Afghan intelligence officials talk to Mullah Omar

KABUL, July 8: Afghan intelligence agents have talked to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammed

Omar after commandeering a satellite phone being used by his top aide, an official claimed

on Thursday.

Mullah Omar, along with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has escaped a US-led dragnet which

now numbers some 20,000 soldiers since the ousting of his government in 2001.

A man believed to be Mullah Omar's aide, Mullah Sakhi Dad Mujahid, was captured on Tuesday

while carrying a satellite telephone containing the phone numbers of top members of the

ousted government, Kandahar intelligence chief Abdullah Laghmanai said.

"We contacted Mullah Omar by Mullah Mujahid's phone," he said, adding that at first Mullah

Mujahid was forced to talk to his boss on the phone. "But when he (Omar) realized the

situation ... he cut off the phone."

"Salam-aleikum, where are you?" Mullah Omar asked Mullah Mujahid, according to Mr Laghmanai,

who did not say when the call was made. Mullah Mujahid, as he is known locally, was arrested

on Tuesday during a raid in Dara-i-Noor, some 70kms north of Kandahar.

The area is in the rugged border region between Uruzgan and Kandahar and known to US

military officials as the 'Taliban heartland'. Mullah Mujahid served as Mullah Omar's

secretary under the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule.

"Currently he was serving as Mullah Omar's military assistant," he said. Kandahar military

spokesman General Abdul Wasay confirmed the arrest. "The arrest of Mullah Mujahid will

pacify Taliban's activities in the area," where he was captured, he said.

Mr Laghmanai said subsequent efforts to contact Mullah Omar had been unsuccessful as the

one-eyed Taliban boss refuses to answer phone calls 'from strange numbers'.

"Maybe Omar has found out that his friend is under our control," he said. "He doesn't answer

his telephone." Mullah Mujahid was transferred in handcuffs to Kabul on Wednesday for

investigation, which authorities hope could lead to the arrest of other militants.

Mr Laghmanai alleged that intelligence reports as well as information received from Mujahid

suggested Mullah Omar was hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas near Kandahar and close to

Quetta. "The information Mujahid provided, and also our intelligence, suggests that Omar is

in Pakistan's tribal areas," he said.

FOREIGNERS HELD: Three foreigners, including a US national, have been arrested for setting

up a private vigilante group here to detain suspected terrorists, a minister said Thursday.

"Three foreigners who had formed a self-made group and were claiming their aims were to act

against those carrying out terrorist attacks, have been arrested," Interior Minister Ali

Ahmad Jalali said.

Four Afghans were also arrested along with the foreigners for allegedly illegally holding

eight local people in a private jail as part of their personal war against terror. "They did

not have any legal connection with anyone and the United States was also chasing them," Mr

Jalali said. "They are actually rebels."

"The group had illegally arrested eight Afghans from Kabul and kept them in their custody,"

Mr Jalali added. The men were arrested on Monday night in a house near the Intercontinental

Hotel in western Kabul.

The identity of the two other foreign nationals is not known. "They were operating under the

fake name of an export company," Mr Jalali told a press conference in Kabul.

A spokesman for the US embassy, who asked not to be named, said he was unable to confirm the

number of American nationals arrested. On July 5 the American-led coalition force issued a

press release in which it warned against an individual named as Jonathan K. Idema.

"US citizen Jonathan K. Idema has allegedly represented himself as an American government

and/or military official," the statement said. "The public should be aware that Idema does

not represent the American government and we do not employ him." -AFP






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Civilian shipments to Iraq hampered by insurer fears



SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, July 5, 2004
ABU DHABI - Gulf Arab insurers continue to cut back on coverage for cargo shipments to Iraq.

Industry sources said leading insurers in the Gulf Cooperation Council have significantly

reduced war risk coverage to insure business to or in Iraq. The sources said the refusal to

provide such insurance has hampered the supply of civilian cargo to Iraq.

In April, GCC insurers decided to suspend coverage for cargo destined for Iraqi transports,

Middle East Newsline reported. The sources said the insurers were willing to insure cargo

until the Iraqi port. But from the port, the cargo would not have been insured.

GCC insurers have been led by the industry in Bahrain. Insurance companies in Bahrain were

expected to benefit from a new Saudi law that would open the kingdom to foreign firms.

International insurers, such as Lloyds of London, have been willing to provide some war

coverage. But the lack of competition drove up the price of war risk coverage.

GCC insurers have offered coverage to preferred clients when backed by massive reinsurance

support from Lloyds, the sources said. They said the premium could amount to 100 times the

normal war risk premium in other countries.




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Copyright ? 2004 East West Services, Inc.
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THE TWO KOREAS:
Time to Leave South Korea

Thomas Henriksen

Why it makes sense for U.S. forces to leave Korea's demilitarized zone.

