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August 4, 2004
John Ross
Mexico's Dirty War Never Ended: Inside
Puente Grande Prison
August 3, 2004
Uri Avnery
The
Oligarchs
Ray McGovern
The 9/11 Commission Chimera
Jack McCarthy
Sexual Politics in Jeb's Florida
Eric Ruder
Meet Barak Obama: the Democrats' New Liberal Star
John L. Hess
Crying Wolf: Orange Alert!
Elaine Cassel
Civil Liberties Elections: 1800 v. 2004
Jules Rabin
The Man Who Didn't Walk By
Website of the Day
No Wall
August 2, 2004
Robert Jensen
Kerry's
Hypocrisy on the Vietnam War
Joshua Frank
Greens, Kerry and the Politics of Mendacity
Mike Whitney
The 9/11 Commission and Civil Liberties: "We Need an American
Police State"
Gary Leupp
Beyond
Good and Evil: Some Thoughts on Invasions
July 31 / Aug.
1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerry:
He's the (Any) One
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Five Questions with Noam Chomsky: "The Savage Extreme of
a Narrow Policy Spectrum"
David Lindorff
The Shame of the DNC
John Chuckman
The
Disturbing Words of John Edwards
Brian Cloughley
All Slam and No Dunk; All Blame and No Responsibility
Christopher Brauchli
"Being Poor is a State of Mind": the Frowning Face
of Compassionate Conservatism
Fred Gardner
A World of Pain
Michael Donnelly
How Big Pharma Bilks the Elderly
David Nally
Genocide in Darfur?
Joshua Frank
Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Sam Bahour
Colin Powell and My Grandmother
Diane Farsetta
The IMF and the Indonesian Elections: The Invisible Hand in the
Voting Booth
Harold Gould
Was Iraq a Mutual Charade?
Van Bergen / Stephens
Election 9/11: Surreal Political Theater
Lee Sustar
A New Model for the Labor Movement?
Ron Jacobs
The Lost Art of Hitchhiking
M. Junaid Alam
An Interview with Palestinian-American Rapper, The Iron Sheik
Poets Basement
Albert, Ford, Krieger, St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Cross Cultural Poetics
July 30, 2004
Kolhatkar /
Ingalls
Shattering
Illusions: Kerry's Speech Tells Anti-War Activists They're Not
Wanted
Dave Lindorff
Murder
Not So Foul?
Bruce Jackson
Walt Whitman on the Sound of Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Fidel Castro
The
Pathology of George W. Bush
Maximilien Robespierre
Memo to Kerry and Bush: Why They Resist
Saul Landau
Bush
Charges Castro with Sex Tourism; JFK Rolls Over in His Grave
Sex, Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
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July 29, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Hail,
the Conquering War Criminal: What Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
Frank Bardacke
What
Michael Moore Left Out of F9/11
Tom Barry
Shallow and Formulaic: Kerry's Latin America Plan
Ron Jacobs
Kerry
and Lennon: Hawking the CounterCulture
Robert Fisk
The Unreported War
Lichtman /
Kellis-Borok
What Kerry Must Do to Win (But Probably Won't)
William S. Lind
The 9/11 Commission Report: Cashing in on Failure
CounterPunch
Wire
Doonesbury Onto John Kerry in 1971!
Website of
the Day
Jabbing JibJab: Copyright Madness
July 28, 2004
Robert Fisk
The
Occupation at 114 Degrees: Baghdad is Swamped in the Smell of
the Dead
Kevin Mink
Kerry's Misperception of Palestine
Ray McGovern
Israel and the Iraq War: How the 9/11 Report Soft-Pedals Root
Causes
United for
Peace & Justice
An
Open Letter to John Kerry: Winter Soldiers and Summer Patriots
Mike Ferner
Vets Demand End to Occupation: "Pull the Troops or Face
Impeachment Mvt."
Imraan Siddiqi
Turning Tricks with Ann Coulter
Alexander Cockburn
Candidate
Kerry
Website of
the Day
Iraq Vets Against the War
July 27, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Why
the Democrats Deserve Nader
Dave Lindorff
Back to the 19th Century: Globalization's Coming!
Mike Whitney
Control Room: Inside Al Jazeera
Ali, Anderson, Bello, et al.
