September 14, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5442 • 5443

Johnson's Russia List
#5443
14 September 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Canadian Press: Fred Weir reports.
2. AFP: Russia backs US reprisal strikes but unwilling to take part.
3. New York Post: Niles Lathem, U.S. MAY SOCK BIN LADEN FROM RUSSIAN BASES.
4. AFP: Russia, China and CAsia denounce US attacks.
5. UPI: Muscovites: Bush will handle crisis. (poll)
6. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Andrei Fedorov, RUSSIA IS FACING A DIFFICULT CHOICE. By supporting US anti-terrorist actions, Moscow may speed up its rapprochement with the EU and NATO.
7. Peter Lavelle: Untimely Thoughts - The end of the 20th century (re Russia joins the west?)
8. The Independent (UK): Patrick Cockburn, Afghanistan's neighbours unite against Taliban.
9. Vremya MN: Yevgeny Vasiliev, MOMENT OF TRUTH. The Kremlin had better revise its foreign policy and defense doctrines.
10. The Times (UK): Vanora Bennett, Kremlin has vested interests in promise of help to Washington.
11. Los Angeles Times: Robyn Dixon, Courts, Bureaucrats Besiege Salvation Army in Moscow.
12. Forbes Magazine: Paul Klebnikov, A Putin Play. (stock market)
13. BBC Monitoring: Russian Supreme Court makes cuts to list of military secrets.
14. The Guardian (UK): Jonathan Steele, No easy conquest: Britain tried to subdue Afghanistan three times. Russia tried it once. They both failed. And the US military is unlikely to do any better.]

********

#1
From: "Fred Weir" <vier@co.ru>
Subject: from fw
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001

By Fred Weir
MOSCOW (Canadian Press) -- Russian officials and security experts say they
have
long been warning the West of an assault by central Asian-based "super
terrorists" which can only be stopped if old Cold War rivals unite their
efforts in a global anti-terrorist crusade.
"These events underline the importance of Russia's proposal to unite
the world community's efforts to combat terrorism, the plague of the 21st
century," President Vladimir Putin said following Tuesday's spectacular
terrorist attacks that killed thousands in New York and Washington.
Since a wave of still-unsolved apartment bombings killed 300 people
in Russian cities in 1999, Moscow has been trying to convince the West that
a powerful new terrorist threat that combines high finance and computer
literacy with medieval fanatacism is seeping from Afghanistan, across
Russia, to infect the world.
"Russia has been warning for years of the emergence of an
interconnected network of drug-funded, Islamic extremists who carry
terrorism to unseen heights," says Vitaly Naumkin, president of the Centre
for Strategic and Political Studies in Moscow.
"Russia has experienced this already. China, India and the central
Asian countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States are all in the
direct line of fire".
The Soviet Union unwittingly hatched the problem when it invaded the
central Asian country of Afghanistan in 1979. Over 10,000 Islamic volunteers
from around the Arab world, including a young Saudi multimillionaire named
Osama bin Laden, came to Afghanistan over the next decade to fight against
the Russians.
The Islamic fundamentalist Taleban movement won the civil war that
followed Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, and imposed strict
religious rule over the 90 per cent of the country it controls.
Russian experts say thousands of battle-hardened Arab soldiers
remained in the country, and have since built a huge terror network to
spread the Islamic revolution around the world.
"We have information that Osama bin Laden, who is considered a prime
suspect for these terrorist atrocities in the U.S., has been named the
Taleban's Inspector-General, which is equivalent to defence minister," says
Vyacheslav Belokrinitsky, a top Afghan expert with the Institute of Oriental
Studies in Moscow.
"Several thousands of Arabs in Afghanistan, like bin Laden, have
become enormously influential and are the main force radicalizing the
Taleban. They are injecting their global terrorist agenda into what was
formerly a local Islamic extremist movement".
The new terror centre has an impenetrable territorial base in
Afghanistan, almost unlimited funds through the expanding exports of heroin
across Russia to the West and a steady stream of fresh volunteers from the
conflict plagued Middle East, they say.
The Russians also claim that the secessionist republic of Chechnya is
a link in the global terror network. After the 1999 apartment bombings,
Moscow invaded Chechnya, killing thousands of civilians in a massive and
indiscriminate military campaign which still continues.
"I hope the Americans will not be taking advice from Russia on how
to respond to terrorist challenges," says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of
the independent Centre for Strategic Studies in Moscow.
"The way Russia has handled Chechnya is a model of destruction and
brutality that leads only to mass suffering and eternal war".
Russian experts say the highly sophisticated suicide attack seen on
a grand and tragic scale in New York and Washington, was rehearsed last
Sunday in a kamikaze assassination of the main anti-Taleban
resistance leader in Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Masood, by "journalists" armed
with an exploding TV camera.
They say there is little doubt that bin Laden was behind the attack
on Masood, which at a single stroke beheaded the last remaining barrier to
Taleban rule in Afghanistan.
Russia maintains 10,000 special troops in the ex-Soviet republic of
Tajikistan, which borders on Afghanistan, to interdict what it says are
daily attempts Islamic terrorist infiltrators to sneak into the
mainly-Moslem countries of former Soviet central Asia.
A year ago Russia's defence minister warned that Moscow might launch
air strikes against terrorist bases inside Afghanistan, though the threat
has not yet been carried out.
"From Russia we do see a pattern emerging, which involves a high
degree of organization, discipline and extreme fanatacism -- and this is the
signature of bin Laden and the Arab column in Afghanistan," says
Belokrinitsky.
"The Americans used to scoff that we Russians are too much into
conspiracy theories, but now maybe they'll take a closer look at what's
going on in central Asia".
Now that the U.S. has received a tragic wake-up call, Russian
experts say, there may be swift moves toward joint action, perhaps even
including military strikes against terrorist bases inside Afghanistan.
"These events have confirmed that international terrorism poses a
global threat," says General Sergei Lebedev, director of Russia's SVR
external intelligence service. "Joint action is urgently needed to forestall
further terrorist attacks".
Critics warn that the fresh enthusiasm in Moscow and Washington for
beefing up security services and striking at terrorists could obscure very
real concerns about Russian human rights violations -- especially in
Chechnya -- and even deepen the roots of instability in the world.
"Though these latest terrorist acts are unprecedented in their
sophistication and scale, we must remember that the causes of terrorism are
old," says Naumkin.
"This is about America's relations with the poor countries of the
world and its failure to help dispossessed peoples like the Palestinians.
To fight terrorism, we must address those problems.
"The U.S. can fire as many cruise missiles as it likes, but that
won't end terrorism".
Nevertheless, analysts say Russia is quietly offering its military
backing to the United States, should it decide to strike against bin Laden's
home bases in Afghanistan.
"Russia can provide intelligence, logistics and a good deal of
political and military help," says Grigory Bondarevsky, a Central Asia
expert who advised Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980's.
"The countries bordering on Afghanistan are our allies, and we
ourselves have long, bitter and intimate experience in that region".

