.
Prelude to 9/11 attack on United States – a plan by Russia, Iran and India to strike Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Massoud connection in Panjsher valley is important to India and Kashmir.
My hypothesis: the attack on NY and Washington was a pre-emptive strike by the Taliban and al-Qaida! Pakistan leader Musharraf and the ISI were informed of the plans to attack the Taliban through the Northern Alliance.
Afghanistan’s Masood says trip to the West a success
DUSHANBE, Apr 9 (Reuters) – Ahmad Shah Masood, commander of the armed resistance to Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement, arrived in Tajikistan on Monday after what he described as a successful mission to the West.
On his arrival in the capital Dushanbe, Masood was given a hero’s welcome by hundreds of compatriots, who applauded and held up pictures of him.
“I had a lot of useful contacts during my visit to France,” Masood, kept behind a tight chain of bodyguards, told reporters in Dushanbe airport on his arrival from Paris.
“I am very satisfied with my trip.”
Masood, whose forces of the Northern Alliance remain loyal to ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani but control only 10 percent of Afghan territory, made a rare trip to the West last week.
During his visits to Paris and the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the veteran commander urged the world community to put pressure on Pakistan to stop backing the Taliban and condemned the destruction of giant Buddha statues by the purist movement.
The 47-year-old charismatic commander became widely known in the 1980s as the “Lion of Panjsher ” for successful resistance to Soviet efforts to seize his strategic stronghold north of the Afghan capital Kabul.
India and Iran will “facilitate” the planned US-Russia hostilities against the Taliban.
All parties have interest in security and downfall of Taliban. Russia says it has evidence that the Taliban aims to create “liberated zones” all across Central Asia and Russia and links its Chechnya problem to the rise of Taliban fundamentalism.
- The Decline of the U.S.-Taliban Alliance and U.S. War Plans
- Daily Kos: 9/11 was pre-emptive strike on US [article by creve coeur aka Oui @ Booman]
Sebastian Junger on Afghanistan’s Slain Rebel Leade r
[National Geographic Adventure]The Perfect Storm author spent a month with anti-Taliban warrior Ahmad Shah Massoud in 2000. Now he offers his reaction to the recent murder of the Northern Alliance leader–and the subsequent attacks on the U.S.
In November 2000 Adventure sent contributing editor Sebastian Junger and photojournalist Reza to profile Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. The resulting article appeared in our March/April 2001 issue and has just been reprinted in Fire, a collection of Junger’s journalistic work.
« click for story
Hundreds of Afghans showed up at Massoud Square on the 10th anniversary of his death.On September 9, 2001, suicide bombers killed Massoud. Two days later the U.S. was under attack. Here Junger offers his thoughts on those two days of terror and their implications.
- BooMan23 diary @dKos – Shocking 9/11 Revelations
- Clinton, Clarke Were NEVER TOLD about ATTA & Gang being in US!!
Special report: Why the U.S. mistrusts Pakistan’s spies
(Reuters) May 5, 2011 – Since 9/11 the United States has relied on Pakistan’s military to fight al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the mountainous badlands along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. President George W. Bush forged a close personal relationship with military leader Musharraf.
But U.S. officials have also grown frustrated with Pakistan. While Islamabad has been instrumental in catching second-tier and lower ranked al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, and several operatives identified as al Qaeda “number threes” have either been captured or killed, the topmost leaders – bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al Zawahiri — have consistently eluded capture.
The ISI, which backed the Taliban when the group came to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, seemed to turn a blind eye — or perhaps even helped — as Taliban and al-Qaeda members fled into Pakistan during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, according to U.S. officials.
Washington also believes the agency protected Abdul Qadeer Khan, lionized as the “father” of Pakistan’s bomb, who was arrested in 2004 for selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
And when Kashmiri militants attacked the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people, New Delhi accused the ISI of controlling and coordinating the strikes.
Pakistan: “The Taliban’s Godfather”?
Washington D.C., August 14, 2007 – A collection of newly-declassified documents detail U.S. concern over Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, “There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil.” While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself.
Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the documents reflect U.S. apprehension about Islamabad’s longstanding provision of direct aid and military support to the Taliban, including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan. The records released today represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan’s aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad’s firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.
These new documents also support and inform the findings of a recently-released CIA intelligence estimate characterizing Pakistan’s tribal areas as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, and provide new details about the close relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban in the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Declassified State Department cables and U.S. intelligence reports describe the use of Taliban terrorist training areas in Afghanistan by Pakistani-supported militants in Kashmir, as well as Pakistan’s covert effort to supply Pashtun troops from its tribal regions to the Taliban cause in Afghanistan-effectively forging and reinforcing Pashtun bonds across the border and consolidating the Taliban’s severe form of Islam throughout Pakistan’s frontier region.
Also published today are documents linking Harakat ul-Ansar, a militant Kashmiri group funded directly by the government of Pakistan, to terrorist training camps shared by Osama bin Laden in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Musharraf denies deal with US for special forces to kill or capture Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan
Eleven years on, Hillary Clinton “puts pressure” on Pakistan …
Clinton steps up pressure on Pakistan, Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan (The Express Tribume) Oct. 20, 2011 – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Pakistan dismantle Taliban safe havens, stepping up the pressure on Islamabad as American troops pressed a major offensive along the border.
Clinton spoke in unusually strong language following talks in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai a month after his peace broker Rabbani was assassinated, derailing any immediate prospect of reconciliation with the Taliban.
She warned the Taliban to be part of a peaceful future or face a continuing assault, but urged Islamabad to play a “constructive” role in bringing militants to negotiations aimed at ending the 10-year war in Afghanistan.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
