Tactical Nuclear Weapons Deployed | China Moves Forces into Afghanistan | Fears of Terrorist Backlash | Fahd Returns Home, Accepts Stance Against US Bases
Tactical Nuclear Weapons Deployed
LOW
CONFIDENCE REPORT (UNVERIFIED)
6 October: Military and
intelligence sources report that Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin,
in a single 70-minuted conversation on September 23, eleven days after the
terrorist assaults in New York and Washington, agreed on the deployment of
tactical weapons. This is an epic shift in the global balance of strength.
Putin gave the nod for US forces poised in Central Asia to jump into Afghanistan
to be armed with tactical nuclear weapons, such as small neutron bombs, which
emit strong radiation, nuclear mines, shells, and other nuclear ammunition
suited to commando warfare in mountainous terrain.
In return, Bush assented to Russia deploying tactical nuclear weapons units
around Chechnya after Moscow’s ultimatum to the rebels, some of whom are
backed by Osama Bin Laden, to surrender, went by without response. Military
sources place the US nuclear weapons in four former Soviet Central Asian bases:
the military air facility at Tuzel, 15 km (10 miles) northwest of the Uzbek
capital of Tashkent; at Kagady in the Termez region; in Khandabad, near the city
of Karshi; and at the military air base in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
In addition to the nuclear weapons units, Russian bombers carrying small neutron
bombs were moved to Russian military air bases around the border of the
breakaway province, in Stavropol northwest of Chechnya, the Godowta base in
Georgia to the south, and Mozdok in northern Osetia, northwest of Chechnya.
Russian and U.S. military sources refuse to take questions on these startling
events.
The US is far from eager to actively inject a nuclear element into the war
against terrorism and will not be the first to do so. According to Military
sources, the US plans to hold those tactical nuclear weapons in reserve,
unleashing them in the campaign against bin Laden only in certain extreme
circumstances:
1. To counter a move by Bin Laden’s men first bring out nuclear,
chemical or biological weapons against the US force fighting inside Afghanistan.
2. If a chemical or biological assault by the Taliban against
Pakistan.
3. Should groups of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network –
either in Central Asia or the Balkans – wield these weapons of mass
destruction against US military targets or US nuclear arms in other parts of the
world.
4. If using them is the only way to save heavy American combat
casualties
China Moves Forces into Afghanistan
LOW
CONFIDENCE REPORT (UNVERIFIED)
6 October: Before even the
launching of the major US military offensive in Afghanistan, long Chinese
convoys were carrying armed Chinese Muslim servicemen through northwest China
into Afghanistan, according to intelligence experts.
They were sent in to fight alongside the ruling Taliban and Osama Bin Laden’s
Al Qaeda. Their number is estimated roughly between 5000 and 15,000. Our
sources report another three convoys are behind the first 3000, who crossed the
frontier Friday, October 5.
They are entering Afghanistan along the ancient Krakoram Road to the
Afghan-Pakistani border, through the Kulik Pass of Little Pamir, which is
situated in one of the highest and most remote regions of the world.
Beijing is deploying this force in two places:
A. Whakyir, the Kirgyz tribal encampment near the Little
Pamir-Tadjik frontier, opposite the swelling concentration of US and Russian
Special Forces and air strength
The Chinese have brought with them Kirgyz fundamentalist militants from the
Ferghana Valley of Central Asia, as interpreters.
From Whakyir, the Chinese generals believe, with Bin Laden’s and the
Taliban’s tacticians, they will be able to block off the movement of the
US-led force from its rallying point in Dzhartygumbez, Tadjikistan, no more than
35 miles from Little Pamir, into the mountains of Hindu Kush.
B. Jalalabad in north Afghanistan, at the foot of the Hindu Kush range.
Chinese sources reveal that, immediately after the terrorist strikes in the
United States on September 11, the Chinese intelligence service, MSS, handed in
to the defense ministry in Beijing their estimation that the United States would
go to war to overthrow the Taliban regime, for the sake of which it would sign a
pact with Russia. The Chinese leadership viewed this eventuality as the most
significant shift in the global balance since the 1962 Chinese-Russian feud,
with dangerous implications for China’s world standing and its interests in
Central and Southwest Asia. They decided it must be counteracted.