*******

#2
Russia backs US reprisal strikes but unwilling to take part

MOSCOW, Sept 14 (AFP) -
Russia signaled Friday that it was ready to back US air strikes on
suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan but would neither take part in a
possible ground offensive nor let NATO troops be based in former Soviet
republics for such a campaign.

Military analysts further warned that ties between Moscow and Washington
would suffer should the United States attack any of the so-called "rogue
states" with which Russia is developing close trade ties.

"I can see no grounds, even hypothetical, for a possible NATO deployment in
Central Asian states" that border Afghanistan, Defense Minister Sergei
Ivanov declared while on a visit to the Caucasus republic of Armenia.

The comments came one day after Ivanov firmly announced that "Russia is not
planning any kind of military actions or strikes."

"We are prepared to render every kind of assistance with the
investigations," he added. "One can only speak of retaliatory measures once
those who are guilty are known and when there are facts."

Ivanov's remarks are striking in part because the Kremlin in May 2000
itself threatened to launch an air attack against suspected Afghan
terrorist bases in reprisal for the Taliban's alleged support of guerrillas
fighting in rebel Chechnya.

They also came in juxtaposition to Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov's
announcement that "Russia not only offers its sympathy, but also ... is
ready to offer all the necessary help" to the United States.

Military analysts note that Russia could be of some use to the United
States should Washington decide to go after Osama bin Laden, a suspect in
Tuesday's deadly suicide attacks who is hiding in the Taliban-controlled
regions of Afghanistan.

"Russia is in a particularly strong position to know about the situation in
Afghanistan" since it itself waged a decade-long war there in the 1980s,
said Gennady Chufrin, project leader at the respected Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

"This experience and knowledge (of the terrain) would be very helpful in
any action in general in that area," he said.

But at the same time, Moscow remains deeply suspicions of NATO's presence
in the region and fears the effects of an all-out war in Afghanistan,
analysts and officials said.

"Of course Russia will face serious consequences if, in the worst-case
event, the United States launches a ground invasion" of Afghanistan, said
former FSB security service director Nikolai Patrushev.

"This will destabilize the situation ... and of course see a wave of
refugees," said Patrushev. "I think they (the Taliban) will take every step
possible to make sure that their territory is not bombed or invaded."

And an unnamed Russian diplomat told Interfax that Moscow thought "striking
an entire country could not be justified" while Chief of Staff General
Anatoly Kvashnin told ITAR-TASS that no consultations with the United
States had yet been held about a possible joint operation.

Further, while Moscow supports Washington's pursuit of international
terrorists, it would take a grim view of possible attacks against other
nations which Washington accuses of sponsoring terrorists -- including Iraq
and Iran.

Such attacks could send relations spiraling to the lows of 1999, when NATO
launched air strikes on Russia's traditional ally Yugoslavia during the
Kosovo conflict.

"Russian generals have already said they would not stand for strikes
against the so-called rogue states. Our generals do not mind strikes
against Afghanistan, because we are in essence fighting there now," said
independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer.

"But we would not support much else. Other strikes could harm Russia-US
relations."

Other Moscow-based military analysts cautioned that US strikes against
nations with which Russia enjoys open relations threatened to degenerate
into a wide-scale war that could only be approved by the UN Security
Council -- where Russia has veto power.

"If the United States begin bombing other nations it can turn into a
world-wide conflict," said Yury Gladkevich of the AVN military news agency.

"Such decisions must be made by the world community within the auspices of
the United Nations."

*******

#3
New York Post
September 14, 2001
U.S. MAY SOCK BIN LADEN FROM RUSSIAN BASES
By NILES LATHEM

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is talking with Russia about using
former Soviet military bases in central Asia as staging areas for massive
military assaults on Osama bin Laden, The Post has learned.

Senior diplomatic officials in both countries revealed last night that
plans to use two Russian bases in Tajikistan - and the former Soviet air
base at Bagram inside a portion of Afghanistan under the control of
anti-Taliban forces - are at the center of ongoing talks between the United
States and Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country has been victimized by
terror bombings of Moscow apartment buildings linked to bin Laden, has
revived an offer he made a year ago for the United States to use bases in
Tajikistan for possible joint operations against bin Laden and the ruling
Taliban in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said President Bush spoke twice by phone to
Putin on Wednesday about joint measures the two former Cold War rivals
might take to combat their common enemy: militant Islam.

Asked specifically about whether the United States will use the Russian
bases as staging areas for military operations in Afghanistan, Powell said
only: "There are lots of ways the Russians can help. It's their
neighborhood."

The White House has said it is prepared to launch massive and sustained
military action against those responsible for Tuesday's attacks, but has
not made final decisions on the details.

Options being debated include repeated air strikes and possible ground
assaults and commando raids, sources said.

The United States could stage long-range air raids and missile attacks from
aircraft carriers and bases in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, but
Pentagon planners have acknowledged the need for a staging area in the
volatile region if it becomes necessary for ground operations.

"If you look on the map, the Tajik and Afghan bases are the most logical
and reliable staging areas for what I think is being contemplated," said
Kenneth Katzman, former CIA analyst and Afghan expert for the Congressional
Research Service.

Likely targets of U.S. bombing raids and ground assaults would be heavily
fortified mountain bunkers and caves.

"There is 100 percent Russian solidarity on this. The Russian government
and people realize that we face a common enemy," said Michael McFaul, of
the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace.

