Ex-Taliban chief details Massood slaying

[maddezmom]

KABUL, Afghanistan - The beat-up video camera was delivered to Afghanistan in a box, and picked up by two clean-shaven Arabs posing as journalists. They met with Osama bin Laden before leaving on their mission — to kill mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood.

Five years after the Taliban opponent was slain by a bomb hidden in the camera, a former Taliban official on Saturday described how al-Qaida staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance.

Waheed Mozhdah, director of the then-Taliban Foreign Ministry's Middle East and Africa department, also showed The Associated Press a copy of what he said was a signed letter dated Sept. 13, 2001, from bin Laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, urging him to launch an offensive against the alliance.

In the letter, written in Arabic, bin Laden said that if America failed to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, it would decline as a superpower. But if the U.S. started fighting, he added, its economy would suffer a major blow and it would face the same destiny as the Soviet Union — whose ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan heralded its disintegration.

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060910/ap_on_re_as/afghan_killing_massood

[greyl]

1. Very interesting, I hadn't heard of this. I found a peculiar article

from 2003:

Journalists commonly attribute the murder either to al Qaeda or to the Taliban. {2} That seems logical enough. Massoud's United Front was fighting a war against the Taliban at the time. The Taliban were in turn protecting al Qaeda, an organization blamed for a number of sophisticated terrorist attacks, including those on 9/11. Simple as these explanations may be, Massoud's murder has never been solved. The details of the assassination, which included an explosive charge disguised as a battery pack for a video camera, the acquisition of stolen passports, and the death of both assassins, at different times and by different means -- suggest a sophisticated conspiracy. Dead men tell no tales, and in this case, neither have the living. The Taliban, for their part, have denied any involvement in Massoud's death.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/

edit: highlighting quote from article in OP:

described how al-Qaida staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance.

[maddezmom]

2. another interesting tidbit from your link

Although Massoud had cast his lot with Russia and Iran, he was no stranger to the US State Department. According to United Front veterans I interviewed, <6> Massoud met on several occasions with Robin Rafael, the American Deputy Foreign Minister for the East, between 1996 and 1998. Apparently, Commander Massoud was extremely angry after his final meeting with Rafael, who'd suggested in the meeting that his best option might be to surrender to the Taliban. At the time, Massoud's forces had retreated into the rugged Panjshir valley, and the Taliban controlled some 95% of Afghanistan. According to the story, Massoud threw his pakul -- a distinctive Afghan hat -- onto the table and pointed at it, announcing that as long as he controlled a territory that big, he would never surrender. Considered arrogant by his enemies, supporters describe Massoud as an independent Afghan nationalist incapable of taking orders from foreigners. Massoud would never have allowed foreign bases on Afghan soil, according to them.

[maddezmom]

3. googled Sayyaf: Suppressed UN Document: war criminals—not “freedom fighter

Suppressed UN Document: war criminals—not “freedom fighters”—hold some top posts in Afghanistan
Posted on Wednesday, September 6, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.
SourcesOne of the grim realities involved in establishing a government in post-Taliban Afghanistan was that just about anybody who's anybody in that country had blood on his hands. While the Bush Administration sought to paint its Northern Alliance allies as freedom fighters, many of the leading figures in the Mujahideen coalition that captured Kabul in late 2001 were bona fide war criminals.

For nearly two years, the United Nations has been holding up the release of a major report that chronicles Afghanistan's history of human rights abuses stretching back to 1978. According to a story published three months ago in the Guardian, the report was scheduled for release in January 2005, but “has been delayed repeatedly due to sensitivities over identifying former warlords still in positions of power.”

The Guardian obtained a copy of the report, but to my knowledge no other media outlet has done so, and suppression by the UN has received virtually no attention on this side of the Atlantic. I recently secured a copy of the report (296-page PDF), and it's easy to see why publishing it could lead to embarrassment. It identifies current and former cabinet ministers, members of parliament, and highly-placed members of the Afghan National Army as having played leading roles in past atrocities. (The report details vile atrocities committed by pro-Soviet and Taliban leaders as well.)

