Mullah Omar, Entire Taliban Leadership Safe

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

[ ... it's only the tribal leaders "loyal to the new Afghan
government of Karzai" who are getting wiped out at the moment, thanks
to the Taliban's superior counterintelligence convincing Rummy's
Dummies to bomb them on... the Road to Kabul. Good title for a movie.]

Friday December 21 11:49 AM ET (via Yahoo)


Taliban Ex-Minister Says Mullah Omar Is Safe

By Saeed Ali Achakzai

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Mullah Mohammad Omar, the
reclusive head of the ousted Taliban movement, is safe and is at an
unknown location in Afghanistan, a former Taliban minister said on
Friday.

Mullah Abdul Shakour, ex-minister of communications and
reconstruction, said all the Taliban leaders were safe, and
threatened retaliation against any country that extradited any member
of the Taliban leadership to the United States.

He told Reuters he had no idea where Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born
militant accused by Washington of masterminding the September 11
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was now.

`We are not aware of the whereabouts of Osama,'' Shakour said. `We
don't know whether he is in Afghanistan or not. But Mullah Omar is in
a safe place (in Afghanistan).''

`We are not worried about the safety of our leader,'' he added. `All
our senior leaders are safe.''

The Taliban were swept from power in November after more than a month
of U.S. air strikes, launched after the movement refused to hand over
bin Laden to Washington.

During the five years in which they controlled most of the country,
imposing an extreme form of Islam on the Afghans, the Taliban had
welcomed bin Laden, letting him live in the country and set up
training camps for followers of his al Qaeda network.

In the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the former Taliban
powerbase, tribal Pashtun forces said earlier this week they were
preparing to attack a mountain redoubt where Mullah Omar was believed
to be hiding with 500 men.

Kandahar Director of Intelligence Haji Gullalai said Mullah Omar had
retreated to mountains and caves around the village of Baghran in
Helmand Province, 100 miles northwest of Kandahar, accompanied by
diehard Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

Shakour said the Taliban's military potential was still intact
despite their rout from all Afghan cities and the disintegration of
their armed forces in the last few weeks.

`We are following a policy of wait-and-see,'' he said.

U.S. special forces and anti-Taliban Afghan fighters, backed by U.S.
air power, have launched a largescale drive to track down senior
Taliban leaders and non-Afghan Islamic combatants linked to al Qaeda.

U.S.-led forces are questioning around 7,000 prisoners in Afghanistan
to determine the level of their involvement in the Taliban and al
Qaeda movements, coalition spokesman Kenton Keith told reporters in
Islamabad.

TALIBAN LEADERSHIP SAFE

Shakour warned Afghanistan's neighbors of retaliation if they
extradited any Taliban official to the United States, but gave no
details of what form this might take.

`If any of our leaders is extradited, we will launch a movement
inside that country.''

On Thursday, Pakistani secret service agents detained Aminullah Amin,
a senior Taliban official and former head of security for the Afghan
border town of Spin Boldak and the southern frontier, in the
Pakistani border town of Chaman.

He was the first ranking Taliban official to be detained by Pakistan
since the fall of the Taliban.

Islamabad was the Taliban's main supporter before the September 11
attacks on the United States, but reversed its policy and backed the
war on terrorism declared by Washington which led to the bombing of
Taliban defenses and help for the anti-Taliban forces.

Pakistan has tightened security along its porous 1,560 mile border
with Afghanistan to keep out routed Taliban fighters and members of
al Qaeda.

 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytmid-12.22.01-05:06:48-15905