Al-Qaeda deputy calls for Afghan uprising
Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, has issued a call for young Afghans to rise up again the "infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands".
The call to civil war, made in a video which also refers to the Kabul riots last month and posted on an Islamic website last night, came as four American soldiers died in fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
Harmid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, responded to the video by calling al-Zawahri "an enemy of the Afghan people" and saying that his country could not tolerate the recent upsurge in violence.
Around 600 Afghans have been killed since May in the worst period of sustained unrest since the fall of the Taleban in November 2001.
The unrest may have been fuelled by an ongoing al-Qaeda propaganda campaign, that has produced six al-Zawahri videos and an audio recording of bin Laden in recent months.
The four American soldiers were killed in combat trying to block the movements of enemy forces in the province of Nuristan, which lies on the border of the Chitral region of northern Pakistan, according to a US military statement. Afghan and US forces have been looking for al-Qaeda and Taleban forces in the area since the middle of April.
A fifth soldier was wounded in the battle, which took place in the Kamdesh district of the province, but is in a stable condition. Nuristan, 5,000 square miles of nearly roadless mountains, forests and deep, terraced gorges, has a long history of independence from the rest of Afghanistan and a 250-mile border with Pakistan that remains largely unguarded.
The al-Zawahri video, which carried the stamp of al-Qaeda's in-house media unit, Al-Sahab Productions, appeared to have been made on May 30, the day after an American lorry ran out of control in Kabul, killing five people and prompting anti-Western riots that cost the lives of a further 20 people in Kabul.
Entitled "American Crimes in Kabul", the tape shows the Egyptian cleric seated in front a black backdrop with an automatic rifle. Unlike other tapes, it carried no English subtitles, only translations into Farsi and Arabic, suggesting it was aimed at Afghans rather than the West.
"I am calling upon the Muslims in Kabul in particular and in all Afghanistan in general and for the sake of God to stand up in an honest stand in the face of the infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands," said al-Zawahri.
"I direct my speech today to my Muslim brothers in Kabul who lived the bitter events yesterday and saw by their own eyes a new proof of the criminal acts of the American forces against the Afghani people."
With the Taleban mustering the largest fighting groups since 2001 and US commanders speaking of a likely increase in violence as Nato prepares to take over the military mission to the country, the Afghan President called al-Zawahri "first the enemy of the Afghan people, and then the enemy of the rest of the world".
"This ’War on Terror’ has been limited to Afghanistan soil," Mr Karzai told journalists in Kabul. "We can’t tolerate it forever... in the past three weeks five, six hundred people have died in the country. We want an end to this, a basic end to this."
The call to civil war, made in a video which also refers to the Kabul riots last month and posted on an Islamic website last night, came as four American soldiers died in fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
Harmid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, responded to the video by calling al-Zawahri "an enemy of the Afghan people" and saying that his country could not tolerate the recent upsurge in violence.
Around 600 Afghans have been killed since May in the worst period of sustained unrest since the fall of the Taleban in November 2001.
The unrest may have been fuelled by an ongoing al-Qaeda propaganda campaign, that has produced six al-Zawahri videos and an audio recording of bin Laden in recent months.
The four American soldiers were killed in combat trying to block the movements of enemy forces in the province of Nuristan, which lies on the border of the Chitral region of northern Pakistan, according to a US military statement. Afghan and US forces have been looking for al-Qaeda and Taleban forces in the area since the middle of April.
A fifth soldier was wounded in the battle, which took place in the Kamdesh district of the province, but is in a stable condition. Nuristan, 5,000 square miles of nearly roadless mountains, forests and deep, terraced gorges, has a long history of independence from the rest of Afghanistan and a 250-mile border with Pakistan that remains largely unguarded.
The al-Zawahri video, which carried the stamp of al-Qaeda's in-house media unit, Al-Sahab Productions, appeared to have been made on May 30, the day after an American lorry ran out of control in Kabul, killing five people and prompting anti-Western riots that cost the lives of a further 20 people in Kabul.
Entitled "American Crimes in Kabul", the tape shows the Egyptian cleric seated in front a black backdrop with an automatic rifle. Unlike other tapes, it carried no English subtitles, only translations into Farsi and Arabic, suggesting it was aimed at Afghans rather than the West.
"I am calling upon the Muslims in Kabul in particular and in all Afghanistan in general and for the sake of God to stand up in an honest stand in the face of the infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands," said al-Zawahri.
"I direct my speech today to my Muslim brothers in Kabul who lived the bitter events yesterday and saw by their own eyes a new proof of the criminal acts of the American forces against the Afghani people."
With the Taleban mustering the largest fighting groups since 2001 and US commanders speaking of a likely increase in violence as Nato prepares to take over the military mission to the country, the Afghan President called al-Zawahri "first the enemy of the Afghan people, and then the enemy of the rest of the world".
"This ’War on Terror’ has been limited to Afghanistan soil," Mr Karzai told journalists in Kabul. "We can’t tolerate it forever... in the past three weeks five, six hundred people have died in the country. We want an end to this, a basic end to this."
posted by worldnews at 5:47 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home