The honor roll includes:

~snip~
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a powerful member of parliament and ally of Hamid Karzai, was one of the earliest of the men to take up arms against the Soviets. In this period, he also reportedly mentored 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The UN report cites a former military commander who said that prior to the Afshar massacre, Sayyaaf told his men, “Don't leave anyone alive—kill all of them.”

more: http://harpers.org/sb-suppressed-un-afghanistan-1157555989.html

[pretzel4gore]

4. oh ferchrissake! i did it....

if one follows the twisted logic of who did what to whom for whatever reason and when, one gets lost and it's best to clear the air, for me just to confess: i did the goddam deed, so shut the fukk up and concentrate on the bush criminals who are overthrowing representative government in humanity's biggest investment (the usa) as we speak! PLEASE! after bush and his horny henchmen ie coultergriest etc, are hanged, yall can come and get me (for planning the death of poor mr massood)
this no criticism of you maddzemon; but of the media who have the energy to quote an 'ex taliban' leader in a way that says bush=good guy when they ignore the downing street miniutes, judy miller, david horowitz, the pnac etc...

[maddezmom]

5. not sure who you want to shut the fukk up

:shrug: me, the press, Waheed Mozhdah?

[pretzel4gore]

6. not you maddezmom...you got caught in the xfire

it's good to know all this stuff: i recall mr massood, who was a dynamic, popular guy who cared about his people, not to exclusion of anyone. he reminded me of general omar torrijos of panama, a man whom the book 'getting to know the general' by graham green was written about...manuel norriega was reputedly the person who put the bomb on torrijos plane...
http://countrystudies.us/panama/53.htm
this kind of dirty tricks are usa staples dealing with poor countries - regardless of how decent these men were, they were murdered, and the only real beneficiary was the usa, supposedly, which uses its control of media to hide the details and then selectively expose guilty parties who...maybe not guilty at all! i posted before realizing how it would be read...and tried to fix but...
>so not even waheed mozhdah- but the media who used guys like that to serve/protect bush and co.....
another name springs to mind in same vein is general lebed of russia, and general Romy Schneider of chile and Paul Wellstone though obviously Lebed had nothing to do with bushinc, it still was of the pattern as seen in the others...

[maddezmom]

7. gotcha

:hug:

[acmavm]

8. bin Ladin really has to get a code name and stop signing his letters

with his real one.

He should know we find them all. Can't find him but sure as hell can get our hands on his correspondence.

:sarcasm:

[Eugene]

9. So everybody's doing 5th anniversary specials?

Al Quada releases a behind-the-scenes look at the 9/11 hijackers
and now here comes the Teliban. I'll accept them as genuine, but
they has "propaganda play" written all over it.

I'm sorry but this raised just one red flag too many.

[MrPrax]

10. OBL's day planner was stacked that week!

Sept 9: Assassinate head of Northern Alliance
Sept 11: Start war with United States
Sept 12: Look for a new Cave in Pakistan...

Was Massood's killing done to preparation of an invasion and who's?

Since the Taliban were already at war with Massoud's United Front, why would OBL have to write him to tell him to "urging him to launch an offensive against the alliance."

:shrug:

Here's Massoud giving an interview to Jane's Defense Weekly in June 2001. He talks about how the war is going and seems to feel he is winning?

Here's Massoud giving a press conference in August, 200o on how the war is going and whether negotiations were possible with the Taliban government.

Note his stand on women and their role in Afghanistan? He sounds like a guy we could have worked with inspite of his fierce nationalism and the fact he doesn't like the Taliban and their foreign buddies in Pakistan and AQ!

In fact, if he hadn't died -- we could have armed and supported his group, avoided invasion and got rid of the taliban with a more moderate guy, years before Sept. 11!

But if you re-call there WAS allegations (John O'Neill come on down) that it WAS the Bush Administration was negotiating with the taliban around the same time Cheney's Energy Taskforce was planning whatever it was they were planning:

Bush, oil and the Taliban
http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/02/08/forbidden/index.html">Salon


Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil Team
Global Research
911 Timeline for references

Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban - May 22, 2001
By Robert Scheer

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.

Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.
http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm">Robert Scheer

So early on in the Bush mandate you have all this activity between it and Afghanistan, inspite of the fact they are scumbags and inspite of the fact there was a healthy alternative struggling in the North to defeat them?

Clinton's to blame? Like hell...he attacked them with cruise missiles?

Bush got elected and tried to negotiate a pipeline deal with them and also awarded them 'aid' for their tough 'war on drugs' stand?


Oddly enough Pakistan, who just signed a ceasefire with the Taliban elements in Pakistan, just killed another guy who hates the AQ and taliban just last week: Bugti

Is this assassination the beginning of a larger regional action as well?