Russia has maintained a large military presence in Tajikistan since its
forces pulled out of Afghanistan in the early 1980s. The 201st Motorized
Division is considered one of the best-equipped and -trained units left
over from the once-mighty Soviet Red Army, and is located near the Afghan
border.

The Bagram Air base, once the center of Soviet military operations in
Afghanistan, is located 40 miles north of Kabul in an area controlled by
the Northern Alliance, one of the largest anti-Taliban groups still
fighting in Afghan's civil war.

The Russians have also been pushing for months to give economic aid and
military support to the Northern Alliance fighters, and those plans
intensified yesterday with meetings in Tajikstan that were also attended by
Iran and India.

*******

#4
Russia, China and CAsia denounce US attacks

ALMATY, Sept 14 (AFP) -
The prime ministers of Russia, China and four Central Asian states issued a
joint declaration Friday condemning the brutal terrorist attacks in the
United States.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization SCO, which groups Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Russia and China, also agreed to
bolster economic ties at the first meeting of the nation's prime ministers.

The six nations said that Tuesday's strikes in New York and Washington,
which left thousands missing and presumed dead, posed a "challenge to the
fundamental principles of human civilization."

"We are prepared to take effective measures in close coordination with all
states and international organizations with the aim of conducting an
uncompromising fight to root out this global danger," the statement read.

Central Asian states have deep concerns about terrorism following a
succession of summer raids on Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2000, blamed on
Islamic extremist rebels trained in Afghanistan.

China is also nervous about simmering separatism in its troubled Xinjiang
region where Uighur Islamic militants have carried out violent
anti-government attacks in recent years.

Russia, for its part, has portrayed its ongoing crackdown in the breakaway
republic of Chechnya as an anti-terrorist operation.

The SCO meeting will be followed by a meeting of a Eurasian body, bringing
together Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which aims
to create a single economic area for the five countries.

Meanwhile Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said that a separate
agreement Friday on economic cooperation between the six nations showed
that the regional role of the SCO was expanding.

The organization has previously focused on ways to ward off Islamic
extremism in the Central Asia.

"We are widening the specter of our cooperation," said Russian Prime
Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who added that the fight against terrorism would
nevertheless remain a key task.

But he said the six countries would now aim to work together in the sphere
of transport, infrastructure and trade among others.

The move comes as both Russia and China have their eye on the vast,
untapped energy resources of Central Asian states.

Kazakhstan alone is thought to be sitting on top of one of the largest oil
fields to be discovered in the last 30 years and expects to become a major
oil producer over the next two decades.

Russia and China are thought to be concerned about growing US influence in
the Central Asian region, where US oil giants, including Chevron and
ExxonMobil, already have stakes in major oil and gas exploration projects.

The two regional powers fear that US-backed plans to develop new transport
corridors to unlock Central Asia's energy riches will allow the former
Soviet states to assert greater independence from Moscow.

Central Asian republics, meanwhile, are keen to attract foreign investment
to build their shattered economies following the Soviet Union's collapse in

*******

#5
Muscovites: Bush will handle crisis

MOSCOW, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Most Muscovites regard Tuesday's terrorist
attacks on the United States as the beginning of a campaign of terror
against the only remaining superpower, rather than a worldwide phenomenon,
according to a poll conducted in the city Thursday.

An overwhelming majority of respondents believes that U.S. President
George W. Bush can handle the crisis successfully, but at the same time
doubt Washington's ability to hunt down the perpetrators of the crime.

Thursday's telephone survey, conducted by ROMIR independent research
center, polled more than 500 adult Muscovites.

The survey showed that 34.9 percent of respondents deemed the attacks as
part of an unfolding campaign of terror against the United States. Less than
a third -- 29.2 percent -- of those polled consider the tragic events to be
the starting point of a worldwide terrorist campaign.

Twenty-one percent of respondents thought Tuesday's attacks were singular
acts of violence, committed by a group of extremists while 5.7 percent said
the attacks marked the beginning of World War III. The remaining 9.2 percent
were undecided.

The ROMIR poll also showed that 38.4 percent of the Muscovites polled
expected Washington to launch retaliatory actions against the states
suspected of being related to the attacks. Nearly the same number of
respondents said that the United States would get involved in a large-scale
fight with terrorism worldwide with the ultimate goal of destroying the
strongholds of international terrorism.

Slightly more than 14 percent of those polled thought that the White House
would react to the crisis by launching internal investigations and punishing
its own officials whose faults led to the tragic events. The remaining 9.2
percent were undecided on the issue.

In Moscow, the respondents were also asked to say who they blame for the
attacks.

Nearly half -- 49.8 percent -- replied that the attacks were committed by
Islamic extremists; 7.6 percent blamed the attacks on other religious
extremist groups while 7 percent said the attacks were launched by secret
services of some countries. The poll did not ask the names of the suspected
countries. More than 5 percent of those polled thought the attacks were
perpetrated by anti-globalist radicals while 3.5 percent blamed the U.S.
secret services. More than 23 percent were undecided.

The poll showed that the issue of international terrorism sends many
Russians into jitters as 47 percent of respondents believed Russia could
also be hit by a similar wave of terrorist attacks. Only 21.6 percent of
Muscovites rule out attacks on their home soil.

The majority of Muscovites thought that George Bush was able to deal with
the situation -- 74.1 percent of respondents believed the U.S. president
would successfully handle the crisis while 19.6 percent questioned his
abilities.

Few Muscovites -- 18.1 percent -- believed that the U.S. authorities would
find the perpetrators of Tuesday's string of tragedies within a short time.
Nearly 30 percent thought the search was more likely to succeed than fail
and 31.4 percent thought just the opposite. Finally, 13.7 percent said the
perpetrators would never be found. Seven percent remained undecided.

In Russia, the opinions were divided on the issue of the attacks' impact
on world economy.

The attacks would cause a short-term economic crisis with no consequences
on global economy, 34.6 percent of those polled said. According to 32.7
percent of respondents, the attacks wouldn't harm the Russian economy.
Nearly 14 percent said the Russian economy would benefit from the rise of
oil and non-ferrous metals prices. Only 7.6 percent of respondents said that
the attacks would lead to a global economic crisis. More than 11 percent
remained undecided.

