| Subject: Taliban seek American 'extinction' 'God willing, it will fall to the ground': Mullah Omar |
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Date Posted: 16:34:25 12/03/01 Mon
November 16, 2001
Taliban seek American 'extinction' 'God willing, it will fall to the ground': Mullah Omar:
As cornered leader raves about divine plan, the allies establish a bridgehead near Kabul
Araminta Wordsworth National Post news services
http://www.nationalpost.com/
Caught in a tightening web in Afghanistan, his power collapsing around him and enemy soldiers on his trail, Mullah Mohammed Omar issued an apocalyptic new vision yesterday: the "extinction of America".
With his retreating troops under siege in the cities of Kandahar and Kunduz, the Taliban's supreme leader said in an interview a plan to implement the destruction of the United States is "going ahead, and God willing, it is being implemented.
"But it is a huge task, which is beyond the will and comprehension of human beings.
"We are hopeful for God's help," he added in the interview with the BBC. "The real matter is the extinction of America. And God willing, it will fall to the ground."
The mullah's words were given a sinister resonance by the discovery of plans for nuclear and biological weapons in a Kabul house abandoned by members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.
The documents included instructions for manufacturing ricin, a deadly poison that UN weapons inspectors have previously discovered in Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
Even as Mullah Omar spoke, his days of freedom seemed numbered. A U.S. official said the Northern Alliance had captured a group of al-Qaeda leaders "senior enough to provide some meaningful information" on his whereabouts and those of bin Laden.
This morning, about 160 British Royal Marines and U.S. special operations troops flew to Bagram airfield north of Kabul as Western nations rushed to assemble an international force to keep order in Afghan areas wrested from the Taliban. Eight C-130s landed at the air field, establishing the first allied bridgehead at the airbase.
Built by the Soviets, Bagram airfield is expected to be the base for the force, which includes the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
The force's primary mission is to protect humanitarian supply routes, secure airfields, ensure the safe return of UN and aid agency staff and perform bomb disposal.
However, Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, said this week: "We cannot, of course, rule out some of our troops being used in offensive frontline operations."
The documents detailing al-Qaeda's interest in nuclear and biological weapons were found in a two-storey house in the Karta Parwan district of the Afghan capital on Wednesday. The terrorists had taken their weapons and explosives, but in their haste did not have time to remove all the documents.
Someone had attempted to burn the incriminating material, but the top floor of the house was littered with journals, letters, handbooks and Canadian passport applications. There were also handwritten studies of rocket fuel, thrust capabilities and concept models of a missile with radar stealth ability and load capacity to a speed of Mach 2.4, as well as instructions on making a nuclear bomb taken off the Internet.
Much of the information was no more than the bomb-making literature that would be expected of a terrorist organization.
But, said The Times of London, "it is only when the neat handwritten notes of a mathematician or scientist turn their focus to the detailed studies of Mach speeds, conical areas, liquid rocket fuel and plutonium ... that the hair begins to crawl on the back of your neck."
In his interview with a Pakistani journalist last week, bin Laden boasted he had obtained nuclear materials. It appeared from the papers left behind in Kabul his group was hoping to build a fission device like Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
One room in the house contained what looked like a makeshift laboratory, complete with foul-smelling liquids in dirty brown jars and scattered papers covered in chemical formulas. The Times reported that, scattered about the laboratory, were documents containing instructions on how to manufacture ricin. Bulgarian secret police killed exiled dissident Georgi Markov as he walked across Waterloo Bridge in London in 1978 by stabbing him in the leg with an umbrella tipped with the deadly poison.
Underneath the building were bunkers, with a roof of fresh concrete. One bunker contained weapons parts, with the barrels of anti-aircraft weapons propped up in one corner.
Al-Qaeda continued to suffer losses. In addition to the members captured by the Northern Alliance, several al-Qaeda leaders were killed overnight Wednesday when U.S. air strikes hit the buildings in Kabul and near Kandahar in which they were hiding.
Pentagon officials said neither Mullah Omar nor bin Laden were killed. Both have vowed not to be taken alive and are the target of a massive manhunt, with the United States offering a US$5-million reward for bin Laden.
A Taliban spokesman insisted Omar was still in the southern city of Kandahar and in full command of the remaining Taliban forces.
But while he was defiant, there was a greater sense of desperation in comments from the one-eyed fundamentalist leader.
"It makes no difference if we control one, two or 20 provinces. Once we did not even have a single province, but later we captured all the provinces," he said.
"We have lost the captured provinces but it makes no difference."
Asked whether the Taliban would participate in a possible broad-based government, he said: "We would prefer death to the government of fascists."
The BBC said the interview, with its Pashtun service, was conducted through a Taliban intermediary over satellite phone. He passed the questions to the Taliban leader through a hand-held radio, then attached the phone's receiver to the radio for Omar's answers.
Pakistan ordered an alert for bin Laden on its western borders, with beefed-up security in North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan in case he should try to enter the country.
Hamid Mir, the Pakistani newspaper editor who interviewed bin Laden last week, said the terrorist leader is certain the Americans will eventually kill him.
"He told me, 'I am ready to die.' He said, 'I know that they can bomb this place also. They are not aware that I am present here. But they are dropping bombs blindly everywhere,' " Mr. Mir said.
"My cause will continue after my death," he quoted bin Laden as saying. "They think they will solve this problem by killing me. It's not easy to solve this problem. This war has been spread all over the world."
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