pakistani investigator who
interrogated him said Yousef is believed
to have been in the town of Peshawar
near the Afghan border in 1985-86 and to
have trained and fought in the Afghan
War under Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the most
anti-Western of the seven moujahedeen
faction leaders. For their part, U.S.
investigators believe Yousef came later
for training, in the three-year hiatus
between the Soviet pullout and the fall
of the Marxist government in Kabul.
In all countries where he is
believed to have operated, Yousef
availed himself of the assistance of
local groups of Muslim militants,
investigators have concluded. "It was
the experience in Afghanistan that
served as cement for these people," a
French law enforcement official said in
Paris.
For more proof of that, consider
the events one hot, sunny August morning
two years ago, when two hooded men armed
with submachine guns burst into the
lobby of the Hotel Atlas-Asni in
Marrakech, Morocco, as a third stood
guard outside. The gunmen rifled the
cash register and, as they were leaving
with $1,300 in booty, showered a crowd
of terrified tourists with bullets. Two
Spaniards were killed.
A subsequent investigation
disclosed that: The assailants were
French nationals of North African origin
from the rundown suburbs of Paris and
Orleans; they had undergone military
training in Afghanistan; the target was
chosen to destabilize Morocco's
economically vital tourism industry;
funds for the attack came via London;
and the raid was coordinated in
Peshawar.
"We see people working together
now--Pakistanis, Egyptians,
Algerians--who, before, were cloistered
by nationality and had no contact," the
French official said.
Wave of Terrorism
For Egypt, a key U.S. ally in the
Middle East, the fallout from the Afghan
War has been fearsome and tragic. Since
1992, the Arab world's most populous
country has been swept by a wave of
anti-government terrorism in which
graduates of the military training camps
in Afghanistan and Pakistan have played
a major role.
Many of the Egyptian Islamist
leaders have used Peshawar, the old
jihad headquarters-in-exile, and the
lawless tribal areas along the
Afghan-Pakistan border as a sanctuary
and base. Last year, Afghan trainees
were believed to have been behind the
assassination attempt on Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia.
"The Arab involvement in
Afghanistan started as a noble
cause--the defense of Islam and the
defeat of Russian-backed communism,"
Hassan Alfi, Egypt's interior minister,
said in an interview. "Unfortunately,
some power took hold of these young men
and changed their way of thinking. It
changed their principles. Their way
became violent, and they tried to compel
others to take Islam by force. Then they
came home and started setting the fires
of terrorism."
Alfi has been a target himself:
Two terrorists on a motorcycle, one an
Afghan War veteran, attacked his
limousine with a bomb in 1993 and
wounded him.
In Algeria, returnees from
Afghanistan were important early players
in the 4-year-old Islamic insurgency
that inflamed the North African country
after the army canceled January 1992
elections that fundamentalists of the
Islamic Salvation Front were on their
way to winning.
"Your government participated in
creating a monster," Mahfoud Bennoune,
an Algerian sociologist, complained to a
Times correspondent visiting Algiers.
"Now it has turned against you and the
world: 16,000 Arabs were trained in
Afghanistan, made into a veritable
killing machine."
In recent years, veterans of
Afghan training camps or battles also
have trooped over battlefields in the
disputed Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir, in Bosnia and in the southern
Philippines.
"Officer for officer, we may have
more combat experience than the
Philippines army," one leader of the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim
insurgent force on the island of
Mindanao, joked earlier this year to a
correspondent from the Far Eastern
Economic Review.
This is not to say that all
violent unrest or terrorism in the
Muslim world can be traced to
Afghanistan; far from it. But in
countries where they have been involved,
"Afghans," as one U.S. official noted,
have been especially valuable as "force
multipliers," sharing their knowledge of
small arms, demolition and guerrilla
tactics with new recruits to the cause
and acting as the hit squads of Islamic
fundamentalism. "They can't change the
outcome, but they can certainly drive up
the pain," the official said.
As for Afghanistan itself, more
than 16 years of nonstop warfare have
pounded it to rubble and left more than
1 million people dead. As the nominal
government of President Burhanuddin
Rabbani and his allies and enemies,
almost all of them former moujahedeen,
still battle for power, the country has
become a dangerous geopolitical black
hole.
"Afghanistan has become a conduit
for drugs, crime and terrorism that can
undermine Pakistan and the neighboring
Central Asian states and have an impact
beyond, to Europe and Russia and even
the United States," Assistant Secretary
of State Robin Raphel, the top Clinton
administration official for South Asian
affairs, told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee this year.
