- Refugees From Kandahar Describe City Bracing for War(2001/10/02)
- CIA Trained Pakistanis to Nab Terrorist(2001/10/03)
- Anti-War Protesters March in D.C.(2001/09/29)
Turmoil in Home of Taliban
Refugees From Kandahar Describe City Bracing for War
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 2, 2001; Page A01
CHAMAN, Pakistan, Oct. 1 -- The conservative southern Afghan city of Kandahar, birthplace and capital of the ruling Taliban militia, has dissolved into panic and frantic military preparations in anticipation of an attack by the United States, according to interviews with refugees and traders leaving Afghanistan.
They said parts of the once-bustling city are deserted as residents have fled to Pakistan or into remote villages, while other sections resemble military encampments with tanks standing sentry on roadways, dozens of impromptu checkpoints set up at intersections and Kalashnikov-toting men and boys patrolling the streets, frequently firing their guns into the air.
"They are preparing for war," said Ghulam Haidar, 60, who crossed the Pakistan border two days ago from Kandahar.
In cities across Afghanistan, travelers and refugees said, Taliban soldiers are rounding up young men from mosques, religious schools and city streets, ordering them to take up arms against a potential attack.
The detailed accounts of refugees, traders and drivers -- who continue to travel between Kandahar and a contested strip of border desert just 30 minutes away -- present grim images of an already ravaged country spiraling into bleak new chaos.
Refugees from some minority tribal groups said they fled their homes with little more than the clothes they wore, fearing not only U.S. missiles and bombs, but possible retaliation from the Taliban. Others said they were joining the exodus to escape existing drought and economic deprivation more than a military attack.
The descriptions from inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan could not be verified independently, but the eyewitness accounts of refugees and traders from a variety of locations and tribal backgrounds provided strikingly similar descriptions of current conditions.
"Everybody is afraid, everybody wants to run away," said Amin Bigum, 45, who fled Kabul, the Afghan capital, by minibus three days after the terrorist attacks in the United States.
Nowhere in Afghanistan did the panic spread faster or strike deeper on the day of the attacks on New York and Washington than in Kandahar, which remains the Taliban spiritual and governmental center.
In a city in which television sets and the Internet are banned, the news arrived by way of the BBC's Pashto radio service. Within minutes, neighbors burst from their houses breathless with the reports they were hearing. Eleven-year-old Fazal Ahmad raced out of the tiny shop where he worked after school and ran to find his mother, Shaima, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.
"The radio says Osama bin Laden attacked America and America is going to attack Afghanistan," the youngster told his mother, using a homegrown sign language and emotional facial expressions. His mother has been deaf since birth.
Within hours, the neighborhoods surrounding the houses and offices of the Taliban leadership, including the militia's leader, Mohammad Omar, emptied completely. Even Taliban officials sent their wives and youngsters dashing for safety toward Pakistan or more remote home villages, according to Ullar Sadiq, 23, a Kandahar resident who was visiting Pakistan on family business this weekend. He spoke as he passed through the border crossing here, which remains open to people and goods despite Pakistan's claim to have shut down such traffic.
On the morning of Sept. 12, the day after the attacks, the Taliban closed every religious school in Kandahar and ordered the students to begin emergency military training. Soldiers handed out weapons to any young man in the city volunteering to take up arms. Taliban authorities announced on loudspeakers from mosques that all men who were not willing to fight should leave town.
But as growing numbers of frightened residents shuttered their houses and shops and abandoned the city, Taliban authorities apparently switched tactics, conscripting even those men opposed to fighting. In one instance, soldiers descended on a mosque at prayer time, demanding that all the young men present participate in the coming battle, according to a letter received a few days ago by boys' relatives living in Quetta, a city in southwestern Pakistan 2 1/2 hours by car from the Afghan border.
Today, many of those boys remain in hiding in their houses, fearful of being snatched by Taliban soldiers if they venture out, the relatives said. Fear has also forced businesses to close, refugees said, giving many sections of larger cities an atmosphere of abandonment as the country braces for attack.