*******

#6
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
September 14, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
RUSSIA IS FACING A DIFFICULT CHOICE
By supporting US anti-terrorist actions, Moscow may speed
up its rapprochement with the EU and NATO
Andrei FEDOROV, director of political programmes of
the Council of Foreign and Defence Policies

The tragedy in the USA has changed the world. It put on
the agenda new questions, the answers to which should be sought
on a global scale. Here are some of these questions of vital
significance to Russia.
First, we should review the notion of national security,
because the terrorist attacks in the USA were spearheaded not
at New York or Washington, hut at the US state as a whole,
putting in question the effectiveness of its operation. Today
the military component of security is becoming senseless unless
complemented by other measures.
The vulnerability of the USA can be a good lesson for some
and an impetus to action for others. It is clear already now
that in the next few decades we will live in a world where
terrorism is becoming a fact of everyday life.
In addition, the world is coming to see that national
borders are no longer a serious hindrance to actions
spearheaded against a state or a group of states.
Second, stability and security of any state is becoming
more dependent on the stability and security of other states in
conditions of technological progress. The global nature of
terrorism is objectively pushing us towards finding a global
answer to this challenge. The more so that the actions of
terrorists are comparable to war losses in terms of damage.
The terrorist acts in New York and Washington will also
have a long-lasting effect on the global economic system, since
any reply actions by the USA (and I don't doubt for a minute
that there will be a series of such reply actions) will
engender new risks to the world economy.
Third, a major psychological factor has come into play -
the dramatically growing feeling of insecurity of hundreds of
millions of people above all in European states, including
Russia. This will inevitably affect many processes, from
politics and economy to culture. The prestige of the USA as the
leader of the Western world has been greatly undermined. New
threats call for a new psychology of behaviour of both
politicians and common people.
Fourth, the problem of terrorism calls for growing
openness in revealing and analysing many problems, including
the Chechen one. Nobody will be able to hide behind national
borders now and hence the cooperation of special services
should become a foreign policy priority.
Fifth and possibly most important, the problem of
terrorism is acquiring a civilised dimension. There is a
palpable danger of an accelerated division of the world into
the good and the bad, which will inevitably engender a new
round of confrontation between the West and the Islamic world,
with all the ensuing consequences.
The current situation is complicated for Russia in that it
is facing a difficult choice. If it joins the struggle against
terrorism on a global scale, it will either have to support the
West (and it will be most surely the struggle against the
Islamic world) and hence disrupt many of its traditional ties
with Arab countries, or to keep aloof of the problem, which
means that it will not quarrel with Arab countries but will
inevitably conflict with the West.
The choice cannot be made behind closed doors, for it
objectively presupposes practical actions. Russia's joining the
broad anti-terrorist alliance will have serious political and
economic consequences, one of them the accelerated
rapprochement of Russia with the EU and the improvement of its
relations with NATO.
What can happen next? This depends above all on exactly
what the USA will do in the next few days or weeks. It is clear
that the USA will not respect anyone's sovereignty, which is a
new objective reality, too. The world has become less safe than
it was a week ago. And hence it will be much more difficult,
including for Russia, to keep the peace and work for genuine
strategic stability. A serious challenge has been thrown at
Russia, too, and its place among the world powers largely
depends on the answer to this challenge.

********

#7
From: "Peter Lavelle" <plavelle@metropol.ru>
Subject: Contribution
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001

Peter Lavelle: Untimely Thoughts - The end of the 20th century
(re Russia joins the west?)

What the US may or may not do over the next days and weeks could have a
major long-term impact on Russian politics and society. While Russia may
hope the world (and especially the United States) will see and interpret the
world as it does, the outcome of some major military action may have
profound implications the way Russians may come to see themselves. In a
sense, Russia has asked the world to choose sides. But in reality Russia
itself is on the brink of joining a side. Rhetorically, Russia's decision
seems clear: to respect liberal-democratic values as well as honoring the
sanctity of human life. Politically, Russia's choice to join the ranks of
the west will fundamentally alter its geographical reality. The US and its
closest allies label many of Russia's old Soviet friends rouge state, many
on or very near to Russia's borders. Is Russia informing it is willing to
re-think its status as a Eurasian state? Does Moscow conclude that we are
experiencing a "clash of civilizations"? These geopolitical questions are
obvious though yet to be played out. What is not so obvious is the social
impact on Russia. Russia is again confronted with the paradox of claiming to
protect and defend the rights of others over its own citizens. This
rhetorical dissonance will not be lost upon the average Russian in our
borderless and electronic age. This is an opportunity for civil society
(and not exclusively in a NGO sense) to express and claim protection of its
own interests. By protecting the rights of Americans and all other peoples
of the "civilized world", Putin's own "dictatorship of law" just may
transform into the "rule of law". By identifying with the values of the
west, even willing in some form to be involved in a military venture with
its former Cold War foes against international terrorism, Putin is creating
the possibility of looking at his own country in a new way. While many may
claim Putin is looking only for a western-legitimized cover for Russia's
Chechen policies, a western driven demonstration effect may ultimately bring
about the opposite. Russia dominated how the world defined politics in the
last century. It was the quintessential juxtaposition to the west. Russia
now, with help of the west and who knows who (Osama bin Laden?), may be
signaling that juxtaposition was nothing more than evil itself.

********

#8
The Independent (UK)
14 September 2001
Central Asia: Afghanistan's neighbours unite against Taliban
BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN MOSCOW

SENIOR DIPLOMATS from Russia, India, Iran and other countries hostile to
the Taliban in Afghanistan held an emergency meeting yesterday in Dushanbe,
capital of Tajikistan.

They planned to discuss the role of the anti-Taliban alliance of
Afghanistan's neighbours as the United States prepared to retaliate for the
attacks in New York and Washington.

In the past the anti-Taliban group has supported the Northern Alliance, the
sole remaining opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan. But Ahmed Shah
Masood, the Northern Alliance's charismatic leader, was killed or badly
wounded by a bomb last Sunday, just as his retreating forces might have
been revived by foreign aid. The Taliban is not short of enemies, but
Masood, who built his military prestige during the Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan, was its only opponent with an army in the field.