The State Department's "Patterns
of Global Terrorism" reports that almost
all Afghan factions, including Rabbani's
rump government, are still "involved to
some extent in harboring or facilitating
camps that have trained terrorists from
many nations who have been active in
worldwide terrorist activity."
Sons of the Jihad
In Afghanistan's agony, a new
generation of Muslim fighter, literally
the sons of the jihad, also has arisen
in the guise of the Taliban, an
ultra-orthodox Islamic militia. Drawing
tens of thousands of recruits from
madrasas, or religious schools, on the
Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier, it has an
avowed goal of creating a pure Islamic
state on Afghanistan's ruins.
"In the past years, the
moujahedeen turned away from the right
path and betrayed the cause of the
jihad," said Samad, the onetime
moujahedeen commander, who has thrown in
his fortune with the new militia and now
commands its border detachment at Spin
Boldak near Khojak Pass. "Taliban is the
law of God in this part of the land. The
only law that we want in Afghanistan is
the law of Islam."
Somewhat contrite, past and
present U.S. policymakers now admit they
didn't see the Afghan blowback coming,
especially the enormous global impact of
the thousands of Arabs and other foreign
fighters who shuttled into and out of
Afghanistan and the training camps in
the 1980s and early '90s. "In
retrospect, we clearly missed something
very important. We didn't see the trees
for the forest," one former senior U.S.
policymaker said.
The reason, one former senior
intelligence official contends, is that
the Reagan administration, former CIA
Director William J. Casey and other
"true believers" had single-mindedly
embarked on a worldwide
campaign--including an upswing in the
clandestine agent program, covert
operations in Nicaragua and Angola and
an expanded U.S. Navy--meant to halt the
spread of Soviet influence in the world
and, if possible, roll it back.
"Afghanistan was a golden
opportunity for the weakening of the
Evil Empire," Victor Marchetti, a former
senior CIA official, said in an
interview. "But the CIA has had this
experience time and time again: Korea,
Cuba, Vietnam. In all these clandestine
activities, the pressure is so great to
get something done and get it done right
away that no one takes a long-term view.
They hire all sorts of people, some of
whom are crazy. When the operation ends,
they are inevitably left with people
trained in demolition, firearms use or
guerrilla warfare, some of whom are
suddenly out of a job."
But, Marchetti pointed out, "a lot
of this was going to happen anyway
whether the U.S. government got involved
or not. People were going to come there
and fight against the Soviets. There was
going to be money. The CIA just gave it
shape and direction."
Cold War Sideshow
For the majority of Americans, the
Afghan conflict was a dimly understood
sideshow of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry
located halfway around the world. For
people in Islamic countries, the
viewpoint was wholly different. The
triumph of the tough, brave but
outgunned moujahedeen on the Afghan
plains and mountains was, for many
Muslims, one of the most important and
far-reaching events of recent times.
"Islamic history in the last
several hundred years has generally been
one of failures. There hasn't been much
to cheer about, and a general sense of
inferiority has become quite
widespread," said Sohail Mahmood,
professor at the University of the
Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan, and author
of a study on Islamic fundamentalism in
Iran, Egypt and Pakistan. "Finally, with
victory in Afghanistan, there was a
great morale booster."
Given such a rare and dazzling
success, imitation and emulation were
inevitable where Muslims felt
discriminated against, repressed or
betrayed.
"Jihad is the key to all problems
of the Muslim umma [community], whether
in Bosnia, Chechnya or Kashmir," Mast
Gul, a Pakistani veteran of Afghanistan,
told supporters after a daring armed
foray into Indian-administered Kashmir
that ended last year with a siege and
the burning of the historic 500-year-old
walnut-wood Muslim shrine at
Charar-i-Sharif.
Even in the ghettos of Western
Europe that are home to much of the
continent's rapidly growing Muslim
minority, the Afghan War has had
repercussions. France, whose Muslim
population of 3 million is Western
Europe's largest, endured a series of
eight bomb attacks last summer,
beginning with a blast in an underground
station of the Paris express commuter
railway. All told, eight people were
killed and 160 wounded.
French suspicions focused on the
Islamic revolutionaries waging the
ferocious war of insurgency against the
French-backed government in Algeria.
Once again, investigators found an
Afghan link. "Almost all of the leaders
of the people we have arrested for
terrorism have passed by Afghanistan or
Pakistan," one law enforcement official
in Paris said recently. "The know-how
was learned there," another said. "How
to operate clandestinely as well."
In many ways, the Afghan conflict
was a powerful contributor to what
Hassan Turabi, a radical Muslim leader
in Sudan, calls "the Islamic awakening's
second wave."
