Jihad against “Terrorism” 16-22/9/01 (1)

At the moment of writing, it is still not clear what our governments are
going to do to the people of Afghanistan. One of the articles below
(^ÌSecret US plans revealed¹, oddly enough from Pravda) suggests it might
not be as bad as we all expect it to be: that there will be a battle to
win hearts and minds, more carrot than stick. Clearly and very
understandably under the circumstances the nation has gone mad, and
Bush has to do something. On a very optimistic reading he may simply be
prolonging the moment of non-action until a more considered and
reasonable approach becomes possible.

But it seems unlikely, both on past performance and on the rhetoric that
is being employed though this has still not descended to the level of
gangster obscenities favoured by Bush Sr during the Gulf Massacre.

Already with the departure of the aid organisations it seems that we have
guaranteed the deaths of many more people than were killed at the World
Trade Centre and a slow, lingering death of starvation and disease
probably worse than that we have already inflicted over the past ten
years on at least tens of thousands of people in Iraq.

The ultimatum Bush has given the Afghans far outdoes in its brutality and
arrogance the famous ultimatum of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the
Serbs in 1914, which precipitated the First World War (and the
circumstances are comparable. The assassination of the heir to the throne
of the great historical empire of Europe was the equivalent of killing
the Vice President of the United States).

Bush demanded that the Afghans hand over all ^Ìterrorists¹, as if that
word (which no honest commentator should ever use without wrapping it in
inverted commas) has any meaning in that part of the world; as if Osima
bin Laden¹s camps are not full of people training to fight in Kashmir, or
in Chechnya. Are they all ^Ìterrorists¹? The ultimatum was meaningless
and designed to be so.

And what about the means by which the United States has established
itself in Pakistan? Does that not resemble Hitler¹s ultimatum to
Yugoslavia when he wanted access to Greece in 1941? And when the Yugoslav
government decided to give in to Hitler, did it not provoke a desperate,
suicidal wave of revulsion among the Serb population, just as is now
happening in Pakistan?

And does the whole operation not rather resemble ... Saddam Hussein¹s
invasion of Kuwait? Except that Saddam Hussein made a serious effort to
negotiate with the Kuwaitis beforehand. In that case, it was the
Kuwaitis, the victim, who refused to negotiate. In the present case it is
the aggressor who is refusing to negotiate.

Taken as I am with historical analogies I¹ve long thought the Muslim
struggle against the US Empire resembles the struggle of Jewish zealots
against the Roman Empire the desperate struggle of a great religious
culture against an immensely powerful but spiritually empty
material/technical civilisation which is crushing it to death. The Jewish
zealots too had a suicidal streak and the Romans regarded them as
terrorist fanatics. Is Afghanistan fated to become the Muslim Masada?

In this whole unpleasant spectacle there is one little flash of something
resembling poetic genius, and that is the name ^ÌOperation Infinite
Justice¹. If the Americans are serious about their professed aim then
they are indeed embarked on a process that will be endless. It is as if
they were to proclaim a war to eliminate all the evil in the world the
sort of thing the Taliban might think to do.

Realistically, they can only achieve it by putting the entire world under
military occupation and 24 hour surveillance, and that is what seems to
be implied when, with superb (and largely justified) contempt for the
United Nations and ^ÌInternational Justice¹, Bush says to the entire
world: ^ÌYou¹re either with us or you¹re with the terrorists.¹ Either you
accept our tutelage or you become a legitimate target.

Is that not the end of a pluralist world? Is Bush not, to near unanimous
applause, staking a claim to world domination that goes beyond anything
Hitler ever imagined the whole world to be to the US as Europe would
have been to Germany had Hitler won the ^Ìclash of civilisations¹
giving way to the ^Ìend of history¹?

US POLICY

http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/09/16/Features/Features.34910.html

*  THE FIGHT OF THEIR LIVES
by Barry Rubin
Jerusalem Post, 16th September

[.....]

More than once, dictators have made the mistake of underestimating
America, of seeing it as too soft to fight back. When the Japanese
decided to go to war with the United States in 1941, their leaders were
well aware that American resources would win a protracted war. They
launched aggression hoping that the Americans would not sustain the fight
too long, and that a single knock-down blow would further discourage
them.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait believing the West would
notfight back, an idea he continued to accept right down to the start of
the war on January 15, 1991. Indeed, many Americans shared that hope, or
at least expectation. Iraqi officials quoted from American newspapers,
magazines and polls opposing the use of force. And I, personally, debated
a Georgetown University professor named Madeleine Albright who insisted
that the United States not use its troops predicting, appeasement-style,
that the entire Arab world would side with Iraq.

