Today's Afghan News:
Bombs Injure Two at Afghan Election Office
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
15 July 2005 -- Afghan police say two bombs exploded at an election commission office in the northeast city of Khost, injuring two policemen.
The first blast late Thursday destroyed the office, which was housed in a mosque. Police say a second bomb exploded minutes later as investigators reached the area.
Reports say an attempt at a similar attack failed last week. Police discovered that device and defused it.
Pakistan: U.S.-Led Forces Kill 24 Militants Near Afghan Border
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
15 July 2005 -- Pakistan's military says U.S.-led forces have killed 24 suspected Islamic militants on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border.
Major-General Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's military spokesman, said the fighting occurred late Thursday.
He said Pakistani troops recovered the bodies of the 24 men near Alwara Mandi, a small market town in the North Waziristan tribal region. He said he believes the fighters crossed into Pakistan after being engaged by U.S. troops.
He said the Pakistan army was n-o-t involved in the operation.
There has been no comment on the report from the United States military.
Militants from Afghanistan's former Taliban militia have increased attacks in the south and east of Afghanistan in recent months, prior to parliamentary elections set for September.
24 bodies of Taliban suspects found in Pakistani tribal area
ISLAMABAD, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani troops Friday found 24 bodies of Taliban suspects who were killed in an overnight fighting with the US-led coalition forces inside Afghanistan, saida military spokesman.
Major General Shaukat Sultan was quoted by Pakistan TV as saying that the bodies were found near Alwara Mandi, a small market town in the North Waziristan tribal agency.
He said the suspected Taliban fighters were killed on Thursday night in fighting with the coalition forces and Afghan troops. Enditem
Top US official denies Afghanistan military quagmire
This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio.
Friday, 15 July , 2005 08:23:00 / Reporter: Michael Rowland
TONY EASTLEY: As 150 Australian SAS troops prepare to leave for Afghanistan, America's top general is being forced to deny claims that Afghanistan is becoming a military quagmire.
General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says coalition troops are not being bogged down by rebel attacks, although he warns that Taliban fighters will become much more active as they try and disrupt September's parliamentary elections.
Washington Correspondent Michael Rowland.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: In a rare appearance at Washington's Foreign Press Centre, General Myers, was keen to underline the multinational nature of Operation Enduring Freedom.
RICHARD MYERS: The coalition in Afghanistan is strong, with 40 nations involved in Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO's international security assistance force in Kabul in the north and the west of that country.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: But it's a force about to be seriously tested.
RICHARD MYERS: As we have seen consistently in Afghanistan and Iraq as you get close to elections, that those who do not want free and fair elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, you see an increase in the violence. I mean, that's just been the typical pattern. And we anticipate that in Afghanistan.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: While General Myers believes the terror group al-Qaeda doesn't pose a credible threat in Afghanistan, bands of committed Taliban rebels certainly do. Echoing comments by the Prime Minister John Howard earlier in the week, America's top military officer says all coalition troops in Afghanistan will be at much greater risk between now and the September elections.
RICHARD MYERS: Certainly there are remnants of Taliban – well-trained, good fighters, been fighting for a long time, very capable – that are currently pretty much staying to the hills, but they will try to disrupt things.
They haven't been able to disrupt things yet. They are certainly no stronger today, in fact weaker today than they've been ‘cause we've kept the pressure on them both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, so they're not any stronger.
So my guess is the impact on the parliamentary and provincial elections in Afghanistan will be virtually nil, it'll be like last time, they'll be successful.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Even if the elections succeed, there's a growing danger of coalition troops becoming bogged down in Afghanistan, just as many critics suggest they are in Iraq. As General Myers noted the Taliban rebels are proving particularly resourceful and particularly deadly, as the shooting down of a US helicopter proved late last month. Sixteen US soldiers died in that incident and 35 have died so far this year. But don't mention the word quagmire to General Myers.
RICHARD MYERS: I think the 25-million citizens in Afghanistan that are going to go to the polls in September would tell you that no, Afghanistan is not a quagmire.
I mean, the last person to use quagmire and Afghanistan in the same voice was another reporter about two weeks before, about a week before Kabul fell. This was within 30 days of US forces arriving, so quagmire is overused, I think, a little bit.