And the blowback from Afghanistan
continues. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
(R-Huntington Beach), who visited
Afghanistan in 1988, this year termed
the country a "ticking time bomb waiting
to explode" and a "haven for Islamic
extremists working against American
interests."
It would seem that the prophecy
set down in elegant Persian more than
six decades ago by one of the Indian
subcontinent's most celebrated poets has
come true--beyond his wildest
expectations. "Asia is a living body of
mud and water; the Afghan nation is like
its heart," Muhammad Iqbal wrote in
1932. "If there is trouble in
Afghanistan, all Asia will be troubled.
If there is peace in Afghanistan, there
will be peace in Asia."
Times staff writers Robin Wright
and Robert L. Jackson in Washington,
Richard Boudreaux in Shalazhi, David
Lamb in Cairo and John Daniszewski in
Dhahran contributed to this report.
* Monday: Muslim fighters trained
in Afghanistan have used the skills and
contacts acquired there to blaze a trail
of terror from the Philippines to
France.
* * *
Deadly Fallout of Holy War
Veterans of the anti-Soviet war in
Afghanistan have helped spawn a new
generation of militant Islamists and
terrorists around the globe by providing
military training, foot soldiers and
radical leadership. Some major flash
points:
1.* Morocco: Robbery and slaying
of two Spaniards at Marrakech tourist
hotel in August, 1994.
2.* Tajikistan: Armed opposition
to Russian-backed government.
3.* France: Bombs kill 8, wound
160 in summer of 1995.
4. * Croatia: * Car bomb kills
driver near Rijeka police station Oct.
20 after militant Talaat Fouad Kassem
disappears while in custody.
5. * Russia: * Afghan- trained
Chechen rebels fight for independence
from Russia.
6. Bosnia- Herzegovina:
* Afghan War veterans train, fight
with Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian
Serbs and Croats.
* Muslim fighters blamed for
slaying of American U.N. employee in
November.
7. Philippines:
* Armed Islamic insurgency rages
in Mindanao.
* Bomb kills 1 on Philippine
Airlines jet in December 1994.
8. Pakistan:
* Home to extremist military
training camps and thousands of Afghan
War veterans.
* Car bomb kills 16 at Egyptian
Embassy in Islamabad in November.
* Attempted assassination of Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1993.
9. India: * Insurgency in Jammu
and Kashmir state.
10. Yemen: * Bombings at Aden
hotels leave tourist dead in 1992.
11. Saudi Arabia:
* Car bomb kills 5 Americans and 2
Indians at military training center in
Riyadh in November.
* Truck bomb kills 19 U.S. airmen
in Dhahran on June 25; Afghan veterans
suspected.
12. Egypt:
* Anti- government campaign of
Islamic Group, with attacks on police,
foreign tourists and Coptic Christians.
* Assassination attempts against
President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia in
June 1995 and against Interior Minister
Hassan Alfi in 1993.
13. United States: * Bomb kills 6,
wounds 1,000 at World Trade Center in
New York in 1993.
14. Algeria: * Civil War, 50,000
dead; scores of foreigners slain.
Source: Times staff and wire
reports
Afghanistan's Anguish
Afghanistan, one of the poorest
nations in the world, is a landlocked
country of high, snow-capped mountain
ranges traversed by deep, fertile
valleys.
The nearly 15-year Afghan War left
severe political, economic and
ecological problems. Roads suffered
extensive damage, and there are no
railways except an extension of the
Soviet rail system built during the war.
Life expectancy in Afghanistan is
the lowest in the world, while its
infant mortality rate is the highest.
And though the war against Soviet rule
ended in the establishment of an Islamic
republic, rival Muslim factions still
vie for control, continuing decades of
bloodshed.
* Land: Slightly smaller than
Texas
* Capital: Kabul
* Government: Republic
* Population: 21.5 million
* Ethnic composition: Mainly
Pushtun, Tajik and Hazara
* Languages: Afghan Persian,
Pushtu, Turkic
* Infant mortality rate: 152.8
deaths per 1,000 live births
* Life expectancy: 43 years
* Economy: Highly dependent on
farming and raising sheep and goats.
Prewar exports included fruits, nuts,
hand-woven carpets, wool, cotton, hides
and gems.
* Gross national product: Less
than $300 per capita in 1992
* Literacy (age 15 and over who
can read and write): 29%
SOURCES: CIA World Factbook 1995;
Political Handbook of the World
1995-1996; Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th
Ed.; Statesman's Yearbook; Population
Reference Bureau; Times staff and wire
reports
Why the War?
