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United States - 11 September 2001 attacks - Before - during - after

Please note: All other events of interest in the time frame treated in this file on 9/11 can be found on other Lost Worlds' files for The Present. Please see other files indicated above.

Lost Worlds' "where did the time go?" news series...

New York World Trade Centre, 11 September, 2001 or so: The chilling picture below went right around the world within about two days! It came to Lost Worlds via e-mail between photolabs from New York to Australia - so it was said. Unfortunately, the identity and fate of the tourist shown are unknown. It is amazing that a camera's film survived the drop to the streets below, where the film was retrieved and developed.
Or, has the picture been digitally-enhanced, or faked? If so, what does this say about the capacity of the Internet for giving false impressions, for mischief-making? -Ed

From the editor -
Abu Bakar Bashir caused this website page a problem, due to quickly-arising allegations that his organisation, Jemaah Islamiah, may have been connected with the Bali bombing. The bombing surprised and amazed Lost Worlds, and the editor felt it wise to stop posting items on the resulting problems till matters concerning Bashir had been sorted out. (He was by late January 2003 reportedly arrested in Indonesia on charges of treason against that state.) For these reasons, this webpage on matters related to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US finishes with items dated October 2002 (the file was getting overlarge anyway). All other relevant items dated from October 2002 will be posted on the ordinary chronology files of this website. -Ed

20 October 2002: National Day of Mourning for Australia due to the 12 October car-bombing attack near Kuta Beach, Bali. (And very heartfelt too - Ed)

Bali and Australian outrage: A very worrying aspect of the car-bomb terror attack on the Sari Club near Kuta Beach, Bali, is a report fed from Washington Post that by late September, US intelligence via intercept(s) had reports ("precise warnings") of threat(s) to a major tourist destination (perhaps in South East Asia?), which was not passed on to Australia. Bali was mentioned as a "possibility". All Australia heard of was the possibility of "something" happening in South East Asia.
Meantime, Australian prime minister John Howard has told parliament that he wants the UN to officially list Indonesian Islamic activist group, Jemaah Islamiah, led by Abu Bakar Bashir, as a terrorist organisation. Jemaah Islamiah was named as having at least indirect links to al-Qa'ida (and possibly to the Bali bombing) by late Monday 14 October 2002 by Indonesian defence minister Matori Abdul Djalil. (Jemaah Islamiah aims for "an Islamic state covering most of southeast Asia".)
(Newspapers and evening TV news in Australia, 15 October 2002)

4 October 2002: Reports arise that US desires help of Australia's SAS troops (who are rather admired) early in phases of any US action in Iraq. President Bush today is said to be "toning down" war rhetoric. (Australian midday TV news)

US government has mistakenly given 48 classified documents to 9/11 accused terrorist, Zacarias Moussaoui in what a judge has called "a grave security breach". Moussaoui, with little background knowledge of the US legal system, is conducting his own defence. (Reported 28 September 2002)

Propaganda Wars: A German TV station says it has examined 450 photographs of Saddam Hussein and concluded that at least three lookalikes have been posing as the Iraqi leader.
(Reported 28 September 2002)

Claims by Bush administration of intelligence detailing links between Iraq/Hussein and al-Qa'ida terrorist networks have been met with scepticism. (Reported newspaper weekend editions 28-29 September 2002 in Australia)

Israel: Fears rise that Hezbollah militants in Southern Lebanon have stocked thousands of surface-to-surface missiles, with range enough to strike cities in northern Israel. Intelligence is that many such missiles have been supplied by Iran. Delf was lately promoted to replace former Hamas figure Salah Shedadeh, killed last July. (Reported 28 September 2002)

Israel: Israeli had failed in a bid to make an attempted assassination using helicopters on the life of a commander and top bomb maker of militant group Hamas, Mohammed Delf, though two lesser members of Hamas were killed. (Reported 28 September 2002)

22 September 2002: Israel almost demolishes HQ of Yassar Arafat on West bank, where 200 people remain with Arafat in his building.

Tyrannicide: What does "regime change" mean regarding Iraq? In the view of international human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, it means "assisted tyrannicide". Though Robertson would rather there be an international convention against tyranny, not just action against a regime which appears to "stiff" the US. Saddam Hussein's regime as it persecutes Kurds in Northern Iraq killed more than 100,000 in the 1980s, ending with the mustard gas massacre of 5000 with 9000 wounded at Halabja in 1988. (Robertson has an article in Inquirer section of Weekend Australian, 21-22 September 2002).

Australia: Nation's most experienced military leaders warn against any unilateral US action against Iraq, with risk of jeoparidising international security. (Reported in Weekend Australian 21-22 September 2002)

For details on suggestions that US interests since before the Gulf War of 1991, had supplied the basis of Iraq's chemical/nuclear weapons systems to Iraq, see the below citation. The cited newspaper this date has an article with map indicating that Iraq has about 17 "suspect weapons depots". It is not exactly clear just what biological and chemical weapons, Iraq actually possesses. (Reported Sydney Morning Herald weekend edition, 21-22 September 2002, article by columnist Alan Ramsey)

"If you look at these matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace." Nelson Mandela:
(Reported in a comment column from The Guardian reported in Sydney Morning Herald 21-22 September 2002)

UN told to get tough with Iraq or Bush will. (Headline and p. 15. Sydney Morning Herald, 21-22 September 2002)

Bush: How I'll rule the world. (Enough said already, -Ed) (Front page headline, Sydney Morning Herald, 21-22 September 2002)

21 September 2002: US pre-emptive strike: Possible invasion of Iraq by US set for next January/February - probably preceded by ferocious air strikes. (Australian evening TV news)

19 September 2002: Allegations arise in US that the US intelligence community had warnings re a 9/11-type attack with hijacked planes bombing a WTC-like target as far back as 1995 or 1997 - with Al-Qa'ida named as attacker. (Australian evening TV news)

UK: Acting in Britain, a Moslem activist group is Islamic Hizb ul-Tahrir (LIberation Party), which is banned in many Moslem countries and recommends removal of corrupt rulers of Moslem countries and their regimes, and implementation of Islam. Problems with Iraq are an opportunity for this sort of action, says a UK spokesman for the group, Imran Waheed. His group sees unfolding crises as "a precursor to a clash of civilizations driven by Anglo-Saxon capitalist interests." "British soldiers and American soldiers are going to die to fatten up the balance sheets of oil companies." The group was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by scholar Taqiuddin an-Nabhani, and considers violence and armed struggle to be a violation of Islamic Law. (Reported 17 September 2002)

Australian Government believes there is no sign of any change in Iraq's attitude to weapons inspections and expects further steps to military action. (Reported 17 September 2002 in Australia)

Axis of Evil: Rumour surfaces that in the original draft of President Bush's "axis of evil" speech, the evil three were first named as Iraq, Iran and Syria. (Lost Worlds does recall a time when Reagan was US president, regarded by some outside US borders as "the great Satan". Has the world grown into one huge schoolyard wracked by name-calling?) (Reported in Weekend Australian, 14-15 September, 2002, see column by Greg Sheridan )

US expects to go to war over Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with UN resolutions requiring him to prove that he has destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Weekend Australian asks, will this make US safer or produce "more instability, Moslem hatred and terrorist recruits?" (It is said by 28 September that Iraq could deploy biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.)
Russia meantime has recently announced a £26 billion investment program in Iraq, which owes Russia US$8 billion loaned during former Soviet times. (Might this help explain any current Russian attitudes to Middle East problems?) (Reported 14 September 2002 in Australia)

"I wish you would [replace me], and give me a rest" - Yassar Arafat, to the Palestinian Parliament about possibility he might step down. (Reported 14 September 2002)

New York Times article as reprinted in Australia feels US has still not heard from President Bush any compelling case for a war-path course of action. (Reported 14 September 2002)

Questions on the Net :

Is Osama bin-Laden (or, al-Qa'ida) a reincarnation of The Old Man of the Mountains? See below!

The Assassins: http://www.silent-arrows.com/
http://www.geocities.com/melkorendil.geo/Sabbah/Main-Sabbah.htm/
http://www.weirdload.com/hasan.html/
http://www.geocities.com/baalzephon999/HassanISabbah.html/
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/assassin.htm/
http://www.geocities.com/kimmielvr/OtherObsessions/assassins.html/
http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/Ludlow/Texts/assassin.html/
See also Iraq Daily: http://www.iraqdaily.com
Iraq Net (broken link?): http://www.iraq.net

11 September 2002: Question: US is on its second-highest possible security alert. Citizens are told to be vigilant but not to panic. What has the war against terrorism done to the US justice system? Will there be car bombings in South-East Asia, or suicide bombings in the Middle East, against US interests, conducted by al-Qa'ida cells? Possible terror attacks timed to coincide with the anniversary. Where is Osama bin-Laden, is he still alive? (Jim Lehrer's News Hour on SBS TV Australia and other TV reports)
This night on Australian TV, it is notable that estimates from various commentators of the membership of al-Qa'ida varies from 3000 to 10,000 to 20,000 - you decide! -Ed

11 September 2002: For views of militant US commentator on current world problems, Daniel Pipes, regarding not a war on terrorism, as much as the problem of "militant Islam" as a radical utopian ideology, somewhat totalitarian, a mostly urban middle-class phenomenon devised by intellectuals alienated from their societies, which began in Egypt in the 1920s. Check website: danielpipes.org

Latest "terror video release" in US of 9/11 hijackers at training, and discussing tactics, obtained in Kandahar, according to al-Jazeera, Arabic TV news station, though it is not known when it was filmed, or where. A "chilling view", it is said. (Australian TV news on 10 September 2002)

As of 10 September 2002, a US poet, Stazja McFayden, advises Lost Worlds that... Wednesday marks one year since the 9/11 disaster. Many communities are holding commemorative events. I won't dwell on it beyond referring you to this week's eleven featured poems at http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/, and drawing your attention to an item in Section V. Announcements, which links to the text of US Poet Laureate Billy Collins' poem "The Names," presented last Friday to a special joint session of Congress in New York City.

Invasion of Iraq?: Newspaper headlines read: Scuds turned on Israel as Saddam girds for war. And, Bush calls for use of Australian troops. US says Saddam Hussein is on a global quest for materials to make an atomic bomb. On 12 September, President Bush is expected to tell the UN that the US and Britain "will take whatever steps are necessary to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction if the UN fails to act". (9 September 2002)

Invasion of Iraq?: 9 September 2002: US by now is also fearful that Iraq has developed radar which can now detect its formerly radar-invisible Stealth bombers.

US closes its embassy in Jakarta/Malaysia after specific threats have been made, and security cordons are thrown around New York and Washington (F16 jets and radar planes patrol skies over six or so major cities), as tension rises with the onset of the first anniversary of 11 September. Security has also been stepped up for Australian embassies in Indonesia and East Timor due to "unspecified threats". (TV news of 10 September 2002)

New Afghan hero: 8 September 2002: About now is burial of Afghanistan's newest hero, Azimullah Muhammad, an 18-year-old seller of plastic water jugs, who intervened in the attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai at cost of his own life in Kandahar last Friday. An Afghan army guard, an ex-Taliban man, Abdul Rahman, began shooting at Karzai and the governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha Shirzai. Karzai had just left the governor's compound. Some blame for the attack is being laid at the feet of remnants of the al-Qa'ida network and the Taliban. Suspicion is also given to a former prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar Meantime, criticism arises due to US failure to provide enough peacekeepers to stabilise Afghanistan and begin proper reconstruction of the country.

