Nov 23, 2002 op eds

November , 2002 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

Nato finds a role: Fighting Muslims and taking over their resources
Gulf News, 23-11-2002

Nato's search for a new role in the rapidly changing world continues to develop, taking the alliance further away from its original purpose of mutual defence in Europe, while also meeting the need of its member states to have a mechanism by which they can offer military answers to threats which might arise anywhere in the world.

   Nato has invited seven former communist states to join the alliance, which will take Nato into the Baltic, Balkans and southern Central Europe. The move will strengthen these emerging democracies' security, so further encouraging their social development.

   Possibly more importantly, Nato has also planned a 20,000 rapid deployment force, which might be used outside Europe against "terrorists" or what Nato still calls rogue states (basically Muslim countries - Editor). Three years ago Nato celebrated its 50th birthday, and then announced for the first time that it would be ready to operate as an alliance outside Europe. Its member states had undertaken all sorts of military operations in many parts of the world, but Nato as such had stuck to the mutual defence of its member states.

   The decision to allow the alliance to look further afield for action, was limited by the lack of any prepared force, which the decision this week has dealt with. However, the political leadership of the alliance is still unsure of what kind of action Nato would agree to be involved in. For example, the impending American-led action against Iraq does not have the support of Germany, despite Nato's backing the action at this week's summit. But such doubts only affect some types of perceived threat. All agree that others merit Nato action, such as the former Yugoslavia which would have had a much better time if a Nato rapid deployment force had intervened effectively and earlier than the eventual action.

Focus should now be on Israel-Palestine conflict
By Brent Scowcroft

Gulf News, 23-11-2002

The United States has just concluded a remarkable exercise in diplomacy. It has opened up a possibility for peaceful resolution of the crisis over Iraq that few would have thought conceivable only three months ago.

While the process may have resembled the old adage about watching sausage being made, it has resulted in a tough, clear directive to Saddam Hussain.

By credibly threatening unilateral military action to resolve an Iraqi problem that has festered for years, the administration achieved two objectives. First, it induced the United Nations Security Council to face up to its responsibilities.

Second, by declaring that the only sure solution to the Iraqi problem was regime change by military force, the administration maximised the odds that Saddam would take the United States seriously, accept UN authority and avoid a conflict that could involve incalculable consequences for the region.

The result: unanimous agreement in the Security Council that an international outlaw regime must return forthwith to lawful behaviour, and unmistakable determination to use military force if it doesn't.

A remarkable outcome, notwithstanding that the process by which it was achieved has left wide resentment and bruised feelings on the part of those who believe the United States has behaved in a unilateral and arrogant manner that failed to take their interests and concerns adequately into account.

What now? Saddam, having accepted the Security Council's resolution, has two options. He can cooperate and comply fully - unlikely, given his past record. Or he can choose a temporizing strategy, testing UN resolve but cooperating just enough - by his calculations - to avoid military action against him.

Since his most basic objective is certainly to stay in power, he's likely to try to buy time through minimal compliance, hoping that the international resolve to resort to force will wane.

If so, the biggest risk is that he will miscalculate - perhaps sooner rather than later - what he must do and what he can get away with. This most likely course could take some time to work itself out, whatever the eventual outcome.

While the inspection process is under way, the administration could launch another diplomatic initiative that could rival the triumph it just scored, and at the same time reinforce the success it has just achieved.

This initiative would take the form of devoting the same kind of skill, audacity and laser-like attention to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Such a move could assuage some of the ill will stimulated in the Middle East and Europe by the hard-hitting Iraq initiative.

It would show U.S. determination to deal with the one issue that is the primary lens through which the Arab world views the United States. It would also reduce the appeal of Al Qaida and other terrorist groups and the negative reaction that would ensue should force against Iraq prove necessary.

In sum, it would not only address a critical security problem but also strengthen and sustain the international coalition that has been forged on the Iraq issue. In so doing it would help doom a "buy time'' strategy by Saddam.