The only satisfactory outcome of the Bin Laden crisis in Chinese eyes is the
redeployment of Japanese-based US troops to the Persian Gulf, when the Kitty
Hawk carrier moved the 3rd Marines Division out of Okinawa last week.
Chinese intelligence did not miss the absence of fighters and reconnaissance
craft on her decks. The planes stayed behind, but the very fact that the Kitty
Hawk is no longer within operational range of the Straits of Taiwan leaves the
disputed island with diminished protection.
Beijing also took note of additional US military movements, including the
Army’s 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum, New York and that
of another formerly Pacific-based unit, the 25th Infantry Division,
out of Hawaii to the Persian Gulf.
According to Far East experts, the removal of substantial US military strength
from the Pacific Rim opened the way for Chinese intervention in Afghanistan and
its effort to slow down the US-Russian advance.
LOW
CONFIDENCE REPORT (UNVERIFIED)
6 October: US intelligence are in no doubt
that a fresh wave of terrorist strikes, including possibly chemical and
biological attacks, threatens the United States in the wake of a US assault on
Osama Bin Laden.
On September 13, two days after the devastating airliner crashes in New York,
Washington and Pennsylvania, experts on terrorism reported that a second
wave had been planned well in advance of the first.
This prognosis has not changed.
According to those experts, the plans were drawn up by the key elements of the
Bin Laden network - the Egyptian Islamic Jihad - his primary operational arm,
the arcane Iranian-Palestinian-Lebanese group headed by the former hostage-taker
of Beirut, Imad Mughniyeh - mastermind of the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei’s
terror network, the chiefs of the Algerian extremist GIA, and terrorist groups
associated with Iraqi military intelligence, notably the 15th of May
group. It was this last organization – not Libyan intelligence – that was
behind the 1988 bombing of PanAm-103 over Lockerbie Scotland.
In the estimate of experts, between 30 and 50 terror activists are organized in
teams in the United States. They are all armed with detailed missions for
implementation in major US cities on both coasts as soon as the US launches its
offensive in Afghanistan. Logistical and command posts to run this second wave
have been set up on three continents: Canada, in Toronto and Vancouver in
Canada; Europe, in Hamburg, Vienna and the north Albanian Adriatic port of
Shengjin, an important Albanian mafia center; and the Persian Gulf, in Dubai.
These centers are operated by an estimated 900-1000 Al Qaeda activists. At their
disposal in the US are a further 70-90 well-trained Islamic militants waiting
for missions and orders to strike.
An additional 150 terrorists are scattered round Canada, Europe, the Persian
Gulf and the Far East, as a reserve force. They live quietly under false
identities, with wives and families, usually locals who do not suspect that the
head of he family is a terrorist and may disappear forever, if called to action.
The most dangerous terrorists- in-waiting, who live under the deepest cover, are
the 100 or so Islamic militants, who are programmed to carry out missions as
lone wolves – not all of them inside America. These loners are the ones most
likely to carry out chemical or biological strikes, the fear of which is now
gripping America. The FBI is looking closely at the anthrax case in Florida that
occurred not far from the flying school where one of the hijackers who crashed
an airliner in New York on September 11 rented planes.
Any bioterrorists would have received their training in the dissemination of
dangerous materials directly from Iraqi military intelligence experts. Iraq is
the only country known to be actively developing such substances of mass murder
as anthrax, sarin, mustard gas and nerve gases as war weapons.
Many intelligence experts have now come to believe, as postulated at the time,
that the foot and mouth disease which struck British livestock last year was a
bioterror exercise carried out either by groups connected with Bin Laden’s Al
Qaeda network or by Iraqi military intelligence.
Fahd Returns Home, Accepts Stance Against US Bases
MEDIUM
CONFIDENCE REPORT
6 October: King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz returned
home from his enforced exile in Geneva last Thursday, September 27, mending the
rift in the Saudi royal house by lining up with his half-brother, Crown Prince
Abdullah’s refusal to grant Washington the use of military bases for attacking
any Muslim power.
By giving in, the king may have saved the royal regime from being torn apart on
the issue. But he put paid to the moderate Arab support the United States had
hoped would be ranged behind its war on terror. The crisis brought US defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld hurrying over to Riyadh – to no avail.