However, the Taliban has declared it is ready for a confrontation with the United States. Omar, the group's spiritual leader, said in a radio broadcast Sept. 19 from Kabul that the United States had issued "an ultimatum of war and military attack." He added, "I will see what is in store for you. We will see you when you come."
But many ruled by the Taliban are not waiting for war. In the Farsiban tribal community -- a minority group opposed to many of the social and educational restrictions imposed by the Taliban -- people left their homes and the streets emptied. For the widow Shaima, who washed clothes, cleaned houses and begged in the streets to support her three young children, the $50 she needed for passage to Pakistan equaled more than a month's wages. Sympathetic neighbors donated the money to her. In the end, it was barely enough. The driver wouldn't take her bags of meager possessions.
"I left my luggage, I left my clothes, I didn't have the money to bring them," Shaima relayed through her crude sign language.
While the majority of refugees escaping into Pakistan are from the southern Kandahar region, many others have made the far more arduous trek from the capital, Kabul. They have heard reports that the border in the southwest is easier to cross than the more treacherous border farther north, leading into Peshawar.
Khair Mohammad, 25, said he fled Kabul after barely escaping conscription by the Taliban. He said six Taliban soldiers arrived at his house and ordered him to accompany them. They brought him to a room in a building he did not know, where nine other men had also been corralled.
"They weren't being discriminatory about age or ethnic group," said Mohammad. "They were taking older men as well as boys."
Mohammad said he convinced his Taliban guards that he was a willing participant and was allowed to leave the building to run a fabricated errand. Instead, he collected his wife and three children, and raced from the city.
Across Afghanistan, food supplies, already strained by one of the worst droughts in decades, are dwindling further. Drivers and traders making regular trips to Kandahar said that produce and other stocks in local markets appeared to be disappearing as residents hoard supplies and Pakistan restricts delivery of new goods into Afghanistan. "Already there is less food in the market," said 18-year-old Mahamoud, a farmer from Kandahar.
In Kabul, food prices have lept by as much as 24 percent in the past several days, according to officials of the World Food Program, which dispatched a truck convoy loaded with 200 tons of wheat and other foodstuffs to Kabul and Herat on Sunday and sent a 19-truck convoy carrying 500 tons from Peshawar to Kabul today.
Authorities said the food shipments are experimental. Aid workers fear the Taliban could hijack supplies for its soldiers rather than allow distribution among needy citizens.
Relief workers said they are perplexed by the disappearance of an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 refugees reported to be massing along the Pakistan border in the days immediately following the attacks in the United States. Rupert Coleville, a spokesman in Quetta for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that while some are believed to have straggled across the border, others likely returned to their home towns under pressure from the Taliban.
A regional Pakistani official said border authorities rounded up 109 Afghan refugees, most of them women and children, and at 1 a.m. Friday woke a Taliban border guard and turned the group over to him.
"We gave them back to the Taliban," said the official, who asked that his name not be used, adding, "The Taliban might not be treating them so well."
Even as thousands of Afghans may be attempting to flee their country, hundreds are making the pilgrimage between Kandahar and a chaotic border crossing here each day. On one recent day, trucks piled high with logs from the opposition Northern Alliance-held Panjshir Valley rumbled through the border gate while donkey carts sagging under the weight of scrap metal creaked toward Quetta in Pakistan.
Taxis loaded with passengers from both sides of the border disgorged passengers, some with documentation, some without.
Hameeda, a 26-year-old mother of six, said she crossed the no man's land here in a vehicle with 50 other refugees Saturday. "Nobody even asked for an ID card," she said.
All along the route from her small village north of Kandahar, according to Hameeda, "The Taliban had guns in their arms. They were making preparations for an attack and people were running the other way."
CIA Trained Pakistanis to Nab Terrorist
But Military Coup Put an End to 1999 Plot
By Bob Woodward and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 3, 2001; Page A1
In 1999, the CIA secretly trained and equipped approximately 60 commandos from the Pakistani intelligence agency to enter Afghanistan for the purpose of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, according to people familiar with the operation.
