WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 30 September — US President George W. Bush said yesterday his country’s covert war in Afghanistan in response to terror attacks was heating up, while US officials denied a report that Osama Bin Laden’s men had grabbed US commandos on a spying mission.
The Pentagon refused to comment on the report, by Qatari-based Al-Jazeera television, that three US commandos and two US citizens of Afghan origin had been caught in southwest Afghanistan near the Iranian border carrying maps showing the base camps of Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group.
“We’re not going to get into the habit of commenting on every story that comes out of that region,” a Pentagon spokesman said. But a US administration official, who declined to be named, said “the report is inaccurate”. However, the Qatari television station, which has had contacts with Bin Laden in the past, insisted on the veracity of its story.
Al-Jazeera’s correspondent in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar, Ahmad Zaidan, said in a live broadcast that “unimpeachable sources” who cited “a military official in Al-Qaeda” had announced the capture.
He said “three members of the US ‘special forces’ and two Afghans holding US citizenship were captured by the Al-Qaeda organization in Helman, near the border with Iran.” He added that pictures of the detainees would be published “soon.”
For its part, Afghanistan’s Taleban militia regime, which protects Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, said it was not involved in any arrest of US personnel. Asked about the report, the Taliban’s Defense Minister, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, told Reuters: “It is totally wrong, we deny this news that they have come to our areas.”
Kabul’s official news agency Bakhtar also issued a denial. The Pentagon spokesman would say only: “We’ve seen the stories and we are not going to get into the habit of commenting on every story that comes out of the region.”
The foreign minister of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, told reporters he doubted that US or allied British special forces were operating within Taleban-controlled areas of the country. ABC News, CNN and USA Today have reported small groups of US special forces troops operated in Afghanistan in recent days. US officials also declined comment on these reports.
And a spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said that no US actions had been launched from Pakistani soil. US and British officials have refused to publicly confirm persistent reports from US media that allied special forces are inside Afghanistan paving the way for a mission to snatch or slay Bin Laden, but evidence suggests that US retaliation for Sept. 11’s terror attacks on US cities is close.
The escalation has sent reverberations around the region and the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, representing the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, will hold an emergency meeting next month to focus on the crisis, Qatari officials said yesterday. Bush himself hinted in a radio address yesterday that action was being carried out in secret to hit back at Bin Laden, the suspect blamed for the Sept. 11 suicide hijack attacks on New York and the Pentagon that left more than 7,000 people dead or missing. “This war will be fought wherever terrorists hide, or run, or plan,” he said. “Some victories will be won outside of public view, in tragedies avoided and threats eliminated. Other victories will be clear to all.”
A number of US media, including CNN and ABC television, reported that anonymous American officials had confirmed that US and British special forces were scouting locations within Afghanistan ahead of possible attacks. Elite troops from the America’s counterterrorist unit, Delta Force, its Rangers and Navy SEALs, along with the British Special Air Service (SAS), are reported to be operating out of bases in Pakistan and Central Asia. Bush said Friday: “Make no mistake about it, we’re in hot pursuit.”
Thousands of anti-war demonstrators, including a large number identifying themselves as anarchists, marched in Washington yesterday to protest possible US military action. A handful of protesters briefly clashed with authorities, leading police to use pepper spray to control the crowd, but the group was largely peaceful. The crowd marched in a park outside Washington’s Union Station, near the US Capitol building, behind a five-meter-long (16-foot-long) banner reading: “Anticapitalists against war, racism, terrorism, property.”
“Destroy imperialism, not Afghanistan,” read a flag waved by demonstrators. Some 2,000 protesters, according to police estimates, descended on the city, many dressed in black and covering their faces with glasses and bandannas to protect them from tear gas. But they were tightly controlled by riot police. The groups converged in the early afternoon on Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. Two people were detained and two injured in earlier minor clashes with police in the noisy and tense but largely peaceful demonstration. Some counterdemonstrators voiced their support for Bush’s declared war on terrorism after the attacks. In one scuffle, anti-war protesters snatched a US flag from a counterprotester and set it on fire, a Washington newspaper reporter said.
The US president met yesterday with his National Security Council to discuss the planned assault on what they see as terrorists through military, covert, legal and financial means. Their bid to form an international coalition around their strategy was strengthened Friday when the UN Security Council unanimously voted for a resolution to punish terrorism’s state sponsors. The resolution was passed after the Taleban refused an 11th hour ultimatum to hand over Bin Laden.
Russia, which has pledged to support a US counterstrike, hailed it as a vote of “exceptional significance”. Pakistan, which had used its former status as the Taleban’s strongest ally to push the failed demand for Bin Laden, said diplomatic contacts with the Islamic regime would continue. “We have made the gravity of the situation clear to the Taleban leadership. We will continue to make efforts,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Moinuddin Haider told reporters.
Pakistan also denied reports that US ground forces were operating from its territory. Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Muhammad Khan also dismissed rumors that Pakistani police had arrested several Arabs on suspicion of having links with “terrorist” organizations. “There is no basis to either of the two reports,” he told a press conference here. “There are no foreign troops in Pakistan at present.”