Headline: US seeks to bridge West-Islam divide: "The Bush administration conceded yesterday that a 'dangerous gap had opened between the West and the Islamic world since the September 11 attacks on the US, putting at risk the war on terrorism.' ... ' The US is hoping a post-Taliban Afghanistan built on freedom and modernity will be a victory for the West and example for moderate Moslems, and a defeat for extremists.' ... 'What we have before us today is less a clash of civilizations, as some have theorised, than a collision of understanding between the Moslem and Western world,' said deputy Defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz. ... 'This is a debate about Moslem values that must take place among Moslems.' ... (But Mr. Wolfowitz' speech ignored tensions over specific locations, Iraq and Palestine...)
(Reported in Weekend Australian, 7-8 September 2002, story by Roy Eccleston in Washington)

US President Bush promises to share US intelligence on Iraq's alleged development of terror weapons with the world. (Reported 7 September 2002)

Invasion of Iraq? Prediction: "It [would] open the gates of hell" [in the Middle East]... if the US make a strike against Iraq, the view of Arab League spokesman, Amr Moussa. (Quoted week ending 7 September 2002)

US congressional leaders are now being given secret briefings on the US case against Iraq in response to calls to the US government for hard evidence on any threat posed by Iraq, and in respect of views which may be held by the UN Security Council. (Reported 7 September 2002)

Al-Jazeera, Arabic news TV, said this Thursday that it now has confessions from two men identified as members of al-Qa'ida claiming their group was responsible for the 11 September attacks. One man is Yemen-born Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, a former room-mate of Mohamed Attar. Another is Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad, noted on a US FBI list of "most-wanted terrorists". (Reported 6 September 2002)

Iraq: About 100 US and British aircraft have helped an attack on the main air-defence command centre for Western Iraq - the H3 airfield, 386km west of Baghdad - the biggest single western operation of its kind in four years. Iraq has allegedly made 130 attempts to shoot down coalition aircraft this year. (Reported 6 September 2002)

Australia warned: Headline: "We'll send Australians home in bags, says Iraq". An adviser to the regime of Saddam Hussein, Dr. A. K. Al-Hashimi, has warned of the hatred with which Iraqis will kill Australians or the troops of any other invading country. "They don't understand the Moslem mentality; God help those soldiers when they face our anger. etc" (Goodbye, Australian wheat sales to Iraq - Ed.) (Reported 30 August 2002)

UK rabbi despairs of corruption of Israel: Britain's chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks, has warned Israel that its stance is "incompatible" with the deepest ideals of Judaism, and that the conflict with Palestinians is "corrupting" Israeli culture. (Reported 28 August 2002)

US anti-Iraq talk toughens: US vice-president Cheney has toughened talk against Iraq by calling for a pre-emptive strike, to block Hussein from dominating Middle Eastern oil supply, and possibly attacking the US with a nuclear weapon. (Reported 28 August 2002)
Consider, for example, the US atomic bombing of Japan! In what sense is a strike "pre-emptive" if it has earlier been discussed in the world press for months"? Why can't the world media use words properly anymore, a sign of the times? - Ed

US Intelligence hits brick wall: "Some of these guys literally don't know the world is round". As US intelligence men tend to find when interrogating some of its 600 suspects from Afghanistan held (under cloudy legal circumstances) at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Quote of the Week column, Sydney Morning Herald, 24-25 August 2002)

Israel now fears a new stage in terrorism, with targets such as an oil depot north of Tel Aviv, or buildings in that city. Reports have been received from Britain of Iraq passing biological weapons agents to anti-Israeli terrorist groups. This is according to an interview between Israel's Minister for Transport, former dep-Defence Minister, As-Ephraim Sneh, and journalist Greg Sheridan. (Reported in The Weekend Australian, 24-25 August 2002, p. 29)

Pakistan: A militant Islamic leader in Pakistan has warned of more terrorist attacks if the military government of Pakistan blocks guerillas from crossing into Kashmir to confront Indian forces. (Reported 24 August 2002)

US: A senior US general, Gen. James Jones, has said that plans by leading US hawks to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein with tactics of the type lately used in Afghanistan as "foolish". (Reported 23 August 2002) By 20 August, the US general who led allied forces during the Gulf War, Norman Schwarzkopf, is reportedly against a unilateral US strike against Iraq and says President Bush should not "go it alone".

Al-Qa'ida test weapon gases: CNN has now shown previously unreleased video footage from al-Qa'ida training camps of tests of use of poison gas on dogs. CNN will now be showing a five-part series, Tapes of Terror, based on 64 tapes found in a remote part of Afghanistan. The series will also show footage on production of TNT, training exercises on vehicle hijacking, destruction of bridges and assassination-from-motorbike (Reported 20 August 2002)

Legality vs Regality: In a surprise move, families of victims of the 11 September strikes have "launched a multi-trillion dollar legal counterstrike aimed at financially crippling members of the Saudi royal family, the government of Sudan, some Middle Eastern banks and charities that they claim helped to bankroll al-Qa'ida. A 259-page complaint for damages of between US$1000 billion to US$3000 billion from 99 named organisations or individuals has been filed in a US Federal court by a 600-member group, Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism. A three-four-year legal battle is expected. Leader of the complainants legal team is Ron Motley, a pioneer in tobacco and asbestos class actions. (Some 15 of the 11 September hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia.) (Reported in The Weekend Australian newspaper 17-18 August 2002)

Four of the 600 or so claimed terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay have tried lately to commit suicide, officials have acknowledged. (Reported 17 August 2002)

Invasion of Iraq?: Allies of the US are divided, however, on whether President Bush has good grounds for going to war against Iraq. Fears are that any pre-emptive attack on Iraq will worsen existing problems with Afghanistan, the Middle East generally, and Kashmir in India. (Reported 10 August 2002)

Advice from an old soldier: Australian World War I veteran, Ted Smout, now aged 104, (also a republican), is against Australia contributing to a war effort against Iraq. In his view, it would be preposterous to send Australian troops to fight in Iraq. "Australians shouldn't go overseas to fight again. The only fighting should be done here, to defend Australia, " he said. (Reported 10 August 2002)

UK church leaders come out on Iraq: British church leaders including the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have questioned the legality and morality of an American-led assault on Iraq "in a strongly-worded declaration handed to Downing Street", and PM Tony Blair, major ally of the US regarding any possible strike against Hussein's regime. (Reported 8 August 2002)

Israel vows merciless revenge: Israel has warned of reprisals "without mercy" after a terrorist bomb ripped through a bus near a Jewish shrine in north of the country, at Safad, north of Lake Galilee, killing about nine people and wounding 50. Responsibility for the attack as "a martyrdom operation" was taken by Hamas. In a few days, a Palestinian delegation is due to meet US Secretary of State Colin Powell. (Reported 4 August 2002)

3 August 2002: Israel: Cable-TV watchers from November 2002 will no longer receive CNN news broadcasts, as Israeli officials and Jewish groups have accused CNN of slanting its news to the Palestinian side, a charge CNN has denied. Meantime, news outlets taking CNN have applied to let their contracts with CNN lapse, as it is "too expensive". The BBC and Sky news are also regarded by some in Israel as biased to the Palestinian side of present conflicts, now 22-months long.

Invasion of Iraq?: 2 August 2002: Australian prime minister John Howard says he feels that a US conflict with Iraq is now "more probable than not", in which case, Australia will also be involved. (Reported evening TV news)

31 July 2002: US Senate begins to debate in public the question: what should be US' official attitude to Iraq while an invasion of Iraq is still presumably on the agenda.

30 July 2002: Jordan's King Abdullah warns US of its "fixation" with Iraq.

By 30 July 2002, various discrepancies in the US story on the bombing of this wedding party are being discussed in a draft UN report. By 9 September it is reported that a US military investigation has found that the attack was justified as the US aircraft "had been fired on from the ground".

Philippines, Zamboanga: Two suspected Abu Sayyaf Moslem guerillas blamed for a deadly bomb attack in the Southern Philippines have been arrested. Authorities believe that the arrests have foiled a wave of bomb attacks from Abu Sayyaf allegedly linked to Al-Qa'ida. (Reported in Australia July 2002)

26 July 2002: Palestinian child malnutrition is reportedly rising in the West Bank area of Israel.

26 July 2002: Claimed member of the 11 September hijack team, French citizen Zacarias Moussaoui, in the hands of US authorities, has reversed his former plea of "guilty" and, acting for himself, now pleads not-guilty after being given a chance to do so by the judge of his trial. He now says that although he was a member of al-Qa'ida, he had no advance knowledge of the hijack plan. Jury for his trial will not be selected till 30 September 2002.

26 July 2002: US is reportedly planning to expand its Camp Delta, the high-security jail at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The jail now holds 564 suspected Al-Qa'ida and Taliban prisoners.

26 July 2002: Concern is rising in the US about a claimed slide to "constitutional dictatorship" and unprecedented applications of martial law. According to a story by investigative journalist Ritt Goldstein rather surprisingly published in Sydney Morning Herald, p. 20, in world news.

North Korea: Political prisoners face starvation, torture and summary execution in prison camps in North Korea, according to statements made by a former inmate to a US Senate inquiry. (Reported 20 July 2002)

The US military campaign in Afghanistan may last as long as the Cold War, partly as more than half the former Taliban leadership is still intact, US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz has warned. Meanwhile, today's headlines warn that the US Pentagon now considers a secret plan to be capable of making pre-emptive strikes anywhere in the world with use of pilotless aircraft amongst other high-tech weaponry. (Reported 16 July 2002)

16 July 2002: Iraq-Saddam Hussein is "no more than three years away from" developing usable nuclear weapons, according to the latest CIA report.

Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai has assured his people that the assassination of a key political ally and Pashtun warlord, Abdul Qadir, will not destabilise the country's government. It is thought that Qadir was gotten rid of by drug industry figures, as he was overseeing a Western-backed plan to compensate farmers for destruction of poppy crops, a plan which has gone awry ( a double-cross, say some). The money (US$500 per acre) was not getting to farmers, who had been duly destroying their crops, as Qadir himself was complaining before his death. (Reported 9 July 2002)

On the West Bank, which embraces the old-known lands of Judea and Samaria, near Nablus, "Hardline Israeli settlers in the Palestinian territory see themselves as modern cowboys taming a hostile land". There are about 350,000 Israeli Jews living in 150 settlements hated by the Palestinians, across the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, all territory captured by Israel in the Six-day War of 1967. (Catherine Taylor writing in Weekend Australian, 6-7 July 2002.

Before 6 July 2002: Yassar Arafat moves to dismiss his West Bank security chief, Colonel Jibril Rajoub, and replace him with the governor of Jenin, Zuheir Manasrah, which Rajoub will do Manasrah's old job. The moves seem designed to stave off a power struggle within the PLO.

3 July 2002: US attack kills Afghan wedding guests. In the Central Afghanistan province of Uruzgan, in Dehrawad district (south-west of Kabul), the traditional firing of guns at a wedding party was mistaken by US forces for an attack, so they sent in a B-52 bomber which killed at least 40 people and injured another 70. (Reported 3 July 2002)

Unemployed Palestinians have been marching on the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority to denounce corruption in Yassar Arafat's administration. (Reported 3 July 2002)

1 July 2002: The end of thousands of years of impunity for ultra-criminals? That is the view of activist against genocide and war crimes, William Case, as more than 70 countries ratify the 1998 treaty establishing an International Criminal Court which could try war criminals. Though the US opposes creation of the court. (Reported after 1 July 2002, Time Magazine. See also critique of the views of the US conservative right on this court, in an article by Paul McGeough in Sydney Morning Herald, 6-7 July 2002, p. 31)

29 June 2002: "Baby Suicide Bomber": The Sydney Daily Telegraph and The Australian also publish "the baby suicide bomber picture", a picture of a baby boy with shoulder straps of bullets and his waistband carrying sticks of explosives, wearing the headband of the feared Hamas Qassam Brigade. The picture was allegedly found by Israeli soldiers raiding the house of a wanted man in Hebron, West Bank. (Is this picture maybe faked by Israeli propagandists? - Ed) (29 June 2002)
Update: Time Magazine reports that [Palestinian] relatives of the baby said the photo was real, but taken only as "a joke" at a party. (Rather bizarre-morbid, as party jokes go! The baby boy in question is but a toddler! On an adjoining panel this same day is a headline that Palestinians are claiming that Israel is "saboutaging" peace push! An Israeli army bulldozer has been knocking down Palestinian HQ in Hebron. It must have been quite some bizarre "party" when the baby was dressed as a suicide bomber - here, questions rise of basic realism - Ed)

Headlines lately read, "US is accused of trying to snuff out moves to establish a world court" (Reported 29 June 2002)

Surrounding Arafat: Israel is now sealing off Yassar Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, using dozens of tanks, as it conducts a new crackdown on Palestinian militants. (Reported 25 June 2002)

Afghanistan: British marines breaking into a suspicious village compound have come across one of the largest weapons caches yet found in South-eastern Afghanistan - rooms stacked with hundreds of mortars, rockets and heavy weapons. Perhaps left by Taliban or Al-Qa'ida fighters? Including thousands of recoilless rocket rounds and 65,000 rounds of small arms ammunition. (Reported 25 June 2002)

By 18 June 2002, Israel intends to wall itself off from would-be suicide bombers. Next four-six months will see building of 120km of protection, of a total planned of 350km. The wall will cut off Israel from the west bank towns of Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya and Nablus. Some Israeli settlers fear the wall will become the legal border of any future Palestinian state. Palestinians for their part fear that the wall may pre-empt border negotiations between the two parties. An Israeli military historian, Professor Martin van Creveld, is quoted as saying, "I would build a concrete wall so tall that... the people cannot look each other in the face..."

17 June 2002: Israeli plans to build a wall between Israel and Palestine, creating controversy on both sides. It's being said on TV, good neighbours build good walls, bad neighbours build bad walls. (Question of attitude - why not stop squabbling? -Ed)

17 June 2002: Worldwide media reports arise that US President Bush has sent (secret?) orders to CIA to induce "a change of regime" in Iraq. The power vacuum left by any departure of Saddam Hussein will be filled by a democracy. Recent reports on the recent visit of Australian Prime Minister John Howard to Washington gave indications that Australia may assist any such effort - in an unspecified way.

