- Over 1,000 US airborne troops were reported yesterday
to have been deployed to Uzbekistan and Tajikstan in preparation for a
ground operation against Osama bin Laden's bases and Taliban forces in
neighbouring Afghanistan.
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- A force of 1,500 troops was said to have arrived in the
two former Soviet states, with 8,000 US marines also being deployed in
the region from ships in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.
-
- The unconfirmed reports came as the Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar ignored evidence of a military build-up by making a defiant
statement yesterday. "There is less possibility of an American
attack,"
he said. "America has no reason, justification or evidence _ Therefore
[Afghans] who have been displaced are instructed to return to their
original
place of residence."
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- It is widely assumed that airborne troops could be
dropped
into Afghanistan to capture and hold key air bases following missile
strikes.
Bases that have been used by Bin Laden would also be targeted.
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- Yesterday the full extent of Bin Laden's bases and
al-Qaida
support network in Afghanistan were reported by Reuters in what it called
a Russian memorandum sent to the UN security council.
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- It said Bin Laden had at least 55 bases in the country,
and recruits including Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens, and Filipinos. In
addition
to his own supporters, about 3,500 fundamentalist Pakistanis were in the
country as well as Pakistani soldiers and diplomats working as advisers
to the Taliban, according to the report.
-
- The memo, dated March 9 2001, said most of Bin Laden's
facilities were in or around the main cities of the capital Kabul,
Kandahar,
Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sherif.
-
- Most were at former Afghan army bases, on large former
farms and in mountain caves. About 150 men are based in Bagh-i-Bala, the
hilltop restaurant that was once Kabul's most fashionable dining
spot.
-
- A cover note from Moscow's UN delegation said the memo
responded to a 1999 Security Council appeal for information "on bases
and training camps of international terrorists in Afghanistan" and
on foreign advisers to the Taliban. It named 31 Pakistanis, from generals
to diplomats, it said were working as advisers in Afghanistan.
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- The memo said the focus of Bin Laden's forces is at the
former headquarters of the Afghan army's 7th Division at Rishkhor, where
7,000 fighters, including 150 Arabs, as well as a Pakistani army regiment
are based. A nearby camp has instructors from Libya, Tunisia and
Egypt.
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- Further south in Charasyab, at a former base for the
anti-Soviet mojahideen, troops included 50 Filipinos and 40 Uighurs from
the mainly Muslim Xinjiang region in China.
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- The memo reported that at least 2,560 Chechens were
serving
or training with the Bin Laden network. Czechs and Bulgarians were reported
to be active at a base in Logar province south of Kabul.
-
- Kandahar, the southern city which is the Taliban's
spiritual
centre, was mentioned six times in the report, but without any major
military
installations. Around Jalalabad, Bin Laden units were based in two large
Soviet-built state farms and at former army posts close to the Pakistani
frontier.
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- The memo said six Pakistanis had senior posts in the
Taliban military. It said a Pakistani Awacs reconnaissance plane, of the
type originally provided by the US to monitor Soviet and Afghan air
activity
during the war in the 1980s, was based at Mazar-i-Sharif in northern
Afghanistan
to survey the borders with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
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- The memo did not reveal the source of the information.
Moscow had close ties with the Afghan Khad intelligence service during
the 1979-1989 Soviet war and trained thousands of Afghan leftists at Soviet
universities at that time.
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