How might this work? The United States has already taken a first step by developing, with its partners in the "Quartet" (the international consulting group consisting of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia), a road map for the achievement of a Palestinian state by 2005.

Some will argue that it would be imprudent, even dangerous, to push further at a time when Israelis (and perhaps the Palestinians) are facing elections. But the contrary might well be true. With the selection of its new leader, the Labor Party has put the peace process at the top of Israel's election agenda.

The administration owes the parties a clear statement of its vision. Presenting it at this time could provide both the Israeli and Palestinian publics a broader perspective on the most important issue facing them even as they engage in the election process.

The outlines of a process are already clear. The Palestinians need to end terrorist attacks and reform the Palestinian Authority. To require total compliance as a precondition, however, is simply to put control of the process in the hands of those on both sides who do not want it to succeed.

Steps toward reform of the Palestinian National Authority have already begun. We should define its requirements in non-personal terms, to avoid putting ourselves in the position of supporting democracy only if it elects Palestinians we prefer.

For the Israeli side, there must be a willingness to pull back forces from West Bank population centres short of a total cessation of violence - which no one can guarantee. Any type of settlement expansion must cease.

For the United States and its partners in the Quartet, there should be a willingness to outline in greater detail the nature of a Palestinian state, and to provide some sort of presence - including military personnel at least from the United States and the European Union - as Israel pulls back from its occupation in the West Bank.

None of this is new. But a clear, high-profile U.S. effort to move with vigor to build on our Iraqi diplomatic success with progress on the region's most vexing and intractable problem could open the way for change in the region that could be revolutionary, supporting all U.S. aspirations for the area. It could attenuate - perhaps even reverse - deepening anti-American feelings in the Middle East.

The author was national security adviser to U.S. presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush.

How the West fuels global terrorism
By Seumas Milne
The Guardian

LONDON, 23 November 2002 — This time last year, supporters of George Bush’s war on terror were in euphoric mood. As one Taleban stronghold after another fell to the US-backed Northern Alliance, they hailed the advance as a decisive blow to the authors of the Sept. 11 atrocities. The critics and doom-mongers had been confounded, cheerleaders crowed. Kites were flying again, music was playing and women were throwing off their burkas with joyful abandon.

As the US president demanded Osama Bin Laden “dead or alive”, government officials on both sides of the Atlantic whispered that they were less than 48 hours from laying hands on the Al-Qaeda leader. By destroying the network’s Afghan bases and its Taleban sponsors, supporters of the war argued, the Americans and their friends had ripped the heart out of the beast. Washington would now begin to address Muslim and Arab grievances by fast-tracking the establishment of a Palestinian state. London even published a rollcall of shame of journalists they claimed had been proved wrong by a hundred days of triumph. And in the UK Parliament, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ridiculed members of Parliament (MPs) from his own Labour Party for suggesting that the US and Britain might still be fighting in Afghanistan 12 months down the line.

One year on, the crowing has long since faded away; reality has sunk in. After six months of multiplying attacks on US, Australian and European targets, civilian and military — in Tunisia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Russia, Jordan, Yemen, the US and Indonesia — Western politicians are having to face the fact that they are losing their war on "terror. In Britain, the prime minister has taken to warning of the “painful price” that the country will have to pay to defeat those who are “inimical to all we stand for”, while leaks about the risk of chemical or biological attacks have become ever more lurid. After a year of US military operations in Afghanistan and around the world, the CIA Director George Tenet had to concede that the threat from Al-Qaeda and associated jihadist groups was as serious as before Sept. 11. “They’ve reconstituted, they are coming after us,” he said.

