Terrorists are nurturing plans to overthrow constitutional power in the countries of the region. This seems far bigger than anyone is letting on and means the war has not yet begun.
This might also explain why China is poised to enter the war in Afghanistan
China may also announce plans to send peacekeepers to Afghanistan during the Berlin meeting, sources said. At present, China has just one security personnel in Afghanistan , who is a drug buster. #msg-2707685
Although an ally of bin Laden and the Taliban, China, in addition, is worried about the prospect of an Islamic uprising among its millions of Muslim citizens.
Among Osama’s plethora of projects were his agricultural holdings, which included cotton farms. Xinjiang with its large Muslim influence is the largest cotton producing area in China and borders the area where Osama was once believed to have hidden, the Whkhan corridor.
Moreover as far back as 2001 bin Laden was reported to have sought refuge in the vast and remote area of Muslim western China. -Am
Afghanistan: Return of the jihadis By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - With the onset of summer and the ice now melting in the mountains of Afghanistan, the most organized global struggle yet of the International Islamic Front partners has begun to defeat the United States and coalition forces at their hub in Afghanistan.
The early manifestations of this can already be seen in Uzbekistan, where a series of terror attacks over the past few days have left more than 40 people dead, and in the foiled terror attacks in Britain and the Philippines. But the real battlefield is Afghanistan, where Pakistan, already the world's backyard of radical Islam, will play an important role.
The Uzbek struggle Events in Uzbekistan, including suicide attacks and culminating in a shootout on Tuesday, are the bloodiest wave of violence to hit the former Soviet republic since it enlisted as a key US ally in the "war on terrorism" soon after the 2001 September 11 attacks. A US air base there proved an important strategic asset in the US aerial attacks on Afghanistan.
Some reports have blamed the Hizb ut-Tahrir, but this is unlikely to be the case, as this group, although committed to the overthrow of existing political regimes and their replacement with a caliphate, has traditionally been non-violent.
Rather, the violence in Uzbekistan is much more likely to be linked to Afghanistan and the struggle that is to be played out there in the coming months.
Pakistan's Central Asia connection In the development of Islamic radicalism in Uzbekistan, the "Naqshband" circle of Sufis emerged as an underground network during Soviet rule in opposition to the Soviet system. These Sufis believed in militancy against "tyrant" rulers. The network's first contact with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) came when the Sufis began resistance operations against the Soviets after the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
In collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the ISI actively assisted the militants, and also devised a strategy to take the struggle back to USSR soil, apart from Afghanistan.
The go-between for this was the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now once again spearheading operations in Afghanistan. The HIA helped spread the revolutionary literature of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Central Asian republics. The aim was not to convert ordinary Muslims, but to recruit revolutionaries who would attack the Soviet system from within their own regions, including Uzbekistan. These operations were launched in the mid and late 1980s, and over the years a whole new generation has evolved committed to underground operations. They are not an isolated community, like the Pakistani tribals, who are easily identified with their links to militants. This new generation of militants is part and parcel of Central Asian urban culture, and like any secret agents, they are not easily identifiable.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan army established a special intelligence cell within the HIA for which Pakistanis and Afghans were trained. All of the Pakistanis were ISI operators. However, after 1989, at the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the HIA began to work independently and it absorbed many Arabs into the intelligence cell, as well as Central Asian youths. These were sent to training camps in Afghanistan, where they were drilled by Arab instructors. The Central Asian recruits, therefore, forged good ties with many Arabs. In the early 1980s Afghanistan also served as a testing ground for Pakistani dictator Zia ul-Haq's vision, along with his chief spy master, then Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdul Rehman (later a full general), for an international Islamic brigade. This matured into Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front, a loose umbrella front for organizations that include al-Qaeda and independent cells in Central Asia comprising militants nurtured by the CIA-ISI nexus and trained in the HIA's Afghanistan camps.
In this context, the terror in Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan, cannot be seen in isolation, rather as the beginning of a new jihad in Afghanistan that will tap into resources, especially those in Central Asia, developed over many years.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Chinese nationals visited Osama bin Laden terrorist camps in Afghanistan after a U.S. cruise-missile attack there in 1998 and paid for the right to study and remove unexploded missiles.
To go back to the fateful morning of September 11, 2001, the author Gordon Thomas says a Chinese aircraft landed in Kabul on that same day carrying a high-ranking delegation of Chinese officials who came to sign contracts to provide the Taliban authorities with state-of-the-art electronic defense equipment. It is not known whether those equipment was delivered because in October 2001 the US launched a massive military strike against Afghanistan, which overthrew the Taliban and sent Osama bin Laden and his soldiers into hiding.
If Bin Laden made it to the vast and remote area of Muslim western China he would, at least, be safe from the Americans, who would not be able to launch any military action there to catch him.
But it is unlikely that China would welcome him. The regime is worried about the prospect of an Islamic uprising among its millions of Muslim citizens. China who supports bin Laden would not welcome him for fear of an Islamic uprising but this suggests that China would be aware of Osama’s infiltration which may not be the case. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1556541.stm #msg-2487990
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