On September 3, Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post expressed the
following ignorant opinion on Israel: "Almost quaintly, the old general
[Prime Minister Ariel Sharon] talks about reviving the tolerance for
hardship of the pioneering Zionists of old and leading Israelis in a
blow-for-blow battle with the Palestinians stretching over years, or
maybe even decades. But Sharon must be one of the last Israeli leaders
who fails to understand that the old kibbutz Israel is gone, replaced by
a rich, hi-tech, worldly and mostly secular society that will never
accept years of suicide bombings with no hope of a permanent settlement."

So, if Israelis are too weak and selfish to defend their existence after
suffering the Holocaust and six wars in living memory what can one
expect of entertainment-oriented, luxury loving Amer-icans, who lost the
war in Vietnam and couldn't wait to end the Kuwait war?

After all, the cowboys are long gone, replaced by complacent
suburbanites.

[.....]

I once spent a lot of time interviewing American soldiers in covert
counterterrorist units who had infiltrated Beirut in the 1980s. They had
located where the American hostages there were being held and came up
with a detailed plan for rescuing them. But the White House rejected
their proposal. No one wanted to be responsible for a foul-up that could
lead to a disaster for which someone would be blamed.

But perhaps it will be different this time. The target was not Americans
abroad, but Americans at home. The scale of carnage has crossed some
invisible line between a terrorist incident and a war.

Of course, it is unfair to pick on America in such matters. The United
States was the country that imposed sanctions on Iran for, among other
things, being a sponsor of international terror. It led efforts to start
and maintain an international embargo against Libya and Iraq for similar
and other crimes. Most recently, the United States showed exemplary
courage and leadership in combating the pro-racism conference in Durban.

[.....]

Here is what the US State Department spokesman said about that in an
August 2, 2001 press briefing. After a major suicide bombing attack,
Israel fired rockets into a Hamas headquarters. A reporter asked the
State Department's Richard Boucher, "Do you acknowledge, as the Israelis
have claimed, that this was a headquarters from Hamas?"

Boucher answered: "I think, whether it was or not, we're against this
practice of targeted killings, and we're against this particular attack."
In other words, even if specific individuals can be identified as having
organized a terrorist attack to kill your civilians, you are not supposed
to attack them militarily. And if the United States has maintained this
position against Israel, others have gone even further in condemning this
practice. Perhaps in this case it is going to be hard to accuse the
United States of using "excessive force" yet every point raised about
Israel's self-defense could be raised against America, too, eventually.

[.....]

Another issue that should be considered is incitement. If space
permitted, I could append here dozens of articles, sermons and speeches
from Palestinians and Arab states calling for attacks on America. (To see
dozens of them, go to http://www.pmw.org.il
http://www.pmw.org.il/sitem-151200.html> and also http://www.memri.com>)

[.....]



http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-09-17/News_and_Views/Beyond_the_City/a
125519.asp

*  IT'S REALLY WAR AGAINST THE ISLAMIC AXIS
New York Daily News, 16th September

The first step in any war is simple: Define the enemy.

America's enemy is the Islamic Axis: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan and
Afghanistan and the groups they fund, support and direct. These groups
include the cells of Osama Bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO.

The next step is to define short-term dangers and long-term goals.

The greatest immediate threat the Axis poses is an attack using nuclear,
chemical or germ warfare. That is why America's first concern can't be
chasing after Bin Laden or invading Afghanistan. Before that, it must
disarm Axis countries that are on the verge of gaining unconventional
weapons.

That means Iran, Iraq, Syria and whatever others are found to be getting
close.

U.S. Must Invade

This can't be done through diplomacy or fancy footwork. The U.S. must
invade these countries (if there is time), dismantle their unlatched
governments, disperse their armies and seize their arsenals. Think of it
as the German model.

If there isn't time, if one or more of the Axis regimes seems capable of
attacking with nukes or germs before U.S. forces get there, these regimes
and their infrastructure, arsenals and leadership will have to be
destroyed by whatever means necessary: the Japanese model.

Either way, it is only after America has done what it takes to protect
itself from mass murder can it concentrate its full energies on achieving
the one strategic goal that makes sense: total victory.

I can hear the protests. Total victory? In the postmodern world?
Impossible.

Like hell it is. If America had gone to war in 1941 asking self-defeating
questions it would probably have lost. When a war starts, you never know
how it will end, but you can't fight it unless you have complete
confidence in your ability to prevail. And up against the Islamic Axis,
whose most formidable military member is probably Iraq, that confidence
is fully justified.

Yes, say the experts, but won't war with the Axis embitter and radicalize
the world's billion Muslims? There are two answers to this: Probably not,
and who cares? Probably not because the majority of the world's Muslims
live in places like Indonesia and Bangladesh, where there is no
discernible spirit for a jihad against the Great Satan. Who cares,
because the masses in Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Iran (and perhaps Egypt,
Jordan and Saudi Arabia) are, for the most part, already so full of
hatred that nothing America does now will make it worse.

