Muslim Fury, Suitcase Nukes In NYC Soon?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9808/29/text/world2.htmlAug 29 98
CHRISTOPHER KREMMER, Herald Correspondent in Islamabad

MUSLIM FURY

"War of future" claims first victims

Date: 29/08/98

By CHRISTOPHER KREMMER, Herald Correspondent in Islamabad

GENERAL Hamid Gul, a former chief of Pakistani intelligence, fastened
his seatbelt as a Pakistan International Airways
plane began its descent into Lahore this week.

The flight had been bumpy, but not as rough as General Gul believes
the war against terrorism will be.

"It's not that difficult to obtain a suitcase-size nuclear weapon,"
the urbane former military officer reminded a fellow
traveller. "Just the thing for retaliation against London or New York."

Such is the Muslim world's anger over the United States's cruise-missile
attacks on August 20 against terrorist camps
in Afghanistan and an alleged chemical weapons factory in Sudan that
such a scenario is now receiving serious
thought in governments and think-tanks around the world.

Since President Bill Clinton decided direct action was the best response
to the August 7 twin bombings of US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 257 people, the reaction
so far has been lethal, if limited.

In the Afghan capital, Kabul, the day after the attacks, an Italian
military observer working with the United Nations,
Lieutenant-Colonel Carmine Calo, died after an ambush by gunmen linked
to the ruling Taliban Islamic movement.

Outside the Ugandan capital, Kampala, grenades and bombs exploded on
three buses, killing 29 people. In the South
African city of Cape Town, a bomb blast killed one person at a Planet
Hollywood American theme restaurant, while in
Tel Aviv, Israel, a bomb concealed in a rubbish bin near the city's
main synagogue injured 19 people. In all three cases,
police have not ruled out retaliation as the motive.

The "war of the future" described by the US Secretary of State, Dr Madeleine
Albright, has already claimed its first
victims. But the basis for the blood feud - the evidence provided by
a key suspect in the Kenyan embassy bombing - is
now being questioned.

Palestinian Mohammed Sadiq Odeh was arrested at Karachi airport the
day after the embassy blasts, while travelling
on a fake Yemeni passport. The photograph in the passport bore no relation
to Odeh's appearance.

Under interrogation, Odeh confessed to helping plan the bombing, which
he said was ordered by the exiled Saudi
millionaire Osama bin Laden. He also gave details linking bin Laden,
who lives under the protection of the Taliban in
Afghanistan, to some of the most notorious terrorist attacks of the
decade, including bombings at US military targets in
Saudi Arabia and an attempt on the life of Egypt's President Hosni
Mubarak.

General Gul, the former intelligence boss who knows something about
false travel documents, believes Odeh is an
imposter, planted by a foreign intelligence agency - probably Israel's
Mossad or the US's Central Intelligence Agency -
to provide a justification for the cruise-missile attacks on bin Laden's
Afghan bases.

"It costs 1,000 rupees [about $30] to buy any passport officer at Karachi
airport. Odeh's millionaire backer bin Laden
hadn't given him that much money, nor even a reasonable forgery of
a passport? This man wanted to be caught," says
General Gul.

A leading defence analyst, Dr Shireen Mazari, agrees. "It just doesn't
make sense. Hard-core political terrorists do not
volunteer information the way Odeh has done. It's a set-up."

Odeh, and another suspect, Khalid Salim, were flown to New York on Thursday
to face formal charges relating to the
embassy bombing.

The stated aim of the US attacks was to destroy terrorist "infrastructure"
being used to plan more major strikes against
US interests around the world.

US officials with access to satellite photographs of the camps, near
the eastern Afghan town of Khost, said the
damage caused by scores of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from warships
cruising in the Arabian Sea was
significant.

In the eight days since the strikes, the Afghan authorities have blocked
efforts by journalists to visit Khost. They said
only 27 people were killed at the Zhawar Kili al-Badr complex of camps.
At least six of them were Pakistani citizens
receiving weapons training to fight in the separatist war in Kashmir.