In other words, the global US onslaught had been a complete failure — at least as far as dealing with non-state terrorism was concerned. Tom Daschle, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, was even more brutal. Summing up a litany of unmet objectives in the US confrontation with militant Islamism, he asked: “By what measure can we say this has been successful?” But most galling of all has been the authentication of the latest taped message from Bin Laden himself, promising bloody revenge for the deaths of the innocent in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. This was the man whose capture or killing was, after all, the first objective of Bush’s war. And yet, along with the Taleban leader and one-eyed motorbiker Mulla Omar, the mastermind of America’s humiliation remains free.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan itself, the record is just as dismal. By using the heroin-financed gangsters of the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taleban regime and pursue Al-Qaeda remnants ever since, the US has handed over most of the country to the same war criminals who devastated Afghanistan in the early 1990s. In Kabul, the US puppet President Hamid Karzai can rely on foreign troops to prop up his fragile authority. There, and in a few other urban centers, some girls’ schools have reopened and the worst manifestations of the Taleban’s grotesque oppression of women have gone.

But in much of what is once again the opium capital of the world, the return of the warlords has meant harsh political repression, lawlessness, mass rape and widespread torture, the bombing or closure of schools, as well as Taleban-style policing of women’s dress and behavior. The systematic use by Ismail Khan, who runs much of Western Afghanistan with US support, of electric shock torture, arbitrary arrests and whippings to crush dissent is set out in a new Human Rights Watch report. Khan was nevertheless described by the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently as a “thoughtful” and “appealing” person. His counterpart in the north, Gen. Dostam, has in turn just been accused by the UN of torturing witnesses to his troops’ murder of thousands of Taleban prisoners late last year, when he was working closely with US special forces.

The death toll exacted for this “liberation” can only be estimated. But a consensus is growing that around 3,500 Afghan civilians were killed by US bombing (which included the large-scale use of depleted uranium weapons), with up to 10,000 combatants killed and many more deaths from cold and hunger as a result of the military action. Now, long after the war was supposed to be over, the US 82nd airborne division is reported to be alienating the population in the south and east with relentless but largely fruitless raids and detentions, while mortar and rocket attacks on US bases are now taking place at least three times a week. As Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, puts it, the US military campaign in Afghanistan has “lost momentum”.

All this has been the inevitable product of the central choice made last autumn, which was to opt for a mainly military solution to the challenge of terrorism. That was a recipe for failure. By their nature, guerrilla campaigns which have deep social roots and draw on a widespread sense of injustice — as militant Islamist groups do, regardless of the obscurantism of their ideology — cannot be defeated militarily. And as the war on "terror" has increasingly become a war to enforce US global power, it has only intensified the appeal of “asymmetric warfare” to the powerless. The grievances Al-Qaeda is able to feed on throughout the Muslim world were once again spelled out in Bin Laden’s latest edict. But there is little sign of any weakening of the wilful Western refusal to address seriously the causes of "terrorism." Thus, during the past year, the US has armed and bolstered Pakistan and the Central Asian dictatorships, supported Putin’s ongoing devastation of Chechnya, continued to bomb and blockade Iraq at huge human cost, established new US bases across the Muslim world and, most recklessly of all, provided every necessary cover for Ariel Sharon’s bloody rampages through the occupied Palestinian territories. In most of this, despite Tony Blair’s muted appeals for a new Middle East peace conference, Britain has played the role of faithful lieutenant.

Now, even as “phase one” of its war on terror has been seen to have failed, the US shows every sign of preparing to launch phase two: its long-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perhaps some of the intensity of the current warnings about terrorist threats is intended to help soften up public opinion for an unpopular war. But what is certain about such an act of aggression is that it will fuel Islamist "terrorism" throughout the world and make attacks on those countries which support it much more likely. If such outrages take place in Britain, there can no longer be any surprise or mystery about why we have been attacked, no point in asking why they hate us. Of course, it wouldn’t be the innocents who were killed or injured who would be to blame. But by throwing Britain’s weight behind a flagrantly unjust war, our political leaders would certainly be held responsible for endangering their own people.

