Benjamin C. Works, Executive Director

--Celebrating Chaos Theory Since 1990--

_

SIT 8-13; Thursday. August 13, 1998

"Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority... and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre."

- Edmund Burke; Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790

Timing is everything, not just to terrorists, but to governments and to leaders in predicaments as well. Last Friday, two bombs went off in the capitals of Kenya and Tanzania, slaughtering over 250 souls, including 12 Americans. A few details are beginning to emerge that are of particular interest from a SIRIUS point of view.

1. The US Embassy system has not routinely videotaped from its surveillance cameras despite bomb attacks in Beirut, Oklahoma City and elsewhere and despite the universal and inexpensive nature of that technology --this is the "non-existent" black box on Ron Brown's Air Force-Two all over again and indefensible.

2 The Dar Es Salaam bomb was remotely controlled. In Nairobi "swarthy" men tried using hand grenades and small arms fire to get the bomb into an underground garage which would have caused a greater disaster inside the embassy. We do not know who got away in the Nairobi incident, but we see two different delivery methods. The fact that both bombs exploded mere minutes apart demonstrates thorough preparation and a high degree of professionalism. These bombers were not kamikazes as with Beirut in 1983 and with Hamas suicide bombers in Israel. In the Al Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi, the bombers also got away and left a very scant trail.

3. These bombs are reported to have the characteristics of "clean" plastic explosive devices as opposed to very dirty fuel-fertilizer bombs, as with the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombs. We all suspect Czech Semtex of the pre-Havel, odorless type which was shipped to many supporters of terrorist groups back in the Soviet days --the IRA, Libya, Syria and others had ample supplies and much was traded into the black market. Thus, Semtex by itself allows us to conclude very little of and by itself, as to specific groups or sponsors. I will say though that Syria is not on the list of suspects as it has rigorously adhered to agreements made during the Bush Administration.

It is likely the bombers will have gotten clean away and that the audit trail from the pieces of the bomb, etc. will be inconclusive. As our FBI and other experts demonstrate their expertise on TV and in the papers, the other side learns what it must do to sanitize the evidence. It would not be surprising that the two different bombs even have entirely different construction in order to further complicate the evidentiary process. A clear audit trail leading back to Iran's ayatollahs or even directly to Osama bin Laden is not very likely, though I agree his cabal of fundamentalists are the likely perpetrators. This international network of fundamentalist terrorists does not need a direct government sponsor if it has money and kindred spirits in the many countries of the Maghreb, Middle East and Southwest Asia.

If the audit trail back to Osama's friends could be proved, it still means little in that he is in remote Afghanistan. And since his factions control no countries, there are no prime targets or "centers of gravity" for our armed forces to hit with cruise missiles or other attack platforms.

4. The Pentagon and State Department were very slow to demonstrate that they were interested in all the victims in Kenya and Tanzania and very slow getting emergency search and medical teams to the site. The US is not prepared; Israel was and scored a publicity coup by having its rubble search and rescue team on site while US Army personnel were just beginning to off load the first medical supplies out at the airport. The Air Force's much touted Emergency Medevac-Hospital package, designed for chemical and biological weapons disasters never got into business and local Red Cross personnel were on site more than 36 hours before our uniformed personnel arrived in any number. This was bad time management for the Pentagon.

This last point was a signal disgrace to the Pentagon and to CENTCOM, which considers Kenya as part of its operational territory. Fifty years ago, when the Berlin Airlift began, Air Force and other commands just began operations on their own initiative while seeking higher authority in order to expand the mission in its first week. Today, the Pentagon does not seem to encourage local or even Dept. of Defense initiative for sending out emergency medical and rescue teams. Yet it would not be hard or expensive to maintain a set of such teams either at the Pentagon, or through a non-uniformed agency such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) or the State Department itself --civilian teams are a bit more flexible and less expensive in short operations and do not count as "casualties" in the newspapers when they get injured or accidentally killed.