Meanwhile, by 15 June 2002, Afghanistan's new government intends to establish a truth commission to investigate war crimes against its civilian population in more than 23 years of foreign invasion and internal conflict.

Jakarta, Indonesia, 15 June 2002, Indonesian government has chosen a Balinese Hindu, I Wayan Karya, once part of Indonesia's Security Ministry, to head an investigation into three years of bloody clashes between Christians and Moslems on Maluku Islands, to investigate inter-faith violence which has left more than 9000 dead.

8 June 2002: Abu Sayyaf Moslem guerillas in Southern Philippines have killed two hostages, an American missionary, Martin Burnham, and a Filipina nurse, Ediborah Yap. Mr. Burnham's wife Gracia was wounded but freed. A rescue attempt to the town of Siraway on Mindanao Island's Zamboanga peninsula had failed.

8 June 2002: FBI hobbled by poor computers and no email": In a story Lost Worlds can hardly believe, FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley as part of her criticism of in-house FBI culture and bureaucracy has indicated that FBI staff do not have even basic Internet and email connectivity, nor the kind of computer power many teenagers have on any new computer. (Reported in Sydney Morning Herald, 8 June 2002)

8 June 2002: By now, the role of the FBI in US has been "up-ended" from an agency of law enforcement to a terrorism prevention agency. But predictions on its "marriage" to the CIA are that awkwardness will be the result. (Reported 8 June 2002 in Australia)

7 June 2002: Views from schoolteacher and Moslem cleric, Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, a leader of Islamic Jihad in Palestine: "The Palestinian Authority is broken; its institutions are destroyed. How can the Palestinian Authority [help] assure the security of the Israelis when it cannot even protect its own people?"

7 June 2002: Fresh trouble breaks out in Poso, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, as a bomb explodes in a crowded bus, killing four and wounding 17 people, breaking a Moslem-Christian truce in the area.

7 June 2002: India's military is seeking final authorisation to invade the Pakistani side of divided Kashmir in mid-June to destroy the camps of Islamic militants. India has "quietly asked" US to find if separatist fighters are coming into Kashmir from suspected terrorist camps in Pakistani-controlled territory.

6 June 2002: Yassar Arafat is again under siege as Israel retaliates for latest bombing of a bus carrying soldiers and moves again into Jenin refugee camp.

A massive car bomb attack turns a rush-hour Israeli bus to fire, killing 18 people and wounding dozens. Responsibility is taken by radical Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad. (Israeli PM Sharon has just ordered the construction of a 200km wall/fence to separate Israel from the occupied West Bank.) The usual complaints and threats and counter-complaints and counter-threats of the complainants are duly uttered. (Reported 6 June 2002)

Failure to join up the dots: President G. W. Bush (his father once used to run the CIA) has admitted for the first time that there has been a failure of communications between FBI and CIA in months leading up to 11 September. He admits this just as Congress is launching "a secret investigation" into why the expensive US intelligence effort failed to prevent "the world's worst terrorist attack". G. W. Bush said, "I have seen no evidence to date that we could have prevented the attack." One question is: Did the CIA have information that it did not pass on to the FBI about two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, etc. (Reported 6 June 2002)

Conspiracy theory vaporised: An educator USAF officer - Lt-Col. Steve Butler has been suspended after he wrote a letter to a newspaper (Monterey County Herald) suggesting that US President Bush "allowed" the 11 September attack to happen "because he needed this war on terrorism" for political reasons. Butler also happened to observe that President G.W. (Dubya?) Bush was emplaced not by vote, but by the Supreme Court adjudicating on the Gore-Bush presidential race tie, itself a matter of controversy. (Reported 6 June 2002 in The Australian)
Weird situation: Lost Worlds since 11 September 2001 has had a lot of email from the US - some of it quite sickening - about 9/11 problems, and from that email gathers that there is quite some widespread scepticism in US military circles, at about the rank (or educational level) of colonel - about "US motives" (particularly "oil"), the presidency, and US foreign policy in general. It's almost a question arising of the sceptical views of military "hawks of the left". It is not unconnected however, that some of the grosser corruptions of American corporate governance (rather, lack of it) are being reported in the same timeframes, Enron, WorldCom etc. Quite frankly, "US Capitalism" and "US foreign policy" are in quite a mess and worse, there is no one attending the phone, just an answering machine with no wish to reply! - Ed

4 June 2002: The blame the CIA game: Newsweek quotes an unnamed FBI official: "There's not doubt we could have tied all 19 hijackers together". Fresh information arises on the number of FBI intelligence failures and bungles about predicting anything like an 11 September attack. Two of the hijackers - Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhamazi on the plane bombing the Pentagon - were known to officials from a visit they made to Kuala Lumpar in January 2000 as al-Qa'ida terrorists, but were allowed to continue. One of them had been linked to the bombing of USS Cole in the Middle East. (Reported 4 June 2002)

1 June 2002 End of tradition of Letter to the Editor!: The Internet has made Letters to the Editor of newspapers redundant now that anyone with an opinion can mount a website page, from anywhere in the world. "The world's media is caught in a cross-fire" of criticism of their coverages, and offending news outlets are being targeted by media-watch websites. In a nice irony on the history of journalism in the "Western World", some websites offer detailed background on journalists or news outlet managements, and bias against bias is rampant. honestreporting.com has become a buzzword. (Where will it all end? -Ed) (Reported in Australia 1 June 2002)

May 2002 - August 2000: A claim arises in media that Italian intelligence agents in August 2000 intercept a so-called phone conversation by, with or about al-Qa'ida, re an attack like 11 September, which is not translated till May 2002.

31 May 2002: The last relic of New York's Twin Towers is taken out of the site, a flag-draped 10-metre steel girder. Discussion moves along now on the future of the site.

May 2002: Geneva: The UN Committee Against Torture has criticized Saudi Arabia over amputations and floggings it carries out under Sharia Law. (Time Magazine)

28 May 2002: In a new twist in the blame-game played in the US about non-stoppage of the 11 September 2001 jet-bomb attacks, FBI director Robert Mueller has received "a savage memo" from an FBI staffer, Coleen Rowley, aged 46. Time Magazine has obtained a copy of her memo, which seriously attacks the credibility of senior FBI management. Mainly, she feels that "roadblocks" were put in the way of information travelling through the FBI system about the activities around 16 August, 2001 of the suspected "20th hijacker of 11 September", Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen born in Morocco. (Reported 28 May 2002)

May 2002: US President George W. Bush vows to "take out" Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Other areas used for US movements could be Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman and island Diego Garcia. (Time Magazine of 13 May 2002)

22 May 2002: US: FBI director Robert Mueller yesterday stepped up warnings of another terrorist attack on the US, suggesting that suicide bombings similar to those afflicting Israel will inevitably occur on US soil.

Beirut: A son (Jihad Jibril) and a senior deputy of militant Palestinian leader Ahmad Jibril was killed by his own car, turned into a car bomb. Jibril senior is head of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, his son was an organiser of military operations. (Reported 21 May 2002)

Vice-President Dick Cheney is reported as saying that the US faces "the near certainty" of another al-Qa'ida attack, possibly with a nuclear weapon. (Reported 21 May 2002)

Suicide bomber kills three including himself in a market in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya. About 40 other people were wounded. In March, a suicide bomber killed 29 people in a hotel in the same town, an attack which "triggered Israel's largest invasion of the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East war". (Reported 20 May 2002)

US debates how FBI failed to connect the dots: Should President Bush be blamed for aspects of the 11 September attacks since he failed to tell the US public of risks after receiving intelligence reports that terrorists might hijack airplanes? It's reported that three weeks before 11 September, the FBI in Minnesota had "vital clues" - but failed to see what was coming. However, intelligence operatives had issued warnings of various sorts of threats in various parts of the world in May 2001, June 26, July 2, 6 August. (Reported 17 May 2002)

14 May 2002: Israeli PM Ariel Sharon defied his Likud Party yesterday by refusing to recant his stated willingness to see the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, Sharon risks losing his next political fight to Benjamin Netanyahu. Sharon however has earlier opposed creation of a Palestinian state. At issue is the extent to which any such Palestinian state would then control some 30 per cent water supplies, due to control of the aquifer. (So why doesn't someone build some desalination plants for equal use by both parties? Let's be practical - Ed)

11 May 2002: Assassinated right-wing Dutch politician, flashy and forthright Pim Fortuyn, lately killed by a rabid animal welfare activist, now has his case entered in Europe's growing "identity crisis", (or is that just a Netherlands identity crisis?), and has left behind a quote which may become his legacy - "Christianity and Judaism have gone through the laundromat of humanism... but that is not the case with Islam." (Reported by 11 May 2002)

11 May 2002: French and Pakistani officials say that the suicide bombing in Karachi on Wednesday that killed 14 people, eleven of them French engineers, was in retaliation for the West's war in Afghanistan.

11 May 2002: Hamas leader eggs-on Israelis: Second-in-command of Hamas in Palestine is Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi. Hamas is the Palestinian terrorist organisation that has launched 56 suicide attacks during a 19-month Intifada, and is suspected of being behind recent attacks. Dr. Al-Rantissi seems unworried by prospects of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, saying his people do not have an army, but they do have fighters. (Reported 11-12 2002 in The Weekend Australian).

11 May 2002: US: Intelligence agents are backing off the idea that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the 11 September attacks. It is now not thought that the hijackers' ringleader, Mohammad Attar, held secret meetings with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in April 2001. Czech agents say Attar was not in Prague at the time.

11 May 2002: "Is America's ability to destroy evil regimes matched by a skill to create better regimes?" Question by Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large for The Australian newspaper, The Weekend Australian, 11-12 May, 2002.

10 May 2002: The 39-day siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity ended yesterday with 13 militants wanted by Israel flown to Cyprus to await exile in various parts of Europe.

7 May 2002: Israel: A deal to end the siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity is edging closer as of last night. But Israelis and Palestinians are still arguing over the number of gunmen to be deported from the West Bank.

30 April 2002: Three Iraqi defectors from military forces claim that from 23 February 2002, weapons from Central Europe are being smuggled from Syria into Iraq as Saddam Hussein builds defences against a threatened attack or invasion from US.

30 April 2002: Israel has answered international pressure by ending siege of HQ of Yassar Arafat but continues military action against Palestinians and arrests some members of Arafat's Fatah faction, and of militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

3 May 2002: Afghanistan: Progress of Operation Snipe, which aims to deploy US and British troops against "a new base for terrorists" in south-eastern Afghanistan.

28 April 2002: Witty newspaper headline department: "Anti-opium campaign comes a cropper": "thousands of kilos of opium have gone astray", in story in The Australian by Anthony Lloyd reporting from Ghani Kel in Afghanistan, where the bazaar is known as "the largest open opium market on the planet". And yes, anti-Afghani-opium-distribution "international arrangements" made at Tokyo as long ago as 3 April 2002 have already gone awry, and are not being audited.
Same issue of same paper on same day on same page, Tokyo correspondent Stephen Lunn reports that "Japan is looking to broaden its security role in Asia, believing it can contribute to the fight against terrorism, piracy and drug smuggling".
(Interesting how seldom piracy in South East Asian waters is ever mentioned as a specific problem! Meantime, don't even start to ask who is winning the war against drugs, the drugs are - Ed)

28 April 2002: A former director of CIA and FBI, William Webster, also a former Federal Appeals Court judge, who has already made recommendations on putting foreign terrorism suspects on trial before specially-created military tribunals, has recommended that truth serum drug(s) be given to recalcitrant Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, a major problem arises here, despite the known ability of sodium pentothal to reduce inhibitions about speaking - there is no such thing as a truth serum.
(Sigmund Freud's views on wish fulfillment may be relevant here, perhaps? -Ed)

27 April 2002: Religious Tolerance in Jerusalem: Once again the Israeli Government has refused to recognise Patriarch Irineos, the new Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, who would become the custodian of most of the Christian religious sites in the region. "Real estate issues" re key sites are part of problems which earlier dogged the former patriarch, Diodoros I, who died in 2000.

26 April 2002: Headline reads: "Death and an appalling stench hangs in the air around the Church of the Nativity" in Israel. An Israeli sniper sits waiting to spot gun-toting Palestinians taking sanctuary in the church supposed to be the birthplace of Jesus.

26 April 2002: Saudi Arabia is reportedly angry with US President Bush and may retaliate by cutting oil exports, due to US support for Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon.

Washington: A fresh report from authorities says that US must now regard smallpox as a national security threat, not a public health problem, in view of possible biological terror attacks. It may be necessary for government to offer voluntary vaccinations. (Reported 20 April 2002)

17 April, 20002: Afghanistan: Accident in which two US fighter planes land friendly fire, killing four Canadian soldiers and wounding either others, maybe in "violation of the rules of engagement". US Air Force by 30 June 2002 is reportedly considering disciplinary actions.

