Author: Tom Heneghan
Publication: Hindustan Times, New
Delhi
Date: September 27, 2001
Osama Bin Laden had at least 55
bases or offices in Afghanistan earlier this year with over 13,000 men,
ranging from Arabs and Pakistanis to Chechens and Filipinos, according
to Russian information.
A Russian memo to the United Nations,
obtained by Reuters on Wednesday, reported that in addition to bin Laden's
own men, about 3,500 fundamentalist Pakistanis were in the country as well
as Pakistani soldiers and diplomats it said were working as advisers to
the hardline Taliban movement.
The memo to the UN Security Council,
dated March 9, 2001, said most of bin Laden's facilities were in or around
the main cities of Kabul, southern Kandahar, eastern Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sherif
in the north.
Most were at former Afghan Army
bases, on large former state farms and in caves in rugged mountain regions.
It was not clear whether these facilities,
part of bin Laden's alQaeda network, were all still in use at the time
of or after the September 11 suicide flights.
Washington has named bin Laden as
the prime suspect in those attacks and vowed to capture him "dead or alive"
and punish the Taliban for harbouring him.
The Taliban say they have already
taken emergency measures to defend themselves against any U. S. air attack.
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.
Pakistani military spokesmen were
not immediately available to comment on the list, which named 31 Pakistanis
- from generals to diplomats -- it said were working as advisers in Afghanistan.
The memo also says the focus of
bin Laden's forces is at the former Afghan Army Seventh Division base at
Rishkhor, south of Kabul.
Run by bin Laden's deputy Qari Saifullah
Ahtar, it has 7,000 fighters, including 150 Arabs and some Pakistani fundamentalists,
as well as a Pakistani army regiment.
A nearby camp has instructors from
Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, it said.
Further south in Charasyab, at a
former base for the anti-Soviet mujahideen, troops included 50 Filipinos
and 40 Uighurs from the mainly Muslim Xinjiang region in western China.
The memo from Russia, which is fighting
Muslim separatists in Chechnya, reported that at least 2,560 Chechens were
serving or training with the bin Laden organisation.
An unknown number of Czechs and
Bulgarians were reported to be active at a well-defended base in Logar
province south of Kabul.
Of the 19 camps said to be run by
Pakistani fundamentalists, the memo named three militant groups active
near Kabul. It did not identify who ran the other camps.
Several Pakistani groups have mobilised
students at religious schools to go and fight in Afghanistan.
The memo said six Pakistanis had
senior posts in the Taliban military and identified a former royal palace
in southwestern Kabul as "headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the
Pakistani forces in Afghanistan".
