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Israel Prepares Military Operation for Gaza Strip
DEBKAfile Special Report
Jul. 7, 2002, 3:37 PM
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Accelerated diplomatic momentum is in the air,
along with the apparent slowdown of Palestinian suicidal terrorist
action against Israel. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s two senior
envoys, his political adviser Osama el Baz and intelligence chief Gen.
Omar Suleiman, arrive Sunday, July 7, for talks in Israel and the
Palestinian Authority. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has named a
high-ranking team to translate President George W. Bush’s new Middle
East principles into practice, initiating a plan for enhancing
Israel’s security while distributing economic benefits to the
Palestinian population not engaged in terrorism. Sharon has directed
foreign minister Shimon Peres to start a dialogue with the newly
appointed Palestinian ministers of economy Salam Fayeed and interior
Abdel Razak al-Yahya.
However, the leaked litany from the prime
minister’s office in Jerusalem alleges that Yasser Arafat’s government
overhaul is not a genuine reform program but steps for tightening his
grip on Palestinian government. He has issued no orders at all to hold
back Palestinian terror against Israel. Sharon has therefore urged
European Union leaders to withhold subsidies from the Palestinian
Authority, as the funds go straight into the hands of groups preparing
fresh terrorist campaigns.
DEBKAfile’s political sources can
confirm that the common thread running through Arafat’s new
appointments is the removal of officials who pose a threat to his
rule.
Jibril Rajoub’s dismissal as chief of the West Bank
preventive security apparatus has been forced down his throat, but he
still retains control of his 4,000-man militia and refuses to take up
the Jenin Governorship vacated by his designated successor Zuhair
Manasra. Arafat believes he can put down the revolt staged by 600
officers loyal to Jibril by handing round cash. He is not short of
funds, whether Arab, European or private, for buying obedience.
Two other would-be challengers to Arafat’s
authority, Muhamed Dahlan, Jibril’s opposite number in the Gaza Strip,
and Mohamed Rashid, his personal financial adviser, have removed
themselves and their families to London under the protection of
British security. They, like Jibril, must be asking themselves how
they came to fall so hard from positions of such high authority.
Abu Mazen, Arafat’s veteran deputy and official
successor, has gone to ground in one of the Persian Gulf emirates.
Hundreds of affluent Palestinians have taken advantage of the summer
vacation to shut their villas and make tracks for European and
American resorts after liquidating their assets in Israeli and
Jordanian banks.
According to DEBKAfile’s political
sources, Sharon’s diplomatic performance is as phony as Arafat’s
reforms, except that the Israeli prime minister is backed to the hilt
from the White House – a prime asset he will never do anything to
jeopardize.
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US-led Afghan Offensive Pushes on
Mar. 5, 2002, 12:13 PM
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General Tommy Franks, head of the American Central
Command, claims the United States has applied the lessons drawn from
previous battle of the Afghan War, especially the Tora Bora
engagement, in the current push against Taliban and al Qaeda
strongholds south of Gardez in East Afghanistan. He promises that in
this offensive, dubbed Operation Anaconda, the two forces will not get
away across the border into Pakistan. They will have to surrender or
be killed.
He is probably right. Operation Anaconda is the
largest US-led air and ground offensive of the Afghan War. Some 2000
coalition troops are ringing al Qaeda-Taliban hideouts in the east
AfghanPaktiaMountains. Coalition bombers are relentlessly blasting
their mountain strongholds. Some 100 to 200 rebels have been killed in
the operation since it began five days ago, and a small number taken
prisoner - Taliban fighters, as well Chechens and Uzbeks.
But the rebels are fighting back. Monday, March 4,
al Qaeda and Taliban fighters fired machine guns and rocket-propelled
grenades at two US helicopters, killing seven American soldiers.
Tuesday, fresh US coalition troops were moved into the front lines.
DEBKAfile’s military analysts contend
that even if the US-led operation achieves its objectives in full, its
success will be short-lived. After the Gardez rebel concentration is
broken up, making the highways to Kabul and Kandahar safe, it will be
restocked gradually as of late spring from the other pockets of
resistance around the country and across the border in Pakistan,
Kashmir and the Ferangha Valley of Central Asia – in all of which
thousands of Chechen, Uzbek, Chinese, Tadjik and Kazakh extremist
Muslim militants are waiting their chance to creep back into
Afghanistan. The US-Afghan force can dissolve pockets of resistance,
but it cannot block off the constant passage of itinerant Taliban and
al Qaeda militants up and down thousands of miles of routes,
crisscrossing half a dozen countries.
Military strength, even assisted by technological
surveillance, is unequal to this task, without efficient intelligence
to pinpoint and hit those routes. This capability the Americans lack
for the moment in Afghanistan and outside the country. Nor do they
appear to be expending effort on repairing this deficiency. The US
command seems to have set itself the task of striking at one
stationary Taliban al-Qaeda pocket after another. It has little chance
of catching rebels on the move now – any more than it had in the
battles of Konduz and Tora Bora.