5. The bodies of 10 American military and civilian personnel were evacuated to Germany by early Monday, yet were held there --and away from their bereaved families-- for three days so Mme Albright could make a well-publicized but dilatory journey to Germany to provide a personal escort. Thus, she delivered the remains on Thursday where and when President Clinton could be present for the arrival without upsetting his busy fundraising schedule in California. This means that the funeral coverage will continue into the weekend, smothering the President's preparations for his interrogation by Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr next Monday. This is excellent opportunistic time management for Mr. Clinton and the Media did not call attention to this unheard of delay in returning bodies to their survivors.

Fortunately, one family, for some reason, chose not to play into the White House game. Air Force Senior Master Sargeant Sherry Lynn Olds' remains were flown home on Wednesday, but other service personnel are among those being given special handling by Albright and Clinton. Our leaders are not attending to more serious matters of international importance, such as Saddam's renewed uncooperativeness, the Congo mess, the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, the Cyprus confrontation or the Kosovo insurrection and Geg Albanian threat to the Balkans, and Clinton goes from Starr's inquiry to vacation and on to Moscow and Ireland through Sept. 5^th.

There is a ripe irony in this dispatch from a newsletter published by AIR SECURITY International. It seems that 44 Iranis are playing hostages for Taliban and that Iran has to protect a foreign embassy from its own activists:

HOT SPOTS 8/12/98

- Protesters Attempt to Enter Pakistani Embassy In Tehran -

An estimated 150 protesters tried to make their way into the Pakistani Embassy in Tehran today to demand the release of 11 Iranian diplomats, an Iranian news agency correspondent and 32 Iranian truck drivers allegedly captured in Afghanistan. Riot police were called in as scuffles developed between embassy guards and protesters attempting to enter the embassy. Protesters quickly dispersed soon after police surrounded the embassy building.

© AIR SECURITY International, 1998

About Taliban, they currently have the opposition forces of General Dostan on the run and appear poised to exert effective control over most of the country, thanks to substantial backing from the Pakistani Army.

Like Sudan, Niger and some other colonial agglomerations, Afghanistan "is not a country, but a geographical expression," as Metternich once observed of Italy. It comprises at least six major ethnic groups with differing languages and three major sects of Islam: Sunni, Shiite and Ismaili. Who controls Kabul, only controls Kabul. But Taliban is attempting to surmount these substantive differences by imposing a homogenized pan-ethnic Sunni fundamentalism that will, in the long run fail, as imposed universalisms always do. Such a homogenization is not a "lowest common denominator" that will satisfy peoples' real needs for survival, growth and development, it is only a means of standardizing an authoritarian rule.

But for now, Taliban is winning on the battlefield and their legal restrictions on women at work, eliminating television, prohibiting kite-flying, etc. seem tailored to deliberately annoy and provoke our NGO elites of the New World Order at the UN. In that they have succeeded nicely, and every pro-feminist pronouncement by Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Mary Richardson, and others has helped Taliban recruiting while not helping General Dostan's rebel army's cause. Now Russia is concerned that Taliban will support rebel factions in the former Soviet republics along its northern border.

About Osama, I reprint herewith a comment form a SIRIUS associate which appeared in the March 3rd issue of SIT as Osama does have some protectors within the reactionary wing of the Saudi Royal family.

"Osama ibn Laden is a Saudi fundamentalist closely aligned with Crown Prince Abdullah, and is staunchly anti-Western in all respects. He is well known within the Kingdom as a radical, and has, at one point, fomented actions against the Royal family. Because Saudi ibn Laden is one of the largest non-royal companies in the Kingdom, and Osama's friendship with Abdullah, they leave him be.

"Osama is friendly with the Iranian factions for global Islamic unity (an oxymoron, but there are those who will try), and is steering Saudi towards a more fundamentalist path through local Mullahs and contributions to Mosques.This is one character to watch from an intelligence perspective.

I agree and Osama has been suspected of complicity with (financial support of) the group that bombed our Air Force.personnel at the Al-Khobar Towers." (ICU-31 March 3, 1998, p. 4).

-- I note that "Islamic Unity" is a form of paradox, but not an oxymoron.