Okay, let's say the U.S. defeats the Islamic Axis, then what? Can America
occupy the entire Islamic Middle East?

Yes, it can. After the war the U.S. and its allies will be obliged to run
the Middle East for a while in the same way they occupied and governed
Germany and Japan after World War II. That occupation can end when the
Islamic Axis countries accept, as Germany and Japan accepted, the basic
rules of democratic government and international behavior.

The experts scoff. According to them, what we call democracy and
civilized behavior is nothing but a construct of the West, foreign to and
incompatible with Islamic precepts of religious authoritarianism and
jihad.

Slandering Muslims

That argument slanders Muslims by making them out to be uniquely and
irremediably warlike and barbarous. Turkey, a reasonably open and
peaceable Muslim-majority nation proves otherwise, and I think there can
be more Turkeys, But if I'm wrong, if political Islam is inherently
aggressive and hostile, then in the age of weapons of mass destruction,
Islamic governments can't be left to their own devices in the name of
political correctness.

When America achieves total victory over the Axis Powers, it will still
face Islamic terrorism and enmity. But no government will be in a
position to fire a nuclear missile at New York ^Ë and terrorists deprived
of diplomatic, financial and military sponsorship will be far less likely
to kill us. It really doesn't get any simpler than that.


http://cgi.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010918/3638958s.htm

*  SHOULD U.S. FORCES STRIKE BACK HARD?
by Amitai Etzioni
USA Today, 18th September

The way to greatly curtail international terrorism is to do for more
countries what we did for Japan after 1945: impose freedom. Free
societies harbor few international terrorists. Authoritarian and
totalitarian nations are their primary homes.

If we try to deal with terrorist attacks mainly by heightening our
defenses, we will need to curb ever more our freedom of movement, of
assembly, of commerce. Ultimately, we will turn into a garrison state and
still not be safe. The British enacted all kinds of laws limiting rights
to protect themselves from Irish terrorists, yet the terrorists shot a
missile at their ''White House'' and planted a bomb next to their ''CIA
headquarters.'' And despite all of the security measures they have taken,
Israelis fear going to malls, bus stops and movies.

Even if we succeed in blocking one form of attack -- by putting armed
marshals on airlines, for instance -- we just shift the terrorists'
efforts to other avenues. This is what happened when we made it more
difficult to place car bombs; they took to the air. Osama bin Laden has
so far never repeated his mode of attack. Next could be anything from
chemical to cyberspace.

What, then, should be done? Our long-term policy on this matter depends
on how serious we consider the terrorists' danger to be. I deeply regret
to say that -- based on my 21 years of life in the Middle East, including
3 years of fighting -- as horrible as Sept. 11 was, I believe it was just
a beginning. The terrorists have not yet played their trump cards:
weapons of mass destruction.

The only way to cut off all of the heads of this terrorism Hydra is to
strike at its heart. I do not mean we should bomb some country into the
Stone Age; most casualties then would be innocent people. And bin Laden
and his ilk count on the fact that we cannot much hurt a country such as
Afghanistan from the air; it is already in the Stone Age. What would we
bomb? A few footbridges or goat passages? Retaliation would satisfy some
of our sense of justice, but we must accept that it would be a part of
meting our justice, not an effective deterrent of future attacks.

To effectively curtail international terrorism, we have to enter these
countries, remove their tyrants and disable their facilities for making
weapons of mass destruction. We would, of course, be serving not merely
our safety, but also aiding the oppressed people of these countries.

A cliché that evolved during the past days is that the new enemy is
invisible. This holds only if one rejects President Bush's well-put line
that we will not distinguish between terrorists themselves and those who
harbor them. It is argued that if we remove a Saddam or Gadhafi or the
Taliban junta, then they will merely be replaced by another
terrorist-harboring tyrant. This may well be true. We then would need to
replace these, repeatedly perhaps, until a new group that reflects the
people of these nations, and is willing to open up these countries,
arises. This may take two or three rounds.

I do not mean that we should occupy these countries and hold them until
they democratize, but that we ought to change our policy of not attacking
their heads and their facilities. Ethically, taking out tyrants is far
superior to causing ''collateral damage'' to their civilian populations.

