If you’re looking for pieces on Jack Idema and his team, please click on this link.

From EurasiaNet back in 2001:

The Afghan opposition seemed on the verge of irrelevancy — or worse, extinction — earlier this month. On 9 September, the Northern Alliance lost its charismatic leader, Ahmad Shah Masood. He was mortally wounded when a bomb — hidden in a camera held by two assassins posing as journalists — exploded at Masood’s headquarters on Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan. He died of his injuries six days later.

The assassination attempt came just two days before the devastating terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. U.S. President George W. Bush is vowing to find and punish not only the perpetrators of those attacks but states or groups that assisted them in any way. And the man Washington sees as most likely to be behind the attacks is Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan with the Taliban’s cooperation.

Now, let’s take a look at Jack Idema’s entry into Afghanistan which was documented on film, showing him entering the country with his documents, hugging leaders, kissing the picture of Massoud, and so on. This is not gaining illegal entry to the country; this was an event that the Afghans were welcoming him and sanctioning his trip and his mission.

“The Northern Alliance is in a position to offer several things. One, and not to be sniffed at, is good intelligence on what’s happening in various parts of Afghanistan. Now clearly, that intelligence will become probably less reliable the further away you got from their own areas of control. Nevertheless, given the fact that the Northern Alliance is not confined only to the northeast, it has significant wide pockets of guerrilla activity in central and western Afghanistan, those areas are dotted around a lot of Afghanistan.”

Some commentators suggest that should any U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan turn to ground fighting, the Northern Alliance would seem a natural ally. As for the number of its fighters, Davis says the Afghan opposition has between 12,000 and 15,000 fighters in Takhar and Badakhstan provinces and in the Panjshir Valley, all in the northeast corner of Afghanistan.

This is precisely what Idema did; forged a friendship and and alliance with the already existing anti-Taliban fighting militia who had resisted the Soviets and then later the Taliban, for over 20 years. Now think about that. Think about how overjoyed they must have been to receive backup from the United States after all those years of fighting.

And on top of that, an experienced Green Beret and counter-terrorist expert who could get the job done, in Jonathan Keith aka “Jack” Idema.

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