TONY EASTLEY: General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that report from Michael Rowland.
Afghan leaders honored
By Gail Scott / THE WASHINGTON TIMES / July 15, 2005
The contrast couldn't have been more striking as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, looking chic in a bright pink suit, presented the prestigious National Endowment for Democracy award Wednesday to a quiet Afghan woman dressed all in black and pulling her head scarf close.
In the softly lighted room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, with Afghan Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad and State Department Under Secretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky standing nearby, Sakena Yacoobi explained how her Afghan Institute for Learning has annually helped more than 350,000 women and children improve their literacy, vocational and micro-enterprise skills in war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan during the past decade.
"Our women are blossoming," Miss Yacoobi said. "Before they came to [us], many were so traumatized, abused and frightened they did not even speak." Afterward, she noted, it was not unusual for her charges to run centers for as many as 800 students.
"Education is the key for democracy, and we are changing the life of Afghan women," affirmed Miss Yacoobi, who was forced to go underground to continue training women during the Taliban era. "We are going to show the world that we are the winners."
Sens. John McCain and Paul Sarbanes presented NED awards to two additional Afghan winners, Mohammad Nasib and Sarwar Hussaini, who, along with Miss Yacoobi, had met earlier in the day with President Bush. Their moving acceptance speeches won instant standing ovations.
Mr. Nasib is the managing director of the Welfare Association for Development of Afghanistan, whose work to improve civic education in rural areas always stresses how democracy is a system compatible with traditional Afghan values.
"After you are afraid for 25 to 30 years, you adapt," Mr. Nasib said. "If you continue to be scared, the [enemies of democracy] are going to win."
"At the beginning, there was little hope, no light at the end of the tunnel," Mr. Hussaini said of his group of Afghan intellectuals who created the Cooperation Center for Afghanistan in 1990 to protect human rights, sovereignty and the integrity and historical values of Afghanistan.
It was Mr. Jawad who summed up the crucial importance of his brave countrymen's work. "They have not only supported democracy in Afghanistan," he said, "they are investing in global security for us all."
Afghan basketball star Sabrina takes brave shot for democracy
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul / The Telegraph (UK) / July 15, 2005
When she slips off her veil and dons Nike trainers for her daily basketball game at a Kabul gym, Sabrina Sagheb is already challenging many orthodoxies of Afghan society.
She will challenge many more when she becomes the youngest woman to stand in Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections on Sept 18.
The 25-year-old with a talent for shooting hoops will contest a seat in the lower house, the Wolesi Jirga.
This is a courageous decision in a country where it is still socially unacceptable in many areas for women to leave home without the company of a male relative and the anonymity of a burkha.
Moreover, Miss Sagheb will campaign on a platform of liberal reform and equality for the sexes. She hopes to make the wearing of the burkha a matter of choice for all women and advocates an end to forced marriages.
"I want basic human rights for men and for women," she said, adding that her parents will let her choose a husband.
Some 5,805 candidates have been declared eligible to contest the first post-Taliban parliamentary polls. A total of 2,778 candidates will stand for the 249-seat lower house and 3,027 in provincial councils. Some 583 women will run.
The elections have already been postponed from April and will take place against a background of mounting Taliban violence and instability.
Miss Sagheb is the minimum legal age for candidacy. In a country where female literacy is 14 per cent she is exceptional in being a fluent English speaker and a university graduate.
She escaped the Taliban bar on female education because her family fled to the relative permissiveness of Iran. Despite her youth, she is already the head of the Afghan Basketball Federation and an International Olympic Committee representative.
Every day, after work for an international NGO, she heads for the basketball court.
There are so few women players that she must sometimes resort to playing with schoolboys half her age. That in itself is controversial. If she were to play alongside grown men, it might attract death threats from conservatives.
Shaima Reyazee, a 24-year-old presenter on an MTV-style channel which was repeatedly denounced by the religious establishment for its western attitudes, was murdered in her Kabul home in May.
Two months earlier she was forced to quit Tolo TV under pressure from the mullahs. She was the only female presenter and appeared with her hair uncovered.