If We Were Venezuelan, We'd Vote for Chavez
Stefan Wray
Texas Plan to Grab Los Alamos Takes Hold, as DOE Shuts Down Labs
Louis Proyect
Reflections on Nicaragua: First Came the Contra Butchers, Then
the Sweatshops
Rick Giombetti
Faith in Freedom: the Challenge of Thomas Szasz
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
The
9/11 Report and Its Weak-Kneed Consensus: Dogding Israel/Palestine;
Blinkered on Causes of Terrorism
July 26, 2004
Todd Chretien
Green
Resistance: a Reply to Normon Solomon & Medea Benjamin
Robert Fisk
Terror
by Video
Richard Forno
Security
Theater in Boston: Security Expert Harrassed by DHS for Exposing
Flaws at the Fleet Center
Mitchel Cohen
Report from a Boston Demo: Arresting the Curious
Richard Moreno
Rockers
for Justice: an Interview with Tom Morello and Serj Tankian
Alexander Cockburn
Boston
Awaits a Dead Party
July
24 / 25, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Democrats and Their Conventions:
Part One
Dennis
Hans
Those 16 Words Still Smell, Mr. Bush
Patrick
Cockburn
The Struggle for Iraq is Only Beginning
Josh
Frank
The War Path of Unity: Dems Reject
the Peace Movement
Justin
E.H. Smith
Christianity and the Left: the Latin
American Experience
Tariq
Ali
What's at Stake in Venezuela
Fred
Gardner
The Politics of Pot: Year of the
Antagonist
Mark
Scaramella
There's Dope and There's Dope
Ron
Jacobs
The Weather Underground's Prairie
Fire Statement...35 Years On
July
23, 2004
Lee
Sustar
Revolution in Nicaragua: 25 Years
On
Dave
Lindorff
Battle for NYC: Bush 1, Protesters
0
Saul
Landau
Zaniest President in US History: Bush
Beats Reagan
Mike
Whitney
The 9/11 Whitewash: Blaming No One
Mickey
Z
Get On the Bus: 150 Years After Elizabeth
Jennings
Gary
Leupp
The 9/11 Commission and the Looming
War on Iran
July
22, 2004
M.
Junaid Alam
Ten Ways to Build a Better Democrat
Brian
McKinlay
Rusted On Down Under: Howard, Bush and Sharon
Jason
Leopold
Cheney Lobbied for Easing of Sanctions on Terrorist Regimes While
CEO of Halliburton
Chris
Floyd
Mob Rule: Ripping the Lid Off of America's Pious Myths
Uri
Avnery
Chirac v. Sharon
July
21, 2004
Paula
J. Caplan
The Emotional Casualities of War: Psychologists
Can't Heal All the Damage
Joshua
Frank
Nader Sleeping with the Enemy? Let's be Fair
Ron
Jacobs
American Exceptionalism
Reza
Ghorashi
The Elections, Iran and al-Qaeda
Amy
Martin
Will Congress Rearm the Guatemalan Generals?
John
Ross
Bush May Lose, But His Wars Will Go On and On
|
August 4, 2004
The Hunt
for Bin Laden
Trail Gone
Cold
By
JUSTIN HUGGLER
The Independent
Peshawar,
Pakistan.
Somewhere,
a man huddles in the shadows, speaking into a tape recorder, bringing
his latest message to the outside world. His face is instantly recognisable.
There is a $25m price tag on his head, and just a snippet of information
on his whereabouts could make a man rich for life. He is the most
wanted man in the world, but for more than three years, nobody has
been able to find a trace of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts.
With
Washington and New York this week on orange alert, and the US releasing
what it claims is the most detailed evidence yet of an al-Qa'ida
plot to strike inside its borders, the focus is suddenly back on
the hunt for Bin Laden. Al-Qa'ida allies are being blamed for the
loathsome beheadings of foreigners that have become almost a grisly
routine in Iraq. And with a US national election looming and President
George Bush doing badly in the polls, the White House is said to
be desperate to capture their man in time for November.
But
the trail appears to be remarkably cold. Unless something is being
hidden from the public - and it would have to be remarkably well
hidden - there has not been a single confirmed sighting of Bin Laden
since he fled the US bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late
2001. Nor, according to Pakistani sources, has there been any intercepts
of satellite phones call by him, or any e-mails. Drones fly constantly
over the Afghan-Pakistan border monitoring all movements. They have
failed to detect detected anything. He has disappeared from the
US's electronic surveillance network, the most sophisticated the
world has even known. The last heard of him was a tape recording
in April in which he offered Europe a ceasefire if it stopped co-operating
with the US.
The
central al-Qa'ida organisation has been decimated since 2001. Estimates
vary, but as many as 3,400 out of 4,000 members are said to have
been captured or killed, according to experts. Some put the number
still at large as low as 200; the continued bombings and other attacks
are believed to be the work of related groups, many of whose militants
were trained by Bin Laden's organisation in Afghanistan, but not
of the central al-Qa'ida itself.
