Tactical Nuclear Weapons Deployed
6 October: DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, in a single 70-minuted conversation on September 23, eleven days after the terrorist assaults in New York and Washington, agreed on the deployment of tactical weapons. This is an epic shift in the global balance of strength.
Putin gave the nod for US forces poised in Central Asia to jump into Afghanistan to be armed with tactical nuclear weapons, such as small neutron bombs, which emit strong radiation, nuclear mines, shells, and other nuclear ammunition suited to commando warfare in mountainous terrain.
In return, Bush assented to Russia deploying tactical nuclear weapons units around Chechnya after Moscow’s ultimatum to the rebels, some of whom are backed by Osama Bin Laden, to surrender, went by without response. DEBKAfile’s military sources place the US nuclear weapons in four former Soviet Central Asian bases: the military air facility at Tuzel, 15 km (10 miles) northwest of the Uzbek capital of Tashkent; at Kagady in the Termez region; in Khandabad, near the city of Karshi; and at the military air base in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
In addition to the nuclear weapons units, Russian bombers carrying small neutron bombs were moved to Russian military air bases around the border of the breakaway province, in Stavropol northwest of Chechnya, the Godowta base in Georgia to the south, and Mozdok in northern Osetia, northwest of Chechnya.
Russian and U.S. military sources refuse to take questions on these startling events.
The US is far from eager to actively inject a nuclear element into the war against terrorism and will not be the first to do so. According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the US plans to hold those tactical nuclear weapons in reserve, unleashing them in the campaign against bin Laden only in certain extreme circumstances:
1. To counter a move by Bin Laden’s men first bring out nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against the US force fighting inside Afghanistan.
2. If a chemical or biological assault by the Taliban against Pakistan.
3. Should groups of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network - either in Central Asia or the Balkans - wield these weapons of mass destruction against US military targets or US nuclear arms in other parts of the world.
4. If using them is the only way to save heavy American combat casualties.
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6 October:
Before even the launching of the major US military offensive in Afghanistan, long Chinese convoys were carrying armed Chinese Muslim servicemen through northwest China into Afghanistan, according to DEBKAfile’s intelligence experts.
They were sent in to fight alongside the ruling Taliban and Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Their number is estimated roughly between 5000 and 15,000. Our sources report another three convoys are behind the first 3000, who crossed the frontier Friday, October 5.
They are entering Afghanistan along the ancient Krakoram Road to the Afghan-Pakistani border, through the Kulik Pass of Little Pamir, which is situated in one of the highest and most remote regions of the world.
Beijing is deploying this force in two places:
A. Whakyir, the Kirgyz tribal encampment near the Little Pamir-Tadjik frontier, opposite the swelling concentration of US and Russian Special Forces and air strength
The Chinese have brought with them Kirgyz fundamentalist militants from the Ferghana Valley of Central Asia, as interpreters.
From Whakyir, the Chinese generals believe, with Bin Laden’s and the Taliban’s tacticians, they will be able to block off the movement of the US-led force from its rallying point in Dzhartygumbez, Tadjikistan, no more than 35 miles from Little Pamir, into the mountains of Hindu Kush.
B. Jalalabad in north Afghanistan, at the foot of the Hindu Kush range.
DEBKAfile’s Chinese sources reveal that, immediately after the terrorist strikes in the United States on September 11, the Chinese intelligence service, MSS, handed in to the defense ministry in Beijing their estimation that the United States would go to war to overthrow the Taliban regime, for the sake of which it would sign a pact with Russia. The Chinese leadership viewed this eventuality as the most significant shift in the global balance since the 1962 Chinese-Russian feud, with dangerous implications for China’s world standing and its interests in Central and Southwest Asia. They decided it must be counteracted.
The only satisfactory outcome of the Bin Laden crisis in Chinese eyes is the redeployment of Japanese-based US troops to the Persian Gulf, when the Kitty Hawk carrier moved the 3rd Marines Division out of Okinawa last week.
Chinese intelligence did not miss the absence of fighters and reconnaissance craft on her decks. The planes stayed behind, but the very fact that the Kitty Hawk is no longer within operational range of the Straits of Taiwan leaves the disputed island with diminished protection.
Beijing also took note of additional US military movements, including the Army’s 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum, New York and that of another formerly Pacific-based unit, the 25th Infantry Division, out of Hawaii to the Persian Gulf.
According to DEBKAfile ’s Far East experts, the removal of substantial US military strength from the Pacific Rim opened the way for Chinese intervention in Afghanistan and its effort to slow down the US-Russian advance.
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