What we did in the past in response to such attacks was truly batty: try
to apply the standards of U.S. justice to international terrorists. We
send hundreds of FBI agents to reconstruct the crime scene, try to
establish which suitcase contained what bombs, who exactly placed it
where, and so on and on. Ten years later, we bring this information to
some international court and then win or lose by some rarified standards
of international law that few other countries take seriously, including
most of our allies. One may argue that this time the terrorists did not
come from Iraq or Iran or Syria or Palestine, but from some other place.
But it should not matter who sent the last group. We should openly
announce that we shall not allow those who train, finance, facilitate and
protect terrorists to survive -- and then take them out in whatever
sequence suits us best.

What does it matter if bin Laden was involved this time or only in the
bombing of our ship in Yemen or embassy in Kenya? If we have reliable
evidence that a given party is a major source of terrorism, and we
present that evidence to our courts and share it with the world, this
will have to do.

We would do best if we could collaborate with other nations in imposing
the condition under which democracy can flourish. Ideally, that would be
the United Nations; second best, our Western allies or some ad hoc
alliance including Muslim countries. But we should realize, like it or
not, that we are the terrorists' No. 1 target.

The world is looking to us to lead. As undesirable as it is may be, we
may have to go it largely alone.

Amitai Etzioni, a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors, was an
Israeli commando from 1947 to 1949.


http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010918/us/attacks_diplomacy_54.html

*  U.S. CONTACTS SUDAN, CUBA FOR HELP
by George Gedda
Yahoo, 18th September

WASHINGTON (AP) - In its quest for a diverse anti-terror coalition, the
Bush administration said Tuesday it has made overtures to Sudan and Cuba.
They're the third and fourth nations on the State Department terrorism
list seen as potential sources of information in last week's attacks.

Secretary of State Colin Powell called Sudanese Foreign Minister Osman
Ismail Mustafa and asked for his cooperation after taking note of Sudan's
offer to play a constructive role combating terrorism.

High-level contacts with Sudan have been extremely rare, and State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the conversation a good
beginning.

Boucher also said a U.S. official visited Cuba's diplomatic mission in
Washington and asked for whatever information Cuba might have about the
terrorist attack. Cuba strongly condemned the Sept. 11 disaster.

[.....]



http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3I5JR2SRC&live=t
ue&useoverridetemplate=ZZZ99ZVV70C&tagid=ZZZOMSJK30C&subheading=US

*  PRESSURE MOUNTS ON US TO GET UN INVOLVED
by Carola Hoyos
Financial Times, 18th September

In the week since terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York
and the Pentagon in Washington, the 15-member United Nations Security
Council has adopted a single resolution.

It contrasts sharply with the council's adoption of 12 resolutions on
Iraq between the time Saddam Hussein's armies invaded Kuwait on August 2,
1990, and the first strike by US Apache helicopters in the early morning
of January 17 1991.

Sensing that support for the US could wane, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary
general, has been discreetly urging Security Council members to avoid the
divisions that plagued the UN during the Gulf war.

Even as the US tries to build international support for launching
military retaliation - first and foremost against Osama bin Laden, the
prime suspect behind last week's terrorist attacks, and Afghanistan,
which is sheltering him - Washington appears keen to keep UN involvement
to a minimum.

But China, one of the five permanent members that hold a veto in the
Security Council, has demanded the Council guide Washington's response to
the attacks. Many at the UN believe Russia, which is expected to announce
its position this week, will seek a more thorough discussion within the
Security Council, where it also holds a veto.

Iran and Pakistan, which will be crucial to any US effort to launch
strikes against Afghanistan, are also heavily relying on a UN process.
Iran on Tuesday announced it would support a UN-led coalition against
terrorism, and General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, has
repeatedly relied on the UN resolution passed last week to justify his co
operation with the US.

Jacques Chirac, president of France, is scheduled on Wednesday to discuss
the UN's role with Mr Annan. And China has said it is prepared to discuss
any proposals to combat international terrorism at the Security Council.
But a senior Security Council diplomat said: "They (the US) may well rely
on article 51 of the UN charter. That together with resolution 1368 gives
the Americans good international legal cover."

Resolution 1368, which the Security Council passed unanimously the day
after the strikes, describes the attack as a "threat to international
peace and security", language that some fear the US could interpret as
authorisation for the use of force.

Article 51 of the UN's charter allows any state to defend itself in the
case of an armed attack until the Security Council has taken measures
necessary to maintain international peace and security.

The text calls on all states to help bring to justice the perpetrators,
organisers and sponsors of the attacks and work towards preventing
further such tragedies. "It is better than anything we ever got on
Kosovo," says one former US ambassador.

However, overwhelming international support for US action immediately
after the attacks is already faltering - and the more quickly it weakens,
the greater the role the Security Council should play, diplomats say.

As they begin to assess the UN's role, diplomats are awaiting Wednesday's
arrival of John Negroponte, the newly confirmed US ambassador to the UN.
How active he will be in engaging the UN will be largely decided by which
member of President George W. Bush's administration emerges as the most
influential over US strategy in the wake of the attacks.