"I think the alliance will almost certainly disintegrate," said Robert
Templer of the International Crisis Group's Asia programme. "Masood really
did fight battles and didn't just bribe his opponents to go away. It won't
be much of a military force without him."

Outside Afghanistan, notably in Russia and Iran, Masood was the only
opposition leader with any credibility. The new military commander of the
Northern Alliance, which consists mainly of ethnic Tajiks, is General
Mohammed Fahimkhan, who does not have the prestige of Masood. Mr Templer
said the Northern Alliance does not have wide popular support.

At first glance the Taliban faces a formidable array of enemies who are
willing to help the US pursue those responsible for the attacks. But the
meeting in Dushanbe brought together a disparate group of powers that have
little in common apart from dislike of the Taliban.

Russia still has a division of troops in Tajikistan, which shares a long
common border with Afghanistan. President Vladimir Putin has long spoken of
joining the US in tracking down "international terrorism", which he blames
for the war in Chechnya. The Kremlin has also offered help to central Asian
states such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan which are fighting guerrillas.

The Iranians regard the Sunni Muslim Taliban with extreme antipathy because
of its oppression of the Shia minority, known as the Hazara, and the murder
of Iranian diplomats.

Uzbekistan fears guerrillas from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which
has raided its territory. Tajikistan is the main conduit for heroin from
Afghanistan and also fears the export of Islamic revolution. India does not
want Islamic rebels trained in Afghanistan to cross into Indian Kashmir.

The position of some states in the region is ambivalent. China has good
relations with Pakistan and recently signed an economic agreement with the
Taliban. But it also fears the spread of Islamic revolutionary ideas to
Xinjiang, its largely Muslim province.

Russia has been leading the charge in opposing "Islamic fundamentalism and
terrorism". Immediately after the attacks in the US, Mr Putin said: "What
happened today underlines one more time the importance of the Russian
proposal to unite international forces in the fight against terrorism. That
is the plague of the 21st century. Russia directly knows what terrorism is
and for that reason we understand the feelings of the American people."

American calls for international solidarity against "terrorism" fit in well
with Russian policy on "terrorism" in Chechnya. But central Asian states
worry about becoming too dependent on Russian military support to combat
what at this stage are minor guerrilla incursions.

Mr Templer says that despite declarations of solidarity, the states that
ostensibly stand shoulder to shoulder against terrorism and fundamentalism
regard each other with deep suspicion. A decision to set up a joint
research institute into terrorism in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan,
foundered because nobody would pay for it.

The key to any move against Osama bin Laden, other radical Islamic groups
in Afghanistan or the Taliban is likely to be Pakistan. The Taliban is,
after all, largely the creation of the Pakistani intelligence service. Only
the Pakistanis have the knowledge and the manpower to eradicate radical
groups in Afghanistan, unless the US intends to use ground troops.

The US does not need Russian material support. But the daily Vremya
Novostei said that in talks in the past few days between the Kremlin and
the White House it looked as if there was a political agreement reached
similar to that in 1991 before the military operation against Saddam
Hussein. "The Americans do not need our assistance, but a guarantee not to
interfere," it stated.

Moscow will find it easy enough to act in concert with the US over
Afghanistan. But it would be much more worried if US actions were directed
against any of seven states - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea
and Sudan - with whom it has had close relations.

In one respect the situation resembles that after the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait. Even more than then, nobody wants to make an enemy of Washington.

********

#9
Vremya MN
September 14, 2001
MOMENT OF TRUTH
The Kremlin had better revise its foreign policy and defense doctrines
Author: Yevgeny Vasiliev
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
RUSSIA IS NOT THREATENED BY THE WEST, NATO EXPANSION, OR EVEN
NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEMS. IT IS THREATENED BY SOMETHING
ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. BUT HOW FAR IS RUSSIA PREPARED TO GO IN
COOPERATING WITH THE WEST AGAINST TERRORISM?

TWO TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN THE RUSSIAN AND US PRESIDENTS WITHIN A FEW HOURS ON WEDNESDAY ARE AN INDICATION OF THEIR READINESS TO BRING OUR COUNTRIES "CLOSER TO EACH OTHER". THIS INTERPRETATION OF THE NEW MOOD IN RELATIONS BETWEEN THE TWO PRESIDENTS WAS OFFERED AT YESTERDAY'S NEWS CONFERENCE HELD BY THE PRESIDENTIAL PR DEPARTMENT IN THE KREMLIN. IT IS FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT CONSOLIDATED EFFORTS AGAINST TERRORISM ARE BECOMING THE MAIN FOUNDATION OF THE RUSSIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONSHIP.

Actually, this new basis of the Russian-American relationship
started to take shape at the summits in Ljubljana and Genoa. However,
back then it was discussed in a more theoretical manner.
Now Washington and NATO are talking of the need for close
coordination of efforts with Russia against the forces of evil.
There is a question. How far is Russia prepared to go in this
direction? On the one hand, Vladimir Putin has declared that the
civilized world needs to take stronger measures against terrorism. On
the other hand, the problem of "identifying" this evil is impeded by
the apparent disparity in the foreign policy interests of Russia and
the West.
Moscow is expanding contacts with nations which the United States
and its allies refer to as rogue states or states of concern. Western
critics say that Russia has become a political sponsor and the main
facilitator in the increasing military power of these states.
Moreover, their military power is approaching the point at which they
may actually pose a threat to the West. The latest criticism was
voiced by Washington, just before the tragic events in the United
States. A CIA report and State Department spokespersons stated that
Iran is actively working on weapons of mass destruction and delivery
systems, and that Russian companies continue to supply Iran with
technologies.
Even if there is absolutely no truth to these statements, the
fact that the allegations have been made highlights the gap between
the strategic interests of the Russian Federation and the United
States. The US and Israel view Moscow's efforts to expand military-
technical cooperation and sign a friendship treaty with Iran as a
direct threat to their security.
The Kremlin's attitude and actions with regard to Iraq, Libya,
and so on are viewed in a similar manner. Attitudes toward them might
have been different if Russia had coordinated the expansion of its
contacts with the rogue states with the West. It has not done so.
Moscow behaves like a center of global policy which wants its hands
untied wherever it stands a chance of making some money by selling
arms or equipment for nuclear power plants, for example.
Shall we try to compare Russia's annual profits from arms sales
to the developing world (less than what Cyprus earns from tourism!)
with the losses resulting from the extremely low level of trust the
West has for Moscow, the virtually non-existent investment in the
Russian economy, and so on? Russian and Western analysts agree that
Moscow would have done better to focus on cooperation with the West.
The Kremlin clearly thinks otherwise.
The post-September 11 situation does give Moscow a chance to draw
closer to the West, and to the United States in particular. Actual
involvement in the civilized world's united counter-terrorism front
will require Russia to revise its foreign policy and defense
doctrines. As a result, the Kremlin may finally understand that Russia
is not threatened by the West, NATO expansion, or even national
missile defense systems. It is threatened by something entirely
different.