The operation was arranged by then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his chief of intelligence with the Clinton administration, which in turn promised to lift sanctions on Pakistan and provide an economic aid package. The plan was aborted later that year when Sharif was ousted in a military coup.
The plan was set in motion less than 12 months after U.S. cruise missile strikes against bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan that Clinton administration officials believe narrowly missed hitting the exiled Saudi militant. The clandestine operation was part of a more robust effort by the United States to get bin Laden than has been previously reported, including consideration of broader military action, such as massive bombing raids and Special Forces assaults.
It is a record of missed opportunities that has provided President Bush and his administration with some valuable lessons as well as a framework for action as they draw up plans for their own war against bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The Pakistani commando team was up and running and ready to strike by October 1999, a former official said. "It was an enterprise," the official said. "It was proceeding." Still stung by their failure to get bin Laden the previous year, Clinton officials were delighted at the operation, which they believed provided a real opportunity to eliminate bin Laden. "It was like Christmas," a source said.
The operation was aborted on Oct. 12, 1999, however, when Sharif was overthrown in a military coup led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who refused to continue the operation despite substantial efforts by the Clinton administration to revive it.
Musharraf, now Pakistan's president, has emerged as a key ally in the Bush administration's efforts to track down bin Laden and destroy his terrorist network. The record of the CIA's aborted relationship with Pakistan two years ago illustrates the value Eand the pitfalls Eof such an alliance in targeting bin Laden.
Pakistan and its intelligence service have valuable information about what is occurring inside Afghanistan, a country that remains closed to most of the world. But a former U.S. official said joint operations with the Pakistani service are always dicey, because the Taliban militia that rules most of Afghanistan has penetrated Pakistani intelligence.
"You never know who you're dealing with," the former senior official said. "You're always dealing with shadows."
'We Were at War'
In addition to the Pakistan operation, President Bill Clinton the year before had approved additional covert action for the CIA to work with groups inside Afghanistan and with other foreign intelligence services to capture or kill bin Laden.
The most dramatic attempt to kill bin Laden occurred in August 1998, when Clinton ordered a Tomahawk cruise missile attack on bin Laden's suspected training camps in Afghanistan in response to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
At the time, the Pentagon informed the president that far more ambitious and riskier military actions could be undertaken, according to officials involved in the decision. The options included a clandestine helicopter-borne night assault with small U.S. special operations units; a massive bombing raid on the southeastern Afghan city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban and a place frequently visited by bin Laden and his followers; and a larger air- and sea-launched missile and bombing raid on the bin Laden camps in eastern Afghanistan.
Clinton approved the cruise missile attack recommended by his advisers, and on Aug. 20, 1998, 66 cruise missiles rained down on the training camps. An additional 13 missiles were fired at a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that the Clinton administration believed was a chemical weapons factory associated with bin Laden.
Clinton's decision to attack with unmanned Tomahawk cruise missiles meant that no American lives were put in jeopardy. The decision was supported by his top national security team, which included Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, officials said.
In the aftermath of last month's attacks on the United States, which the Bush administration has tied to bin Laden, Clinton officials said their decision not to take stronger and riskier action has taken on added relevance. "I wish we'd recognized it then," that the United States was at war with bin Laden, said a senior Defense official, "and started the campaign then that we've started now. That's my main regret. In hindsight, we were at war."
Outside experts are even more pointed. "I think that raid really helped elevate bin Laden's reputation in a big way, building him up in the Muslim world," said Harlan Ullman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "My sense is that because the attack was so limited and incompetent, we turned this guy into a folk hero."
Senior officials involved in the decision to limit the attack to unmanned cruise missiles cite four concerns that in many ways are similar to those the Bush administration is confronting now.
One was worry that the intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts was sketchy. Reports at the time said he was supposed to be at a gathering of terrorists, perhaps 100 or more, but it was not clear how reliable that information was. "There was little doubt there was going to be a conference," a source said. "It was not certain that bin Laden would be there, but it was thought to be the case." The source added, "It was all driven by intelligence. . . . The intelligence turned out to be off."