The pawning of Lebanon

By Michael Young

The Daily Star, 11/23/02

It’s nice to know that once a year the word “independence” can be freely used, without the threat of judicial reprisals.
Arguing that Lebanese independence is a fanciful notion is prosaic. More interesting, as Lebanon prepares to celebrate Independence Day amid the cough of tanks kept safely away from the Southern border, is to track how independence will fare in light of the week’s other major event: the “Paris II” summit.
On the eve of the summit, the eagerness of some officials to collect foreign money has clouded their judgment. Premier Rafik Hariri is delighted to step out of the economic noose he tied for himself, at least temporarily, but it is already clear that assistance will come with strings attached, some of them political, many economic.
We forget that the International Monetary Fund agreed to a change in strategy when it ceased demanding that the government devalue the pound to reduce the public debt. However, this will translate into a much sharper eye when surveying reform. The IMF plans to prepare regular updates on the economic situation, whether Lebanon likes it or not.
The government has often cited the devaluation debate as an example of its devotion to economic sovereignty. In the shadow of Paris II, however, the line rings hollowly. In coming years the broad guidelines of Lebanon’s economic agenda will be set abroad. That might induce the government to pursue genuine reform, but it will also mean harsher financial burdens for the Lebanese.
In recent months Hariri has avoided dealing with domestic politics. Instead, the prime minister cut a deal with President Emile Lahoud, allowing him to shape political developments through the security and judicial apparatuses, while Hariri focused on salvaging his economic house of cards. That did not prevent his satellites from censuring the opposition, though this only confirmed Hariri’s docility.
So, the prime minister has accepted domestic political marginalization to better prepare for his relative economic marginalization once Paris II ends. The pitfalls in this equation are obvious. How can someone who has increasingly less of a say on major political matters deliver on the fundamental political concessions demanded of a serious reform program?
Instructions from on high don’t leave much room for maneuver. With Syria anxious about how a war in Iraq might affect its fortunes, Lebanon’s political class has been told to keep a low profile. What that means is that neither Hariri, nor, if he happens to agree with his premier, Lahoud can initiate a potentially divisive administrative purge to reduce spending.
The same applies to privatization, no less of a political hot potato than administrative reform. Under present economic conditions the prospects for privatization are dismal. However, Syrian-inspired inducements to avoid tension will allow public-sector mandarins to regain the initiative. How Hariri will sell this to donors as progress is an open question.
There is poetic justice involved. Here is the grand co-opter himself, who liberally threw the republic’s money around in the early 1990s to purchase support for his reconstruction program, compelled to pawn his power to ensure his survivability. Hariri is a hostage to the debt he created. Nor can he opt out of the system, leaving those who financially propped Lebanon up in the lurch, since many of them wagered on his political resilience.
Consequently, this Independence Day Lebanon finds itself forfeited in all directions. Paris II donors will soon stake a claim on the country’s economic future, the major obstacle to their plans being Syria’s stake, as Damascus nervously aspires to Lebanese stalemate while the Iraq crisis develops. Meanwhile, the US, too, has apparently laid claim to Lebanon’s soul, swapping economic flexibility for yet-unclear political demands.
Given these outstanding claims, how soon will Lebanon be redeemed by its own? The question is badly posed. A more pertinent query is how cheaply? And nothing comes cheap in this country, except the reliability of its governing class.

America's 'war on terror' going nowhere fast

Mushahid Hussain

Khaleej Times, 11/23/02

THE probably definitive discovery that Osama bin Laden may still be alive well over a year after the US launched the "war on terror" aptly corroborates the title of one of the most analytical and well-informed books to emerge after September 11.

The Britain-based journalist, Dilip Hiro, who won last year's Muslim News award for his positive coverage of Muslim world issues, recently released his latest book, War without End.

As the title of the book indicates, the United States is facing a new kind of unique enemy, different from all others faced in the past. Faceless, nameless, stateless and elusive. And the recent tape recordings of Osama underscore the difficult nature of this conflict.