Most at the UN hope Colin Powell, the secretary of state, is the main
influence. Mr Powell has a close relationship with Mr Annan and extensive
experience of working with the UN during the Gulf war.

"The UN is an extremely useful place for the kinds of responses - legal
conventions, co operation between states on police matters, intelligence,
etc - that go beyond the purely military response to terrorism," said
Shashi Tharoor, head of the UN information department.

France and the UK are actively seeking a meeting of foreign ministers in
New York within the next two weeks to discuss resolutions that could
impose sanctions against countries that continue tolerating terrorist
cells within their territories.

The Security Council earlier this year strengthened its sanctions against
the Taliban, freezing Mr bin Laden's financial assets and adding travel
restrictions and an arms embargo to the flight ban it imposed on
Afghanistan's Ariana airlines in November 1999.

Any proposal to further stiffen sanctions on Afghanistan are likely to
face resistance in the Security Council, however, as many members believe
the negative humanitarian impact of sanctions would outweigh their
effectiveness.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly is looking to resuscitate its latest text
for a convention against terrorism, which was submitted last year but
remains in the drafting stage. The draft became bogged down in
differences over the definition of terrorism.

India, chiefly involved in drafting the text, believes the convention
could be adopted at the next meeting. The UN has set much of the legal
ground with 12 conventions on terrorism, though diplomats are seeking an
umbrella text.

Within the UN secretariat, Mr Annan has used his position as
secretary-general to call for ethnic tolerance rather than to publicly
become involved in what he sees as Washington's affairs. Even so, he is
in constant telephone contact with Mr Powell and has served as a conduit
for messages to the US from leaders such as Mohammad Khatami, president
of Iran.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=94825

*  ROBERT FISK: 'SMOKING THEM OUT' IS NOT NEW IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Independent, 19th September

"Smoking them out of their holes"? "Wanted dead or alive"? President Bush
says that he wants justice, but the United States seems close to
sanctioning hit squads and liquidation. A new policy for America, maybe
but it's an old policy in the Middle East where assassination, kidnapping
and murder squads have been a normal part of local "justice" for decades.

Iran, Israel, Libya and Iraq have all employed killer squads to hunt down
their enemies overseas. The Iranians twice sent teams to murder the
Shah's last prime minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, in Paris on the basis that
he was planning a "terrorist" coup d'étât. The first gang killed a
policeman and an elderly lady, but the second group, who were armed with
knives, almost severed his head from his body.

Colonel Gaddafi openly admitted his determination to hunt down and kill
the "terrorist stray dogs" of the Libyan opposition abroad, his gunmen
murdering the most prominent of his opponents in Rome. Israel arranged
the murder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader, Fathi Shkaki, shot
dead by motorcyclists in Malta, and the assassination of Abu Jihad,
Yasser Arafat's military commander, in Tunis.

But the policy has its devastating failures. In Norway, an Israeli murder
squad hunting a leader of the Black September movement shot down an
innocent Moroccan waiter. Some of the murderers were found hiding in the
home of an Israeli diplomat in Oslo.

When Israeli agents tried to kill a Hamas leader in the streets of Amman
by injecting him with poison, the victim was saved when King Hussein of
Jordan telephoned President Clinton to warn that he would break off
diplomatic relations with Israel unless the Israelis provided the
antidote. Sheikh Yassin, the Hamas leader, was released from an Israeli
prison by Benjamin Netanyahu, then Prime Minister, to express regret to
the king.

Today, Israel's policy of murdering its militant opponents in the West
Bank and Gaza "targeted killings" in Israel's own exclusive lexicon
is in full swing. Telephone bombs, booby-trapped cars, helicopter
gunships and murder squads have liquidated at least 60 Palestinian
"activists" and bombers, with the usual crop of innocent children and
women. Palestinians have privately threatened prominent Israeli agents
with the same tactics and one was murdered by his own collaborator
contact.

During Lebanon's 16-year civil war, there were many successful attempts
to assassinate heads of state and others. The Druze leader, Kemal
Jumblatt, the Prime Minister, Rashid Karami, the President, Rene Mouawad,
and the Christian Maronite politician Dany Chamoun were all murdered by
gunmen; in Jumblatt's case, many Lebanese blamed Syrian agents for the
assassination, while the others may have been killed by right-wing
Christian organisations.