Key events of Afghan conflict:
1973: A military coup led by
former strongman Mohammed Daoud
overthrows King Mohammed Zahir Shah;
republic is proclaimed with Daoud as
president.
1978: Left-wing revolution ousts
Daoud, who is killed. Nur Mohammed
Taraki is installed as head of a
Marxist, pro-Soviet regime.
1979: Taraki yields office of
prime minister to his hard-liner deputy,
Hafizullah Amin, then dies mysteriously.
Amin imposes rigorous and
unpopular Communist policies, resulting
in an uprising that leads to a massive
military intervention by the Soviet
Union under leader Leonid I. Brezhnev.
Amin is killed and replaced by
Babrak Karmal, who is flown in by the
Soviets from exile in Eastern Europe.
1980: Within days of Soviet
intervention, the United Nations calls
for total withdrawal of foreign troops.
U.S. President Jimmy Carter
imposes sanctions against the Soviet
Union, including a halt in the sales of
grain and high-technology equipment.
U.S. boycotts Summer Olympic Games in
Moscow. Civil war continues until 1989
in most parts of Afghanistan between the
moujahedeen and Soviet-backed government
forces.
1981: Newly elected President
Ronald Reagan lifts embargo on grain
sales.
1982: Afghan resistance makes
neighboring Pakistan its base; 2.5
million Afghans take refuge there.
1984: Soviet Union boycotts Summer
Olympics in Los Angeles.
1985: Rival Afghan resistance
elements agree to form seven-party
coalition. Government proposes timetable
for withdrawal of Soviet troops.
1986: Karmal is replaced as
president by Najibullah, a former secret
police director.
Resistance reportedly receives
first supply of U.S.-made Stinger
antiaircraft missiles, which they use to
blunt effect of Soviet air power.
1987: Rebels reject power-sharing
proposal. Najibullah says Soviet troops
could be withdrawn within a year.
1989: Soviet troops complete
withdrawal. Armed conflict increases
between government and resistance
forces.
1991: Talks between moujahedeen
and Soviet government lead to transfer
of Soviet support from Najibullah to
interim Islamic regime.
1992: Najibullah steps down as
moujahedeen closes in on Kabul.
The Islamic State of Afghanistan
is declared.
BY THE NUMBERS
* Number of Soviet troops:
Originally 30,000; grew to 110,000
* Nations aiding rebels: United
States, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Pakistan
* Afghan casualties: 1 million
dead, 5 million refugees
* Soviet casualties: 15,000 dead,
37,000 wounded
* Aftermath: More than 5 million
land mines saturated the countryside as
late as 1992
SOURCES: CIA World Factbook 1995;
Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th Ed.;
Statesman's Yearbook; Times staff and
wire reports. Researched by CARY
SCHNEIDER.
Kambiz Iranpour
PARIS, Aug 5 (Reuter) - France warned the United States on
Monday that the European Union would retaliate if President Bill
Clinton implemented a law imposing sanctions on foreign firms
that invest in Iran and Libya.
``We reaffirm our determimation to ensure that French
interests are not affected and that any damage does not go
without retaliation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Yves Doutriaux
told journalists.
He said that the United States, as far as he was aware, had
given its allies no evidence that Iran was involved in the
latest bomb attacks against U.S. targets at home or abroad.
``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
for the safety and development of world trade by taking
unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
Speaking at a regular ministry briefing, he said it was an
issue of principle for France and its European partners.
Doutriaux said France was fully committed to the fight
against terrorism through practical measures but did not share
the U.S. analysis that Iran, Libya, Iraq and Sudan were
terrorist states.
R Weems Jr
Kambiz Iranpour (m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no) wrote:
: ``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
: for the safety and development of world trade by taking
: unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
Well, it seems to me that a bombing that kills dozens of
Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
have no idea.
However, if we discover undisputable proof that a given nation
was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
retaliation proportional to the attack.
And if the French or the rest of the EU don't like it then
that's just too bad.
Dave Healy
El...@cris.com (R Weems Jr) wrote:
>However, if we discover undisputable proof that a given nation
>was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
>think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
>retaliation proportional to the attack.
>
> And if the French or the rest of the EU don't like it then
>that's just too bad.
The original article wasn't about military retaliation, it was about
the imposition of US sanctions outside the US against foreign
companies pursuing activities that are legal under the laws of the
countries in which they're domiciled.
