Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat

A young man with a short beard stopped me from entering the shrine of Hazrat Imam Hussein. "You have a video camera," he said. "You need permission to shoot inside."

Who is authorised to grant permission, I asked. The young man ignored the question and said that if I wanted to go in, I would have to leave my camera at the reception.

I explained that as a journalist I could not operate without a camera. But that only infuriated him and he began shouting, "Go away! Go away!"

I was secretly terrified, but informed him politely that I was from Pakistan, that I had visited Iran and Afghanistan recently for my work, and that I could not go inside without my camera.

He calmed down a little and asked for identification. I presented all my documents. He went through them for more than five minutes, then looked up and asked, "Are you the same Hamid Mir who appears on Al Jazeera to tell the world what's going on in Afghanistan?" I said yes, I was indeed the same Hamid Mir. He then instructed another young man to guide me to a hotel behind the revered shrine in Karbala.

When I entered the hotel, two men searched me. It took me only a few moments to realise that this was no hotel, but a secret office of Hizbullah, a Shiite organisation that is resisting the coalition troops in Iraq.

I was produced before Abu Musa, local commander of the Hizbullah fighters. He was sitting on a revolving chair behind a big office table. A nicely framed picture of the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was hanging behind him.

Abu Musa questioned me about the objectives of my visit. He was particularly concerned about a special card issued to me by the Jordanian ministry of information. "They issue this card to those who are very close to them," he told me. I told him that I got the card simply because I was coming from Pakistan through Jordan, and that I was in Iraq to just report on the current situation and that I was not 'embedded' with the coalition troops.

Finally, Abu Musa was satisfied and gave me permission to enter the shrine with a camera. He also delivered a ten-minute lecture on the need for a Shia-Sunni alliance against the Americans. "Hizbullah-Al Qaeda brother brother," he proclaimed. He placed a green and white band on my head with the famous Hizbullah slogan 'Ya Allah, Ya Hussein.'

So I was entering the shrine of Hazrat Imam Hussein, grandson of the Holy Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, with an impression that Shia guerrillas trained and financed by Iran control this place. Hizbullah boys escorted me inside the shrine, and when I connected my videophone with my office in Dubai to report live from Karbala, they forced me to speak on camera with their white and green band on my head.

I visited Iraq twice after the fall of Saddam Hussein and in April this year I was sure that pro-Iran Shia militants and Al Qaeda fighters were collaborating against the US in Iraq.

Al Qaeda is using Iraq as a new base for organising attacks against the US and its allies after September 11. US Secretary of State Colin Powell had repeatedly claimed in the UN Security Council that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction, but one year after the invasion of Iraq it was disclosed that actually it was the Iranians who were making WMDs, including nuclear bombs and missiles, since the last 18 years, not Saddam Hussein.

The Americans have now started Saddam Hussein's trial, but, surprisingly, allegations about the possession of WMDs are missing from the charge sheet. Bush and Powell were embarrassed internationally because the Central Intelligence Agency was concentrating on Iraq instead of Iran.

Interestingly, the CIA was getting disinformation about Hussein's WMDs from Iranian intelligence through a double agent, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi was an indirect contact of Iran with the US. The Iranians used the US indirectly against their old enemy Saddam Hussein and now they are using Al Qaeda against the US in Iraq. They are playing a classical double game, not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan.

THREE years ago Ahmed Shah Masood, chief of the Northern Alliance, was working both for Iran and the US in Afghanistan. He was killed by Al Qaeda two days before September 11.

After Masood's death, Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Dr Abdullah Abdullah were the two main contacts of the US in the Northern Alliance. They were receiving open support from the US and covert support from Iran.

When the Taliban and Al Qaeda vacated Kabul in November 2001 and the Northern Alliance took control of the big cites like Kabul and Kandahar, the Iranians tried their best to instal the Persian-speaking Tajik leader Burhanuddin Rabbani as the new interim president of Afghanistan.

But the US preferred Pashtun loyalist Hamid Karzai. After the fall of the Taliban, the Iranians were supporting Fahim and Dr Abdullah in Kabul, Karim Khalili in Bamiyan, and Ismail Khan in Herat. They also gave refuge to hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan.

Very few people know that Al Qaeda was actually in contact with the Iranians even before September 11. It was March 1997 that I first interviewed Osama bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan for Daily Pakistan. In that interview bin Laden proposed an alliance between the Taliban and Iran because of their anti-US stance.