(The Bush administration responded to this major blow to its war effort by
turning to Moscow and the former Soviet Central Asian republics, as was revealed
last week.)
So dense was the cloud of secrecy the princes imposed over the feud that the
king’s departure for Geneva with all his family and a vast entourage of
princes of senior rank, some of them ministers, took place unannounced on
September 19 - as revealed on September 22.
Before this crisis, the Americans took it for granted that the Prince Sultan air
base near Riyadh was available as their command and control center for running
their anti-terror war in the region. They had the king’s consent. His abrupt
departure left Abdullah, who opposed the king on the issue, calling the shots.
Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, the king’s full brother and
third in the royal hierarchy, tried to mediate the dispute. According to
sources, he pointed warningly to the flourishing alliance between Washington and
Moscow, highlighted by Russia’s permission to grant the Americans the use of
military bases in the former Soviet Muslim republics of Central Asia as staging
posts for their offensive against the Taliban and bin Laden. The Saudi bases had
therefore been quickly replaced and its clout in Washington diminished.
But Crown Prince Abdullah, who effectively runs the kingdom because of Fahd’s
poor health, stood firm. In the end he prevailed. Now, the Saudi royal house is
reunited around a five-year old religious edict, or fatwa, recycled by
the Saudi Grand Mufti Abdullah Aziz Bin Abdullah, at the Crown Prince’s
request.
Saudi experts explain how this edict, helped by acrobatic exegesis, was turned
into a prohibition against Saudi bases serving the US military operation against
Afghanistan or any other Muslim power, the Taliban and Iraq implicitly included.
For the first time, Saudi-US collaboration in the war against terrorism is
forbidden on religious grounds.
The key fatwa specifically forbids any Muslim to accept assistance from a
non-Muslim authority in the conduct of investigations into security occurrences
involving Muslims. Since the Saudis on religious grounds are not allowed to
share intelligence on bin Laden and the Taliban with the non-Muslim United
States, neither may Riyadh accept US evidence of his complicity in the attacks
on the United States. Since such evidence is unacceptable, so too is any
military action stemming from it.
But the Saudi rationale is not purely religious.
Members of the government, including foreign minister Saud Al-Faisal and army
chiefs, argued that once the Americans were caught up on two military fronts,
they would focus on Afghanistan at the expense of the anti-Iraq front, leaving
Saudi Arabia exposed to punishment at Saddam’s hands.
On the whole, the Saudis do not regard the Taliban in the same light as the
Americans.
According to Saudi experts, the Afghan ruling party are seen as the only Sunni
military force capable of holding the Iranian-backed Shi’ite Hizbollah
militants in check. As such, they deserve Saudi backing and their alliance with
Bin Laden and Al Quaeda, who oppose the Saudi royal family, is deemed a
deviation, not a crime. According to Saudi calculations, this deviation can be
corrected by the Taliban handing the master terrorist over to Saudi Arabia or
holding his operation down to directives from Riyadh.
To sacrifice their Taliban asset for the sake of eradicating bin Laden, as the
Americans demand, is an unacceptable option for Riyadh.
Defense secretary Rumsfeld’s whirlwind tour also took him to Cairo in an
effort to swing the largest Arab country round to support for America’s
military operation.
Cairo sources report he had just received the bad news of a major anti-US
upheaval among the senior ranks of President Hosni Mubarak’s advisers. His
most markedly pro-American aides, foreign minister Ahmed Maher and special
adviser Osama al-Baz, were pushed down the totem pole, while former foreign
minister and current Arab League secretary the pan-Arab Amr Moussa was
elevated over their heads.
Immediately after the September 11 attacks in the United States, Moussa
formulated three conditions that effectively blocked off Arab League support for
the American campaign:
- No Arab nation may attack - or threaten to attack - any other Arab or
Muslim state.
- Any action against terrorists must be preceded by a precise definition
of the term terrorism and its practical manifestations.
- The Arab world must follow its own interests, which are not necessarily
identical to those of the United States.
In Washington, the Saudi fatwa and Amr Mousa’s three conditions sounded
the death knell for America’s hopes of Arab support in its war against
Afghanistan and bin Laden.