*******

#10
The Times (UK)
September 14, 2001
Kremlin has vested interests in promise of help to Washington
BY VANORA BENNETT

RUSSIA has rushed to support a stricken America, promising help if
Washington responds to terrorism with force. The reasons for President
Putin’s backing, however, may not be to America’s liking.

Active Russian support for any military response directed against
Afghanistan would vastly increase America’s chances of success in hunting
down the perpetrators of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.

A generation of modern military engagement on either side of the old
Soviet-Afghan frontier, starting with the Soviet Army’s occupation of
Afghanistan in 1979, has given Russian forces enormous know-how about
logistics, terrain and even the personalities of fighters in the
inhospitable Central Asian region.

Regional states led by Moscow, which wants to maintain its old imperial
influence and access to Central Asia’s natural resources, police the Afghan
frontier today. Russia is the main provider of men and money for the
garrisons.

Using its expertise to support America would serve Mr Putin’s own interests
in three ways. First, Russian help to President Bush would likely come at
the price of demanding that he drops his plans to build a missile shield to
protect Americans against attacks by rogue states.

The Russian media has lost no chance this week to point out that missile
defence would not have stopped this attack. “The anti-missile shield will
not protect the United States,” said Mikhail Nosov, of the prestigious
USA-Canada Institute. “The threat will come not from rogue states and their
feeble missiles, but from Islamic terrorism.”

Second, Russia’s own difficult history of conflict with Muslim radicals
could be reassesed — in Moscow’s favour — if Americans did hunt down the
perpetrators of Tuesday’s savagery. Russian forces have fought two
gruelling wars in the 1990s against Islamist separatists in Chechnya. The
second war was triggered by a series of explosions in Russian towns in
1999, which were blamed without proof on Chechen terrorists.

Smarting at the West’s squeamishness about its brutal military response in
Chechnya, which it billed as an anti-terrorist operation, Russia also
stands to gain now if the West comes round to its belief that ruthlessness
is a legitimate response to terrorism.

Russian anxiety about Muslim radicalism dates back beyond the Chechnya
conflict to the 1980s, when Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan for a
decade lost their war against Muslim guerrillas funded by Saudi Arabia and
America.

Although the Soviet collapse in 1991 left Russia itself with no common
frontier with Afghanistan, the newly independent Central Asian state of
Tajikistan, a former Soviet satellite on that border, went through a
full-scale war between pro-Moscow and Islamist factions in the early 1990s.

Local Islamist rebels operated from both sides of the Afghan border and,
although the Tajik war is long over, small insurgencies still simmer near
the frontier. Russian agencies have also tracked the fighting that has
racked Afghanistan since soon after Soviet troops pulled out at the end of
the 1980s, and are as firmly against strengthening Taleban control of the
territory as are Americans.

Today Russian and CIS troops in the region know the difficult terrain, that
has defeated all invaders over the centuries, and the style of fighting
favoured by local guerrillas.

The final blessing for Mr Putin may be that, through stepped-up military
activity around Afghanistan, he now has a chance to strengthen his
influence over Central Asia.

******

#11
Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2001
Courts, Bureaucrats Besiege Salvation Army in Moscow
Charity: Judge issues order 'liquidating' group over registration error. It
plans appeal, and leader says he'll soldier on until police intervene.
By ROBYN DIXON, TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOSCOW -- On the day this week that a Moscow court discussed whether to
close down the Salvation Army, two homeless boys lay propped on their
elbows here on a stretch of grass littered with dog droppings and wondered
why anyone would want to stop the organization from feeding needy people.

Andrei Volkov, 12, and Dmitri Gribkov, 15, come for the soup and the hunk
of bread doled out by the Salvation Army each lunchtime in a shabby city
park near one of the big railway stations that are shelter to many of the
homeless.

In a dingy courtroom not far away Tuesday, Judge Svetlana Grigorieva
brushed aside the arguments of the Salvation Army seeking a suspension of
the case against it. The following day, she handed down a judgment
"liquidating" the group's national headquarters here without waiting to
hear final arguments by the Salvation Army's lawyer, Vladimir Ryakhovsky,
who had been caught in one of the city's infamous traffic snarls and
arrived 10 minutes late.

The Salvation Army was banned as an anti-Soviet organization in Communist
times but began operating freely in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991.

Then in 1998 prosecutors here sought to close it down based on the
contention that it is a paramilitary organization because of its uniforms,
ranks and the word "army" in its name.

But after 2 1/2 years of legal action, the Salvation Army was finally
closed down on a technicality--claims by the Ministry of Justice Moscow
directorate that the group made a minor mistake in its application for
re-registration, which is required by Russia's law on religions.

Col. Kenneth Baillie, commanding officer of the Salvation Army in Russia,
said two previous court rulings against the group because it is a
paramilitary organization still stand.

"Two courts have endorsed that ridiculous argument, but we consider it to
be something of a smoke screen, a populist argument designed to appeal to
certain people," he said.

"It's so patently ridiculous that one shakes one's head at the idea that a
court could record that decision or a lawyer could mount that argument," he
said.

Baillie said the legal ground has shifted many times as the case has
dragged on.

"I've heard so many different versions of why they are denying us
registration," he said. "I don't know who to believe anymore because they
have said contradictory things."

Throughout Russia, the Salvation Army runs soup kitchens and offers prison
and home visits and other social services.