A second concern was about killing innocent people, especially in Kandahar, a city already devastated by the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Large loss of civilian life, the thinking went, could have cost the United States the moral high ground in its efforts against terrorism, especially in the Muslim world.
The risks of conducting a long-range helicopter assault, which would require aerial refueling at night, were another factor. The helicopters might have had to fly 900 miles, an official said. Administration officials especially wanted to avoid a repeat of the disastrous 1980 Desert One operation to rescue American hostages in Iran. During that operation, ordered by President Jimmy Carter, a refueling aircraft collided with a helicopter in the Iranian desert, killing eight soldiers.
A final element was the lack of permission for bombers to cross the airspace of an adjoining nation, such as Pakistan, or for helicopters to land at a staging ground on foreign soil. Since Sept. 11, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have offered the United States use of bases and airspace for any new strike against bin Laden.
Bin Laden, 44, a member of an extended wealthy Saudi family, was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991 and stripped of his citizenship three years later. In early 1996, the CIA set up a special bin Laden unit, largely because of evidence linking him to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. At the time, he was living in Sudan, but he was expelled from that country in May 1996 after the CIA failed to persuade the Saudis to accept a Sudanese offer to turn him over.
After his subsequent move to Afghanistan, bin Laden became a major focus of U.S. military and intelligence efforts in February 1998, when he issued a "fatwah," or religious order, calling for the killing of Americans. "That really got us spun up," recalled retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who was then the chief of the Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia.
When two truck bombs killed more than 200 people at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August of that year, and the U.S. government developed evidence that bin Laden was behind both attacks, the question was not whether the United States should counterattack, but how and when. And when depended on information about his whereabouts. Two weeks later, intelligence arrived in Washington indicating that bin Laden would be attending a meeting in eastern Afghanistan. Much turned on the quality of the intelligence provided by CIA Director George J. Tenet, recalled a senior official who had firsthand knowledge of the administration's debate on how to respond.
"Some days George was good," the official said, "but some days he was not so good. One day he would be categorical and say this is the best we will get . . . and then two days later or a week later, he would say he was not so sure."
'It Was a Sustained Effort'
The quality of the intelligence behooved restraint in planning the raid. Hitting bin Laden with a cruise missile "was a long shot, very iffy," recalled Zinni, the former Central Command chief. "The intelligence wasn't that solid."
At the same time, new information surfaced suggesting that bin Laden might be planning another major attack. Top Clinton officials felt it was essential to act. At best, they calculated, bin Laden would be killed. And at a minimum, he might be knocked off balance and forced to devote more of his energy to hiding from U.S. forces.
"He felt he was safe in Afghanistan, in the mountains, inside landlocked airspace," Zinni said. "So at least we could send the message that we could reach him."
In all, 66 cruise missiles were launched from Navy ships in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Pakistan into the camps in Afghanistan. Pakistan had not been warned in advance, but Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Pakistani officials at the precise time of the launch to tell them of the operation. He also assured them that Pakistan was not under surprise attack from India, a potential misapprehension that could have led to war.
At least one missile lost power and crashed in Pakistan, but the rest flew into Afghanistan and slammed into suspected terrorist training camps outside Khost, a small town near the Afghan-Pakistani border. Most of the cruise missiles were carrying loads of anti-personnel cluster bomblets, with the intention of killing as many people as possible. Reports from the scene were inconclusive. Most said that the raid killed about 30 people, but not bin Laden.
Intelligence that reached top Clinton administration officials after the raid said that bin Laden had left the camp two or three hours before the missiles struck. Other reports said he might have left as many as 10 or 12 hours before they landed.
Sources in the U.S. military said the launch time was adjusted some to coordinate it with the Sudan attack and to launch after sundown to minimize detection of the missiles. This had the effect of delaying the launch time by several hours. An earlier launch might have caught bin Laden, two sources said.