Plans arise re the Afghanistan poppy crop, ready to flower soon - for farmers being paid to destroy their crops whether they wanted to or not in an area thought to produce about 90 per cent of the national crop. Meanwhile, US military said that leaflets circulating in eastern Afghanistan offer rewards for the killing of foreigners connected with moves against Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters. (Reported 6 April 2002)

6 April 2002: The Pope on the Middle East: "It seems that war has been declared on peace."

2 April 2002: Israel-Palestine. Israeli military action against the Palestinians is dragging the region toward all-out war, Islamic foreign ministers meeting in Malaysia warned yesterday. In Israel, PM Ariel Sharon has labelled his old enemy, Yassar Arafat, as "Israel's enemy and the enemy of the free world", but observers are mystified why Israel does not take steps to "remove" Arafat, though the reason given is that if Arafat was removed, he would be replaced by Palestinians further radicalised by recent events.

April 2002: Israeli forces level "at least" 140 buildings in the Palestinian Jenin refugee camp. As later protested by UN officials and by many other bodies.
Before 2002 in disputed territories of Israel/Palestine: The Right won Israel's election of 1997 and since then the number of Jewish settlers in occupied territories has about trebled to 250,000. The Israeli state has invested 3679 shekels per year per person in the settlements, compared with an average of 2308 in other government-supported areas. Similarly, public finance in disputed areas was 63 per cent higher than for building generally in Israel, and the state built 17.2 sqm of new road per settler, versus 5.3 sqm per capita in Israel. (Information from Le Monde, France, later in world press)

29-30 March 2002: Israel moves to a war footing, moving tanks against Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat's West Bank base, following another suicide bombing the previous Wednesday.

29 March 2002: Iraq's president Saddam Hussein has secured broad support from the Arab world in heading off any US military action against him with the region's leaders declaring that an attack on Iraq would be considered an attack on all Arab states.

Circa 27 March 2002: Intelligence operatives capture and wound al-Qa'ida executive Abu Zubaydah, bin-Laden's chief of operations, a 31-year-old Saudi-born Palestinian, in a villa near Faisalabad, Pakistan. Also captured were about 10,000 pages of documents - and hints from Zubayda of future terror-strikes . By now, about 2000 al-Qa'ida operatives have been apprehended around the world. But another bin-Laden top aide, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is still at large. Since 1995, the CIA has had a unit of 50 people studying bin-Laden. (Reported in Time Magazine, 8 July 2002)

23 March 2002: Nigeria says Islamic law violates constitution: "Moslem scholars have reacted angrily and Christian leaders expressed relief after Nigerian Government declares the application of strict Islamic law in 12 northern states to be unconstitutional. The decision may threaten the balance between Nigeria's Christian south and Islamic north. The sticking point is Section 42 of the constitution, which forbids discrimination on the grounds of religion or sex.

23 March 2002: Wealthy nations are warned: terror feeds on poverty: World leaders have implored wealthy nations at a conference in Monterey, Mexico, to give far more aid to the world's poor, warning that grinding poverty converts needy countries into incubators for terrorism and chaos. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan calls poverty and inequality the greatest threats to world peace. About 50 presidents and prime ministers attended the conference. (See Sydney Morning Herald of this date, p. 17)

23 March 2002: Taking terrorism seriously: oh, really? US: Washington: Bush administration officials say they have no immediate plans to bring detainees from the Afghan War to trial before special military tribunals, suggesting hundreds of prisoners could be held for years without charge. (Earlier reported by The Boston Globe)

19 March 2002: Israeli and Palestinian field commanders in the West Bank and Gaza strip held surprise talks yesterday in a sign that US envoy Anthony Zinni is making progress with a ceasefire mission.

19 March 2002: Lawyers for accused Australian "al-Qa'ida terrorist" David Hicks now hope to start US court action next month to free the Adelaide man from Camp X-ray in Cuba.

19 March 2002: Australian soldiers are chronically short of ammunition, sufficient to put their own lives and those of their allies at risk, according to an in-house report asked for by Chief of Army. Lt-General Peter Cosgrove. (By June 2002 promoted to chief of defence forces)

16 March 2002: Indian police say they have arrested 10,000 people in the western state of Maharashtra to prevent an outbreak of religious violence over plans by Hindu hardliners to hold prayers for a temple they want to build on the site of a razed mosque in Ayodhya. Leader of the Hindus is 93-year-old holy man, Ramchandra Das Paramhans. Destruction of the 16th-Century Babri mosque (in Ayodhya) in 1992 led to riots in which 3000 people died. Further, Hindus consider the site the birthplace of the god Ram, and say the Mogul emperor Babar destroyed a temple to make way for a mosque. The mosque was ordered razed allegedly on orders of Hindu nationalist Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, according to his daughter-in-law, a solicitor now in London and divorced from the minister's son.

16 March 2002: Afghan commanders cast doubt on the success of the US-led military operations in the mountains as they admit that hundreds of al-Qa'ida and Taliban fighters have escaped during the 12-day assault.

16 March 2002: Saudi Arabia: Religious police stand to be accused of preventing the rescue of 14 girls who died in a stampede following a fire, because an effort to save them would have meant men entering a girls school in Mecca, or girls leaving the school without wearing a veil, as is obligatory. The "police" in question are from The Department of Female Education (headed by Ali al-Morshed)), known as "mutawa", and enforce a strict Islamic moral code. Fourteen girls died in the stampede and 50 more were injured. (Reported 16-17 March, 2002 in Sydney Morning Herald)

12 March 2002: An "ugly dispute" over the possible rebuilding of the destroyed New York World Trade Centre arises as New Yorkers unveil a lighted memorial to victims of the 11 September attacks.

11 March 2002: Release-broadcast in Australia of 11 September 2001 attack damage, new footage, since two French filmmakers were working at the time; their crew followed firefighters into the towers before the towers faltered.

Circa 9 March 2002: Video footage is taken of bin-Laden discussing plans for a new jihad or holy war, and threatening allies of the US and Israel, says a British Islamic news agency. It seems, bin-Laden survived the heavy bombing of the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan (although later reports suggest his left shoulder was wounded badly). There is about now (March-May 2002), intense debate about the failure of intelligence agencies to stave off the 11 September attacks, or anything like them. (Reported in The Australian, 20 May 2002 )

8 March 2002: Israeli troops shoot dead commander of Palestinian security forces for southern Gaza strip, Major-General Ahmed Mefrej. West Bank chief of Arafat's Fatah organisation, Marwan Barghouti, says, "We have reached the point of no return." Meanwhile, Professor Martin van Creveld, an Israeli patriot, noted military historian of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, predicts that the Israeli Defence Force will lose its war with Palestinian terrorists, and will also have its morale sapped as it is already engaging in reprisals against civilians and/or the innocent. He suggests building a great wall to separate the contenders (as was broadcast one late night ABC TV session in Australia). Creveld believes that cruelty corrupts armies.

7 March 2002: Ten Palestinians die as Israelis renew assaults. Palestinian gunman kills five Israeli students in Gaza Jewish settlement. Yassar Arafat has his Ramallah compound bombed as he meets with a European Union delegate.

6 March 2002: Eleven Palestinians die as Israeli planes and helicopters strafe security positions and soldiers invade five areas of Gaza strip.

5 March 2002: Jewish vigilantes bomb an Arab school in Jerusalem in response to Beit Israel attack.

5 March 2002: Afghanistan's mountain retreats: US bombers continue to pound al-Qa'ida and Taliban positions in the eastern mountains of the country... with little reportable result to date.

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4 March 2002: Israeli tanks kill 17 Palestinians while attacking a truck owned by a suspected militant.

2 March 2002: Thirty Palestinians killed in Israeli raids on refugee camps at Balata and Jenin. Some 22 Israelis killed including nine by a suicide bomber.

2 March 2002: Virtual war on terror: Police in NSW, Australia are reportedly training with a high-tech simulator called HYDRA to combat organised crime and terrorism. Strategic decisions are made about "real-life scenarios".

2 March 2002: "Scant action following two massacres has human rights groups asking if the UN has blood on its hands"... This followed two claimed massacres in the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. After a failed Taliban assault on the city early in 1997, Northern Alliance forces are said to have killed 3000 Taliban prisoners, many suffocated after being locked in shipping containers. Some 15 months later, more than 2000 civilians are said to have been killed by Taliban machine-gunners on trucks. Commenting is advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, Reed Broady. At stake is credibility of Mary Robinson of UN High Commission for Human Rights. (Reported by Paul McGeough for Sydney Morning Herald)

2 March 2002: Australian Democrats party says Adelaide-born al-Qa'ida fighter David Hicks should be released from a US military camp in Cuba regardless of whether he faces prosecution in Australia. The party's law and justice spokesman, Brian Greig, said, "The US military commissions are without rules of evidence or rights of appeal and can sentence to death on a lower standard of proof than beyond reasonable doubt."

26 February 2002: Afghanistan has been warned that rival warlords are now posing the most serious threat to stability, and that if trouble begins to spiral, the US may widen its military involvement.

21 February 2001: Afghanistan: More than 1000 people watch as two women convicted of prostitution are hanged in southern Khandahar, headquarters of the Taliban.

Middle East closer to abyss of war: "The Middle East risks 'sliding toward full-fledged war' unless Western powers intervene in the conflict, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has warned the security council in "unusually blunt language". (23-24 February 2002 in Sydney Morning Herald, p. 16)

"Growing evidence arises and suggests that the US have struck many Afghan targets of questionable military significance". (23-24 February 2002 in Sydney Morning Herald) Meanwhile, visitation is becoming frequent to a cemetery for 80 or more al-Qa'ida fighters in Kandahar. The cemetery has become a pilgrimage place for Taliban supporters who already believe the graves have magical healing properties.

23-24 February 2002: Pakistan: Last Wednesday-Thursday, proof by way of videotape arises about the murder of US journalist in Pakistan for Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl. The videotape, undated, is now with FBI after being handed over the Pakistani officials, and shows Pearl being stabbed to death.
On 23 January 2002, Pearl, 38, rings his pregnant wife Mariane on a mobile phone. He has finally found an interview with an Islamic leader he's been seeking for weeks. Pearl soon went from a meeting with a Pakistan official to the Village Restaurant in heart of Karachi. His driver then was the last person to see Pearl alive. Pearl was kidnapped about half an hour later. He had been planning to meet a cleric, Pir Mubarrak Ali Gillani, who in the 1990s allegedly headed a group that landed on a US list of terrorist organisations. It now appears that Pearl's disappearance was orchestrated by Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, aged 27, who has admitted complicity, say police, and posed as a man named Bashir who would help Pearl meet Gillani. There is a "confusing gap" in the dates for the handling of Sheikh after he surrendered on 3 February, and 12 February, when Karachi police became aware he had surrendered.
A Pakistani news service has said that the videotape of Pearl's last minutes shows his head suddenly being lifted back and his throat slit. Daniel Pearl was regarded by his friends as "a musician, a writer, a story-teller, a bridge-builder, a walking sunshine of truth, humour, friendship and compassion". His kidnappers had demanded release of Pakistani prisoners in Guantanamo Bay or he would be killed on 31 January.
Update of 16 March 2002: A man has been indicted by a US Federal grand jury for the kidnapping and murder of Pearl. He is a British-born Moslem, Omar Saeed Sheikh, aged 28, now in Pakistan, and possibly to be tried there.
July 2002: A Pakistani court has now sentenced British-born Islamic militant Sheikh Omar to death for abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, while Omar's three accomplices will get jail for life.

16 February 2002: Afghanistan: Government minister Abdul Rahman killed by assassins. It is not, as in earlier reports, that he'd been killed by angry pilgrims unable to properly organise their pilgrimage to Mecca.

Reported 16 February 2002: As it was first thought, the Afghan interim minister for aviation and tourism, Abdul Rahman, died early 15th after being beaten up by a mob of "hundreds" of angry pilgrims (haj pilgrims) to Mecca already delayed for two days at Kabul airport. Kabul then due for a visit from British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. Rahman had then been bound for Delhi. Kabul at the time had freezing temperatures.

12 February 2002: World first for world justice?: Strongman Slobodan Milosevic is now in the dock at The Hague, the first world leader to be tried for alleged crimes against humanity. The trial may last up to two years and will hear 66 charges. Milosevic does not recognise the authority of the court holding him. A prosecutor speaks of the "medieval savagery" of the alleged crimes in question.

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12 February 2002: FBI/US issues warnings that it fears potential attackers against its interests, possibly in Yemen. A list of up-to-17 named possible-attackers is issued. (Early-evening TV news report in Australia). Nothing serious eventuated.

10 February 2002: Numbers of ex-Taliban fighters are freed by new government of Afghanistan. The former Taliban foreign minister, once in Pakistan, has given himself up and may be tried by US for crimes against humanity. Meantime, Taliban leader Mullah Omar is not heard of lately.