Thomas Henriksen is a senior fellow and associate director at the Hoover Institution.
Despite escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula in recent months, it is time to start

the pullback of the 14,000 American troops stationed along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and

the GIs garrisoned in the nearby capital rather than waiting a year. Implementing Secretary

of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's plans for repositioning U.S. forces from the DMZ and their

central Seoul base will better align Washington's decades-old obligations with newfound

perils on the peninsula and beyond. The United States can honor its commitment to defend

South Korea from another northern invasion by our formidable land and carrier-based

airpower. This military reconfiguration in South Korea should be part of an overhaul of

American post-Cold War strategy.

There are two time warps on the Korean peninsula. There is the familiar one north of the DMZ

with a communist regime that resembles Josef Stalin's Soviet Russia of the 1930s, with

prison camps, starvation, oppression, and propaganda campaigns against the United States.

The other, less acknowledged, time warp is south of the DMZ. Since the end of the Korean War

in 1953, U.S. forces have been frozen in defensive positions against another North Korean

assault. Currently, there are a total of 37,000 U.S. forces in all of South Korea. Their

mission is static, and their training and equipment make them unfit for new fast-paced

operations. Moreover, North Korea's heavy-duty conventional artillery and self-proclaimed

nuclear weapons make this force more hostage than defender.

South Korea's 600,000 troops ought to assume the primary role in defending their own

country, relieving U.S. troops for security operations in liberated Iraq or for swift-

response roles in the campaign against terror, for example. American forces are stretched

thin around the globe in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Japan, Germany, and now the Philippines

and Kyrgyzstan. A rebalancing of American power should have taken place after the collapse

of the Soviet Union, when the world enjoyed a brief respite from major threats.

The current volatile international environment is no excuse not to undertake such a review

now--for it is actually during times of war, hot or cold, that conditions compel change.

Halcyon eras, like the 1990s, breed complacency. The U.S. military and geopolitical

framework underwent profound changes in World War II and again with the onset of the Cold

War. The war on terror necessitates carefully executed adjustments but so, too, does a world

vastly altered by the end of the Soviet confrontation. North Korea is no longer Moscow's

proxy.

Obviously, there are risks. A sudden transformation could cause instability in Asia. North

Korea could interpret American withdrawal as a lack of resolve. But this seems unlikely

given that an attack across the DMZ, with or without our small Maginot-line force, would be

seen as an act of war by Washington, triggering a counterattack and imperiling the Pyongyang

regime itself. In one sense, the absence of a U.S. force on the DMZ would make a massive U.

S. retaliation easier; otherwise American troops would no doubt be overrun by the world's

fifth-largest army and face the danger of errant friendly fire.

Our DMZ contingent has neither halted Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions nor inhibited

its missile sales to Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, or Syria. It cannot be expected to stop nuclear

material transfers to other rogue states or possibly terrorist networks. More important,

American ground units in Korea have not assuaged fears in Japan, Taiwan, or military circles

in South Korea about Pyongyang's nuclear arming. These states will increasingly look to

their own defense. Japan, the most pacifistic state, has now openly abandoned its long-held

prohibition of U.S. nuclear-powered warships in its harbors. Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba

stated that his country is prepared to wage a preemptive strike against a possible missile

launch by North Korea. Pyongyang's likely production of 10 or more new atomic bombs will

deepen anxiety among its neighbors. They will consider defensive measures, perhaps a nuclear

option, even with U.S. ground forces in South Korea.

Finally, the anti-American sentiment that burst forth in the South Korean presidential

elections last fall also dictates a fresh look at our presence at the DMZ. Led by their new

president, Roh Moo Hyun, many South Koreans no longer fear their brothers across the DMZ, an

impression that Pyongyang has fostered and utilized against the United States. America is

caught in the middle of its commitment to defend the South and that country's awakened

nationalism against a perceived foreign tutelage.

The last time the United States was boxed in between protecting an Asian country from its

northern communist neighbor amid anti-Americanism and emerging nationalism in the south, it

fared badly. Although we look for Vietnam War analogies in the Middle East, we might better

see shades of them in the new Korea. It makes sense to anticipate looming realities. Sooner

rather than later the divide on the Korean peninsula will end. When it does, the United

States will cut its commitment just as we did in reunified Germany after the fall of the

Berlin Wall. States nearby will counterbalance a reunified peninsula, which in all

likelihood will have nuclear capabilities.

In Germany, where anti-U.S. feelings have also arisen, it now makes strategic sense to

reposition U.S. troops from Cold War installations into the more pro-American former Warsaw

Pact countries, such as Poland and Hungary. Reconstituted into expeditionary forces, these

units could be rapidly deployed in the Middle East and Central Asia in tune with changing

American interests. But nowhere are the operational realities more out of date than in

Korea. It is time to recognize the historical wind shifts and realign our forces or be

buffeted by them.


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Special to the Hoover Digest.

Available from the Hoover Press is Democracy and the Korean Economy, edited by Jongryn Mo

and Chung-in Moon. Also available is Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in

Korea, edited by Larry Diamond and Doh C. Shin. To order, call 800.935.2882.