R Jeffrey Smith made a case in Wednesday's Washington Post that the link to the June arrest in Albania by the CIA of 4 Arab fundamentalists linked to bin Ladin may be a precipitating factor in the timing of these bombs. (His dispatch is attached to the end of this report for those interested in further details.) At the same time, the US was threatening Belgrade with potential air strikes if it did not "calm down" its attempts to suppress the KLA insurrection in Kosovo.

This puts Gegs of the KLA in de facto league with bin Laden against the USA and Kosovo's Albanians can hardly expect to enjoy American sympathy as that fact seeps into consciousness.

The US continues to issue generic warnings and general threats at Belgrade about unnecessary violence in its ongoing campaign against the KLA, but not much is happening other than contingency planning. The Gegs attempted to allege "mass grave" atrocities and other war crimes propaganda last week, but EU observers and responsible members of the Press promptly debunked these.

What is going on with these continued fights --at the height of harvest season-- is that the KLA is stampeding villagers and townspeople into the hills to maintain the appearance of ethnic cleansing and the Yugoslav police are ensuring that the harvest does not get properly gathered in. This is not quite the level of Sheridan in the Shenandoah or Sherman marching through Georgia, but it is a legitimate anti-insurrectionist stratagem to assure a rebel army an uncomfortable winter season. In the Kosovo case, international relief will ameliorate the situation for the refugees and most will be able to go home, but they may look forward to a winter that is something less than comfortable.

That raises this question on how to prosecute even a necessary and "proper" war under the nose of the caring professionals of the UN. I wonder how an international war crimes tribunal would judge Sherman and Sheridan, who spared thousands of lives while burning barns and slaughtering livestock. Scorched earth is a legitimate tactic for a defender but appears as a war crime to civilians when practiced by an "aggressor" even if it is a force contending with a domestic insurrection Clausewitz observed the following:

"Kind-hearted people might, of course, think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst...

"This is how the matter must be seen. It would be futile - even wrong - to try to shut one's eyes to what war really is from sheer distress at its brutality."

- Clausewitz, On War, 1833; Ch. 1; M Howard & P Paret, Princeton, 1984, P. 75

It seems that the KLA still wants to fight a bit longer, but that other Geg political leaders are realizing that the Geg military uprising will not be supported by the international community.

© Copyright 1998 Benjamin C. Works-SIRIUS

By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Foreign Service

Wednesday, August 12, 1998; Page A19

TIRANA, Albania, Aug. 11÷A raid conducted here in late June by security personnel from the United States and Albania against an alleged cell of an Islamic terrorist organization evidently went off like clockwork.

Two suspected employees of the wealthy Saudi expatriate Osama Bin Laden were arrested by the Albanians, and the Americans who were present took custody of a van load of documents and computer gear.

But a serious problem cropped up almost immediately afterward: The euphoric Albanians leaked a sketchy account of the raid, including an accurate statement about the CIA's prominent role in its planning, to Albania's largest circulation newspaper. By the time a second raid was

conducted two weeks later -- in which two more suspects were arrested -- any hope of keeping Washington's fingerprints away from the operation had died.

A possible connection between this sequence of events and last Friday's bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania has provoked officials here and in Washington to begin investigating whether the attacks might have been revenge by Bin Laden's organization for the CIA's role in the arrest of four of its alleged members here.

The gravity of the inquiry is demonstrated by the fact that several senior U.S. intelligence officials have quietly visited here in the past several days to pursue the matter, according to local sources who said they could not provide details.

One reason for Washington's interest is that several Arabic newspapers considered close to Islamic radicals had complained before the bombings that the suspects -- who are Egyptian nationals -- were taken out of Albania by the CIA and subsequently turned over to anti-terrorist officials in Egypt.

Officials note that Bin Laden, who reportedly now resides in Afghanistan, has not claimed credit for organizing the bombings. But he was quoted in July by one newspaper as saying that U.S. decision-makers needed to be taught not to battle "the Islamic nation." Several independent Western security experts also say they suspect Bin Laden may have struck an alliance with Islamic militants linked to the Egyptian-based Jihad group, which had faxed a statement to news organizations before the bombings threatening retaliation for the four arrests.