Miss Sagheb acknowledges that by standing she could face similar danger. She hopes that in the face of male aggression she can deploy less confrontational devices.
"Softness, kindness and subtlety are our weapons," she said. "In the office where I work the women have faced problems from male colleagues and we won our rights by using these means."
Other candidates include former Taliban leaders, who advocate strict adherence to Islamic Sharia law and the gender roles of Afghan cultural tradition.
Conservatives have been angered by the automatic allocation of 25 per cent of seats to women candidates following international pressure for greater representation of women.
"This is eating the rights of men," said Engineer Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai, a Wolesi Jirga candidate.
"We will never accept the interpretation of democracy in our Islamic republic that the West is trying to implement in Afghanistan."
A former Taliban commander who is standing for election but declined to be named, said: "We will give only those rights to women which are contained in Sharia law."
The list of candidates includes many people familiar to ordinary Afghans for their association with war crimes, the huge opium trade and the illegal militias that still proliferate.
Miss Sagheb hopes that the government and international community will enforce new election laws to throw such candidates off the ballot.
"I remember those crimes," she said. Like almost every Afghan, in a country at war for three decades, she is able to say: "I witnessed many with my own eyes."
The legitimacy of last year's presidential elections was diminished in the eyes of many Afghans when figures such as Rashid Dostum, a warlord accused of persistent human rights abuses, were allowed to stand.
Western diplomatic sources say there are at least 150 known commanders of illegal armed groups on the ballot.
Dangers of running for office in Afghanistan
Women see elections as a chance to promote their rights, but there are risks to putting their names forward.
Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
By Abdul Baseer Saeed in Kabul (WP No. 5, 14-Jul-05)
The threat came by telephone: “You have nominated yourself as a candidate. Your life is in danger, and this time your life is in our hands,” said a male voice.
Soraya Parlika was unruffled. As a leading women’s rights campaigner who heads the Afghanistan Women's Union, she said, “This kind of thing happens to me all the time.”
Parlika is now one of over 500 women standing for parliament in Afghanistan. The elections, scheduled for September 18, promise to be more than usually contentious - and for the women, more than usually hazardous.
Afghanistan's election law seems to smooth the path to parliament for women, guaranteeing them two seats from each of the country's 34 provinces.
But in the struggle between legislation and tradition, the latter seems to be gaining the upper hand. The most conservative elements of society believe that women have no business seeking power, and that it is against Islamic tradition.
Dr Shir Ali Zarifi of the Afghan Academy of Sciences says there are no religious bars preventing women from running for parliament. “Women can go to polls and run for the elections under the umbrella of Islam,” he said
But there have been numerous reports of threats against women, and some cases of actual violence. One candidate had her house burned down.
Sultan Ahmad Baheen, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which is helping with the election process, said it had not received reports of threats made against female candidates.
But 50 women have voluntarily withdrawn from the ballot citing security concerns, according to the Joint Electoral Management Body.
In spite of the difficulties, there are still many women who are ready to battle the odds.
Safia Sediqi lives in Kabul, but has nominated herself as a parliamentary candidate for Nangarhar province where she says she has many followers. She has no illusions about the difficulties women face in Nangarhar, a rural and mountainous region in the southeast, bordering Pakistan.
"Female candidates in Nangarhar face security and economic problems. We can neither hold meetings nor go to certain areas and it will be very difficult for some women candidates to launch election campaigns,” she said. “There are some women who are conducting their campaigns in burqas.”
Since women in more traditional areas are unable to leave the house without their husbands’ permission, Sediqi said her campaign will be a long slog of door-to-door visits, trying to reach her natural constituency.
But she said that she is determined to stand for a seat so as to be able to defend women's rights as well as serve her country.
Another aspiring politician, Malalai Shinwari, has done the opposite - she comes from Nangahar but is standing as a candidate in Kabul. She believes she would be defeated by traditional attitudes in her home province.
“If I nominated myself as a candidate in my birthplace Nangarhar, the traditions would create problems for me,” she said.
Saleha Olkar, who is running in Mazar-e-Sharif in the north of the country, said Afghan women have been held back by men, and most people believe they are incapable of achieving anything.