IN Pakistan's hospitals, the bodies of the trainee terrorists were pockmarked
by shrapnel and burn marks, stark
evidence of America's lethal intent, enforced with the use of anti-personnel
cluster bomblets showered from the cruise
missiles.

"We knew we were under attack and we wanted to hit back, but we could
do nothing," said Maaz Ali, 19, of
Bahawalpur, in Pakistani Punjab, tears of frozen rage brimming in his
eyes, as he recalled the night the sky lit up over
Khost.

Even educated Pakistanis, like Dr Mohammed Imdad, who treated some of
the survivors at Rawalpindi's Civil Hospital,
felt similar rage. "The Jews have turned the Christians against the
Muslims," Dr Imdad said, "but the price for America
and its allies will be high."

All but a handful of non-Muslim foreign aid staff have been withdrawn
from Afghanistan, ensuring further hardship for a
people who have already suffered grievously due to a 19-year civil
war. Kabul's hospitals are heavily dependent on
foreign aid.

Neighbouring Pakistan is also close to falling off the international
map. The US has told its citizens to seriously
consider leaving the country, and Britain and Australia are advising
their nationals not to visit at least two of its four
provinces.

Washington's remote-control war against terrorism has suddenly transformed
Pakistan from a busy base for
international organisations and aid groups into a tense place where
not much can be done. In the antiseptic capital,
Islamabad, UN staff now observe a nightly eight o'clock curfew and
restrict unnecessary movement in the city.

Business people, diplomats and aid workers of other countries, including
Australia, have become unwilling front-line
soldiers in a war declared by a US president who, according to his
critics, took up the cudgels merely to distract a
domestic audience from his much-publicised sexual indiscretions.

Some, but not all, of Osama bin Laden's Afghan bases were destroyed
by the US strikes, but he retains the capability
to retaliate through his International Islamic Front, unveiled in Khost
in May this year.

"His followers in the Middle East can act without any clear orders from
bin Laden," said the editor of the Pakistani
Urdu-language daily newspaper Ausaf, Mr Hamid Mir, who is writing a
biography of the militant Muslim leader.

Mr Mir believes bin Laden will continue to enjoy Afghanistan's hospitality
under the Taliban's supreme leader, the
one-eyed recluse Mullah Mohammed Omar. "They share similar ideas about
America and the international situation. In
fact, Mullah Omar is even more extreme than bin Laden," he says.

Efforts by the Taliban leader to placate Saudi Arabia, which bank-rolls
his movement and wants bin Laden silenced, by
gagging his turbulent "guest" were overruled by Afghanistan's Shariat
court, based in the southern city of Kandahar, Mr
Mir said.

Pakistan's moderate Islamic Government is also walking a tightrope,
condemning the American air raids to outflank
rising fundamentalist outrage.

Defence analysts say the time when a Muslim fundamentalist assumes control
of the armed forces is not far off.

"All the younger officers have been radicalised by the Afghan war, and
every time the Government chooses a new
army chief, the pool of educated, Westernised officers from which to
choose gets smaller," a former defence attache
in Islamabad said.

A former Pakistan Army chief, General Mirza Aslam Beg, believes the
US air strikes can only accelerate the process.
"Ultimately there will a convergence of views in Afghanistan and Pakistan
that we are facing one common enemy: the
US and its allies," he said.

MEANWHILE, Osama bin Laden - deprived of his Saudi citizenship but now
elevated to the status of folk hero in the
minds of many Muslims - appears secure in his Afghan fastness, promising
to answer Mr Clinton "in deeds, not words"
and keeping in touch with his international network by satellite fax
and phone.

He remains a tempting but dangerous target for the long arm of the US.

"If the US military strikes continue, the fire will spread in the whole
Islamic world. Even if they kill bin Laden, 100 others
will rise to take his place," said Mr Mir, the renegade millionaire's
biographer.

But others believe America's new international enemy number one can
be stopped. Professor Ehud Sprinzak, a
professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Israel,
told a meeting of the US Institute of Peace in
Washington this week: "If the Taliban and the Pakistanis decide tomorrow
that the fellow hurts their interests
significantly, they can solve the problem in a very, very short time."