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Could
9/11 attacks have been prevented?
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LONDON,
Sept 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S. and the UN
reportedly ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary weeks before
September 11 last year that Osama bin Laden was planning a huge attack
on America, according to a British daily Saturday, September 07,
2002.
The
Independent reported that the warnings were delivered by an aide of
Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban Foreign Minister at the time, known
to be deeply unhappy with the foreign militants in Afghanistan,
including Arabs.
Muttawakil,
now in American custody, believed the Taliban's protection of Bin Laden
and other al-Qaeda militants would lead to nothing less than the
destruction of Afghanistan by the U.S. military. He told his aide:
"The guests are going to destroy the guesthouse."
The
minister then ordered him to alert the U.S. and the UN about what was
going to happen. However, in a massive failure of intelligence, the
message was disregarded because of what sources describe as
"warning fatigue". At the same time, the FBI and the CIA
failed to take seriously warnings that Islamic students had enrolled in
flight schools across the U.S.
Muttawakil's
aide, who wanted to remain anonymous, told the Independent that the
Minister learned in July last year that Bin Laden was planning a
"huge attack" on targets inside America.
Muttawakil
reportedly found out about the coming attacks from the leader of the
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yildash, the British paper
said.
The
organization was one of the groups that found refuge on Afghan soil,
lending fighters for the Taliban regime's war on the Northern Alliance
opposition, and had good relations with al-Qaeda.
Muttawakil's
aide, who stayed on in Kabul, described in detail to The Independent how
he alerted first the Americans and then the United Nations of the coming
calamity of 11 September.
According
to the emissary, Muttawakil emerged from a one-to-one meeting with
Yildash looking shocked and troubled. Until then, the Foreign Minister,
who had disapproved of the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Bamian
earlier in the year, had no inkling from others in the Taliban
leadership of what Bin Laden was planning.
"At
first Muttawakil wouldn't say why he was so upset," said the aide.
"Then it all came out. Yildash had revealed that Osama bin Laden
was going to launch an attack on the United States. It would take place
on American soil and it was imminent. Yildash said Osama hoped to kill
thousands of Americans."
At
the time, 19 members of al-Qaeda were in situ in the U.S. waiting to
launch what would be the deadliest foreign attack on the American
mainland.
The
emissary went first to the Americans, traveling across the border to
meet the consul general, David Katz, in the Pakistani border town of
Peshawar, in the third week of July 2001. They met in a safe house
belonging to an old Mujahideen leader, who has confirmed to The
Independent that the meeting took place.
Another
U.S. official was also present possibly from the intelligence
services. Katz, who now works at the American Embassy in Eritrea,
declined to talk about the meeting. But other U.S. sources said the
warning was not passed on.
A
diplomatic source said, "We were hearing a lot of that kind of
stuff. When people keep saying the sky's going to fall in and it
doesn't, a kind of warning fatigue sets in. I actually thought it was
all an attempt to rattle us in an attempt to please their funders in the
Gulf, to try to get more donations for the cause."
The
Afghan aide did not, however, reveal that the warning was from
Muttawakil, rather than his own message, a factor that might have led
the Americans to downgrade it, the Independent said.
When
Muttawakil's emissary returned to Kabul, the Foreign Minister
(allegedly) told him to see UN officials.
He
took the warning to the Kabul offices of UNSMA, the political wing of
the UN. The officials heard him out, but did not report the secret
Taliban warning to UN headquarters, the British paper reported.
A
UN official familiar with the warnings said: "He appeared to be
speaking in total desperation, asking for a Mountain Storm, he wanted a
sort of deus ex machina to solve his country's problems. But before
9/11, there was just not much hope that Washington would become that
engaged in Afghanistan."
Officials
in the State Department and in UN headquarters in New York said they
knew nothing about a Taliban warning. But they said they would now be
looking into the matter.
Muttawakil
is now unavailable for comment he handed himself in to the Afghan
authorities in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern
Afghanistan last February. He is reported to be in American custody
there, one of the few senior members of the Taliban regime the U.S.
managed to arrest.
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