But
if the organisation has been hit badly, its most senior commanders
- Osama and his mentor Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri - remain elusive. Bin
Laden, it appears, has pulled off one of the most remarkable disappearing
acts in history.
Or
has he? Rumours abound that he has already been captured by the
US, or maybe Pakistan, and that his captors are waiting for the
perfect moment to announce his capture: just in time for President
Bush's re-election bid, for example, or in order for Pakistan's
President Musharraf to wring the most glittering rewards from the
US. The internet is bursting with innuendo and speculation on the
possibility, but respected sources insist they are not to be taken
seriously.
If
Bin Laden has been captured, then his captors have pulled off a
disappearing act as extraordinary as Osama's. Not one official has
given the slightest hint. Not one sardonic smile. More than that,
there has been no noise from Bin Laden's supporters to suggest he
has been hunted down and captured or killed.
The
official version is still that he is in the border region between
Afghanistan and Pakistan; which side he is actually on depends on
which side you ask the question. Ask the Americans or President
Hamid Karzai's interim government in Afghanistan, and they'll tell
you Osama is in Pakistan. Ask in Pakistan, and the authorities will
tell you he's in Afghanistan.
Everyone
is passing the buck across the border.
The
area is certainly a prime hiding place. The border is some 1,520
miles long and runs through some of the wildest and most inaccessible
terrain on earth. "Even if Pakistan and Afghanistan were to
put their complete armies there, they couldn't seal the border,"
says Dr Rohan Gunaratna, the author of Inside al-Qa'ida. Much of
the land on either side of the border is populated by Pashtun tribesmen
whose loyalties to Bin Laden and al-Qa'ida date back to the mujahadeen
war against the Soviets and who have little sympathy for the US,
the new Afghan government or the Pakistani authorities.
The
Americans claim they have combed the Afghan side of the border exhaustively.
But the Afghan government has repeatedly accused Pakistan of not
doing enough. On a trip to Islamabad last month, the Foreign Minister,
Abdullah Abdullah of Northern Alliance fame, made some pretty vicious
swipes in the direction of the Pakistani authorities at a press
conference.
In
fact, almost all the major successes in the hunt for al-Qa'ida have
been made in Pakistan. The country has seen the most high-profile
targets arrested to date: Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner
of September 11; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, believed to be the 20th hijacker
who couldn't make it because he couldn't get a visa; and only last
week, Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian who is one of the prime
suspects in 1998's US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. And,
as many as 470 al-Qa'ida members have been captured in Pakistan,
according to Dr Gunaratna.
In
recent months there has been more action on the Pakistani side of
the border than ever before in its history. In March, the army sent
70,000 soldiers into the South Waziristan, a tribal area where the
army had never gone before under a long-standing arrangement with
the tribes that dated back to British colonial times. A welter of
excitement followed when President Musharraf said a high-value target
had been pinned down. The speculation, fuelled by official sources,
was that it was Dr Zawahiri, Bin Laden's mentor and al-Qa'ida comrade-
in-arms; but Dr Zawahiri never showed up.
The
Pakistani authorities have blocked access to South Waziristan for
all journalists, foreign and local, for months now. Even the Red
Cross and other humanitarian organisations have been refused access.
But a phone call across the police cordons to Wana is all you need
to get the details of what is happening. The local Pashtun journalists
do not take kindly to be told to stay away from the action, and
tapped phones do not trouble them.
It appears the Pakistani soldiers moved in and surrounded a position
held by some foreign militants. But they in turn were surrounded
by a huge force of local tribesmen sympathetic to the militants,
and there was a battle. According to the locals, more than 100 Pakistani
soldiers were killed, and as many as 200 of the foreign militants
and the local tribesmen combined.
The
Pakistani army claims considerably lower figures for its own troops,
but has still conceded that it took heavy casualties. There were
foreign militants in the area, but only 600, fewer than the Pakistani
authorities claimed. Most were Uzbeks, but there were also Afghans,
Chechens, Uighurs from China and a small number of Arabs. Many may
be fighters from al-Qa'ida and its allies who fled the bombing of
Tora Bora in 2001.
Well-connected
Pakistani journalists say the offensive was based on real information
that Dr Zawahiri had been in the area - though not Bin Laden. But
local sources insist the only "high-value target" in the
area was Tahir Yildashev, the leader of the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, an ally of al-Qa'ida, who escaped alive when his jeep
burst through the Pakistani army cordon at high speed. He has not
been heard of since.