That proposal was a surprise to me because the Taliban were against Iran at the time and that was the main reason for the US State Department's overt and Pakistan's covert support to them.

After the interview I talked to some other Al Qaeda operatives present in the hideout. One of them told me, "We want a broad-based alliance against the US and that's why we are in touch with the Iranians since many years."

Further investigation revealed that the main contact of Al Qaeda with Iran was Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri. He and his comrades in the Jamaat Islamia had organised the assassination of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat in 1981 with the help of Iranian intelligence.

When Osama bin Laden moved to Sudan in 1994, al-Zawahiri re-established his old contacts with Iranian intelligence. Many Iranian officials and leaders of Hizbullah met the Al Qaeda leadership in Khartoum. Although the Hizbullah is a Shia outfit and Al Qaeda is a Sunni group, they decided to unite against the United States.

In coming years, Al Qaeda adopted Hizbullah's methods against US targets. Hizbullah organised the suicide bombing at the US embassy in Beirut with trucks (April 18, 1983), which killed 61 people. Al Qaeda repeated the same kind of suicide bombing at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which killed more than 200 people.

It is also worth mentioning that Osama bin Laden came back to Afghanistan in May 1996. He landed in a special plane with some of his close comrades at Jalalabad airport and was received by Maulvi Younus Khalis, Haji Deen Muhammad, and some others. Another plane of the Ariana Air Lines also landed at Jalalabad airport the next day with his family and big cargo. Afghanistan's official airline was helping bin Laden on Burhanuddin Rabbani's orders. He was the prime minister in Kabul when bin Laden was allowed to enter Afghanistan as a special guest.

THE TALIBAN only controlled some provinces in southern Afghanistan in those days. Pakistan was supporting the Taliban because Rabbani was close to Iran and India; the Pakistani embassy in Kabul was attacked by a mob that was guided by Northern Alliance commanders.

When the Taliban invaded Jalalabad and Kabul in September 1996, bin Laden switched sides and assured the Taliban of his cooperation. American and Pakistani intelligence agencies were aware of bin Laden's presence in Jalalabad, but they never objected because they were hoping that the experienced Arab fighters of Al Qaeda would help the Taliban push the Northern Alliance into Iran.

Those were the days when bin Laden tried his best to bridge the gap between the Taliban and Iran, but the Taliban refused to heed his proposal. The Taliban depended on Pakistani help and the Pakistani establishment was helping them because their opponent, the Northern Alliance, was close to Iran. Then Pakistani interior minister Major General Naseerullah Khan Babar was responsible for providing logistics and monetary support to the Taliban. He admits that 'we were supporting the Taliban to save Afghanistan from Iranian interference because the Iranians were playing a double game with us. They were claiming that we are your Muslim brothers, but actually they were encouraging people who were involved in anti-Pakistan activities inside Afghanistan.'

When the Taliban refused to cooperate with Iran, Osama bin Laden decided to help them quietly because Dr al-Zawahiri was not with him. He had been detained in Dagestan by the Russian authorities. The Russians were unaware of his real identity because he had travelled to the area on a fake Sudanese passport. Zawahiri was Al Qaeda's main link with Iran, and the link was missing.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/jul/16spec1.htm

Ayman al-Zawahiri was released in the summer of 1997. He joined Osama bin Laden in Jalalabad and re-established his links with the Iranians secretly. By this time the Iranians had started denouncing not only the Taliban but also Al Qaeda because Arab fighters played an important role in all the major battles in northern Afghanistan.

An old friend of bin Laden and Zawahiri was, however, still getting help from the Iranians. His name: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

MORE EVIDENCE of the Al Qaeda-Iran collaboration surfaced during a military operation in eastern Afghanistan in March 2002. More than 40 American soldiers were killed in the Shahi Kot mountains in that operation. Several documents and lots of ammunition was recovered from caves in the mountains.

US Army sources confirmed to me in April 2002 in Kabul that unused Air Iran tickets and some bills of a hotel in Mashad were also recovered from the caves. This proved that Al Qaeda not only had training camps in Iran, but was using Iran as a safe passage to the Middle East and other parts of the world.