The publicity has cast an unusual spotlight on the CIA-Albanian operation, which was meant to undercut the use of this economically poor and generally lawless country as a safe haven and base of operations by Bin Laden's alleged accomplices. The State Department previously has

described Bin Laden, a former construction magnate, as "one of the most significant sponsors of Sunni Islamic terrorist groups" and accused him of establishing terrorist cells in Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Tajikistan. But it has not drawn any public link to activities in Albania.

During the early 1990s, some Albanian government officials established close ties with radical Muslims, but more recently the official policy has been to oppose the establishment of such groups, said a U.S. official here. Roughly 65 percent of Albania's 3 million or so citizens are Muslim, but most do not adhere to strict Islamic religious and social guidelines, officials say.

The ease with which Albania could be penetrated, however, was demonstrated when each of the four men arrested entered the country without proper documents and worked and traveled widely here, several local sources said. At least one, Ahmed Ibrahim Nagar, 35, was wanted by the Egyptian government on charges of involvement in a previous terrorist attack.

At the home of another man, religious scholar Maged Mostafa, 36, security officials found a bag of faked documents and official Albanian government stamps needed to get past customs and police checkpoints, certify legal documents and otherwise circumvent an already shaky government security apparatus, the sources said.

"We found evidence of illicit activity in Albania . . . and so we declared them persona non grata," said an official here, explaining the government's decision to release each suspect to CIA custody and allow them to leave the country without formal extradition papers.

Other details of their activities in Albania, including how and why they first came to the CIA's attention, remain shrouded in mystery. But at least three of those arrested --Mohamed Fouda, 39, an accountant; Muhamed Hasan, 38, an engineer; and Mostafa-- once were associated with an independent Islamic charitable organization that official sources here say provided a useful cover for the men's alleged efforts on behalf of Bin Laden.

The organization, the Islamic Revival Foundation, aids poor Muslim families and orphans in Albania, said employees interviewed at two central offices in apartment buildings here. But the foundation also is closely linked with several other Islamic charitable and educational organizations located in Tirana and other Albanian cities, and it obtains all its funds from the

same source they do: a group known as the Kuwait Joint Relief Committee.

Several officials of the group, who asked not to be identified, said the local office spends tens of thousands of dollars each month in Albania that it obtains from private Kuwaiti citizens and funnels through a Kuwait bank.

The committee also has offices in Somalia, Djibouti, Bosnia and Bangladesh, and finances a sizable Islamic educational institute in the city of Elbasan, 25 miles southeast of here, they said.

Hasan, one of those arrested in July, had directed the foundation for the past four years from a third-floor office in a new apartment building in a Tirana suburb called Laprake. The office is closed now, one of at least five sites raided by members of SHIK, the Albanian secret police, and a group of "English-speaking men with translators," according to one employee.

Mostafa had directed the group's orphans project until he quit several months ago, while Fouda had managed the group's books in the same office as Hasan, another employee said.

"I'm not believing these accusations," said Muhammed Abdul-Kereem, who now directs the aid to orphans. He added that "we are not taking advantage of the humanitarian assistance to make some other things," and said that the United States is powerful enough to have fabricated evidence against the group's members.

Hasan's job temporarily has been filled by Ibrahim Meki, a citizen of Sudan who has directed the educational institute for several years. Located in four buildings surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire, the institute has a sign on its guardhouse stating that only five cars are

allowed to pass the gate, including four listed as holding Kuwaiti diplomatic license plates.

According to Sulejman Kurani, the institute's general secretary, its professors are from Sudan, Syria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Kurani said it has donated $80,000 to help refugees in the northern Albanian town of Tropoje -- a town that also is a key locus of arms stockpiling and

smuggling by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla group fighting to win Kosovo's independence from Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

"We have no links with fundamentalist sects," Kurani said. But officials say the activities of these interlocking groups are still being investigated by the Albanian secret police, and one added, "It is still early in this matter."

Since a government ban on religious observances was lifted in 1991, the number of Albanian Muslims has increased, "but not in the sense of being more fundamentalist," a senior Albanian official said.

A former senior government official cautioned, however, that "for years this has been a topic to be worried and definitely looked at closely."

© Copyright 1998 by The Washington Post