The
Waziristan briefly made a hero out of Nek Mohammed, a local tribesman
who led the resistance to the army and was later killed after he
threatened to take the fight into Pakistan's cities. The tribesman
appears to have been killed by the Americans - he was hit in a missile
strike shortly after making a satellite phone call, and the Pakistani
military does not have the technology to track satellite phone calls.
American
special forces advisors and intelligence appear to have been heavily
involved in the South Waziristan operation, despite Pakistan's repeated
insistence that US troops are not operating on its soil. The word
in Islamabad is that the FBI has an office in the city, from which
it is directing the hunt for Bin Laden and other senior al-Qa'ida
figures. But, like so much in this subject, the claim is impossible
to confirm.
Such
a major operation suggests there may have been a high-value target
in the area, but, dramatic though it was, the Waziristan operation
failed to net any - and Bin Laden's name appears never even to have
cropped up in it. Its most significant achievement appears to have
been that the Pakistani army has now set up posts on the Afghan
border inside the tribal agency, "in places you could never
imagine before", according to one local source.
But
the operation has also been heavily criticised because the Pakistani
authorities announced it in advance and because there have been
no concurrent operations in neighbouring areas, allowing militants
to flee south to Baluchistan, or north to North Waziristan agency.
But
there are many in Pakistan who question whether Bin Laden is in
the border region at all. "It's an assumption," says the
Pakistani journalist, Rahimullah Yusufzai. "Most of the arrests
in Pakistan have been in urban areas. What does this tell you? That
these guys were all hiding in big cities." Khaled Sheikh Mohammed
was captured in Rawalpindi, just a stone's throw from the army headquarters,
according to the Pakistani authorities, although reports have emerged
he was actually caught three months earlier in Karachi. Ramzi bin
al-Shiibh was caught in Karachi. And Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, last
week's big catch, was in the town of Gujrat in Punjab.
There
are many who say the world is focussing on the wrong place, that
instead of looking among the mountain valleys of the border it needs
to look in the vast, undocumented suburbs of Pakistan's cities.
It is as easy to disappear in a crowd as in a remote, empty place.
After all, the Pakistani police were unable to find the US journalist
Daniel Pearl, who was held in a house in Karachi, before he was
killed.
Against
this theory, officials argue that Bin Laden is too distinctive to
be able to hide in a city. With so much money on his head, some
one would spot him.
Then
there are those who argue that Bin Laden may be being protected
by rogue elements within Pakistan's own security forces. Recent
press reports in Pakistan pointed out the disturbingly high number
of militant attacks in which members of the security forces have
been involved. The Pakistani military and intelligence establishment
worked for years alongside Bin Laden's organisation in the war against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and if the current leadership
is thought to be sincere in the hunt for Bin Laden, some of the
lower ranking are believed to remain highly sympathetic to his cause.
Bin
Laden is still a popular figure in Pakistan. T-shirts bearing his
picture are still on sale. Karachi's second-highest-selling Urdu
language newspaper, the Daily Ummat, prints his picture on its masthead
every day, together with an extract from one of his speeches. "If
Bin Laden is caught or killed in Pakistan, he will be taken to Afghanistan
and they will say it was done by the American forces," says
Yusufzai, adding that President Musharraf could face serious unrest
if Bin Laden were known to have been caught in Pakistan.
But
there are those in Pakistan who suggest it is not even in Musharraf's
interest to capture Bin Laden, if he is in the country. "There
is a view among some that they don't really want to pick OBL up,
because if they do, then Musharraf would lose his utility to the
US," says Sherry Rehman, an opposition member of parliament.
American
funds are flowing to Pakistan. The country has even been named as
a major non-Nato ally. Find Bin Laden, the argument goes, and all
that could dry up. But Pakistan is facing problems. The pressure
from the US is increasing. Pakistan got some 200 mentions in the
September 11 commission's report - more than Iran and Iraq combined.
Congress is putting Pakistan's efforts in the "war on terror"
under scrutiny.
And
now it seems that al-Qa'ida is declaring war on Pakistan, with last
week's attempted assassination of the prime minister-designate,
Shaukat Aziz, in a suicide bombing that a group claiming to be affiliated
to al-Qa'ida said it carried out. Are the hunted becoming the hunter?
Shortly before his death, Nek Mohammed threatened attacks inside
Pakistani cities. President Musharraf has accused al-Qa'ida of being
behind two of the recent assassination attempts against him, and
Dr Zawahiri called for his killing in his own recent tape recording.
And
all the while the world's most wanted man remains silent, hidden.
The only thing for sure is that if he has been killed or captured,
we'll hear of it well in time for November's elections. But don't
bet on it yet.
With
additional reporting by Nick Meo in Kabul
Weekend Edition July 17 / 18, 2004
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