9 February 2002: Australian David Hicks, allegedly a fighter in Afghanistan for al-Qa'ida, and captured by US forces, has written to his family apologising. Meantime, his legal status has yet to be clarified in US or Australian terms.

7 February 2002: CIA suspect that Osama bin-Laden may be killed in a US attack on a plane, an attack which evidently kills a senior al-Qa'ida figure. Or, is there a bin-Laden look-alike system being used?

The al-Qa'ida terrorist network (A Sunni Moslem organization) seems to be trying to move its base of operations to Lebanon, western intelligence sources suspect, via links to Hezbollah (a Shia organization), which in turn has links to Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Another Sunni-influenced hardline group is Usbat al-Ansar, which has links with al-Qa'ida. Other hardline Islamic groups as lately named include Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, Harakat-al-Mujaheddin in Pakistan and Abu Sayyaf in The Philippines. US President Bush is meantime standing firm on his remarks about "the axis of evil". (Reported 2 February 2002)

2 February 2002: Afghanistan: As warlords tend to fight it out, it is said by Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah that after 23 years of civil war, at least 700,000 people bear arms in Afghanistan. (Reported in Australia by 2 February 2002)

2 February 2002: A deadline for threats to harm US journalist Daniel Pearl has been extended from 31 January. His kidnappers are linked to a Pakistani group, National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. The man Pearl was intending to interview when he was kidnapped was Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, leader of a little-known militant group, Tanzeemul Fuqra.

2 February 2002: Soon after President Bush has identified his "axis of evil", Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has termed Bush "a man thirsty for human blood" and the US as "the most-hated Satanic power of the world". (Reported by 2 February 2002)

1 February 2002: News surfaces on "a bin-Laden confession", on a videotape made last October, not long before bin-Laden is reportedly on the run.

1 February 2002: A US journalist (Daniel Pearl, for Wall St. Journal?) about eight days ago in Pakistan is kidnapped, hostaged, in return for Cuban-held men re events of late 2001.

1 February 2002: News of the latest bin-Laden video interview, with a journalist from Arab TV , al-Jazeera. Bin-Laden is equivocal it seems re admitting any involvement in 11 September attacks.

30 January 2002: Reports in Australia that in Indonesia, the people-smuggling business is in disarray, with asylum-seekers now refusing to pay the asked-for $10,000 for a boat-trip to Australia.

29 January 2002: Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai now believes that world-wide, promises of aid for his country now total US$4.5 billion. He promises there will be no loss of the value of the aid due to corruption.

28 January 2002: Khandahar, Six al-Qa'ida men holed-up in a hospital fight to death with US marines.

26 January 2002: The Indonesian government is being encouraged to crack down on a fundamentalist movement, Jemaah Islamiah Movement, which has allegedly been linked to al-Qa'ida and terrorist raids across south-east Asia. The movement is led by clerk Abu Bakar Bashir, aged 64, who feels bin-Laden is "a true Islamic warrior", and that the 11 September attacks were even engineered by Israeli interests. The US is "a horse ridden by Jews", and the attacks were "a warning from God" against US arrogance. In the Philippines, police seem worried about an Indonesian activist with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Fathur Rohman al Ghozi.

26 January 2002: Reports had been published in Asian Age newspaper of 14-12-2001 that Islamic terrorists are training women to carry out suicide attacks on the capital of India on Republic Day, next 26 January.

January 2002: Assassination of Elie Hobeika, a Christian militia leader of the 1975-1990 civil war in Lebanon, a man who made enemies on all sides. Claiming responsibility are an anti-Syrian Lebanese group. He had lately threatened to bring international legal proceedings against Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Hobeika allegedly helped massacre hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila camps during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. (Reported 23-24 January 2002)

19 January 2002: The US finds it has no precedent in military law for dealing with the 110 prisoners now held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (which base is leased), and have not yet charged or formally identified the men, amongst whom is Australian fighter for the Taliban, David Hicks, from Adelaide. It is not yet clear if Hicks will be tried in the US or in Australia, under which laws of either country. A team from International Red Cross is to evaluate if the US military is violating the rights of more than 100-120 such prisoners. A US corporal helping guard the prisoners has commented on the size of the prisoners - "pretty small" and their age - most seem to be in their 20 or 30s.

18 January 2002: Israeli aircraft destroy the Palestinian security headquarters.

17 January 2002: Reports surface that British troops may be deployed in "stiletto attacks" in Yemen in "a lawless mountain region" where sympathisers of bin-Laden/al-Qa'ida are reported as staying. Evidently, President of Yemen, Hassan Abshir Farah, has agreed to such use of foreign forces.

15 January 2002: World TV reports: Further concerns rise due to discovery in Afghanistan of terrorism training videos (from al-Qa'ida?) with material on tactics for high-rise building destruction/invasion, multiple choice question on how to bring down a plane, assassination tactics, etc.

By 12 January 2002: Kabul is ruined by 23 years of war. Questions arise as to whether difficulties in finding Mullah Omar and Osama bin-Laden are due to the sympathies of some Afghani warlords.
At this time, a warlord of Kabul is Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. On a most-wanted list of Taliban is Mulla Hadji Obaidullah Akhund, minister of defence, and Mullah Nooruddom Turabi, justice minister, founder of Ministry for the Enforcement of Virtue and Suppression of Vice, author of many dreaded edicts on behaviour.

Concerned about issues: try this website - Islam denounces terrorism:
http://www.islamdenouncesterrorism.com/

New leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has pledged to rid his country of drug trafficking but says it would be a difficult task to do so without aid for the country's devastated agricultural economy. (Most Afghanis live on US$1 per day.) He also estimates the number of hardcore Taliban or al-Qa'ida fighters still needing to be caught at 30-35.) (Reported 8 January 2002)

Palestine: Israeli leaders tell the US envoy to their region, Anthony Zinni, that the area is "like a volcano threatening to explode". (Reported 5 January 2002).

The Taliban former foreign minister working in Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, an unsuccessful claimant for political asylum, is now in Pakistani police custody but his leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, seemed last night "tantalisingly close" to capture, as Afghan and US fighters surround a village where he is thought to be hiding. The hunt for Mullah Omar has verged on farce at times, the situation made more vigorous by warlords competing for the large reward the US has offered for Omar. At this point, the Taliban commander is Abdul Ahad (known as Rayes Baghran). The Afghan Minister for Reconstruction is Amin Farhang. Meantime, visitors to Madame Tussaud's waxworks museum in London are being polled, and the finding is that Osama bin-Laden is now the world's most hated man, topping the poll's view of Adolf Hitler. (5 January 2002)

5 January 2002: For the first time, US officials have revealed their thoughts on the number of Taliban and al-Qa'ida leaders they feel it most necessary to find - 10 to 15 men in either organisation, although some are already dead. At this time, it is thought that Mullah Omar is being protected by some local tribal leaders and about 1500 Taliban troops, possibly at Baghran, 160km northwest of Kandahar.

3 January 2002: Reports unconfirmed arise that former Taliban leader Mullah Omar is captured by an Afghan warlord. Within days it is thought Omar escaped on a motorcycle.

1 January 2002: Kandahar: US Marines chase Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

30 December 2001: British troops patrol the streets of Kabul, keeping peace and on the hunt for Osama bin-Laden.

29 December 2001: Malaysia: The Malaysian High Court has sentenced three members of a Moslem sect to death by hanging for planning a jihad to topple prime minister Mahatir Mohamad and set up an Islamic state. Another 16 sect members were given life sentences. In the Philippines, a Jordanian man thought to be a member of al-Qa'ida has been arrested and bomb-making materials seized from his apartment. He is Hadji Yousef Alghoul, 35, arrested in Balanga City in Bataan province west of Manila, after he was under surveillance for three months. (Reported 29 December 2001)

29 December 2001: The alleged "shoe-bomber", Richard Reid, a British-born convert to Islam, now held in the US, visited seven countries in the months before his attempt to blow-up an American Airlines flight from Paris last weekend. His travels included a 10-day stay in Israel, and trips to Egypt, Jerusalem, Turkey, Pakistan, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and maybe Afghanistan, since June 2001. (Reported 29 December 2001)

17 December 2001: Reports surface from UK that at Kandahar, a notebook has been found indicating plans to leave a remote-controlled van-bomb in London's financial district.

The Australian Government expects that the Northern Alliance will soon hand over captured Australian al-Qa'ida fighter David Hicks to US forces, but it is unknown if Hicks will face US or Australian justice. "There is great confusion about how the legal process will proceed". (Reported 15 December 2001)

Various writers are now part of a chorus saying that politically, Yassar Arafat is now staring irrelevance in the face. (15 December 2001)

15 December 2001: US has obtained DNA samples from the bin-Laden family in order to be able to identify Osama if he is killed. He is one of 54 children and is said to have look-alikes travelling with him. At this point, a top aide of bin-Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, has sent faxes and spoken by telephone to a London-based magazine, al-Majalla. (Reported 15 December 2001)

Moves against Yassar Arafat: Trying to influence Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat to arrest Islamic militants responsible for recent suicide bombings, Israeli war planes have blasted the Palestinian Authority's main police headquarters, wounding about 18 people. Earlier, Arafat's men have put Hamas spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest. (Reported 7 December 2001)

14 December 2001: Philippines: Supporters of Moslem separatist Nur Misuari attack a town hall in southern island of Jolo but are repulsed by police.

3 December 2001: In Palestine, Yassar Arafat declares a state of emergency and arrests dozens of militants to try to stave off Israeli retaliation for Palestinian attacks on Israelis which lately kills 25.

1 December 2001: Israel: US peace mission falters after a suicide bomber sat in a bus near the city of Hadera in Central Israel and blew himself up in the middle of the journey, killing three Israelis and wounding nine others.
Note: Radical-action Islamic group Hamas was formed on 14 December 1987, at a time of Palestinian uprising against Israel. By December 2001 the spiritual leader of the group is Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Tactics of suicide attacks began anew in 1993, and to 29 September, 2000, Hamas supporters had provided 43 Palestinian terrorists, with 38 dying in separate suicide attacks. More recently, 39 suicide-bombers have died in 36 attacks.

In the context of President Bush's new "military orders" for the US, the following is from Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy, "We end up looking like some of the things we're fighting against." (Reported 1 December 2001) Or as a break-out in The Australian newspaper has it, "George W. Bush has set up a star chamber to secretly try and execute terrorists". Such terrorists are regarded as "unlawful combatants" by the Bush administration. Meantime, fears arise in the Arab world that Iraq might soon be added to the US' list of military targets. In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance is closing in on the last major Taliban-controlled city, Kandahar. A tribal commander of the Alliance forces is a Pashtun, Mohammad Jalal Khan.

1 December 2001: Northern Alliance has captured an al-Qa'ida guerilla trainer, Ahmed Omar Abdel Rahman, son of Moslem cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Meantime, the Taliban's Mullah Omar has offered a bounty of US$50,000 to any Afghan gunman who kills a Western journalist.

Early December 2001: Bin-Laden and one of his top aides have escaped by sea after leaving Afghanistan. (As suggested by 15 January 2002, when the facts are still cloudy).

Note: By September 2000: Lost Worlds' had made the following comment:
In too many places around the world, are claims that Moslem separatists want to set up many separate states. Has anyone interviewed these separatists about the following:
(1) What do they want, and why?
(2) What are their theories of sovereignty and of government?
(3) What are their views on the (non-Koranic) rule of law?
(4) Who pays for their food and weaponry?
If the UN is not asking such questions, why not? Also, is the CIA interested at all?

24 November 2001: Taliban tithe the opium crop: It is an Islamic tradition that 10 per cent of crops are taken by "the community". And so the Taliban used to take 10 per cent of Afghanistan's poppy crop, worth about US$35 million two years ago. Finally, and after some international pressure, Mullah Omar issued a religious decree banning poppy cultivation. It is now thought that farmers are again planting poppies since the bombing began on 7 October.

18 November 2001: Attif is dead, Khandahar, in an 80-sq km area near Khandahar, Osama bin-Laden is reportedly surrounded as reported by British Sunday Telegraph, and Laura Bush, wife of President George W. Bush has broken with protocol and called for an International women's group to help oppressed Afghani women.

Disquiet of conscience in the USA: 16 November 2001 - The following "moment of silence" message came the way of Lost Worlds from Texas via Milwaukee and via Voter@yahoogroups.com ... and it speaks for itself...

A repost: Minute of Silence For Everyone?

If you are still shaken by the horrifying scenes of 11 September, please observe a moment of silence for the 5,000 civilian lives lost in the New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania attacks.

While we're at it, let's have 13 minutes of silence for the 130,000 Iraqi civilians killed in 1991 by order of President Bush Sr. Take another moment to remember how Americans celebrated and cheered in the streets.

Now another 20 minutes of silence for the 200,000 Iranians killed by Iraqi soldiers using weapons and money provided to young Saddam Hussein by the American government before the great eagle turned all its power against Iraq.

Another 15 minutes of silence for the Russians and 150,000 Afghans killed by troops supported and trained by the CIA.

