Chinese-Made Ammo in al Qaeda Caves Confirms

debkafile was the first publication to reveal that China had sent thousands of armed men into Afghanistan in support of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Our first story came out on October 6, 2001, one day before the US went to war in Afghanistan.
Monday, December 17, Pentagon officials aboard the plane taking US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Brussels, revealed that large quantities of Chinese-manufactured ammo were discovered in the Tora Bora cave hideouts of al Qaeda.
They were speaking to CNN’s senior defense correspondent James McIntyre, who ran the story with close-up shots of the cache. It was shown to include mortar shells, anti-tank rockets and ammunition for various types of automatic rifles and machine guns of Chinese manufacture, abandoned by fleeing al Qaeda men.
debkafile continued to run with the story through different stages of the Afghanistan War.
Follow-ups, verified by other media, appeared on October 20 and November 15. In the first, we reported 15 Chinese fighters found dead in Kandahar. They were part of an escort convoy for one of bin Laden’s senior lieutenants, Basir al Masri, commander of the Arab contingents in Jalalabad, which came under US bombing as it left Kandahar.
In the second, David Chater of Sky television attested to the presence of Chinese fighting alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda in the battles of Konduz and Khanabad in northern Afghanistan.
Now comes the CNN report, which confirms that Beijing sent to bin Laden, not only men but also quantities of weapons.
John Stanton, in a feature article in the December issue of National Defense Magazine, reports that “DEBKA caused a stir several weeks ago when it published an unconfirmed report that Chinese troops were fighting alongside the Taliban…”