“I have nominated myself as a candidate to demonstrate to people that women, too, can defend their rights and serve their community,” she said.
Political analyst Habibullah Rafi says women have a right to be in parliament, and cites examples of them taking part in elected bodies in the past, for example the Loya Jirga or Grand Assembly convened by the reformer King Amanullah in 1928. During the long reign of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, from 1933 to 1973, women ran for both parliament and provincial councils.
But Rafi is opposed to the kind of control that foreigners seem to be exerting over the electoral process, and reserves particular ire for the United States.
“America has had democracy for 200 years, and during that time no woman has been nominated to the presidency, nor are there large numbers of women in the cabinet... so why are they imposing on others what they don't have or don't want?" he asked.
Male voters seem to be divided about having women on the ballot.
“People have experienced what men are capable of in past decades,” said Abdul Nasir, a Kabul resident. “It was nothing but destruction and looting. I’m going to vote for women because women were not involved in all this.”
Another man, Rahimullah, categorically rejects the idea of voting for a woman. “I don’t want to vote for women and I’ll tell my friends and relatives to vote for men, because men do what they say,” he said.
Fazil Hadi, also from Kabul, declared a plague on all politicians of either sex, saying, “Those who claim to represent the people are frauds whether they’re men or women. They have nominated themselves as candidates so as to make money, and that’s that.”
Abdul Baseer Saeed is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.
US finds escaped prisoners'
jumpsuits outside Afghan jail: source
Thu Jul 14, 4:00 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - US forces hunting four Arab militants who escaped from the heavily fortified American headquarters in Afghanistan have found the prisoners' discarded jumpsuits, a military source said.
The find outside the detention centre of the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul ends US military speculation the escapees could have been hiding somewhere inside the sprawling airfield.
"We found the orange jumpsuits they were wearing outside the detention centre," the US source told AFP on condition of anonymity. The centre is buried deep within the grounds of the air base.
"There were some elements that allowed them to escape and we fixed them," the military source added, without elaborating.
The circumstances of the escape, the first from Bagram, have still not been made public. The prisoners would had to have made their way past thousands of troops plus manned gateposts and barbed wire fences.
The prisoners have been identified as Abdullah Hashimi from Syria, Mehmood Ahmed Mohammed from Kuwait, Mehmood Alfathani from Saudi Arabia and Mohammed Hassan from Libya.
As Afghan and US forces searched for the men for a fourth day, a spokesman for the Taliban regime claimed to have located them and brought them to an undisclosed location within Afghanistan.
"The four prisoners who escaped Bagram prison are safe and are with us now. They joined mujahideen at 10:00 am today. They are in Afghanistan," Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP Thursday via telephone.
Hakimi has previously made inflated or untrue claims about clashes in Afghanistan between the Taliban and coalition forces.
US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O'Hara told AFP the search operation was still ongoing and the circumstances surrounding their escape were still under investigation.
General Mahboob Amiri, head of Afghanistan's police quick reaction force, told AFP that the search had moved to the Koh-i-Safi hills around Bagram.
Locals in the villages around Bagram told AFP that US troops had visited offering rewards, displaying the pictures of the detainees and appealing for information.
"They came here and gave their phone numbers and distributed pictures of the men," said Mohammed Alem, a 22-year-old farmer in Ghulam Ali village.
Bagram houses the majority of about 500 terror suspects held by US forces in Afghanistan.
The escape was a fresh blow to US forces in Afghanistan, coming less than two weeks after 19 soldiers were killed in the biggest single loss suffered by the American contingent in the country.
The Taliban and their allies are still waging an insurgency in the country's restive south and east which has left more than 600 people dead, most of them militants, since the start of the year.
'Pakistan connection' under scrutiny after London attacks
Fri Jul 15, 6:28 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - The London bombings have thrown the terror spotlight back on Pakistan, where Islamic militants continue to thrive despite a massive crackdown on Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
Analysts say extremism is alive and well in Pakistan and reports that three of last week's suicide bombers were British Muslims of Pakistani origin have not surprised security officials.
Pakistan has been at the heart of the "war on terror" since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and President Pervez Musharraf's decision to abandon Pakistan's support for Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.