The airing of the tapes of an alleged Osama bin Laden recording could not have come at a worse time for the United States. Just when the Bush administration was savouring its dual triumphs - the Republican sweep in mid-term polls and the unanimous UN Security Council resolution regarding Iraq - the purported voice of Osama comes as an uncomfortable reminder that the war on terror is far from over. And Osama, at least on the airwaves, is more 'alive' than 'dead'.

The Al Jazeera tapes have a threefold significance: the timing, their target audience and the tone. While the US is single-mindedly focused on removing Saddam, Osama has sent a mischievous 'catch me if you can' message of defiance and resilience. His tape is an acknowledgement of the failure to achieve the war on terror's professed principal goal of getting "Osama dead or alive", which President Bush had proclaimed on September 20, 2001.

Then the tapes' target audience is more diverse and different - "to the peoples of the countries allied with the unjust government of the US". Osama seems to be aware of the huge anti-war demonstrations in many of the countries he listed including Britain, France, Germany and Italy. His tone, this time around, is harsh and hard-hitting. He calls Bush, the "pharaoh of our time", refers to the US administration as "this criminal gang", and he compares the 1991 Gulf War bombing of Baghdad to the sacking of the Iraqi capital by the Mongol hordes of Halaku Khan in 1258, a reminder of one of the darkest chapters in early Islamic history. These tapes have significance in the context of the war on terror where the US has failed to achieve its main target, while a new war against Iraq is already being planned.

Regarding Afghanistan, America's chief military officer, Gen. Richard Myers, admitted to the Washington Press on November 7 that the "US military is losing momentum in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan because the remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taleban have proven more successful in adapting to US tactics than the US military has to theirs". Three recent major statements from Western leaders have underscored that the focus of the 'war on terror' is the Islamic world. There were the virtually racist comments of the still-influential former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing on November 8 to Le Monde. He said "Turkey has no place in the European Union, because it has a different culture, a different way of life, and admitting Turkey would be the end of the European Union". In effect, he was saying what many Europeans have felt privately that the EU would remain a 'Christian Club', as Turkey is a Muslim state.

Then Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a diatribe at a Press conference at Brussels on November 12, warning that Chechen Muslims "talk about setting up a worldwide Caliphate - and if you are a Christian, you are in danger".

Conversely, in a refreshing change of tone from Giscard and Putin, the next day, President Bush, came out with a clear and balanced statement where he totally disassociated himself from the ravings and rantings about Islam from his country's militant religious Right, which is a strong base of support for his Republican Party. Bush said "we do not fight a religion", adding "some of the comments uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans". He also underlined "Islam is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others". In any case, regarding terrorism, as Dilip Hiro mentions in his book, the current crop of Islamic radicals owe their origins mostly to policies either of the United States or Muslim governments during the Cold War.

Another aspect mentioned in War Without End as well as another recent book, Bush At War, by Bob Woodward, a prominent American journalist, is that the CIA had already launched its covert operations to capture or kill Osama bin Laden well before September 11. Interestingly, Woodward reveals that $70 million was spent by the CIA in cash payments to buy out warlords and other Taleban commanders and supporters before Kabul fell on November 13 last year. The key question of US policy towards the Muslim world remains to be addressed. Why, for instance, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asked in a November 16 speech in Cairo, the double standards since Israel is exempt from any pressure on weapons of mass destruction, and flouting of UN resolutions, while such standards are being strictly enforced against Iraq?

And, given talk of German-style military occupation, what is the American agenda in Iraq and after Iraq? Or is it actually about oil, with Iraq holding 11 per cent of the world's oil reserves at 112 billion barrels? Is there a 'hit list' of Muslim states since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has urged the US that "after Iraq, it should be Iran's turn".

The Muslim world is already a fertile breeding ground for all kinds of imaginative conspiracy theories. The 'war on terror' is increasingly looking like an open-ended, 'war without end'.