Dave
The opinions expressed| "Who is she to say he can't be trusted.....
herein are solely mine| and come to think of it, how does she know?"
and not my employers' | 'Can't Be Trusted' - The Bluetones
Jon Livesey
In article <4u6i25$3...@herald.concentric.net>,
R Weems Jr <El...@cris.com> wrote:
>Kambiz Iranpour (m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no) wrote:
>: ``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
>: will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
>: for the safety and development of world trade by taking
>: unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
>
> Well, it seems to me that a bombing that kills dozens of
> Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
> I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
> have no idea.
>
> was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
> think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
> retaliation proportional to the attack.
But we're talking about retaliation against European countries
that had nothing to do with the bombing, as far as I know.
> And if the French or the rest of the EU don't like it then
> that's just too bad.
I think Americans said much the same about Smoot-Hawley.
jon.
Alireza BANAEI
R Weems Jr wrote:
> However, if we discover undisputable proof that a given nation
> was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
> think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
> retaliation proportional to the attack.
You're right, but it seems that Mr. Clinton goes backward :
first he decides sanctions without any consultation with US
partners concerned by his decision;
after he may jugdes,
and may be in the future he looks for some proofs !
AB
Oracle@delphi
R Weems Jr wrote:
>
> Kambiz Iranpour (m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no) wrote:
> : ``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
> : will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
> : for the safety and development of world trade by taking
> : unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
>
> Well, it seems to me that a bombing that kills dozens of
> Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
> I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
> have no idea.
>
> was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
> think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
> retaliation proportional to the attack.
>
> that's just too bad.
Hmmmm,
I wonder what you would post if the British government suddenly bombed
the hell out of Ireland??????Or France bombed Algeria??
R Weems Jr
Oracle@delphi (Ora...@delphi.leeds.ac.uk) wrote:
: Hmmmm,
: I wonder what you would post if the British government suddenly bombed
: the hell out of Ireland??????Or France bombed Algeria??
Well, the Irish government is not supporting the IRA as far as
I know, and I believe that the ALgerian government tries hard to
suppress the fundamentalists who do most of the bombing.
That being the case, neither of these examples is of a nation
officially supporting or training terrorists for attacks against
another country. I would certainly support the right of the
British or French government to attack any nation that did
support terrorists who murder French or British citizens, but
I don't think that such is the case with Ireland and Algeria.
Virk Shakeel
: Well, it seems to me that a bombing that kills dozens of
: Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
: I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
: have no idea.
Okay so here's the situation. There is no proof or evidence to suggest
that Iran supports terrorism, so let's pass a law which greatly hurts
Iran and other countries ???
: However, if we discover undisputable proof that a given nation
: was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
: think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
: retaliation proportional to the attack.
That's a big 'if'. So let's just re-examine the logic.
If it can be proven that Iran is responsible, then the law we have
already passed will be the appropriate punishment, if it cannot be proven
then o'well no skin off our back.
: And if the French or the rest of the EU don't like it then
: that's just too bad.
Yep, that's just too bad for Iran.
Shakeel Virk
rogermonson
Oracle@delphi wrote:
> > : will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
> > : for the safety and development of world trade by taking
> > : unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
> >
> > Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
> > I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
> > have no idea.
> >
> > was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
> > think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
> > retaliation proportional to the attack.
> >
> > that's just too bad.
>
> I wonder what you would post if the British government suddenly bombed
> the hell out of Ireland??????Or France bombed Algeria??
We would support it as any sane nation would do-not wimps like England
has turned out to be in the last quarter of this century. Incidentally,
where the hell have all of you been in the last 20 years. Pan Am
107-Lockerbee was caused by a couple of Libyans. Barracks in Saudi
Arabia looks like the culprit was Iran. Bombing in Ryadh caused by Iran
extremists. Read your newspapers, friend.
Alireza BANAEI
rogermonson wrote:
> Barracks in Saudi
> Arabia looks like the culprit was Iran. Bombing in Ryadh caused by Iran
> extremists. Read your newspapers, friend.
In the newspapers we can read the things like that :
a CIA's authority said that it seems that ....
Never you can find a proof of what you have said, just some propaganda
to have an influence on the public opinion.
When the Israel kills more than 100 civilians deliberatly and there are
many proofs on it, these newspapers dont care. but when there is not
any proof , they try to past the bombings to Iran and to the muslim
world generaly.
please read more your newspapers , friend, and try to read
between the lines !
best regards
Kambiz Iranpour
rogermonson wrote :
>We would support it as any sane nation would do-not wimps like England
>has turned out to be in the last quarter of this century. Incidentally,
>where the hell have all of you been in the last 20 years. Pan Am
>107-Lockerbee was caused by a couple of Libyans. Barracks in Saudi
>Arabia looks like the culprit was Iran. Bombing in Ryadh caused by Iran
>extremists. Read your newspapers, friend.