"Pakistan has arrested more than 90 percent of the Al-Qaeda terrorists arrested worldwide and surely hundreds more are hiding here," an Islamabad-based senior security official said.
In 2002 Pakistan moved tens of thousands of troops into the lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, driving militants who had fled there after the US-led ouster of the Taliban into Pakistan's teeming cities.
Among the major scalps claimed by Pakistan was that of Kuwaiti Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11 and Al-Qaeda number three, arrested in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, in 2003.
His alleged successor, Libyan Abu Faraj Al-Libbi was picked up in Mardan, northwestern Pakistan in May this year.
And in 2004, Tanzanian Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, linked to the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in east Africa, was captured in central Gujrat city. A week before his arrest security agents also seized Pakistani Al-Qaeda computer expert Naeem Noor Khan.
Information gleaned from the pair's emails and computer records led to a worldwide terror alert and was described as a biggest coup against Al-Qaeda since 9/11 attacks.
It also resulted in the arrests of top Al-Qaeda suspects in Britain.
They included alleged kingpin Abu Eisa al Hindi, who travelled to the Pakistani tribal region in 2004 to attend an Al-Qaeda summit planning fresh attacks in Europe and United States, according to Pakistani officials.
But for all its successes, Pakistan has been unable to completely root out the menace of Al-Qaeda.
Analysts say militancy has survived the loss of official patronage and the Musharraf-led crackdown.
Most of the militants involved in the big recent terror attacks have passed through training camps in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, and while many have been shut down there are fears that a number are still active.
"Pakistan was the country which was being used to launch this jihad and these are remnants of the 9/11 attacks who are trying to fight back," security analyst Riffat Hussain, who heads the department of strategic studies at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University, told AFP.
The problem dates back to Pakistan's status as the springboard for the 1979-89 "jihad" or holy war fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Thousands of camps and hideouts were set up in Pakistan, sanctioned by Islamist dictator Zia-ul Hag and backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the military to train Islamic warriors to fight the Russians.
"This is the legacy of West-sponsored jihad against the Soviets and we are paying the price for having patronised jihad as a state policy for quarter of a century," a senior police official involved in the anti-terror campaign told AFP.
"Militants will go where training camps and likeminded people are. Still Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two places where Islamic militants can go and get motivation and sometime training," he said.
Analysts said Pakistan is fulfilling its part of the bargain as a frontline anti-terror state, and the West should understand that it will take time to tackle a problem that was created by the West itself.
"Pakistan deserve sympathy and consideration rather than condemnation and being maligned," said Hussain. "These are children of jihad who migrated from Pakistan and Afghanistan to different parts of the world," he said.
Musharraf acts on 'Taleban law'
BBC News / Friday, 15 July, 2005
Pakistan's federal government has begun moves to overturn a law introducing a Taleban-style moral code in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
President Pervez Musharraf has asked the Supreme Court to declare the new law unconstitutional and a breach of people's fundamental rights.
The law includes measures to ensure people respect calls to prayer and to discourage singing and dancing.
The NWFP government says it was mandated to pass the law when elected.
Vice and Virtue
"This law encroaches upon the constitution and it violated the fundamental rights of the people," Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan said in documents sent on Friday to the Supreme Court in Islamabad.
Mr Khan was acting on behalf of President Musharraf.
The court is due to begin hearing the case on 25 July.
It is also being asked to determine if the law would create a parallel judicial system in NWFP.
The controversial Hisba (Accountability) law was passed by the NWFP assembly on Thursday with 68 votes in favour and 34 against.
Under the new law, an Islamic watchdog will monitor the observance of Islamic values in public places in NWFP.
The plan is reminiscent of the infamous Department of Vice and Virtue, set up by the Taleban regime in Afghanistan.
The passage of the bill followed a heated debate between the ruling conservative six-party religious alliance Mutahida Majlis Amal (MMA) and the opposition.
'People's mandate'
Under the new law, the principal duty of the cleric, called "mohtasib" - one who holds other accountable - will be to ensure people respect the call to prayers, pray on time and do not engage in commerce at the time of Friday prayers.
He will also stop unrelated men and women from appearing in public places together, and discourage singing and dancing.