Related articles:
Al Qaeda Sets up Own Special Force
New US-Afghan Offensive is an Eye Opener
Nepal Loses Ground against Maoist Rebels
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Nepal Loses Ground against Maoist Rebels
Feb. 26, 2002, 12:06 PM
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The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, the world’s
backpackers’ paradise, is being squeezed to death in the crossfire of
big power and domestic conflicts. International airlines shun
Kathmandu since India-Pakistan tensions over Kashmir loomed - on top
of a vicious Maoist rebellion that has claimed 342 lives in the last
nine days alone.
On February 17, the Nepal government renewed the
state of emergency after rebels killed 137 soldiers and policemen at
Kailkot, 400 west of the capital. In the same district, soldiers
killed 76 rebels in a massive weekend strike. Since the mid-nineties,
the insurgency to create a communist state in place of the monarchy,
more than 3000 have been killed, most police and government personnel,
in less than a decade.
For the moment, the Maoists control 33 of 72
Nepalese districts, with full control over four, providing the local
population with administration, health, economic aid and education.
DEBKAfile’s Asian experts report that
the danger of the unrest in Nepal spilling over into its neighboring
countries is imminent; so too is its potentially detrimental effect on
the US-led war on terror.
More than half of Nepal’s population of more than
22 million, with a Hindu majority and about 3 percent Moslems, lives
in third world poverty. The insurgents are gaining ground by dint of a
combination of tactics. Targeting officialdom, banks and American
companies, their methods of operation recall both Islamic radical
expansionists today and North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh in the seventies -
linking education with militancy, driving government troops from
remote areas before moving in on population centers and meting out
cruel punishment – mutilations of bodies, beheading prisoner and
burning the faces of fallen soldiers.
The Nepalese police is poorly equipped and more
vulnerable than the army, which is famous for its legendary Ghurka
fighters. But both are desperately in need of training and weapons
upgrading.
The two rival regional powers, China and India, are
of one mind in fearing the collapse of the Nepalese ruling system and
its replacement by a radical communist Maoist regime. The rebel
movement’s destabilizing influence is already reaching into Bhutan,
Bangladesh and China. However, the Nepalese government wants aid from
sources other than India and China.
This year, both the United States - alarmed by the
effect of the Nepal civil war on its war against terror - and Britain,
have promised support. The Russian government too has condemned the
Maoist revolt and offered the Nepalese government badly needed help.
The army has a number of special units with
mountain artillery and an armored car company. Most of its equipment
is of French, German, US, Indian and Chinese manufacture. Nepal wants
to replace it with American or British hardware.
The Nepalese air force has a small helicopter unit,
a number of short-take-off and landing planes and transporters. The
shopping list includes more American or British armor, helicopters,
including assault helicopters and light counter-insurgency aircraft.
The police, including volunteers and militia, has
about 28,000 men equipped with outdated 303 Li Enfield pre WWI rifles
and Sten sub-machine guns. It also lacks vehicles and communications
systems.
More
Related articles:
Al Qaeda Sets up Own Special Force
US-led Afghan Offensive Pushes on
New US-Afghan Offensive is an Eye Opener
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Al Qaeda Sets up Own Special Force
DEBKAfile Reports Exclusively:
May. 13, 2002, 3:14 PM
Taking a leaf out of its adversaries’ book, the al
Qaeda Islamic network has created an elite force for defending the
religious seminaries of west Pakistan, their traditional hideouts,
against joint US-Pakistani raids. These Muslim seminaries have long
been breeding grounds for the militant Islamic fundamentalists
nourishing al Qaeda.
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DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report that US
special forces combined with Pakistani elite units embarked last month
on the Battle of the Medressas in remote and rugged Pakistani
Wazirstan, after the CIA received intelligence that roughly 3000
al-Qaeda fighters were hiding up in these seminaries, recuperating,
training and returning to Afghanistan for fresh assaults on the
interim government in Kabul and the foreign troops stationed in
Afghanistan.
However, helicopter-borne forces dropped over these
seminaries invariably find them deserted or occupied by innocent
locals with no links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The fugitives are
clearly forewarned of approaching danger in time to clear out. Thus
far the CIA and US military intelligence have not found the source of
the intelligence leaks. According to our sources in the region, the
al-Qaeda are paying Afghan smugglers handsomely to guide them through
mountain routes back and forth across the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.
The smugglers carry the terrorists’ weapons across separately.
Osama bin Laden and his commanders have detached
some 300 Islamic fighters and set up a special elite force to pre-empt
US-Pakistan attacks on the medressas. Some of them are also trained as
suicide killers for terror operations at a later stage.
In addition to the Afghan smugglers, al Qaeda is
the recipient of local aid from diverse quarters. Some of the officers
or men of the Pakistani special units engaged in hunt them are
secretly loyal to the erstwhile Pakistani intelligence Afghanistan
desk that was dismantled for its pro-Taliban allegiances. They may be
tipping off the al Qaeda before raids.
Furthermore, local Pashtun tribesmen maintain a
round-the-clock mountaintop lookout and communication system to alert
their villages on the approach of strangers – not necessarily
Americans. This system has been around for centuries. Today’s Pashtun
lookouts use simple walkie-talkies and stones piled in particular
patterns that convey certain messages. At night, they light bonfire
signals.
Related articles:
US-led Afghan Offensive Pushes on
New US-Afghan Offensive is an Eye Opener
Nepal Loses Ground against Maoist Rebels
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