Plus ten minutes of silence for 100,000 Japanese killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs dropped by the USA.

We've just kept quiet for one hour: one minute for the Americans killed in NY, DC, and Pennsylvania, 59 minutes for their victims throughout the world.

If you are still in awe, let's have another hour of silence for all those killed in Vietnam, which is not something Americans like to admit.

Or for the massacre in Panama in 1989, where American troops attacked poor villagers, leaving 20,000 Panamanians homeless and thousands more dead.
(By the way, a documentary on this 1989 Panama matter has been screened in Australia, conveying also that screening of the documentary was banned in the US - so much for press freedom in the US! -Ed)

Or for the millions of children who have died because of the USA embargoes on Iraq and Cuba.

Or the hundreds of thousands brutally murdered throughout the world by USA-sponsored civil wars and coups d'etat (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador to name a few).

Maybe, and although the memory of Americans claims otherwise, someone may remember the USA attack on Baghdad where 18,000 civilians were killed. Did someone see it on CNN? Was justice ever served? Or was there even any retaliation?

We hope that Americans finally begin to understand their vulnerability and the cowardly attacks and other tragedies that they have caused around the world.

The dead in other places hurt as much as the dead of the New York Towers, even more!

Now, let's talk about terrorism, shall we?

This message came to Lost Worlds unsigned, but this hardly matters -Ed

Webcam for New York's groundzero: http://earthcam.com/usa/newyork/groundzero/

16 December, 2001, The end of Ramadan, the month of fasting in the Islamic world.

The US now feels that from inspection of a lately-acquired, hour-long video of bin-Laden, (dated 9 November), possibly filmed in Kandahar, it seems that bin-Laden knew of a plan, which became the 11 September attack, a year previous. He knew exact timing details on 6 September. Bin-Laden, whose family is in the construction business, thought that the main damage of any such jet-attack would be the three-four floors above the impact areas only. It had not been expected to fully collapse the towers. Bin-Laden named Mohammad Attar as one of the attackers involved in the attacks, which united two teams of men who did not have full details of the overall attack plan. It is also suspected that bin-Laden, aged 44, is suffering weight loss due to kidney problems. In the video, bin-Laden calls on Moslems to make further attacks on a precarious US economy. (As reported in Australia by 15 December 2001)

15 December 2001: Another boatload of asylum seekers appears near Australia's Ashmore Island and are turned back to Indonesia.

14 December 2001: Four Palestinians killed in an Israeli attack.

14 December 2001: Israel continues to systematically attack Palestinian institutions answering to Yassar Arafat and attempts to isolate his influence. Will extremists fill Arafat's place? Israel describes Arafat as now "irrelevant" and has his HQ ringed with tanks.

14 December 2001: TV news: "After much deliberation" over 14 days, US releases video made 9th November, of bin-Laden's "terror confession", and his alleged rejoicing of the destruction in New York, more havoc than he anticipated. Many hijackers involved had no idea of the scale of the plan, or that they would die executing it. CIA has done "forensic work" and used four independent translators. Moslem world divided by US release of latest video of bin-Laden. Have the tapes been doctored? Are they a fabrication? bin-Laden meantime is believed to be cornered (again?) in the Tora Bora complex area, and has not escaped to Pakistan or elsewhere. Cave-to-cave fighting goes on in this sector. US has placed a US$10 million reward for information leading to capture of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

13 December 2001: Did Osama bin-Laden escape to Pakistan by 3-4 December?

12 December 2001: Four Palestinians killed and about 17 wounded in helicopter missile attacks.

12 December 2001: A South Australian man aged about 26 is found in Afghanistan fighting for al-Qa'ida, captured by anti-Taliban forces; he had been fighting on a Moslem side in Kosovo during 1999 and reportedly had converted to Islam. TV news scenes of the amazing opulence of the mansion of Afghanistan's Taliban leader Mullah Omar, complete with a bizarre statue which is difficult to interpret. Alliance soldiers take pictures of each other lying with their guns on Omar's bed.

11 December 2001: A victorious Alliance commander, resting in Kabul, says how pleased he is to see children going to school again, now that the Taliban is gone.

11 December 2001: Afghanistan: bin-Laden's possible escape routes are cut off by US as Tora Bora mountain sector is again heavily bombed. Israel, two Palestinian children killed by a helicopter attack.

10 December 2001: US claims it has bin-Laden cornered in the area of the Tora Bora cave complex, which has been heavily bombed in recent days. Claims arise that new video evidence is found of further links between bin-Laden and 11 September attacks. Fears arise that dissemination of the video may provide coded clues to members of al-Qa'ida network. US now considers situations with Iraq's stocks of weapons of mass destruction. In Israel, eight Israelis are wounded by a suicide bomber.

9 December 2001: Afghanistan: Scuffles break out as UN distributes food supplies in Kabul. Up to 200,000 households will be seeking aid.

8 December 2001: 15 Palestinians are wounded in an Israeli jet attack.

8 December 2001: Afghanistan, Mullah Omar reported captured (mid-evening eastern Australian time). Presumably in or near Kandahar. bin-Laden still at large. In Palestine, position of Yassar Arafat is even more insecure. Taliban have fled Kandahar and also lose control of cave complex Tora Bora near Kandahar; bombing effort to entomb US enemies in that cave complex. Capture of Arab members of al-Qa'ida. Mullah Omar is said to be out of Kandahar and on the run.

8 December 2001: Rumours arise from India to Australia that Australia should seal its borders to prevent escape by "20 terrorism suspects" maybe planning to fly a plane into Melbourne's tallest building, the Rialto. (Reported 8 December 2001)

By 8 December 2001: One of the leaders of the anti-Taliban forces moving into Kandahar is former mujahideen commander Mullah Naqeebullah. Forces loyal to former area governor Gul Agha have reportedly taken over a main airport south of Kandahar.

7 December 2001: Scepticism and also amazement arises in Australia with reports of a 26-year-old Middle Eastern man, apprehended in India by 6 December, who allegedly plotted terror attacks on Australia, to take out tallest buildings, such as Melbourne's Rialto Towers (55 stories); also maybe Parliament House in Canberra. Also, targets in UK and India. He had taken flight training in Australia at Melbourne's Morabbin airport. Report from South Australia that a block-training application from 50 men there had been rejected by suspicious flight trainers.
US says it wishes to prosecute Mullah Omar (whether he is constrained to renounce/denounce terrorism or not). Omar has agreed to surrender Kandahar, the spiritual home of his Taliban organisation. Yassar Arafat now reported on world radio as "all but a spent force" after repeated Israeli attacks on his organisation and HQ.

7 December 2001: An Israeli jet ends a ceasefire and destroys the Palestinian police HQ.

6 December 2001: Palestinian police try to arrest militant Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and find they have to meet protesters.

3 December 2001: Kabul, Afghanistan: Taliban religious police seem to have destroyed hundreds/thousands of artefacts once housed in Kabul Museum. World fears once again of a Middle East war.

3 December 2001: Haifa, a bus bomb blast kills 15-16 people and wounds about 40, about 12 hours after earlier terror attack in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Israel bombs a building near Arafat's office and Sharon declares a "war on terrorism".

2 December 2001: Northern Alliance and US disagree about where bin-Laden is now hiding; Alliance says, still near Kandahar. Jerusalem Massacre: Several suicide explosions, two suicide bombers and one car bomb, organised by Islamic Jihad. Some 180 injured and 12 dead, with most victims being young Israelis. Arafat is under further international pressure to manage situations. In Afghanistan, Northern Alliance agrees to a new, UN-backed government for their country.

1 December 2001: TV report, At Kandahar, Taliban leader Mullah Omar offers to surrender in return for his own safety - while his troops fight to the death. US rejects such offer. It is estimated it will take five years to rebuild Kabul. Five people are killed after a suicide bus bombing, outside an army base in Haifa. Some members of the Israeli cabinet call for "the toppling of the Palestinian Authority".

30 November 2001: Two bombings in Jerusalem kill at least 12 people and wound more than 170.

29 November 2001: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills three Israelis and himself on a bus in northern Israel. Arafat issues a statement urging Palestinians to respect a cease-fire.

28 November 2001: US President Bush has demanded that Saddam Hussein should allow international weapons inspectors back into Iraq to show that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction.

28 November 2001: Afghanistan: US President George W. Bush has warned his country to expect casualties as hundreds of US ground troops move in against targets such as a Taliban armoured column near Kandahar, the last city under Taliban control, in Operation Swift Freedom. Moscow, however, surprises Western observers by landing 12 transport aircraft near Kabul, to establish "a humanitarian centre". (Is it correct, that the US is not the only large power hoping to be able to throw oil pipelines through Afghanistan? That Russia is also interested, presumably because of its Caspian Sea oil reserves?)
"The Taliban clung to the dusty smuggler's paradise of Spin Boldak yesterday", begins one report. Taliban have vowed to fight to the death. So far, eight journalists have been killed while covering conflict in Afghanistan, the latest a Swedish cameraman. Five US troops have been injured during a siege to capture a major arsenal, protected by al-Qa'ida fighters, the Qala-I-Jangi fort ("fort of war", built in the nineteenth century) west of Mazar-e-Sharif, the HQ of warlord of Mazar-e-Sharif, (General) Abdul Rahid Dostum. Dostum has reportedly made a deal to hand over the al-Qa'ida men as prisoners of war to the US. Meantime, the al-Qa'ida second-in-command, Mohammad Atef, was killed by a US strike two weeks ago. Other US enemies killed include two wanted Egyptians, Tareq Anwar and Nasr Fahmi. Hafs al-Masri, a military chief for al-Qa'ida, has also been killed. But Osama bin-Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, continue to elude the US. Captured material now indicates that al-Qa'ida members tend to spend their time studying religion, maths, Arabic, English, military tactics, terrorism and intelligence. bin-Laden's book, The Clear War Against The Americans Who Are In The Holy Lands are required reading.
The US has also warned Iraq and North Korea that their "reported developments" of weapons of mass destruction may mean conflict with US. Iraq, says Bush, must allow UN weapons inspectors ejected in 1998 to return to Iraq to continue work. Fourteen people have been detained in Belgium and France as part of an international investigation into the assassination of Afghan opposition commander Ahmed Shad Massood killed by 9 September 2001 by a two-man suicide bombing attack on his home. Charged in connection with Massood's murder, which is believed planned by Osama bin-Laden as a diversionary tactic, is an Egyptian citizen, Yasser al-Siri, charged by 30 October. Al-Siri ran the Islamic Observation Centre in London. The arrests follow an international warrant being issued by a judge in Belgium. (Reported 28 November 2001)

28 November 2001: Moslem unrest in Philippines: Philippines troops have killed about 25 Moslem gunmen in southern city of Zamboanga (a mostly-Christian city), after pre-dawn clashes. Those killed are loyal to rebellious area governor, Nur Misauri, and have about 40 civilian hostages. (Reported 28 November 2001). Misauri has influence in the mysteriously-named area, Autonomous Region in Moslem Mindanao (ARMM). Note: By 8 December, about Isabela, Philippines, government troops have killed eleven members of a Moslem guerilla group, Abu Sayyaf, which is holding hostage a US couple on a southern island.

By 28 November 2001, it is reported from US (Los Angeles Times) that "the US has been experimenting with germ warfare for almost 50 years", with "Operation Whitecoat" and the co-operation of members of the health-concerned Seventh Day Adventist Church. Some 153 tests were conducted between 1954-1973, when the tests were abandoned. Most tests were conducted in a huge spherical chamber at Fort Detrick, so that problem-material was not let into the atmosphere.

Rebels use families as human shields in Philippines: Rebels loyal to former governor Nur Misuari yesterday took dozens of hostages in defiance of a government order to surrender, shattering hopes for a peaceful transition to a new administration in the autonomous region of Moslem Mindanao. (28 November 2001)

Identified by 28 November 2001 is an "unofficial spokesperson" for the Taliban in the West, Laili Helms, an Afghan-American women married to a nephew of a former CIA director, Richard Helms. Laili Helms now has a mixed press as a woman with sympathies for women in Afghanistan, living under the Taliban regime, as an American, for her actions as a liaison-link with the Taliban, which began before the Taliban were perceived as a threat by the US. Apologists for Mrs Helms say she tried to explain UN attitudes to Afghani women, and otherwise helped now-opposed sides to communicate and to understand each other.

28 November 2001: Taloqan, Northern Afghanistan: Gunmen have broken into a house and shot dead a Swedish cameraman, Ulf Stromberg, 42, from Sweden's TV4 Channel. The gunmen later made off with a satellite telephone and several thousand dollars.

