May 19, 2002	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 6, 1423

KABUL: The assassination of an Afghan rebel leader 48 hours before the Sept 11 terrorist attacks was part of a strategic plan by Osama bin Laden to expand his influence into central Asia, according to American and Afghan government sources.

Analysts initially thought the killing of Ahmed Shah Masood, head of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, was part of Osama’s preparations for Sept. 11 — a move to deprive the United States of a potential ally on the ground when it retaliated for the suicide hijackings.

Government officials now say Masood’s assassination was part of a more ambitious design — to establish a caliphate, or religious state, encompassing Afghanistan and parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and the predominantly Muslim Sinkiang province of southern China.

“Their plan was to capture (northern) Afghanistan in one week after the assassination and — maybe two to three weeks later — capture Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,” said Mohammad Arif, chairman of the National Security Directorate in the interim Afghan government.

As Masood’s chief of intelligence, Arif ran spy networks inside the Taliban and received reports from interrogations of Taliban and other Islamic militants captured by the Northern Alliance.

US officials confirmed what they called “Osama’s grand plan” to expand militarily and politically into central Asia. American policy advisors were extremely unsettled by it well before Sept. 11, officials said.

“It was of great concern, absolutely,” said a senior Bush Administration official. “That is one reason we wanted to get rid of him. He wanted to knock off other governments ... They were training terrorists, creating front organizations.”

While US officials were less certain than Atif that al-Qaeda and the Taliban had a timetable for advancing into central Asia, they regarded the Masood assassination as a key step toward that goal.

“They wanted to take over the whole country (and then) they wanted to expand the caliphate,” said the senior US official, who noted that Masood and his resistance force were the last obstacle to Taliban and al-Qaeda control of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said in an interview: “Osama believed that by getting rid of Commander Masood, the resistance would be over.”

The two al Qaeda assassins, armed with letters of introduction and booby-trapped television equipment, spent nearly a month inside Masood’s compound and entourage, awaiting an interview promised by the rebel leader. On Sept. 9, the men — Tunisians trained in an al Qaeda camp — were ushered into a room with Masood. A few moments later, a bomb blast riddled his body with shrapnel.

At the same time, the Taliban’s so-called final offensive against the Northern Alliance pressed hard on three fronts. One rebel general had reported that his troops were on the verge of collapse. But the lines held.

Osama expected Masood’s killing to demoralize the resistance. But rebel fighters did not learn of their leader’s death for several days — until after al Qaeda hijackers had flown jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

When massive US reprisals began, the Afghan resistance was still intact and Taliban troops had retreated to defensive positions.

“The group around Osama thought up different scenarios. They imagined a Bill Clinton-type response,” said a Kabul intelligence official, referring to a 1998 cruise missile strike in Afghanistan that Clinton ordered after the bombings of US embassies in East Africa.

“They could never imagine the response that took place” after Sept 11, the official said.

By 2000, Western intelligence had begun getting increased reports that Osama was talking openly about creating an Islamic caliphate. The reports coincided with an increase in Osama’s influence over his Taliban hosts.

The Taliban decision-making corps had dwindled with the death from cancer of Omar’s prime minister, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani, a year ago. The diplomat said Osama filled the vacuum.

Afghan military and intelligence officials said that Taliban and al-Qaeda backed fighters planned to infiltrate rapidly across the northern borders once Masood was killed and his troops dispersed. The Afghan and Arab militants were to join forces in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with local groups of fundamentalist guerrillas.

In Afghanistan, Osama had funded and supervised the training of thousands of Uzbeks, Tajiks and other tribal fighters, specifically for purposes of military expansion, said a second Bush administration official.

Besides training terrorists in Afghan camps, Osama was grooming a highly trained and disciplined fighting force for the Masood front — a sort of Arab foreign legion called Brigade 055. Estimates of its size range from 1,000 to 2,500. The fighters were recruited from all over the world and had pledged to fight to the death.

Assisting Brigade 055 was a battle-hardened force of 700 to 1,000 central Asian fighters headed by Namangani, the Islamic leader from Uzbekistan. Namangani was considered a major terrorist threat by the Clinton and Bush administrations after he organized cells in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, officials said. He was reported killed in an American bombings raid in November.

Such non-Afghan military units were increasingly important to the Taliban, officials said. “The Taliban were weak,” said Arif, the Afghan intelligence official. “Their strongest forces were made up of foreigners.” —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post