The Iranians are employing Al Qaeda against the US-led coalition forces not only in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. It is no secret that Zarqawi, who was running a training camp in Iran, is now operating in Iraq. He runs a separate outfit named Al Tawheed. He is not a member of Al Qaeda, but he is an ally.

An Arab named Shadi Abdullah was arrested in Germany some time ago. He is a former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden. He told a German court that he had attended a training camp in western Afghanistan run by Zarqawi. According to the court documents, Zarqawi's deputy is a man named Abu Haroon, an Iranian national. Shadi Abdullah told the court that Al Tawheed had a cell in Germany that sent as much as US $40,000 a month to Zarqawi in Iran.

Zarqawi was also blamed for the killing of an American citizen, Nick Berg, in Baghdad earlier this year. A video of Berg's beheading was released on May 11, and named Zarqawi as the man who beheaded the civilian contractor.

Some Arab Al Qaeda operatives told me in Kunar province of Afghanistan in September 2003 that Zarqawi has Iranian and Uzbek passports under different names. He travelled on fake documents from Iraq to Jordan in April 2004, met his wife and children in Amman, and returned to Iraq. The Jordanians learnt of his visit only several weeks later.

Zarqawi helped many Uzbek and Chechen fighters hiding in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan to slip into Iran. Most of these Uzbeks and Chechens have now joined him in Iraq. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf recently claimed that the Wana area of South Waziristan is like the headquarters of Al Qaeda because most of the militants hiding in the area are foreigners.

The Pakistani authorities arrested three Arabs with Iraqi documents in June 2004 in Islamabad. They were carrying a lot of ammunition. According to their documents, they had entered Pakistan from Iran. It is believed that Al Qaeda is now using Iran as a passage to reach Afghanistan and Pakistan from Iraq.

US officials believe that top Al Qaeda leaders are still hiding in Pakistan. They have made it clear to the Pakistani authorities that they want at least one of the top three 'high value targets' (Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Mohammad Omar) by July 25, 2004, before the Democratic national convention in Boston. US officials are sure that the arrest of any one of these three HVTs will help them unearth Al Qaeda's network spread from the Pakistani tribal areas to Iran and Iraq. Of course, it will also help George W Bush turn the tables on his challenger in this year's presidential election, Senator John Kerry.

THE NAME of the man organising Al Qaeda inside Iraq while sitting in Iran is Saif al-Adil. He is an Egyptian citizen. He was appointed Al Qaeda's new chief of military operations after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Many people told me in Baghdad that Al Qaeda fighters were coming to Iraq from Iran and Syria to fight the Americans. I was also told by Islamic fighters in Baghdad that Adil was organising big operations against the Americans in Saudi Arabia.

I met many young Arabs in Saddam Hussein's hometown Tikrit carrying pictures of Osama bin Laden in their pockets. I cannot forget one Arab lad who told me that Sunni Iraqis would resist the Americans in Fallujah, Al-Ramadi, and Tikrit with the help of Al Qaeda and Shi-ite Iraqis would do the same in Najaf and Karbala with the help of Hizbullah.

This lad told me that he had spent time in Kunar province of Afghanistan. His father was Yemeni and his mother, Afghan. He was born in Kunar in 1987 and fled to Iran after the fall of the Taliban. He entered Iraq from Iran in the second week of April 2003.

In the first five months of 2004, it was proved that somebody had definitely organised a secret collaboration between Al Qaeda and Hizbullah in Iraq. The Americans have faced several Al Qaeda/Hizbullah-style suicide truck and car attacks.

This Pashtun leader and ex-prime minister of Afghanistan had deadly differences with both Ahmed Shah Masood and the Taliban. He was living in Tehran under official security. He advised the Iranians not to speak against bin Laden because the Saudi dissident was also speaking against America.

I met Osama bin Laden again in May 1998. By this time he was under a lot of restriction from the Taliban and he did not speak for an alliance between the Taliban and Iran.

Then, in April 2001, an international conference on the Palestinian dispute was arranged in Tehran by the government of Iran. Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal, and other militant leaders participated in that conference. I learnt during this conference that many Al Qaeda leaders of Arab origin were living in Tehran. I found it hard to believe because the Iranians were condemning the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the international press. But they were also secretly in contact with them.