Bull.... Read the following by the "Information Technology":
""""""""""""""""
OK, so Mr. Perry got you all excited to go on a bombing mission? :-)
The same equal punishment for the same. What is the appropriate
action to be taken against US for OK'ing Israel last
"invasion", (attacking an another country, killing its civilians)
including when they bombed the UN compound? I don't think the Lebanese
have
a fleet to send to NY harbor in order to bomb the hell out of New York
city,
but who knows, they may take an airliner down. Translation: life
has value to all, no matter where they are from. How come there are
no terrorist attacks against Canada? What is the US gov. doing outside
of its shores that they are not? (or vice versa).
But on to Iran. First Iran is NOT behind the latest backlash
against "US Interests". Why? Simple. There has been no incident
to provoke a retaliation. US has been on the attack recently,
while the Iranians on their relative good behavior to prove to
the Europeans that the US is just bullying them. So the last
thing they would do is cause problems for themselves.
In fact when they offered the oil deal
to Conoco, it was a form of peace offering. But US killed it.
Why? US is doing business with Vietnam now, my God, Vietnam!
So the hostage stuff is a minor detail and that was not it.
It was Israel who Killed it. Israel is the only country
that is feeling the Iranian pressure. Iran does support
groups who want to throw them out of Southern Lebanon and
and others who do not agree with the "peace process". The
"peace process", is looked on by many to be similar to the
struggle between the initial Settlers and the native Indians.
The "Good" Indians got involved in the "peace process" while
the "bad","terrorist", or "Savage" Indians decided
to fight for what they believe was an unfair deal.
We know what happened to both.
So Israel calls their lobby group in the US.( Damato and
company), "please help us". The lobby tells Clinton (and Dole)
you either beat the shit out of Iran for us, or American Jews will not
fund your election nor vote for you. Clinton got the message,
he wants to win in November. As you can check, most of the anti-Iran
legislation announcements by Clinton has been made when talking in front
of Jewish Groups. (no disrespect to anone from the Jewish faith).
This is what the Europeans mean when the say "Election Year Politics"
in regard to latest bill passed against Iran/Libya.
So lets get to the meat. Who was behind:
TWA 800
No proof that it was or was not a bomb. But if it was a bomb,
then it came from US soil. (luggage etc..) how did the explosives
reach US? Some chance it may be US group, but most likely external.
For the reasons mentioned
before, Iran has been trying to mend relationships, so they would
not order such a thing. Taking a plane down full of civilians is
an act of revenge. So who would want to take revenge today? Maybe
Lebanese for the killings in lebanon. A slight chance it
was Serbs for US involvement in Bosnia.(The plane did take off from
Greece which is pro Serb.) However Serbs would have too much to
loose if they were caught.
Saudi Arabia Bombing:
NO way Iran, they would not even touch it if they knew about it.
It would start a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and
Iran is not preparing for war with the Saudi's. In fact after the
gulf war Iran has been patching relationship with gulf states.
So does not makes sense. It seems to be totally internal politics.
Someone who knows how to get around in Saudi Arabia, and
the Iranians could never pull such a thing off over there.
(super tight security in Saudi Arabia). However it does look
bad that it was an internal affair. (US-Saudi relationship,
plus US population's view of Saudi's, and the fact that some group
is questioning the King's authority). So best to blame it
on the outside, some scapegoat. Obviously the AK-47s came
from the outside, so there is some "external" factor.
US has no problem blaming Iran, it fits well with their
story etc.. however Saudi's cannot really point at
Iran unless Iran was truly behind it. So they have a problem.
The article in the LA Times did a very good job on addressing
the issue of trained individuals coming back from the Afghan
experience. There is no free lunch.
PS. author is not a highly paid terrorism expert nor a security
specialist, like the ones that come on the TV. You should trust
them more, they know everything.