Cohen came to suspect that bin Laden escaped because he was tipped off that the strike was coming. Four days before the operation, the State Department issued a public warning about a "very serious threat" and ordered hundreds of nonessential U.S. personnel and dependents out of Pakistan. Some U.S. officials believe word could have been passed to bin Laden by the Taliban on a tip from Pakistani intelligence services.
Several other former officials disputed the notion of a security breach, saying bin Laden had plenty of notice that the United States intended to retaliate.
There also is dispute about the follow-up to the 1998 raid, specifically about whether the Clinton administration, having tried and failed to kill bin Laden, stopped paying attention.
There were attempts. Special Forces troops and helicopter gunships were kept on alert in the region, ready to launch a raid if solid intelligence pinpointed bin Laden's whereabouts. Also, twice in 1999, information arrived indicating that bin Laden might possibly be in a certain village in Afghanistan at a certain time, officials recalled. There was discussion of destroying the village, but the intelligence was not deemed credible enough to warrant the potential slaughter of civilians.
In addition, the CIA that year launched its clandestine operation with Pakistani intelligence to train Pakistani commandos for operations against bin Laden.
"It was a sustained effort," Cohen said recently. "There was not a week that went by when the issue wasn't seriously addressed by the national security team."
Berger said, "Al Qaeda and bin Laden were the number one security threat to America after 1998. It was the highest priority, and a range of appropriate actions were taken."
But never again did definitive information arrive that might have permitted another attempt to get bin Laden, officials said.
"I can't tell you how many times we got a call saying, 'We have information, and we have to hold a secret meeting about whether to launch a military action,' " said Walter Slocombe, the former undersecretary of defense for policy. "Maybe we were too cautious. I don't think so."
Researcher Jeff Himmelman contributed to this report.
Anti-War Protesters March in D.C.
By Christina Pino-Marina
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Saturday, September 29, 2001; 5:55 PM
Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of Washington today, shifting anti-globalization themes to anti-war protests in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
Many of the protesters were clad in black clothing with bandannas concealing parts of their faces; some were equipped with trash can tops and gas masks to defend against action from the police. Most carried anti-capitalist and anti-war signs and used bullhorns to deliver their call for peace.
For the most part, the day had more festive overtones. Groups of dancers gathered around musicians pounding out fast rhythms on drums and bells. Sarah Andrew, 23, danced barefoot in front of a stone fountain near the Capitol as other protesters waded through the water.
"I would like to think that this feels much more positive than it would have if there had been World Bank protests," she said.
Most of the clashes between protesters and police stemmed from a morning march organized by the D.C.-based Anti-Capitalist Convergence group. That march, which began about 10 a.m., lead participants from Upper Senate Park near Union Station to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund headquarters at Pennsylvania Avenue and 18th and 19th streets NW.
D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey said in an interview that there were fewer than a dozen arrests of demonstrators by 3 p.m. Many of those were arrested for breaking police lines or parading without permits, but even some of the protesters who had not received permits were allowed to continue with their demonstrations.
A brief standoff between anti-war demonstrators and counter-demonstrators occurred during the second march, which was fed partly by participants from the earlier demonstration. The second march began at Freedom Plaza, 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, shortly after 3 p.m. and ended at the U.S. Capitol.
Demonstrators moving down Pennsylvania Avenue were confronted in front of the National Archive building, 700 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, by a group of about 50 people waving American flags and signs stating among other things "Welcome bin Laden Fan Club," "Defending Ourselves is a Good Thing," " War Got Rid of Hitler" and "Traitors and Cowards Rally."
Police were able to keep the two groups separated and keep things peaceful.
Rob Chalkley, of Reston, who was among the counter-demonstrators, said, "I wanted them to know that theirs is not the only voice out here."
The second march, which drew thousands of protesters, was organized by a coalition called International ANSWER, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. The group was formed by the International Action Center, a New York political activist organization that originally had planned to surround the White House.