In Tehran I found that the Iranian establishment was divided between the reformers and the hardliners. The reformers were led by President Mohammed Khatami while the hardliners were led by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The hardliners were in control of the military and intelligence agencies and secretly supported militant groups in different parts of the world. President Khatami said many times that Al Qaeda hates Iran as much as it hates the United States, but his claim was removed from reality.

After learning these facts I decided to meet Hekmatyar in Tehran. He spoke openly in support of Osama bin Laden. I asked him, "How can you support Al Qaeda without the approval of the Iranian government?" He just smiled and ignored the question. He also presented to me a copy of his book written in Persian and published in Iran. The book was full of criticism of America.

I had no doubt in April 2001 that the Iranians were playing a double game with the Northern Alliance. They were supporting them against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but on the other hand they were also in contact with Al Qaeda and Hekmatyar.

WHY WERE the Iranians doing that?

Because Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masood was in touch with both the Central Intelligence Agency and Iranian intelligence! The Iranians were probably playing a double game with a double agent.

But the Northern Alliance leadership was surprised in December 2001 after the great battle of Tora Bora. They arrested many Arab fighters who were trying to enter Iran from southern Afghanistan. February 15, 2002, was the turning point when two Palestinians and one Jordanian were arrested in Turkey. They revealed that they had been sent by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the men in America's most wanted list now, to Tel Aviv.

According to a police spokesman in Ankara, the three had fought for the Taliban and were members of the Beyyet Al-Imam organisation, which is also known as Al Tawheed. The Turkish authorities said the three members were trained by Zarqawi at a camp near Herat in western Afghanistan. They possessed fake documents, had diagrams showing how to assemble bombs, and claimed that they intended to attack targets in Tel Aviv.

Zarqawi fled from Afghanistan to Iran in December 2001 after he was injured in the US bombing campaign. He was treated in Iran, where a leg was amputated and he was fitted with a prosthesis.

Zarqawi is a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian stock. He was born in the Zarqa refugee camp near the Jordanian capital Amman. US Secretary of State Colin Powell mentioned his name for the first time on February 2, 2004, in the UN Security Council meeting as a man who had spent time in Afghanistan and was now active in Iraq. Powell remained silent, however, on Zarqawi's connection with the Iranians.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/jul/19spec2.htm

You are 2 of the most valued posters here at TM. I like what both of you have offered TM and what you both continue to offer.

Granny is the Google/Twexus Maven and she defends that territory quite nicely and zealously. JustPiper is the Threat Matrix Grand Master Pooh-Bah who keeps the threads going and keeps everyone involved, both of which is no small task.

And they are just the main responsibilities you both have taken on, certainly they are not the only ones. Granny and JustPiper each contribute their insights, witticisms, experience and sense of humor as well as many other things.

Granny, I think you reacted angrily because you read and misunderstood JP's post. In error, you may have saw it as an attack on the type of research that you are more than competent in.

Unfortunately, JustPiper, the excerpt you posted from Final Phase did not contain the link to or source of who wrote it. I myself thought that you wrote it, JP. I was quite impressed that you came up with that. I am in no way less impressed that it was from Final Phase.

JustPiper, I know that you have the care and credibility of TM first and foremost in your mind, as always. You do not wish for hoaxes or really-far-out-there-tinfoil-stuff to take over TM and dilute its emphasis on hunting. If you suspect something is a hoax, I know you would prefer that it not take our time here. And you suspected that the code may be one such hoax. Because of the role that you play here, JP, you have one of the hardest tasks, it may even be impossible. Because there may be no delicate balance in this war on terror at all.

We must rule everything in -- at least for a time until it is proven or disproven; but many things we will never know for certain. We just cannot afford to rule anything out, not with the evil and formidable enemies we face. al qaeda hates us and they are chameleons ever-changing in response to and even in anticipation of our every preemption, move and foresight. They keep the strongest of nations on their toes, for sure!

Because of their unlinear plots, we must think out of the box. It is unfamiliar terrority though, and the line between normal and tin-foil is blurred. See, there is no delicate balance in this fight. Just think, we here on TM know what's what with al qaeda and the threat that still faces us. It didn't end with 911 as most seem to act like they believe. Yet we know some of our own peers and family members probably see it all as tin-foil! This is just the way that it is. So to ensure that we do not miss anything, it is incumbent upon us to entertain everything. And the damn alphabets best be doing the same.