If the remarks of Giscard, Putin and Sharon reflect an influential strand of Western policy, many Muslims would share the apprehension of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, that the war on terror may be transformed into a "war against Muslims", unless, of course, the US reviews its one-sided Middle East policy.

For CIA, Bush's proof is not bulletproof
By Ray McGovern

Gulf News, 23-11-2002

U.S. President Bush has said he will decide on the basis of "the best intelligence" whether to make war on Iraq. He has gone on record assuring the nation that "we've got the best intelligence, thanks to the men and women of the CIA."

One can be forgiven, then, for being perplexed at the disconnect between the president's statements on Iraq and "the best intelligence."

The Bush administration has managed to create in the public mind a link between Iraq and the terrorist attacks of September 11. In his speech on October 7, Bush noted that "some citizens wonder" why it is necessary to confront Iraq now: "There is a reason. We have experienced the horror of September 11."

Bush went on to adduce evidence of linkage between Iraq and Al Qaida. But on the day the president spoke, CIA Director George Tenet cautioned senators that this evidence is "based on sources of varying reliability." This is intelligence code for "Whoa!"

The evidence is not "bulletproof," as Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would have it. It is full of holes.

Driven after September 11 to chase down every scrap of information that might implicate Iraq, CIA analysts have found nothing persuasive.

The challenge they face reminds me of the unrelenting pressure CIA Director William Casey put on analysts to implicate the USSR in the attempted assassination of the pope in 1981. Casey all but said it: "First ones to find evidence of Soviet involvement get promoted!"

And that is exactly what happened. Some people conjured up evidence, made the case and got promoted. Never mind that the evidence and the case were spurious. This time, to their credit, CIA analysts have stood their ground - so far, at least.

Resisting strong pressure from Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the analysts have stuck by their best judgment that Iraq played no role in September.

They have been affirmed by Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to the president's father, now chairman of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a man who knows how essential it is to prevent the politicisation of intelligence.

Scowcroft has described the evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaida as "scant." With that he incurred the wrath of New York Times' self-styled "right-wing opinionmonger" William Safire, who has called upon Scowcroft to resign from the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

In making a case for military action against Saddam Hussain, the president claimed on October 7 that "the risk is simply too great that he will use weapons of mass destruction or provide them to a terror network." The president did not base this claim on the "best intelligence."

The CIA said in a letter released October 9 that the probability is low that Iraq would initiate an attack with such weapons or give them to terrorists ... unless: "Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorists action."

In view of continuing U.S. planning to mount such an attack, it is just short of astounding that CIA analysts continue to spell out their conclusions without fear or favor. How soon could Iraq acquire nuclear weapons?

In his October 7 speech, the president claimed that "if the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal" weapons-grade fissile material, "it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."

But the judgment of the intelligence community is that Iraq could not produce such material until the last half of the decade.

And the notion that it could "buy or steal" fissile material from abroad and turn it into a nuclear weapon without detection by U.S. intelligence strains credulity beyond the breaking point.

Equally important, CIA analysts have been unwilling to parrot the jingoist Madison Avenue explanation for September 11: "They hate our democracy." Rather, the CIA has had the temerity to dig deeper and address the foundational question: If they hate us, why?

A CIA report given last month to the Senate Intelligence Committee noted that "the forces fuelling hatred of the U.S. and fuelling Al Qaida recruiting are not being addressed," and that "the underlying causes that drive terrorists will persist."

The report cited a February Gallup poll of almost 10,000 Muslims in nine countries in which respondents described the United States as "ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased."

Small wonder that CIA analysts are in disfavour at the White House and the Defence Department. Small wonder that the Pentagon has set up its own intelligence unit to come up with the "right" answers.

The author, a CIA analyst from 1964 to 1990, is now co-director of the Servant Leadership School

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent http://www.aljazeerah.info