Kambiz Iranpour
In article <4u8jia$2...@herald.concentric.net>, El...@cris.com
(R Weems Jr) writes:
|> Oracle@delphi (Ora...@delphi.leeds.ac.uk) wrote:
|> : Hmmmm,
|> : I wonder what you would post if the British government suddenly bombed
|> : the hell out of Ireland??????Or France bombed Algeria??
|>
|> Well, the Irish government is not supporting the IRA as far as
What about Clinton ? Didn't he meet Gerry Adams (sp ?) in spite
of the protests from Britain ? Isn't it because the Irish consitituency
in US is strong enough to pressure Clinton to dance after its
tune, the same as the Israeli lobby in the US has done on the
Middle East-related policies through financial leverages and
bank-rolling presidential candidates and Congressmen ? US policies
are often not drived by a long term rationale but as it is
rightly characterized by the Europeans are greatly influenced by
election-campaign policies and by strong lobbies. This sounds too bad
for the future of a world in which the policies of its only superpower
are hostage to the narrow aspirations of the interest-groups
and lobbies. This isn't a policy which brings respect to its
executioner in the world community. These fallacies will eventually encourage
mutiny among the US allies and its friends in a long term !!! Look
at the sanction bills and the repercussions in the world community.
Regards
Kambiz
Anthony Potts
On Thu, 8 Aug 1996, rogermonson wrote:
>
> We would support it as any sane nation would do-not wimps like England
> has turned out to be in the last quarter of this century. Incidentally,
> where the hell have all of you been in the last 20 years. Pan Am
> 107-Lockerbee was caused by a couple of Libyans.
And could you tell us just which court returned this verdict?
Thought not.
Basically, innocent until proven guilty only applies to 'merkins in your
fantasy world.
Alborz
rogermonson <sm...@loop.com> wrote:
>We would support it as any sane nation would do-not wimps like England
>has turned out to be in the last quarter of this century. Incidentally,
>where the hell have all of you been in the last 20 years. Pan Am
>107-Lockerbee was caused by a couple of Libyans. Barracks in Saudi
>Arabia looks like the culprit was Iran. Bombing in Ryadh caused by Iran
>extremists. Read your newspapers, friend.
Don't talk bullshit, talk about facts if it is not hard for you to accept.
Fact No 1- There has been NO shred of evidence of the Iranian involvement in any of the above you have mentioned.
Fact No 2- If you read newspapers you would know that the US govenement recently annouced world wide that it is giving $20M to the=
CIA just for its terrorist operations against Iran. Now would you say this justify a millitary strike against US targets in Persian=
Gulf?
Al
Alborz
rogermonson <sm...@loop.com> wrote:
>Oracle@delphi wrote:
>>
>> R Weems Jr wrote:
>> >
>> > Kambiz Iranpour (m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no) wrote:
>> > : ``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
>> > : will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
>> > : for the safety and development of world trade by taking
>> > : unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
>> >
>> > Well, it seems to me that a bombing that kills dozens of
>> > Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
>> > I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
>> > have no idea.
>> >
>> > However, if we discover undisputable proof that a given nation
>> > was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
>> > think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
>> > retaliation proportional to the attack.
>> >
>> > And if the French or the rest of the EU don't like it then
>> > that's just too bad.
>>
>> I wonder what you would post if the British government suddenly bombed
>> the hell out of Ireland??????Or France bombed Algeria??
>
>has turned out to be in the last quarter of this century. Incidentally,
>where the hell have all of you been in the last 20 years. Pan Am
>107-Lockerbee was caused by a couple of Libyans. Barracks in Saudi
>Arabia looks like the culprit was Iran. Bombing in Ryadh caused by Iran
>extremists. Read your newspapers, friend.
>Oracle@delphi wrote:
>>
>> R Weems Jr wrote:
>> >
>> > Kambiz Iranpour (m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no) wrote:
>> > : ``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
>> > : will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
>> > : for the safety and development of world trade by taking
>> > : unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
>> >
>> > Well, it seems to me that a bombing that kills dozens of
>> > Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
>> > I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
>> > have no idea.
>> >
>> > However, if we discover undisputable proof that a given nation
>> > was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
>> > think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
>> > retaliation proportional to the attack.
>> >
>> > And if the French or the rest of the EU don't like it then
>> > that's just too bad.
>>
>> I wonder what you would post if the British government suddenly bombed
>> the hell out of Ireland??????Or France bombed Algeria??
>
farshad
Job well done, Kambiz. By the time we try to prove to these ASSHOLES who
is right and who is wrong, these brainless (I am nice again) are going to
blow their own god damn head away; but, oh well, it serves them right.
As long as this corrupt and garbage media feeds these brainlesses that's
how it will be. This country is long overdue for a real revolution, to
throw these assholes off the balcony!!!! Put away all of these
multi-termers in their Senate and House out of their miseries, put the
"jewish supported and run" media in trash and end this agony once and
forever.
