US plans to topple Taliban (Guardian UK article) (fwd)

        Secret memo reveals US plan to overthrow Taliban regime 

Special report: terrorism in the US

Special report: Afghanistan

Ian Traynor in Tajikistan and Gary Younge in Washington

Guardian

Friday September 21, 2001

The US government is pressing its European allies to agree to a military
campaign to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and replace it with an
interim administration under United Nations auspices. 

Diplomatic cables from the Washington embassy of a key Nato ally, seen by
the Guardian, report that the US is keen to hear allied views on
"post-Taliban Afghanistan after the liberation of the country". 

The embassy cable reveals that the US administration is bent on force to
evict the Taliban from power because of the shelter it has offered Osama bin
Laden, named by the White House as prime suspect for the New York and
Washington atrocities on September 11. 

The Guardian has also learned that two large US Hercules transport aircraft
landed in Tashkent, capital of the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, on
Tuesday loaded with surveillance equipment to be installed along the
northern Afghan border. 

The secret landing represented a radical departure since it appeared to
herald the deployment of squadrons of US fighters at Uzbekistan's sprawling
airfield at Termez, directly on the border. Such a build-up would incur the
wrath of Russia which views the central Asian republics as its backyard. 

The Pentagon yesterday continued its move to a war footing, with orders for
up to 130 heavy bombers, fighters, aerial refuelling planes and other combat
aircraft to be deployed around the Middle East and Central Asia region. 

Two B-52 bombers yesterday left Barksdale airbase in Louisiana, joining
F-15E fighter-bombers, F-16 fighters, B-1 long range bombers and E-3 Awacs
airborne command-and-control aircraft that left on Wednesday. 

The navy has also sent an additional aircraft carrier toward the Middle East
region,which along with the air deployment could place up to 500 US
warplanes in the Mediterranean, Gulf and Indian Ocean areas. 
Tony Blair, in Washington last night to meet Mr Bush, suggested military
strikes inside Afghanistan, targeted on Bin Laden's training camps, could
come in a matter of days. "These people, if they could, would get access to
chemical, biological and nuclear capability. We have no option but to act,"
he said. 

The US strategy to depose the Taliban regime is based on more than military
thinking. A further plank appears to entail supporting the campaign of the
exiled 86-year-old monarch of Afghanistan, King Zahir Shah, to return to
power by encouraging the guerrilla army of the Northern Alliance opposition
to fall in behind him. 

Diplomatic documents seen by the Guardian show that Washington is funding
and organising the travel of several Northern Alliance figures to Rome to
confer with the exiled monarch who is expected to call for a revolution. 

"The king plans to call on all the Afghan tribes to rise up against the
Taliban," the diplomatic cable reported yesterday, citing the advice of the
US administration. 

US plans to overthrow the Taliban regime were revealed when a senior
European politician in Washington this week was told by the US
administration that it wanted to hear his country's views on how Afghanistan
should be run after the Taliban were defeated and that "closer
consultations" were necessary. 

The Americans also spoke of a role for the UN in the new "interim
administration" for Afghanistan and for the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe in central Asia, without mentioning Nato. 
Washington is routinely sceptical of the UN and OSCE, but the key role was
seen as an attempt to build as broad a coalition as possible behind the
imminent campaign. 

The Europeans, Russia, and even China might be swayed by the unusual US
inclusiveness, diplomats said. "It's a major change of US policy," said one.


The spying mission in Uzbekistan is also fraught with political risk. The
two Hercules could not fly over Iran, but Turkmenistan, the third ex-Soviet
state bordering Afghanistan granted permission. 

However, diplomats said the Turkmens were less keen to grant overflying
rights to US fighter aircraft heading for the Afghan border.  
                





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