Egypt has sent police death squads into the Nile valley south of Assiout,
where Islamist followers were later shot dead, according to their
families, in front of their homes. Syria faced with an Islamic uprising
in the city of Hama in 1982 did, quite literally, "smoke out" its
Muslim enemies. In medieval tunnels beneath the city, presidential
Defence Brig-ades fired smoke grenades at insurgents, forcing them to
emerge through drain covers, where they were gunned down with civilians
hiding in nearby homes. The Muslim Brotherhood of Syria was referred to
by Hafiz al-Assad, then the President, as "terrorists" the same word
used by President Mubarak about Egyptian militants, and by the Algerian
government about the Islamists whom it has been fighting for a decade.

In Algeria's case, there is growing evidence of government involvement in
death squads and mass slaughter. Throughout the Middle East, the policy
of liquidation seeking enemies "dead or alive" has always been
accompanied by torture, human rights violations and the killing of large
numbers of innocents. In almost every case, state-sponsored murders were
justified by governments on the basis that many civilians had died at the
hands of the insurgents/militants/guerrillas/terrorists, and that
shoot-to-kill policy was "the only language they understand".

Almost all Middle East governments adopting these methods have used the
same language. The former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin spoke of
"rooting out the evil weed of terrorism" in Lebanon. Mr Mubarak used
similar words after Islamist gunmen murdered western tourists in Egypt
(and tried to kill Mr Mubarak as well). The Syrians, the Egyptians, the
Algerians even the Iranians when confronting their own "mujahedin kalq"
opposition have all spoken of "victory over terrorism". Only the
Syrians appear to have been successful. Their campaign cost the lives of
up to 20,000 Syrians.


http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=8E2EE861-E801-440D
9E459F89795BC73C&Title=Sanctions%20%2D%20Do%20They%20Help%20or%20Hurt%3F

*  SANCTIONS - DO THEY HELP OR HURT?
by Stephanie Mann
VOA, 19th September

The United States and the international community have often turned to
economic sanctions to punish countries for unacceptable behavior, and
there has been an ongoing debate over whether sanctions are an effective
way to get governments to change their behavior. There is also a question
of whether sanctions may serve to spur some people to take violent
actions.

The United States already has unilateral economic sanctions against about
60 countries, including several in the Middle East and South Asia where
Muslim fundamentalism has strong roots. Some observers suggest those
sanctions may have helped rally support for anti American groups such as
the organization led by Osama bin Laden. They say new sanctions could
provide further incentive for impoverished, disenchanted radicals to join
such groups.

Robert Oakley was U.S. ambassador in Pakistan from 1988 to 1991. He says
sanctions imposed on different countries have varying levels of success.
For example, Mr. Oakley says U.S. sanctions against Iraq have been
largely counterproductive in encouraging changes in Baghdad, while
sanctions against Libya have been more successful.

"Sanctions action we took on Pakistan in 1990 I think have turned out to
be a net minus, a big net minus because they were taken on the grounds of
non-proliferation and had the unintended effect of accelerating
Pakistan's turn to ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads rather than
conventional weapons," said Mr. Oakley. "And they helped engender a great
deal of anti-U.S. sentiment and encouraged the development of radical
pro-Islamic sentiment."

Ambassador Oakley, now a visiting fellow at the National Defense
University in Washington, says it should have been clear from the outset
that sanctions would not change the government in Afghanistan. He notes
that British occupation in the 19th century and Russian occupation in the
20th century were not able to bring about such changes in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been sanctioned because of its nuclear weapons program and
Afghanistan has been sanctioned for refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden
for his alleged involvement in past terrorist incidents.

Eric Melby, a senior fellow at the Forum for International Policy in
Washington, thinks international sanctions against Afghanistan have been
more effective than U.S. sanctions aimed at Pakistan. "As far as
Afghanistan is concerned, there are U.N. sanctions, and I think that
those are probably relatively effective in the sense that hardly anyone
wants to trade and do business with Afghanistan," said Mr. Melby. "In the
case of Pakistan, to my knowledge, there are only unilateral U.S.
sanctions. These are sanctions that we imposed after Pakistan tested a
nuclear bomb a few years ago. Those are specifically designed to prevent
transfer of high technology that could be used in the Pakistan nuclear
weapons program."

Mr. Melby, who has worked on export control issues and U.S. economic
policy at the State Department and the National Security Council in the
1980s and 1990s, says he can not point to a single country, with the
possible exception of South Africa, where unilateral U.S. sanctions have
been effective in prompting changes.

"You can look around the world where we have unilateral sanctions, often
imposed by Congress I think out of a feeling of, well, we've got to do
something," Mr. Melby. "There's nothing we can think of doing. It looks
good for domestic constituencies to impose unilateral sanctions, so we go
ahead and do it. But given the open integrated nature of the global
trading system, if one country is imposing sanctions alone, there are
always other countries who are prepared to trade with that country which
means that it is basically symbolic."