The Salvation Army does have national registration, but the implications of
the Moscow ruling could extend beyond the capital because the group's
lawyers fear it could be liquidated in other cities where it operates.

In a phone interview Thursday, Vladimir Zhbankov, deputy head of the
Justice Ministry's Moscow directorate, made it clear that the ministry will
aggressively pursue the organization.

He said the Salvation Army will be forced to give up all of its property
and assets in Moscow to the state, including vehicles. It will not be able
to rent property in Moscow or operate as a religious organization.

"This will teach them a good lesson that in Russia everybody is equal
before the law, regardless of whether you represent the Salvation Army or
not," Zhbankov said.

"There are some notorious organizations I would so eagerly liquidate, but I
can't because they comply with the law. But the Salvation Army chose not
to. Well, now they will have to sustain serious material losses, as they
will have to hand in all their property and money to the state and start
again from scratch: write a new charter, fill in all the forms and hand in
the registration papers on time," he said.

For those dependent on the Salvation Army, the legal action against it is
incomprehensible.

The homeless boys, Andrei and Dmitri, seem destined for long-term
unemployment, vagrancy and premature death. But they still have dreams.

Dmitri, the older, wants to be a driver. Andrei would like to be a doctor.
Now, though, they have filthy hands and feet and nowhere to go, and their
goals seem unattainable.

Neither can think of where he would get food if the Salvation Army, which
has been their main source of food for the last year, disappeared.

"I want them to feed us. They're a good organization," said Dmitri, whose
mother is an alcoholic and whose father is in prison for theft.

"It's a bad decision. Let them feed us. If they don't feed us, it will be
bad for us," Andrei said.

"Why should the government liquidate them? It's not normal," said another
soup kitchen patron, Valentina Shatornaya, 49, who was carrying several
shopping bags filled with her possessions and with bottles she had
collected to trade for cash.

"I think every city needs a place like this so that once a day, people can
come and get fed, because anything can happen to people," said Shatornaya,
who used to be a technician in a power plant.

For the time being, Baillie said, the Salvation Army plans to continue
ministering to the poor and will wait to see if there is any punitive
police action.

The group is also planning to take its case to the Russian Constitutional
Court and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Russia
comes under the latter court's jurisdiction as a member of the Council of
Europe.

Anatoly Pchelintsev, director of a Moscow think tank, the Institute of Law
and Religion, and a lawyer who has worked for the Salvation Army, said
closing down a religious organization with an impeccable record on a
technicality creates a disturbing precedent.

"We once again hurry to demonstrate to the civilized world that we are
definitely not part of it," he lamented.

********

#12
Forbes Magazine
October 1, 2001
A Putin Play
By Paul Klebnikov

The Russian stock market is up sharply this year, and it's still cheap. Can
you swallow your fears of getting ripped off?

In the mid-1990s Russia seemed like a classic value play. Communism was
dead, and Russia's best companies were on the block. Attracted by the
prospect of buying oil or metals giants at pennies on the dollar, foreign
investors rushed in. Between March 1996 and July 1997 the Russian Trading
System stock index rose elevenfold.

But Act I of Russia's emergence as a market economy ended sadly. The
country had been so badly looted by its crony capitalists that in 1998
Russia defaulted on most of its bonds and devalued the ruble. The RTS index
collapsed.

Act II: President Vladimir Putin says he wants to cut back on crony
capitalism. Corruption, while still rife, is receding. And parliament has
passed a series of reforms, including a flat income tax of 13% for
individuals and 24% for corporations.

Bouncing back from a decade of decline, the Russian economy grew 8% last
year and will probably expand 5% this year. Helped by the lingering effects
of the ruble devaluation and by high oil prices, Russia racked up a $61
billion trade surplus last year. The State Bank has $38 billion in foreign
currency reserves, and the ruble is stable. The RTS index is up 46% in
dollar terms this year, which among big countries is bested only by China's
87% gain.

Though Russia remains a dangerous place for investors, some of its
corporations have finally decided that it is in their best interests to
respect the rights of minority shareholders. A dozen large ones have issued
American Depositary Receipts, are paying out dividends and are issuing
financial results in line with U.S. or international accounting standards.

Russia remains a story of tremendously undervalued assets. A megawatt of
generating capacity at Russia's Unified Energy Systems is worth $52,000 in
the stock market (market capitalization, plus debt, minus cash on hand,
divided by net megawatts owned). Comparable figure for Duke Energy: $3
million. Tatneft's share price represents a barrel of oil reserves at a 97%
discount to the market's assessment of ExxonMobil's reserves.

Yukos, Russia's second-largest oil producer, has made the most startling
transformation. In 1999 it was marred by a shareholder-rights scandal when
its boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, transferred a good part of the company's
assets to offshore companies. Several Western banks were shafted. Since
then Yukos has issued an ADR, adopted Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles, announced a shareholder-rights charter and placed several
Westerners on its board.

Yukos stock is up tenfold since the beginning of 2000. Even so, it trades
at only three times estimated 2001 profits of $20 per ADR.

Another big oil company, Sibneft, has long suffered from its association
with Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who has proven a master at sucking
the cash out of the companies he controls. Now Sibneft says Berezovsky--who
has been forced into exile by Putin--has nothing more to do with the firm.
After years of paying out virtually nothing, Sibneft recently announced
$612 million in dividends, $1.29 a share. It says something about how
skeptical investors are of a repeat performance that the stock trades at
only five times that dividend (ex-date: Aug. 3).

Some Russian ADRs have yet to get this far. Metals giant Norilsk Nickel
(not included in our table) has no Western-style accounting and has angered
minority shareholders with strange related-party transactions.

*******

#13
BBC Monitoring
Russian Supreme Court makes cuts to list of military secrets
Source: Ren TV, Moscow, in Russian 1500 gmt 13 Sep 01

[Presenter] The Russian Supreme Court made a ruling today which might lead
to a fundamental reassessment of the notion of military secret. Former
naval officer Aleksandr Nikitin has been instrumental in achieving this. He
has already won one case against the Defence Ministry.

