The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Nicholas Whyte:

Al-Qaeda never admitted being behind 9/11? I must have missed something somewhere. I thought one of Osama's video/audio tapes claimed credit.

Well, according to this CNN article from November 2001 there were at that point no publicly released videos which did so (though the British were claiming they had unreleased evidence). If you look at the text of the tapes that have been transcribed I don't see any explicit admission that he was behind it.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that Bin Ladern is innocent, I'm saying that he is a liar, and if he couldn't tell the truth about killing 3000 people in DC and New York it seems very odd that he would start telling the truth about killing three people in Karachi.

"escalated domestic dispute" - And they bombed the building? Some escalation. Still, if you want to kill people at your enemy's embassy, you'll take whoever you can get.

It seems that my information was out of date; and the latest from the Pakistani authorities is that it was in fact a "terrorist cell". Though of course one must bear in mind that the Pakistanis are as eager to talk up their part in the "war on terrorism" as was the previous Macedonian government. And it can often suit one lot of militants to claim that they are in fact a different group.

David,

No, the US wasn't fooled and indeed the embassy in Macedonia made it quite clear at the time that they did not believe there was any specific security threat (this at a time when the US embassy in nearby Bosnia was being closed quite frequently because of such threats).

Simon,

The December 2002 incident in which the Macedonian consulate in Pakistan was destroyed appears to have been completely unconnected. The three people who died in the December incident were all Pakistanis, only one was employed in the consulate, and it appears to have been an escalated domestic dispute.

This didn't prevent wild rumours from appearing in the Macedonian press to the effect that Al-Qaeda had left graffiti on the walls of the burnt-out building claiming responsibility. It would have been the first time they ever overtly admitted being behind an attack, and it seems unlikely that they would start with this one.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting was onto this one almost as soon as it happened. There seems to be no direct link with the December 2002 incident.

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