27 November 2001: "Operation Swift Freedom", with helicopter gunships" dramatic new phase in Afghanistan as US marines take a Kandahar airport near a Taliban posting, actually "a small-scale invasion". Northern Alliance pre-advised of strategics. Meanwhile, last Sunday, in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, pro-Taliban prisoner-fighters took control of guns and ammunition from the HQ of regional warlord General Rashid Dostum and a five-hour firefight ensued, leaving hundreds dead. As well, a number of pro-Taliban men committed mass suicide by blowing themselves up with hand grenades. It is suggested that the prisoners revolted after being approached by an unnamed British reporter and a Western woman approached them in a fort. This mass suicide was the second in two days, designed to kill nearby enemies also.

27 November 2001: The British Government has succeeded with a vote 323 to 79 with passing emergency legislation in the House of Commons to allow suspected terrorists to be detained indefinitely without trial. Also on 27th, in Bonn, Germany, more than 30 Afghan leaders (but no Taliban representatives) have sat to plan for their country's future, with a multi-ethnic government. There is of course, some dispute about who is represented, and who not, particularly a lack of ethnic Pashtuns from the south of Afghanistan, and making up about 40 per cent of the population. Parties at the Bonn meeting include: Northern Alliance, Yunus Qanuni, interior minister; Pakistan-based Afghan groups and the monarchist Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani; representatives of deposed king, Zahir Shah; envoys from UK, US, Russia and Pakistan; and possibly some Pashtun leaders formerly pro-Taliban.

27 November 2001: Mindanao, Philippines, TV news, Rebel Moslem demands arise, with some threats to shoot captives.

27 November 2001: Plans for UN Development program, World Bank and Asian Development Bank to meet in Pakistan. Hundreds of representatives will be present, a third of them being Afghans, says New York Times.

27 November 2001: Peace talks re Afghanistan held in Bonn, Germany. Re these talks, the UN-recognised head of the Afghanistan government, Burhanuddin Rabbani (a professor of Islamic Law, Alliance-based 1993-1996), says he is willing to step down or aside if necessary (for the exiled 87-year-old king, Zahir Shah?), and has no personal ambitions. About now, about 100,000 people are living in tents in the Kandahar area.

27 November 2001: Reports arise of a 30-year effort in Afghanistan to dig 30 caves on the western outskirts of Quetta for storage of old copies of the Koran, copies of which may not be thrown away or burned. Behind the program is Afghan religious leader Mullah Sultan Mohammed.

27 November 2001: US envoys arrive in Israel to promote peace deals. Israel announces arrest of 15 West Bank Palestinians saying they are members of an Iraqi-sponsored militant cell. Palestinian gunmen kill six people in Israel and Gaza.

26 November 2001: A revolt against Northern Alliance by captured Taliban is suppressed, situation a bloodbath/slaughterhouse. Much gunfire in hills about Kunduz. Some 400 men loyal to bin-Laden die in a "mass suicide" mission. At Kandahar, US troops (1600 marines?) take a key airport.

26 November 2001: US attorney-general John Ashcroft has said he believes from intelligence reports that Osama bin-Laden has ordered attacks on US supplies of natural gas if he or Taliban leader Mullah Omar are killed or captured.

26 November 2001: Meanwhile, French and Belgian police have detained 14 men with suspected links to bin-Laden, names possibly arising due to international investigation of the murder of anti-Taliban leader, Ahmad Shad Massoud.

26 November 2001: Some 73 intellectuals from 18 Arab nations are gathering in Cairo to discuss ways of countering "a defamation campaign" against Arabs in Western media, and will produce an action plan to present to their leaders who are meeting in Beirut in March 2002.

26 November 2001: More than 25,000 US paratroopers plus British troops prepare to move on the Taliban's "spiritual home", Kandahar (where 6000 al-Qa'ida and Taliban troops may fight to the death). Western leaders prefer Kandahar falls to an international force rather than to the Northern Alliance. British officials urge restraint with handling of any Taliban prisoners captured at Kunduz. (Commenting on US attitudes is Adam Roberts, professor of International Relations at Oxford University, editor of Documents on the Laws of War. A 1997 protocol of the Geneva conventions makes it illegal "to order that there shall be no survivors..."). Preparations also underway for taking of last northern Taliban stronghold at Kunduz; at Kunduz, some 2000 Taliban surrender, up to 15,000 more may surrender. Over 1500 Taliban fighters surrender at Maidan Shahr. bin-Laden is reportedly hiding in eastern Afghanistan (near Jalalabad/Tora Bora). US bombers work at caves/tunnels maybe being used by al-Qa'ida. Commentator Anthony Lewis in The New York Times discusses views on the morality of the war in Afghanistan (mostly a just war he says), but says a problem with putting any terrorists on trial is with discovering if they actually are terrorists. Critics of the war are more numerous in UK than in US. The development of "an alternative justice situation" (use of US military tribunals) is causing concern in the US and so arises concern about the use of "the dreaded f-word" - Fascism (?). Protests also rise re Japan sending some naval logistical support for the Afghanistan war, Japan's first such overseas deployment of military forces in 55 years.

26 November 2001: Israeli helicopters attack Palestinian targets on Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers shoot dead a Palestinian boy engaged in a rock-throwing protest, Khifah Obeid.

25 November 2001: Kunduz falls after a two-week siege and fears that there will be a grave humanitarian disaster for the city's trapped 300,000 civilians. Taliban militia verges on collapse. A senior Taliban commander talks of defection/peace. Some 2000 hardline foreigners of the Taliban will fight to the death. US says (in unconfirmed report) that captured men could be held at Guam, American Samoa or the Northern Mariana Islands. A women's organisation "widely admired" for its work, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, is not exactly thrilled by the return to influence of the Northern Alliance, and feels it might be "dreadful and shocking".

24 November 2001: Appearance in US of one of a rash of new 11 September products, a book by San Antonio evangelist, John Hagee, Attack on America: New York, Jerusalem and the Role of Terror in the Last Days. In UK, two in three British Moslems oppose US-led strikes in Afghanistan. Some 400-600 dead bodies have been found in northern Afghanistan town of Mazar-el-Sharif, now captured by Northern Alliance, but Red Cross cannot tell if these people are killed in fighting or executed. About Kandahar, Taliban had invited in about 100 journalists but now expels them as their grip loosens on the city after six weeks of air raids.

24 November 2001: Israel assassinates top Hamas militant, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, who is blamed for assisting several suicide bombings.

23 November 2001: Pakistan keeps its borders shut. Prisoner-of-war camps in Afghanistan now crowded. "Collapse of surrender talks". It is agreed that foreigner fighters for the Taliban be later tried, though al-Qa'ida associates prefer to become martyrs.

23 November 2001: Israeli helicopter attack kills Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, a Hamas leader in Palestine.

22 November 2001: Idea arises that bin-Laden is on a ship off the Pakistan coast (?). Taliban surrenders at Kunduz.

21 November 2001: Israel: A booby trap has been intended to protect a Jewish settlement but it kills five Palestinian schoolchildren aged six to 14, as they move in a scrub land on their way to school.

20 November 2001: Japan and US have invited governments to meet in Washington today to discuss a reconstruction program for Afghanistan.

20 November 2001: Reported death of bin-Laden's right hand military man, Juma Namangani (aged 32, an Uzbeck warrior general), as Taliban defend their last strongholds. Also lately killed is Mohammed Atef, one of the brains behind al-Qa'ida network and up to seven other Taliban leaders. In various places, up to 60 Chechen fighters are said to have jumped into the River Amu to die, rather than be taken alive. Maybe 25 Taliban shot themselves rather than surrender. Surrender talks go on between the Alliance's Daoud Khan and his Taliban opposite number, Mullah Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander. Taliban reportedly has now abandoned its "guest", bin-Laden.

20 November 2001: Claims arise that because of US HQ's desire to limit civilian casualties, US warplanes have about ten times had senior people of al-Qa'ida and Taliban in their sights, but cannot find permission quickly enough to terminate them. Reports from refugees from Kunduz also indicate that the city has slipped into a frenzy, with mass murder, beatings, mutilations, civilians forced to dance across minefields by Taliban, young men dragged into streets and shot for no apparent reason, up to 350 people massacred. Worst excesses are claimed to come from the "foreign tourists" of the Taliban, non-Afghanis called khareji, many of them trained by al-Qa'ida.

20 November 2001: CONCERNS WITH PROPHECY

Greetings, We found you (Lost Worlds) on the Internet at...

Prophecy -- what does it mean to you? Does it mean the prediction of momentous events, even dire events like catastrophic earthquakes and murderous acts of terrorism? Does it also mean the alternative predictions of a brilliant new golden age of peace, astounding innovation and high culture?
On Tuesday, 20 November, 2001 from 7 - 9 p.m. (CST) you can hear and participate in a free interactive worldwide internet broadcast called: PROPHECY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: TURNING TERROR INTO TRIUMPH.

This talk -- unlike any you have probably heard before -- covers all these aspects of prophecy for our times and many more. For example, in this address you will hear a review of the dramatic prophecies of Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Saint Germain, Mother Mary and others explained and compared.
Far from a doomsday message, this address will cover the key idea of how to mitigate and transform dire predictions into positive new eras of history.
To learn more about this event and how you can hear the FREE interactive Internet broadcast, visit: http://www.icmerlin.com/prophecy/
To send a message: email prophecy@icmerlin.com.]

20 November 2001: Taliban forces said to be cornered and even willing to surrender Kunduz. Four international journalists including an Australian working for Reuters, Harry Burton, are killed by a Taliban ambush.

20 November 2001: Kunduz: The last city held by Taliban, now surrounded by Northern Alliance.

19 November 2001, Headline (very premature): bin-Laden trapped as US closes in. Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mulla Abdul Salam Zaeef, confirms that bin-Laden is no longer in a Taliban-controlled area. At this time, acting interior minister of Northern Alliance is Younis Qanooni, says bin-Laden is hiding 130km east of Kandahar in caves. US claims it has killed a bin-Laden's right-hand man, Muhammad Atef, during an air attack on Kabul last week. Atef (also an in-law of bin-Laden) was a member of the al-Qa'ida ruling shura council. Taliban leadership rejects efforts to negotiate on surrender of Kandahar. Reports arise that at Kunduz, Taliban leadership has been seized by "foreigners"; Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens; who are hanging any Taliban commanders talking of surrender. Infighting and power-jostling arises amongst Afghani warlords. One such warlord is a Pashtun leader, Gulbuddin Hemmatyar, notable about Kabul. At this time, leader of the Northern Alliance is Barhanuddin Rabbani. A notable recent death last Saturday has been that of bin-Laden's right-hand man, Uzbek general, Juma Namangani.

19 November 2001: Question in the media: Does bin-Laden die as a martyr or live a life on the run? From Germany, it seems that soon after 11 September, German officials quickly traced three terrorist ringleaders (including Mohammed Attar, and perhaps also "the missing 20th hijacker", Yemeni Ramzi bin al-Sibh [alias Ramzi Omar?]) to a flat in Hamburg. Marienstrasse 54, an address under surveillance earlier in 1998 and 1999 because of links suspected to an operative for bin-Laden. Possibly also involved here was logistical-brains, Said Bahaji; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been detained in Minnesota. In Spain, a judge has jailed eight suspected Islamic terrorists said to be directly linked to planning and execution of the 11 September attacks in US. Some of the man are said to be linked to terrorist training camps in Indonesia. Washington now thinks that Europe is now home to "hundreds of al-Qa'ida sleeper agents" waiting for orders to make fresh attacks.
Note: By 23 November it is thought that perhaps the suspected leader of the 11 September attacks, Mohamed Attar, visited Madrid, Spain, about 8-19 July 2001 as "a vital step" in planning the attacks, meeting a cell of al-Qa'ida men in Madrid.

19 November, 2001: Anthrax letter-attacks in US now thought to be result of internal US matters alone. In London, 10,000 protesters march through centre of the city calling for an end to the war in Afghanistan. Time magazine lately reports that Jordan has lately stymied two planned al-Qa'ida plots to blow up US, UK and Jordanian embassies in Beirut.

19 November 2001: Guardian newspaper in UK reports that US vice-president Dick Cheney warns that after the Afghanistan troubles are over, US may move on as many as 50 states thought to be harbouring terrorists, with Somalia high on that list as a haven for al-Qa'ida supporters. Guardian also reports that near Jalalabad, evidence arises of an al-Qa'ida attempt to develop "secret toxins" and explosives for war use; evidence also found of international money transfers. It is said that now roaming Afghanistan are ten bin-Laden look-a-likes. (Shades of how many Hollywood movies there? - Ed)

19 November 2001: UK and US are considering spending millions of dollars to try to end Afghanistan's heroin trade. To buy this year's entire opium harvest at black-market prices on condition that farmers plough their ground and re-plant something different? It is said that Northern Alliance warlords have connived at new planting of poppy fields. Some 83 per cent of the 1999 crop was worth about Aust$100 million. Farmers are paid about Aust$700 per kilogram of product. Production of raw opium fell by 94 per cent after it was outlawed by the Taliban.