This is all only my opinion, so please both of you, do not be mad at me if I got it wrong.

Now, you two think it over for a fortnight and then it will probably sort itself all out.

Another Al Qaeda leader in Iran is Sulaiman Jasim Abu Ghaith. He was Al Qaeda's spokesman until the summer of 2002. According to US sources, this former Kuwaiti citizen is in the custody of the Iranian authorities, but the Iranians have never confirmed his detention.

I heard in Baghdad that one son of Osama bin Laden, Saad, is also being allowed to operate from Iran. He is in contact with Al Qaeda fighters hiding in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.

Al Qaeda told its fighters in September 2003 to enter Iraq. I visited Kunar province of Afghanistan that month to meet Al Qaeda operatives. I met a man named Abu Basir near the mountains of Asadabad. He told me that several Arab fighters of Al Qaeda had been asked by their leaders to reach Iraq. These fighters have been slipping into Pakistan from different points in eastern Afghanistan and Al Qaeda's network in Pakistan is arranging their safe onward journey to Iraq through Iran on fake passports.

The Pakistani authorities have arrested two officials of the country's passport agency in Peshawar for allegedly providing fake passports to these Al Qaeda operators.

Further investigations revealed that Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adil and Yazz bin Sifat had slipped into Iran from the Afghan town of Taftan. Both are wanted in connection with the September 11 attacks.

Taftan is in the southwestern part of Afghanistan. The Herat province in western Afghanistan is governed by the pro-Iran warlord Haji Ismail Khan. The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, confirmed to some journalists in Kabul recently that he had evidence of Iranian interference in western Afghanistan. Yusuf Pashtun, spokesman for a pro-Karzai warlord in southern Afghanistan, has claimed many times that Iranian agents have been smuggling arms into the southern Helmand province and that Iranians are providing training to the troops of Haji Ismail Khan.

Haji Ismail received thousands of Iranian AK-74 automatic rifles produced at a Russian-built factory outside Tehran. Sources close to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai claimed that some Iran Army officers are part of the Haji's powerful 20,000 strong militia. Sources claimed that one of his military advisers is General Ali Blokian, a former adviser of Hizbullah in Lebanon and actually an officer of Iranian military intelligence.

Ismail Khan is a threat to President Karzai's authority. He has objected to the deployment of coalition troops in his province. Now, he is encouraging the remnants of the Taliban to attack coalition forces in southern Afghanistan under instructions from Tehran.

Cofer Black, the US state department's counter-terrorism chief, confirmed to me recently that they have evidence of the collaboration between Al Qaeda and Iran. Some defectors from Iranian intelligence have provided a lot of information to the American authorities. According to this information, the Iranian Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) are in regular contact with Al Qaeda. The Pasdaran are not under President Khatami's control. They report directly to Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.

Iran's Minister for Intelligence Ali Fallahian and Quds Force chief Ahmad Vahidi are also said to be in contact with Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to very reliable sources, Zawahiri was arrested by mistake in Iran in 2002. News of his arrest was published in a newspaper called Hayat-e-Nau (or New Life), but the very next day the report was contradicted by Iran's foreign ministry. It is believed that Zawahiri was released on Ali Fallahian's order.

The big question is: why are the Iranians playing a double game with the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer is simple: The Iranians want to convert Iraq into another Shia state because Shias are the majority in Iraq. Secondly, they want control over Iraq's oil to give a boost to their deteriorating economy. But the US will not allow Iran to establish a pro-Tehran Shia state in Iraq and the Iranians believe that the American military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is a grave threat to their agenda.

The Iranians also want control in Afghanistan for economic and political reasons. Afghanistan is the gateway to the Central Asian states, which are rich in natural resources. Tehran wants to capture that gateway to establish an indirect monopoly on the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia.

Third, the Iranians want American forces expelled from the Middle East. This is Al Qaeda's aim as well. The Iranians have established the 'Quds Force' for the liberation of Al Quds, or Jerusalem. Al Qaeda has the same objective.

For achieving these common goals, the Iranians and Al Qaeda are cooperating with each other. Many people in Kabul these days openly blame the pro-Iranian warlords in western and northern Afghanistan, who are trying their best to delay the elections planned for September this year.

Diplomatic circles in Kabul fear a possible increase in attacks on the coalition forces. These sources are sure that Al Qaeda is planning a big, deadly attack inside Kabul with Iran's help. Both hate President Karzai whom they see as a great hurdle for their agenda in the region.