Ambassador Oakley says sanctions can be counterproductive and sometimes
help to foster anger against the United States. He notes the alleged
terrorist network of Osama Bin Laden currently is believed to number in
the hundreds of people. "But one has to be careful," he said. "If you do
it the wrong way, not just by using sanctions but by using military
activity as well as sanctions, you may cause it to spread. In other
words, you could make him into an even bigger hero. He's a popular hero,
but that doesn't mean he has a large organization. Actually, his
operation is fairly loose. It's sort of a collection of different
organizations. But you could cause it to expand and increase if you go
about things the wrong way."

Some observers say Osama bin Laden's support could grow dramatically if
the United States carries out a military campaign against him or his
Taleban hosts in Afghanistan, where he is believed to be hiding.


http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nyt/20010919/ts/scarcity_of_afghan_targets_leads_u
s_to_revise_strategy_1.html

*  SCARCITY OF AFGHAN TARGETS LEADS U.S. TO REVISE STRATEGY
The New York Times, 19th September

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld bluntly
acknowledged today that the difficulty in identifying bombing targets in
Afghanistan was leading the Pentagon to develop a broader, more
unconventional type of campaign leaving the door open to ground troops,
including commando units.

"Several countries have exhausted themselves pounding that country," said
Mr. Rumsfeld, referring to Afghanistan. "There are not great things of
value that are easy to deal with. And what we'll have to do is exactly
what I said: use the full spectrum of our capabilities."

Mr. Rumsfeld did not commit the United States to sending ground forces
into Afghanistan, but he has talked about the importance of using special
operations forces in the fight against international terrorism.

On Sunday, Mr. Rumsfeld said that the fight against terrorism would
require a broad effort and that "a lot of it will be special operations."

The administration's consideration of military action beyond a classic
air campaign like the ones the United States mounted in Iraq and Serbia
reflects a recognition that the terrorists themselves are elusive, and
that Afghanistan, which shelters them, is so impoverished that it offers
a scarce set of targets.

Critical to the administration's planning, therefore, are economic,
political, diplomatic and intelligence measures, as well as possible
ground forces, all of which would deprive Osama bin Laden, the Islamic
militant suspected of masterminding the attacks on Sept. 11, of his
sanctuary or as Mr. Rumsfeld put it today, "drain the swamp they live
in."

President Bush met today with top national security advisers to review
military options and diplomatic overtures, as Pentagon officials said the
first of 35,000 reservists could be mobilized as early as Wednesday.

Mr. Bush and his top advisers have raised expectations of killing or
capturing terrorists. The president went so far as to indicate that he
wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive."

While the administration's stated goals, including going after all
terrorist networks, are very ambitious, the mission presents a whole new
range of military challenges. Bombing alone is unlikely to work for
several reasons.

Terrorists in Afghanistan have abandoned their training camps since last
week's attacks in New York and Washington, making them hard to find.
Intelligence officials also say that in recent years Mr. bin Laden and
his operatives have relied more on couriers and face-to-face meetings
than on cellphones, whose communication can be intercepted by spy
satellites and ground sensors.

In a private Oval Office meeting with four senators last Thursday, even
Mr. Bush belittled the idea of eliminating his nemesis, Mr. bin Laden,
with Tomahawk cruise missiles alone, the military's weapon of choice in
most operations since the Persian Gulf war.

"What's the sense of sending $2 million missiles to hit a $10 tent that's
empty?" Mr. Bush told the senators.

And, as Mr. Rumsfeld indicated today, the Taliban's fixed targets are not
all of great value, and smashing their interior or defense ministries or
disrupting their energy grid might do little to force the government in
Kabul, which hardly relies on modern command and control systems, to
deliver Mr. bin Laden as Mr. Bush has demanded.

The United States could stage commando raids in Afghanistan from Pakistan
or perhaps from valleys held by the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban
force that still controls about 10 percent of Afghan territory. The
administration could also reach unprecedented agreements with former
Soviet republics in Central Asia, like Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, to mount
operations from their territory.

The military has two missions: getting the terrorists and punishing any
government that shelters or sponsors them. The goal of ground troops
presumably would not be a full-scale invasion and occupation, but raids
by special forces to kidnap or kill terrorism suspects or to disrupt the
ability of the Taliban to control Afghanistan.

But getting terrorists requires timely, accurate intelligence and luck.
Before this crisis, the Clinton administration had classified plans to
use missile strikes or to dispatch commandos to snatch Mr. bin Laden.
Those special forces have been stationed in the Middle East ready to move
on a moment's notice. "The gun has been cocked," a former official said.
"We were waiting for the intelligence and never had it."

Even with hard intelligence, the window for action is frustratingly
brief, as the Clinton administration learned in August 1998 when it fired
more than 70 cruise missiles at terrorist training centers the Zhawar
Kili Al-Badr training camp and its support complex.