19 November 2001: Northern Alliance agrees to attend in a neutral place in Europe, a meeting concerning any new government for Afghanistan which represents all ethnic groups. Kabul TV is back on the air with a new transmitter after five years of Taliban-enforced invisibility and silence.

18 November 2001: Bin-Laden is said to be surrounded in an area about 80km square (narrowing later to 48km square), near Kandahar, first reported by UK's Sunday Telegraph quoting defence sources. Breaking with protocol, wife Laura of President George W. Bush has spoken out angrily on TV about Taliban's oppression and suppression of women in Afghanistan - here a call for women to act internationally.

18-19 November 2001: Close associate of bin-Laden for up to ten years, Muhammad Atef has been killed, it is claimed. (Alias Sheikh Taseer Abdullah or Abu Hafs al-Masri, had a price put on his head by FBI of US$5 million. Did Atef plan, or help plan, the 11 September attack?)

17 November 2001: By now, US has released to public the sound tapes of cockpit struggles as hijackers take control of planes on morning of 11 September.

17 November 2001: Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres has told the UN that most Israelis currently favour the establishment of an independent Palestinian state - to be non-military but economically viable.

17 November 2001: Up to 6000 foreign fighters loyal to the Taliban are now in Kunduz, Afghanistan, as alliance forces surround the city with orders to shoot them all.

17 November 2001: A journalist from The Times of London, rummaging through an abandoned house used till lately as a terrorist training camp in Kabul, has found details of an al-Qa'ida plan to use a biological poison, rycin (which was used by secret police to kill the Bulgarian Georgi Markov in 1978). Meantime, Mullah Omar has told British journalists (BBC), "The plan is going ahead... it is a huge task that is beyond the comprehension of human beings ... the real matter is the extinction of America". The use of rycin was considered by the British during World War Two for a "W bomb", but never used. (Reported by 17 November 2001)

17 November 2001: Denmark around 17 November is also reported embarrassed at its population's attitude hardening against asylum-seekers and refugees. A Danish People's Party has been campaigning on an anti-Moslem, anti-foreigner platform.

17 November 2001: Overly creative Islamic Justice?: Lagos, Nigeria, Report that an Islamic Court has ordered that a convicted murderer be stabbed with the same knife used [that he used?] to kill a woman and her two children.

17-18 November 2001: US now believes it has killed a top miliary aide of bin-Laden, the man who planned the 11 September attacks. Atef? Role of British soldiers in Afghanistan is described on radio as "mired in confusion". Taliban prepares to leave Kandahar. More al-Qa'ida training camps are occupied. In Israel, Shimon Perez supports a Palestinian state and is criticised for such views.

17 November 2001: US operatives believe they are closing in on bin-Laden. It is also seen as important that no new civil war begins in Afghanistan; and Australians may be asked to prevent tendencies to "a return to warlordism". Law and order has supposedly broken down in northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, recently taken by Northern Alliance forces. The Taliban still controls Kandahar in the south and Kunduz in the north. It is feared bin-Laden will escape through Turkmenistan and head for Chechnya. Or, to the north-west tribal areas of Pakistan. Australian journalist Paul McGeough, who has almost killed by a Taliban ambush, writes of Afghanistan, "Almost a quarter of a century of conflict, made worse by a dreadful drought in the last three years, as deformed any sense of humanity or decency in this country. And now there is a dangerous power vacuum. Power is all, undertakings count for nothing and honour has little or no value. ... The cruelty is shocking, the barbarity that of animals, not men." Meanwhile, leader of the Northern Alliance, President Burhanuddin Rabbani, has said that the former king of Afghanistan can return only as a private citizen.

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17 November 2001, Investigators think they may have identified a 20th 11 September terrorist, a Yemeni who was deflected from his mission by US visa problems. He is Ramzi Binalsibh, (or Ramzi Omar), once based in Hamburg, and subject of an intense manhunt. The suspected ringleader of the plan hijackers, Mohamed Attar, tried three times to get Binalsibh into the US, it is claimed. However, another man has been suspected as the 20th hijacker. Binalsibh had studied in Germany from 1997, at Hamburg Technical University. In Hamburg, Binalsibh met with later-hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi; and with Ziad Samir Jarrah (who was on the 11 September Philadelphia crash plane).

17 November 2001, In Kabul, Northern Alliance captures Taliban leaders. British and US special operations troops arrive in Kabul. In Khandahar, US destroys a mosque and a foreign ministry building. Opposition warlord Ismail Khan vows to march on Kandhar. In Jalalabad, a former governor of Nangarhar province, Haji Qadeer, seems to have taken over from the Taliban. At Herat, forces loyal to Ismail Khan push south from that city. Correspondent Christopher Kremmer after touring near Kandahar in 2000 writes that he found provincial administration "moribund" and failing to cope with "the worst drought in living memory". Taliban officials lazed over big lunches as whole villages starved. The last Taliban holdout is now Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, where about 20,000 Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters seem doomed to a bloodbath. About 8000 of these men are Pakistanis or Arab volunteers with "nowhere to go". Northern Alliance's General Mohammed Dawood promises little mercy to the foreigners. bin-Laden promises that he has by now helped to "spread a war all over the world".

17 November 2001, It is now estimated that New York will lose about US$83 billion during the next three years due to the 11 September attacks. Some 50,000 employees (of a total of about 180,000 finance workers) of stock-exchange linked businesses have had to be placed in new workplaces. If New York's economy falters too much, the cost could blow out to US$100 billion. Will New York remain the world's financial centre? At least 79,000 jobs disappeared in October 2001.

By 17 November 2001: Outspoken Malaysian prime minister Mahatir Mohamad has lately slammed Ariel Sharon of Israel in the context of world terrorism, for his attitude to Palestinians.

17 November 2001, Further high-alert warnings issued in the US as in Afghanistan, the noose tightens around The Taliban, bin-Laden and the al-Qa'ida network. Tom Ridge, director of the new US Office of Homeland Security, plays down reports on the information an al-Qa'ida safe house had in Kabul, on designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons, and said it was old-hat, and some could be found on the Internet.

16-17 November 2001: Beginning of Ramadan, Islamic month of fasting for spiritual purity.

16 November 2001: The Taliban deputy interior minister, Haji Mullah Khaksar, reportedly has switched sides. In 1996 he apparently helped set up the Taliban's intelligence operation, and it is thought he knows the present whereabouts of Mullah Omar and bin-Laden. Radio intercepts indicate that al-Qa'ida men are angry at Taliban retreats of late. However, Taliban fighters, especially about Kunduz, swear "to fight with the last drop of our blood". Alliance leaders indicate they have given orders that foreign-born fighters on the Taliban side are to be shot. If the foreign-born fighters are Arabs working for Al-Qa'ida, they are reported feared by the Taliban and loathed by local Afghani tribesmen. Also, various Afghani warlords who have been living in exile are on the move to stake their claims for life in a re-born Afghanistan. (Reported 16-18 November 2001)

16 November 2001: Will two Australian aid workers held by the Taliban be used as human shields, or be rescued, and are they now being taken to Kandahar?

16 November 2001, US efforts now centre around "the spiritual centre of the Taliban", Kandahar. Dramatic air rescue of eight Taliban-held aid workers by British. Bin-Laden and followers are being "chased from cave to cave" but still threaten to destroy the US.

16 November 2001: Taliban says it is down but not out. Via a satellite phone call to BBC, Taliban's Mullah Omar warns of a severe counter attack on the US - "the destruction of the US". He says: "keep in mind this prediction". Now it seems, al-Qa'ida has manuals in Arabic on details for construction of nuclear weapons or materials.

15 November 2001: Midnight, BBC reports that the situation of Kabul and with military operations is "frightening, confused and in flux".

15 November, 2001, US B-52 bombers and fighter jets attack Taliban positions around Kunduz, evidently not-so-effectively.

15 November 2001: Newspaper columnists warn that there is also a war in Afghanistan against drought, agricultural collapse, famine, disease and misery. Relief agencies were warning of humanitarian disasters for Afghanistan for this winter even before 11 September. US is reportedly buying millions of tonnes of wheat to keep Afghanis from starving this winter, and Secretary of State Colin Powell speaks of Afghanistan representing "a terrible situation facing the world". Northern Alliance commanders are said to be stealing aid already given. Commander of the US forces in Afghanistan is General Tommy Franks.

15 November 2001, The Taliban says Osama bin-Laden and their leader, Mullah Omar, are both still alive and safe.

14 November 2001: Kabul taken with little resistance. Headlines in Australia: Taliban head for the hills and abandon Kabul. UN still recognises the Northern Alliance as legitimate government of Afghanistan. The Taliban had forced the Northern Alliance politicians from Kabul in 1996. (Northern Alliance held Kabul 1992-1996, during which time faction fights disturbed life and up to 50,000 people died). It is said in the Kabul money market of the old city that departing Taliban men had stopped in front of money-changing shops and simply taken goods and cash. Northern Alliance solders have meantime plundered former Taliban resources and killed captured Taliban men by summary execution. It had earlier been feared that events were moving too slowly, now there is fear they are moving far too fast, and diplomats cannot cope.

28 October 2001, prior to: Australia: About 170 Iraqi asylum-seekers have hijacked an Indonesian ship, KM Sinar Bontang, and are forcing it to sail to Australia. The previous Monday, a boat carrying Middle Easterners hoping to find refuge in Australia has sunk with the drowning of more than 350 people. (Reported 28 October 2001)

13 October 2001: President Bush in US warns nation that more terror attacks may be imminent and offers the Taliban regime another chance to end air attacks in Afghanistan if they will hand over bin-Laden.

13 October 2001: Claims arise in US that clamp-downs on news/propaganda will now rob US of much of its cherished press freedom. Oddly enough, it is said that the US has asked the Emir of Qatar (earlier reported as funding al-Jazeera TV station), to crack down on al-Jazeera's broadcasts since authorities of Qatar said they were powerless to interfere with press freedom. Kabul it is said by now is as dysfunctional a city as Mogadishu in Somalia; and in both Somalia and Afghanistan, problems arise with a sick economy, warlords, and religious-motivated terrorism. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman fulminates: bin-Laden is a man whose only vision is hate, his impact in history will be like a footprint in sand. Bin-Laden is a hijacker of Islam and other people's technology; etc.

13 November, 2001: bin-Laden denies knowledge of matters connected to anthrax contamination in US. One of the Northern Alliance leaders/warlords is General Rashid Dostum, active at the now-fallen city of Mazar-e-Sharif. A top-level meeting has been conducted in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, California, between movie industry executives and US government advisers on propaganda themes which could be used in future productions to boost US morale both at home and overseas.

13 November 2001: Kabul, The Arabic TV station of Doha, Qatar, recipient of videos from bin-Laden and associates, al-Jazeera, finds its Kabul office hit by four US bombs, after 38 days of safety, and despite the TV station having given its precise location to US forces, to avoid being hit. Al-Jazeera is easing off its relationship with CNN in the US. (Reported in Australia by 2 February 2002)

13 November, 2001, Northern Alliance Forces take Kabul, rather quickly. Taliban slipped away in the night, evidently taking with them eight aid workers including two Australians.

11 November 2001, A British newspaper reports that Osama bin-Laden admits responsibility for 11 September attacks. A major new US and Northern Alliance offensive on Taliban in the north of Afghanistan; fear of tribal alliances may mean Northern Alliance is not encouraged to enter Kabul.

10 November 2001: Controversy continues internally in Australia re government policy on the handling of boat-travelling asylum seekers to north-western Australia, the views of Australian naval officers dealing with the asylum seekers, and the truth of allegations concerning the boat named Sumber Lestari. Naval men complain about unprecedented government restrictions on their speaking to the media. ("The role that sickens our loyal sailors"). Meantime, Indonesia's chief political and security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, pledges his government will end people-smuggling.
As for Australia's existing detention centres for asylum-seekers, according to a prisons-watchdog organisation in Western Australia, the nation's detention centres are appalling, a disgrace, and any riots are due to bad conditions.
Note: For statistics relevant to the argument about Australia's willingness or not to accept asylum-seekers, see Sydney Morning Herald, 27-28 October 2001, pages 34-35. (All this, by the way, is as if Australians have entirely forgotten, or never knew, that for Europeans, Australia" began as a not-particularly-happy dumping ground for convicts transported from Britain in, of all things, ships!! Convicts then to be guarded! - Ed)

10 November 2001: US foreign policy-makers lash out at Yassar Arafat for doing too little to stop terrorism in the Palestine-Israeli wrangle. In this context, the Saudi-Arabian government is reportedly "angrily frustrated" that the US will not begin a promised new peace initiative in the Middle East, nor meet Arafat. In the Palestine-Israel area, Israel suggests it has uncovered a plot for the assassination of Israeli Cabinet minister Danny Naveh and his family.

10 November 2001: TV news: bin-Laden admits he has nuclear and chemical weapons and is prepared to use them. Northern Alliance moving south achieves some breaks in Taliban lines. Views arise in US that mail-based anthrax