Posted on 09/29/2001 1:45:59 AM PDT by Ymani Cricket
Islamabad
Aslam Khan
29-09-2001
The United States and Pakistan have shared intelligence on the whereabouts of up to 80 Stinger missiles that are believed to be in the possession of the Taliban forces, well-placed sources told Gulf News.
"The two sides have exchanged information on the possible places and people where the Stingers in the Taliban-ruled areas may be," the source, which requested that he not be named, revealed.
He was referring to high-level secret talks in Islamabad between a visiting inter-agency team from the U.S. comprising officials of CIA, FBI, state department and military intelligence and senior Pakistani military and civilian officials.
"The Stingers are a potentially dangerous source of strike capability against any U.S. warplanes or helicopters that may be used in the coming days and weeks (in likely strikes against Afghanistan), hence the urgency to be sure (on the whereabouts of the missiles) "he said.
According to him, the Americans believe the Taliban may have in their possession about 80 of the shoulder-fired Stingers – the U.S.-made missile with the deadliest record against low-flying aircraft of any weapon since World War II.
"In a reasonably expert hand, the heat-seeking Stinger can bring down any military aircraft,"he explained.
In the 1980s, it was the Ronald Reagan government that delivered "several hundred" Stingers to Afghan Mujahideen groups, "including many of the people currently part of the Taliban.
The CIA, despite strenuous efforts, the source said, "was never able to recover more than a few of the missiles after the war ended, even with big cash rewards."
After Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA, with the help of Pakistani authorities, started a buy-back programme to recover the Stingers, offering as much as $100,000 each. There were relatively few takers.
However, the source says neither the U.S. nor Pakistan is sure about the exact number of Stingers that remain in Afghan hands and in what condition they are.
"At least there is no record of the Taliban having sold the missiles to others," he said.
"Perhaps this is because the Stingers are prized as symbols of prestige and power and can serve as deterrents against air attacks."
Asked whether the Stingers in Afghanistan could be unusable after years of wear and tear, he said a test-firing two years ago in the U.S. showed that the missiles were still working perfectly.
The official refused to divulge the type of intelligence that Pakistan shared with the U.S. officials and the information that the latter gave to the former, saying this kind of information "is not for public consumption for obvious reasons."
"Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said the Stingers supplied to Afghanistan also had "friend-or-foe" receivers that only let them be fired at Soviet aircraft. Those can be removed by a clever engineer, he said."The Stinger weapons are kind of obsolete weapons at this point," Cannistraro said. "They have a mythological status."
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