It is also important that some fighters of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have been arrested from Kabul. They were planning bomb blasts in the capital. Hekmatyar left Tehran after September 11, 2001, but his close association with Iran and Al Qaeda is not a secret. Many people in Kabul believe Hekmatyar will play an important role in the expected deadly attacks against coalition forces in the days to come.

The CIA got evidence of Iran's links with Al Qaeda in the spring of 2002, but CIA Director George Tenet remained silent on the issue. He was then more interested in establishing a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, but he eventually failed to establish that link and had to quit.

Many people believe Tenet did a great job for the Islamic militants under the leadership of George W Bush. The militants were divided on sectarian lines for more than 1,400 years. But for the first time bad American policies and weak intelligence have resulted in a deadly alliance between Shia and Sunni militants in Iraq.

The American media claimed that Al Qaeda was responsible for a car bomb attack on August 7, 2003, in Najaf in which Iraqi Shia leader Ayatollah Baqir el-Hakim was killed along with 82 other people. For many days there was confusion about who was responsible for that attack. Finally the government-run Tehran Times rescued Al Qaeda on September 9, 2003, with a front-page story in which it blamed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. The paper claimed that the explosives used in the attack were smuggled from Israel to Iraq by Mossad agents. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah also blamed Israel while addressing a gathering in Beirut.

Now Shias and Sunnis are offering prayers in each other's mosques. The Iranians are encouraging that kind of unity in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Recently they invited some pro-Taliban leaders from Pakistan to Tehran. Prominent among them were Maulana Sami-ul Haq and Fazalur Rehman, who have both openly opposed the war on terror in Afghanistan. They met important Iranian leaders.

After their return from Tehran, Maulana Sami-ul Haq organised a seminar in Islamabad in the last week of May. This religious leader had close links with hardline anti-Iran Sunni extremists, but he invited not only some Shia leaders but also some Iranian diplomats to the seminar where he appealed to all Shia and Sunni leaders to emulate the Shia-Sunni unity in Iraq. The participants in the seminar adopted resolutions against US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and condemned the operation against Al Qaeda by Pakistani forces in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

The Americans now know more about Iran's links with Al Qaeda than Saddam's. So why aren't they making more of a fuss about it?

Simple: because they have lost credibility. Al Qaeda lost Afghanistan in 2001, but they are regaining their power from Iran in 2004.

The Iranians have removed their enemy, the Taliban, from Kabul using the Americans. Then they removed another enemy, Saddam Hussein, from Iraq, again using the Americans through Ahmad Chalabi. Now they are using Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq against the Americans.

It is the Iranians who are the real winners of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not America.

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/jul/20spec1.htm

Dead whales land in Canaries after naval exercises
SATURDAY , 24 JULY 2004

FUERTEVENTURA COAST: Two dead whales have landed in Spain's Canary Islands, raising fears they may have been hurt by Nato military exercises off Morocco and that more could have died, officials say.

The two whales arrived in the area within 24 hours and were dead for several days before their bodies drifted ashore, said Tony Gallardo, environmental expert with the local government of the island of Fuerteventura, one of the Canaries, which lies only about 60 miles off the southern Moroccan coast.

"There is a strong suspicion that their deaths were related to the Nato exercises that finished a few days ago," Gallardo said yesterday.

Naval and air force units from 10 countries involving 20,000 troops and more than 20 warships took part in US-led Nato military exercises off Morocco from July 11 to 16.

Nato officials had no comment.

The Canary Islands regional government dispatched a helicopter to search remote stretches of coastline after fishermen reported seeing something that looked like a third dead whale floating a few miles from the shore.

Fourteen whales beached in the Canaries in 2002 during multinational military exercises there. It was one of several mass strandings of whales that scientists have linked to the use of naval sonar systems.

A year later, researchers published a study in the science journal Nature that found sonar may cause a type of decompression sickness in whales and dolphins.

Scientists suspect sonar signals disorientate the mammals, forcing them to come up to the surface too quickly, which could cause the formation of damaging nitrogen bubbles in their tissue.

Military sonar systems blast areas of ocean with sound waves to detect submarines.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2982029a12,00.html

Do SONAR and magnetic fields have any similarities?

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