[Correspondent] The old story had a rather surprising continuation today.
In 1995, Niktin published a report of the radioactive pollution of the
Barents Sea caused by ships and submarines of the Northern Fleet. He
drafted this document for the Norwegian environmental organization Bellona.
The Defence Ministry accused Niktin of disclosing state secrets and
demanded that a criminal case be opened against him. Nikitin was arrested
in 1996. He spent 10 months in prison and was released only after signing
an undertaking not to leave Russia. The trial continued for over three
years. Only at the end of 1999, a court in St Petersburg acquitted Niktin
on all counts. This ruling was later confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Having won the case, Nikitin went on to attempt to question the holy of
holies of the Defence Ministry - the military secret. As a result, the
military collegium of the Russian Supreme Court invalidated a number of
items in the list of classified military information. This list was adopted
by order of the defence minister.

Nikitin's lawyers mentioned the following interesting fact: It turns out
that information about casualties among the personnel during both war and
peacetime is strictly classified. Thus, all the reports about our losses in
Chechnya regularly produced by the mass media disclose military secrets.

However, the spokesman for the Supreme Court has not specified which
clauses of the Defence Ministry order have been invalidated. The ruling has
not been officially enforced yet. It can be appealed until 27 September.

********

#14
The Guardian (UK)
14 September 2001
No easy conquest: Britain tried to subdue Afghanistan three times. Russia
tried it once. They both failed. And the US military is unlikely to do any
better
By Jonathan Steele (jonathan.steele@guardian.co.uk)

After the mayhem of Manhattan, the agony of Afghanistan is likely to
worsen. Top of the world league for the largest number of citizens forced
to take refuge abroad, close to the bottom of the poverty table, ravaged by
two decades of war, with almost all its female population ordered to cover
up or stay at home, this pathetic place of stunning scenery and medieval
wretchedness is bracing for new horrors.

Whatever military operation the United States is planning against Osama bin
Laden, the Saudi fundamen talist hiding in Afghanistan, the consequences
will be miserable. The Clinton administration assembled a team of
Pakistanis and Afghans in the city of Peshawar in Pakistan to attempt to
capture him as long ago as 1997. But they aborted the operation when he
heard of it and moved to Kandahar, where the Taliban regime has its
headquarters. After attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998,
Clinton launched 70 cruise missiles on training camps run by Bin Laden: 14
foreign Muslims and 20 Afghans were killed, but Bin Laden was not among the
dead.

The Bush administration's efforts are likely to be more severe. One option
may be a bigger snatch squad, led by American special forces. Bush's father
successfully captured Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989 this way. But in an
urban environment, where the US had troops in the Canal Zone nearby, the
operation caused hundreds of civilian deaths. Capturing a well-defended man
in the mountains of Afghanistan would be much harder.

Using local anti-Taliban forces as contras offers little prospect of
success. An opposition alliance, armed by the Russians, has been fighting
the Taliban, Bin Laden's hosts, for seven years. Control of the northern
plains near Uzbekistan, as well as the region between Kabul and the Salang
tunnel through the the Hindu Kush, has fluctuated, but there has never been
any sign that the ethnically-based anti-Taliban forces could move south and
capture the Pashtun heartlands where Bin Laden lives.

That only leaves an outright invasion of Afghanistan with ground troops.
The history of the country suggests that would be doomed. Ironically, the
main road from the capital Kabul to Kandahar is still called the Eisenhower
highway. This Cold war era gift from America's
military-hero-turned-president was once a smooth asphalt strip running
through the spectacular south-western deserts. But 10 years of Russian
military convoys in the 80s turned it into a series of bone-shaking
furrows, on which vehicles yaw and tumble like yachts in a gale.

This symbolises a military dilemma which no would-be conqueror of
Afghanistan has escaped. You can garrison the cities and deploy your troops
in lowland bases. You can rumble up and down between them. But you can
never occupy the mountain villages or find, among the hundreds of mutually
antagonistic tribal groupings, local leaders to do your bidding for long.
The British tried three times to subdue Afghanistan, the Russians once, and
if American troops invaded they would no doubt meet the same fate.

Battles can be won. Lord Roberts of Kandahar, a Boer war senior commander,
took his name from a youthful foray when he marched at great speed through
the desert for 23 days to defeat a local chief. But Britain could never
capture hearts and minds, or move far off the roads. A century later,
Soviet forces had the same trouble. When Leonid Brezhnev sent troops to
save a pro-Communist regime, they encountered initial success. The Russians
were on the side of modernisation and had the support of many urban people,
particularly in Kabul. This is why their ally, Najibullah, survived three
years after the Russians left.

But although the Russians gained ground militarily after the low point of
1980, and shored up control of the cities, they increased massively the
numbers of their enemies in the rural areas where most Afghans live.
Russian bombing and heavy-handed sweep and search operations tactics
(repeated now in Chechnya) caused millions to flee. Many joined the armed
resistance, which became an Islamic jihad as well as a struggle against an
outside invader. The Russians could not prevent ambushes of their convoys
and hit-and-run attacks on their fixed positions. When Mikhail Gorbachev
came to power in 1985, he told Kabul to look for a political solution as
the Russians would be leaving. About 15,000 Russians were killed.

Washington may hope to persuade the Taliban to extradite their 'guest',
without taking the military option. Clinton came close to this after the
failure of his missile attacks. All that the Taliban asked was diplomatic
recognition and the end of their pariah status. Although the Americans
approved supplies from Pakistan to the Taliban when the movement first
emerged, they balked at these final steps, because of Western media
coverage of the Taliban's appalling human rights record. Disap pointed, the
Taliban have retreated further into fundamentalist isolationism. After
Clinton persuaded the UN to impose sanctions on the country, they responded
by blowing up the giant Buddhas of Bamyan.

When the Russians withdrew, they hoped the US would see the benefit of
modernisation and encourage the least extreme of the mojahedin to share
power with the-then ruler, Najibullah. But Washington was divided between
'bleeders', who wanted to exploit Afghan- istan to humiliate Moscow, and
'dealers', who saw value in keeping the fundamentalists at bay. The
bleeders won, paving the way for the Taliban's eventual triumph. So Bin
Laden's safe haven in Afghanistan was provided as the result of US policy -
not in spite of it.

*******

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