Kambiz Iranpour
In article <Dvu76...@lboro.ac.uk>, Alborz <alb...@lut.ac.uk> writes:
|>
|>
|> Don't talk bullshit, talk about facts if it is not hard for you to accept.
|>
|> Fact No 1- There has been NO shred of evidence of the Iranian
|> involvement in any of the above you have mentioned.
|>
|> Fact No 2- If you read newspapers you would know that the US govenement
|> recently annouced world wide that it is giving $20M to the=
|> CIA just for its terrorist operations against Iran. Now would you say
|> this justify a millitary strike against US targets in Persian=
|> Gulf?
|>
|> Al
|>
|>
|>
Actually Reuter reported on the 8th of August that :
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
While the debate over U.S. retaliatory options continued, a
Central Intelligence Agency official said investigators had
found "no firm evidence pointing to any individual group or
nation" as behind the Dhahran bombing or the TWA explosion.
Referring to reports suggesting a possible Iranian link, the
CIA official said: "The hysteria continues."
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, you can make your own conclusions !!! One wonders why
the administration is conducting this adventurist policies
if it is not an election campaign strategy to satisfy the Israelie
lobby which these days is de facto running the Clinton
administration !!!
Best regards
Kambiz Iranpour
bbx
rogermonson wrote:
> We would support it as any sane nation would do-not wimps like England
> has turned out to be in the last quarter of this century. Incidentally,
> where the hell have all of you been in the last 20 years. Pan Am
> 107-Lockerbee was caused by a couple of Libyans. Barracks in Saudi
> Arabia looks like the culprit was Iran. Bombing in Ryadh caused by
> Iran
> extremists. Read your newspapers, friend.
Thanks for your input. Would you please provide the rest of us with
the proof of what you stated above? Specifically about the "Bombing in
Ryadh caused by Iran" ? I maybe asking too much since your government
has not been able to prove this either. Yet, it is evident that unlike
us, you have been reading "your newspapers", friend.
Use of the terms like "What looks like", "Sources Say", "It's been
alleged", etc. don't cut it anymore sir. If you like to have a decent
dialogue you should try to avoid smoke & mirrors and try to stick to the
proven facts.
Thanks again.
Trita Parsi
R Weems Jr wrote:
>
> Oracle@delphi (Ora...@delphi.leeds.ac.uk) wrote:
> : Hmmmm,
> : I wonder what you would post if the British government suddenly bombed
> : the hell out of Ireland??????Or France bombed Algeria??
>
> suppress the fundamentalists who do most of the bombing.
>
> That being the case, neither of these examples is of a nation
> officially supporting or training terrorists for attacks against
> another country.
Once again you are forgetting ine thing- THERE IS NO EVIDENCE HIERTO
THAT LINKS IRAN TO THE TWA CRASH or any any terrorist activities. If
there was- perhaps the EU wouldnt be fighting the US over these
sanctions...
--
Trita (Terita) Parsi
Zende bAd IrAn
Trita Parsi
R Weems Jr wrote:
>
> Kambiz Iranpour (m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no) wrote:
> : ``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
> : will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
> : for the safety and development of world trade by taking
> : unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.
>
> Well, it seems to me that a bombing that kills dozens of
> Americans is a pretty strong "unilateral extra-territorial measure".
> I'm not saying that Iran was responsible for the bombing- I
> have no idea.
>
> However, if we discover undisputable proof that a given nation
> was responsible for murdering dozens of our citizens, then I
> think the vast majority of Americans would support a miltary
> retaliation proportional to the attack.
Unfortunately undisputable proof is not needed for the vast majority of
Americans to support military actions. Election campaign headlines and
scandals is all they need to be for military retaliation...
Hamvatan
It's a shame that EU does not want to punish Iran for its support of
terrorism. If they could only see beyond their pocket books and pay
attention to the human rights violations committed by the mollahs,
we'll all be able to go back to Iran. I say sanction the hell out of
IRI to force a free election. It worked for South Africa, it'll work
for Iran.
MJ
m.k.ir...@fys.uio.no (Kambiz Iranpour) wrote:
>
> PARIS, Aug 5 (Reuter) - France warned the United States on
>Monday that the European Union would retaliate if President Bill
>Clinton implemented a law imposing sanctions on foreign firms
>that invest in Iran and Libya.
> ``We reaffirm our determimation to ensure that French
>interests are not affected and that any damage does not go
>without retaliation,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Yves Doutriaux
>told journalists.
> He said that the United States, as far as he was aware, had
>given its allies no evidence that Iran was involved in the
>latest bomb attacks against U.S. targets at home or abroad.
> ``We hope reason will prevail and the American authorities
>will refrain from creating a particularly dangerous precedent
>for the safety and development of world trade by taking
>unilateral extra-territorial measures,'' Doutriaux said.