[iwar] [fc:Deadly.Secrets.Left.By.Fleeing.Taleban]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-11-15 08:19:43
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 08:19:43 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Deadly.Secrets.Left.By.Fleeing.Taleban]
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London Times
November 15, 2001
Deadly Secrets Left By Fleeing Taleban
By Anthony Loyd in Kabul
The al-Qaeda men had left in a hurry on Monday night. They took with them
their weapons and explosives but there was not time to load all the
documents on their vehicles and in their haste they allowed the tops of the
bundled sheets to spill across the corridor floors. 
Someone had tried to burn this residue but the flames were weak and left the
job unfinished. 
Another unknown person scattered anti-personnel mines across the ground near
the house, either by accident or intent. Then they fled. 
When looking through the documents they left behind, it becomes apparent
that most are no more than the bomb-making literature one would expect a
terrorist organisation to possess. It is only when the neat, handwritten
notes of a mathematician or scientist turn their focus to the detailed
studies of mach speeds, conical areas, liquid rocket fuel and plutonium -
atomic number 94 - that the hair begins to crawl on the back of your neck. 
For whatever other dark business may have occurred in the al-Qaeda safe
houses in Kabul, a lot of time and effort had been devoted within them to
researching the creation of an atomic device. 
There is an intelligence vacuum in the city at present. A few "spooks",
American and British, have moved into the capital and are doubtless going
about their work, but none had so far visited the four al-Qaeda houses I saw
yesterday. Each had been ransacked by Afghan civilians and Mujahidin in the
wake of the Arabs' fast departure on Monday night, but looters were
interested only in the stocks of medicine and clothes left behind. The
Afghans have more immediate appetites than carrying away literature and
documents written in the alien languages of Arabic, German, Urdu and
English. 
I was taken to the first house, a two-storey building in the Karta Parwan
quarter of the city, by a British cameraman familar with Kabul after years
of experience in the country. It lay opposite an induction centre for
Pakistani and Arab recruits coming to Afghanistan to learn their trade. 
"Two years ago the Talebs moved some Arabs, Egyptians and Pakistanis to the
house after the induction centre became too full," Wakil, 46, a former
policeman who lived next door, said. 
"There were about 60 or 70 of them who lived here. At any one time there
would be up to 20 while the others rotated through the front lines. They
kept to themselves and were not friendly but I knew their watchman, an
Afghan named Baten Shah. He used to tell me a bit about them." 
The documents lay strewn around the top floor, along with copies of aircraft
magazines advertising flying instruction manuals, navigation instruments and
flight charts. 
There was a lot of propaganda and religious material embossed with symbols,
including Islamic flags smashing through the Union Flag and Stars and
Stripes, and the blackened claws of Israel, America, Britain, France and the
United Nations ripping at a map of Saudi Arabia. 
Lying among Canadian passport applications, journals, letters and English
language courses, the majority of the al-Qaeda documents were simple
guerrilla instructions on the use of infantry weapons and manufacture of
bombs, as well as studies of American special forces, the SAS and Western
hostage-rescue techniques. 
The majority of the bomb-making instructions were easy to understand and
used domestic items, including Alka Seltzer tubes, condoms, wax, mousetraps
and cigarettes as contact switches to initiate charges. 
These sound innocuous enough, but the notes included details on how to put
the items to use so that a victim opening a book or turning a door handle
would be blown to pieces. 
There was an abundance of material related to bridge and road blowing, and
some sinister notes examining the air-conditioning systems of apartment
buildings. 
The handful of local Afghans and street children who were idly looting the
first house were so oblivious of its significance that when I asked if they
knew any other houses where Arab fighters had lived they were happy to show
me. Of the four buildings I explored, two in Karte Parwan and two further
east, one had been lived in by Chechens, one by Yemenis (allegedly including
family members of Osama bin Laden), and two by a mixture of Arabs and
Pakistanis. 
Even the diagrams of "E" cell microcoulometer and electrochemical delay
switches seemed banal beside the physics and chemistry manuals devoted to
molecular matter, the thermal expansion of gases and fluid pressures. 
Yet it was the studies of rocket fuel, thrust capabilities and concept
models of a missile with radar stealth ability and load capacity to a speed
of mach 2.4 that were most unnerving for the layman. Some were written on
headed paper from the Hotel Grand in Peshawar, others from the Pearl
Continental in Karachi; most on blank paper or in log books. They were
extensive, precise, extremely detailed: the work of a man or men with highly
advanced scientific and design understanding. 
The vernacular quickly spun out of my comprehension but there were phrases
through the mass of chemical symbols and physics jargon that anyone could
understand, including notes on how the detonation of TNT compresses
plutonium into a critical mass producing a nuclear chain reaction and
eventually a thermo-nuclear reaction. 
This was only what was left behind by frightened men escaping the advance of
the Mujahidin. The sensitive material is still with them. 

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