One of his tasks will be to monitor the media to ensure "publications are useful for the promotion of Islamic values".
The Minister of State for Information, Anisa Zeb Tahir Kheli, told the BBC, the government would not allow any such law to be imposed which would project a negative image of the country abroad particularly in the West.
The opposition Pakistan Peoples Party called it an "obscurantist pipedream" and an attempt to "Talebanise" Pakistan.
But the MMA says it won popular backing for the law when it won elections in the province in 2002.
The Department of Vice and Virtue set up by Afghanistan's former ruling Taleban became the focus of criticism from human rights organisations.
Islamic schools 'not registered'
BBC News / Friday, 15 July, 2005
Pakistan's education minister has said that there may be some Islamic schools in the country that the government knows nothing about.
He was speaking after Pakistani sources confirmed that one of the London bombers had been in Pakistan.
The bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, is said to have attended an Islamic school there.
President Pervez Musharraf has meanwhile pledged his "fullest support and assistance" in Britain's investigation into the London bombings.
'Worried'
In an interview with the BBC, Pakistan Education Minister Javed Ashraf said Islamic schools - madrassas - in the cities were being monitored.
"But those that are in the border belt and on the mountains along the foreign borders... it is very difficult because these are neither registered, nor declared," he told the World Today programme.
"And it is quite possible that there may be some madrassas which are still around about which we do not really have much knowledge," he said.
He urged the British authorities to reveal the name and location of the school attended by the London suspect so that it can be investigated.
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Thursday that he was worried about some of Pakistan's madrassas.
'Unequivocal support'
The Associated Press of Pakistan said that President Musharraf pledged his support to the British anti-terror operation in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday evening.
Tony Blair thanked President Musharraf for his "unequivocal support", APP, the country's official news agency, reports.
The BBC's Paul Anderson in Islamabad reports that Pakistani intelligence and investigation agencies are working flat out to accommodate British demands for leads on any of the three London bombers of Pakistani descent.
Pakistani officials say that so far they have not been able to pinpoint Shehzad Tanweer's movements in the country or say who he met.
They say he entered Pakistan on two occasions legally. There is no record of the entry of the other two bombers entering the country.
Our correspondent says that if they did enter Pakistan after 2002 - when a tracking system which photographed every legal visitor to the country was introduced - they did so illegally.
Attack "thwarted"
Pakistan has played a key role in the US-led "war on terror", launched after the 11 September attacks on the United States.
Several key members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network have been arrested in Pakistan.
In May Pakistani security forces arrested Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan described as "al-Qaeda's number three".
Pakistan's arrest of a computer expert with alleged al-Qaeda links in July last year was said to have provided information leading to a number of arrests in his own country and the United Kingdom.
Pakistani authorities said Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan was a key piece in the al-Qaeda jigsaw.
And on Wednesday Pakistan Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said that Islamabad had helped thwart a militant attack in the UK before the country's general elections in May.
Iran cleric says UK could have bombed own capital
July 15, 2005
TEHRAN (Reuters) - A leading Iranian cleric said on Friday the British government could have orchestrated last week's bombings in London to stir up flagging enthusiasm for British military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan .
Four British-born Muslims blew themselves up in separate attacks on three underground trains and a bus during the morning rush hour, killing 54 and injuring hundreds.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads Iran's top legislative watchdog the Guardian Council, said the British had themselves to blame.
"One possible set of culprits is al-Qaeda. But al Qaeda is Bush and Blair. Who launched al Qaeda? You must be tried, you who are the mothers of al Qaeda," he told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran, blaming British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush for the growth of Islamic militancy.
"The other likelihood is that the British regime may have carried out the attack itself ... because it benefits most... They want to justify their presence in Iraq and Afghanistan," he added.
"They tell people 'if we don't fight terrorism, this will happen to you,'" the cleric continued.
Jannati's remarks echoed editorials in Iran's hardline press that argued the attacks smacked of a plot by the British government to justify anti-Muslim reprisals and military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most Iranian conspiracy theories centre on Britain, which is labelled as "the old fox".
The suspicion has its roots in 19th century Persia, where Russian and British agents jostled for control of routes to India in a series of military encounters and diplomatic intrigues known as "The Great Game".
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