The strike took place on a day that United States intelligence knew Mr.
bin Laden was meeting with his chief operatives and the leadership of
other terror organizations. But the meeting broke up several hours before
the missiles smashed into the camps.

"If you took every terrorist in Afghanistan, you could not make a light
brigade," said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who until a year ago headed the
United States Central Command, which is responsible for military
operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. "They are spread all
over. They hide in mountains and caves. They do not lend themselves to
being targeted."

All those problems were confronted by the Clinton administration. "When
we looked at Afghanistan before, the sense was we were going to bomb them
up to the stone age," said one former Clinton administration official
familiar with the planning of past military strikes against Mr. bin
Laden's terrorist network. "There is just so little to attack. It is the
most target-impoverished environment conceivable."

There are other military options, but they are complicated and entail
risk to American fighters and could well result in casualties.

The United States could use the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance as a proxy
ground force, but the group is not widely supported throughout
Afghanistan, and has no more than 12,000 fighters under a command that is
in flux.

Its leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was gravely wounded by suicide assassins
just days before the attacks in America and died on Saturday. It is not
clear whether his killing had any link to the attacks on the United
States that followed.

Faced with such difficulties, attacks on the terrorists and the Taliban
themselves would have to be accompanied by efforts to cut off financing
to the terrorists, including any revenue they derived from the sale of
drugs.

"You need to go after the network that is collecting money, his
investments in legitimate companies, the laundering of money, and the
banks that look the other way," General Zinni said.

Afghanistan is unlikely to be the only target in the war against those
nations who support terrorism. Mr. Rumsfeld said today that Al Qaeda, the
terrorist network that Mr. bin Laden heads, may have activities in 50 to
60 countries, and that network is just one of many that President Bush
has vowed to vanquish.

In Afghanistan, one hope is that the movement of American forces into the
region could force Mr. bin Laden to come out of hiding and seek another
haven creating a target.

Punishing the Afghan government that harbors the terrorists presents a
completely different challenge than planners faced during the Persian
Gulf war. In that conflict, the first Bush administration picked hundreds
of bombing targets in Iraq that successfully carved away at what Air
Force planners dubbed Saddam Hussein's "centers of gravity."

Military planners already have coordinates for a large number of targets
across Afghanistan and in the capital, Kabul. They know the exact
location of government ministries, of its police posts and army bases and
airfields, of its power grids and communications lines.

"Clearly, the Taliban have an organizational structure," said a Pentagon
official. "They have a leadership. And there is some infrastructure that
enables them to operate. But they are not like a nation state. It is not
like going after Baghdad or Belgrade."


http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/09/21/15793.html

*  SECRET US PLANS REVEALED
by John Ashtead , London
Pravda, 21st September

The war on terrorism is revealed in Operation Noble Eagle as being a
ten-year campaign which will use, first, economic and diplomatic pressure
and secondly, military back-up over a number of years as governments are
persuaded to give up terrorists and those who persist are singled out
with surgical attacks by special forces.

The three US aircraft carriers currently in, or heading for, the Gulf,
are a signal of the military firepower that will be available if and when
it is needed after a political decision to launch a strike. While a
pre-emptive strike on Afghanistan is not being ruled out to calm the more
vociferous elements in the USA who are demanding a revenge attack, a
large-scale military incursion is ruled out.

The long-term policy is being drawn up by Vice-President Dick Cheney and
Secretary of State Colin Powell as a ³hearts and minds² diplomatic
offensive (persuading governments to join the world community and to
leave terrorist tactics) is launched.

This long-term concept runs contrary to the ³old doctrine concept² of
military force, last seen in the Gulf War, in which the Iraqi army,
largely intact, pulled out of Kuwait but further political objectives
were not reached, namely the destruction of the regime of President
Saddam Hussein from within.

This new strategy can be seen as a recognition that the campaigns in
recent years by NATO provoked reactions of outrage around the world due
to their sheer arrogance and intrusive nature. Certainly a return to
diplomacy and not high-altitude bombing would provoke less venomous
reactions from the international community and would win Washington and
its allies more friends than foes.

It is also a recognition that small cells of terrorists who resort to
conventional or non conventional weapons can strike at the heart of a
powerful nation and wreak greater havoc on a country¹s home soil than a
century of wars abroad. However great a nation¹s professional army and
however well equipped it is with the most sophisticated weaponry, if the
root of the matter motives for terrorist attacks is not addressed,
the problem will persist (at best) or deteriorate (at worst).

Operation Noble Eagle is therefore a long-term strategy, one based on
intelligence and patience, in which clinical military operations are
carried out only as a last resort.