China Continues to Arm Al Qaeda

News Max ^ | 6/21/02 | Carl Limbacher

[Paul Ross]

NewsMax.com

 

Friday June 21, 2002; 9:51 a.m. EDT

China Continues to Arm Al Qaeda

Despite their own concerns about Islamic terrorism, Communist Chinese military officials have continued to arm Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda commandos with sophisticated surface-to-air missiles even after the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., according to U.S. intelligence reports.

"Late last month, U.S. Army Special Forces troops discovered 30 HN-5s, the designation for Chinese-made SA-7s surface-to-air missiles, in southeastern Afghanistan," reports the Washington Times in Friday editions. "Other intelligence reports indicated the Chinese shipped missiles to the Taliban after September 11."

Just last week a captured al Qaeda operative told interrogators that he had fired a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. military plane from a position just outside Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The missile was a Chinese made SA-7, according to Pentagon sources.

Before Sept. 11, the People's Liberation Army provided training for Afghanistan's Taliban militia and its al Qaeda supporters, the Times added.

"It was carried out in cooperation with Pakistan's ISI intelligence service," defense officials told the paper.

Though Beijing has denied supporting al Qaeda forces, reports indicate that Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin was so impressed with bin Laden's 9-11 attack that he sanctioned a domestic propaganda effort suggesting the U.S. got what it deserved.

"In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, workers at Beijing Television worked round-the-clock to produce a documentary they called 'Attack America,'" reported the London Telegraph in November.

In the video, Chinese film editors mixed real news footage of the two commercial jetliners slamming into the World Trade Center with scenes from a 1998 remake of "Godzilla" where the monster wreaks havoc on New York.

As carnage fills the screen, the film's narrator proclaims that the city had reaped the consequences of decades of America bullying weaker nations.

The anti-U.S. entertainment bears the imprimatur of the Communist Party-controlled media, the Telegraph said, with the most popular offerings produced by the Xinhua information agency, Beijing Television and China Central Television.

"Communist Party officials say President Jiang Zemin has obsessively watched and re-watched pictures of the aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center," the Telegraph said. (See: Chinese Propaganda Machine Celebrates Twin Towers Attack)

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Al-Qaeda
China/Taiwan
War on Terrorism

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[Mitchell]

Here is yet another report of Chinese support for al-Qaeda, both before and after 9/11, in conjunction with the ISI in Pakistan. We shouldn't focus on Iraq as the only possible state sponsor.

[The Great Satan]

Er, it's the same report, repackaged by Newsmax.

[Mitchell]

Er, it's the same report, repackaged by Newsmax.

Whoops, sorry about that -- you're right. They did append a reminder of Jiang Zemin's propaganda videos extolling the WTC attack; apparently they were quite popular in China. But the new material is just taken from the Washington Times article.