D.C. police had estimated that 4,000 people would take part in anti-war events in the city today, and a counter-demonstration had also been scheduled at the Washington Monument.
As many as 100,000 protesters had been expected to converge in Washington this weekend to demonstrate during the IMF and World Bank meetings. The meetings were canceled after terrorists leveled the World Trade Center towers and destroyed a section of the Pentagon, killing thousands. Some protests groups abandoned their plans to rally in Washington, but others quickly mobilized behind the growing anti-war movement.
At the core of the anti-war sentiments, some protesters say, is the belief that Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive targeted by the Bush administration as the mastermind behind the attacks, should be brought to justice through courts instead of military force.
Natalie Williams, 68, of East Harlem, N.Y., who participated in the march to the IMF and World Bank headquarters, carried an anti-war poster showing with a no-bombing icon.
"I don't categorize this speaking out against a potential war as anti-American," Williams said. "I'm objecting to the policies of America. The U.S. Ethey were the ones who set up these policies, this exploitation of people around the world."
Many of her fellow protesters carried black and red flags and beat drums and the bottoms of plastic buckets.
At one point during that march, there was a brief skirmish between protesters and police on H Street, between 11th and 12th streets. Demonstrators surrounded a police cruiser and sat on the hood of the car. Officers responded by spraying pepper spray and backing the protesters away from the scene.
Gabe Talton, a lawyer from the National Lawyer's Guild who was at the march as an observer, said he witnessed the incident.
Protesters "surrounded the car and tried to stop it and another red SUV," he said. "They sat on the cars, and then the police sprayed some pepper spray. I don't think anyone was hurt, but I did see a policewoman who had her helmet stripped off."
One police official was hit by some pepper spray during the march. Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer was seen near the World Bank splashing water on his face and in his eyes. Sgt. Joe Gentile, a police spokesman, said Gainer was not seriously injured, adding, "He just got hit in the eyes with some pepper spray."
But even during the morning march, most protesters focused on their message and not aggression toward police.
Katrina Errico, 18, who hitchhiked from San Francisco, said the terrorist attacks caused a significant change in the tone of today's protest.
"It's geared a lot more towards peace, love and unity," Errico said. "Before it would have been a lot more radical and violent. The attacks kind of calmed people down a lot."
Another protester, a 20-year-old man from Western Pennsylvania who would only identify himself as "Fusion," said instead of military strikes, he prefers for the United States to try negotiating with those responsible for the attacks.
"We should try any solution except destruction. If there is no possible way to negotiate peace and truce, we may have to support military strikes," Fusion said. "We should find out what it is they hate about us. We should make compromises in our support of Israel, and we should end our absolute economic imperialism. Both the United States and the terrorists share responsibility in the attacks."
After protesters reached the World Bank and IMF headquarters, police prevented them from leaving for about an hour. Police circled protesters in front of the World Bank and blocked off the entrance to the World Bank with metal dividers and a police line. During that time, protesters played soccer, held hands and chanted. There was some taunting of officers as well. When police officers were ready to allow the group to move again, they pushed the protesters, directing them back down H street.
U.S. Park Police showed up in black riot gear to help bolster the police presence. They established lines on cross streets to help control the crowd movement.
About 1 p.m., at H and 15th streets NW, another brief clash occurred between demonstrators and police. Streams of pepper spray dispersed the crowd, and Chief Ramsey, who had been leading a line of police ahead of the protesters, helped pin down one demonstrator, who was handcuffed and taken away.
The demonstration moved down 14th Street to Freedom Plaza, where demonstrators joined the hundreds of other protesters for the second march.
Onlookers watched from behind shop windows and along the march route. Darryl Williams, a tourist from Rochester, N.Y., said he was distraught by the activity. "Right now, I am nothing but angry when I see this; all they are doing is dividing the country," he said. "They don't appreciate what they have."
Tomorrow, an event organized by the Washington Peace Center and the D.C. office of the American Friends Service Committee will take place at 11 a.m. at Meridian Hill Park, 16th and Euclid streets NW. That march will take demonstrators through Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan.