Terrorist Attack _______________ Information Only

Top 415. Nov 20, 2001 9:51 AM

» rasputin - Cohen: World War IV - the enemy is militant Islam

World War IV
Let's call this conflict what it is.

BY ELIOT A. COHEN
Tuesday, November 20, 2001 12:01 a.m. ESTMr. Cohen is professor of strategic studies at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Political people often dislike calling things by their names. Truth, particularly in wartime, is so unpleasant that we drape it in a veil of evasions, and the right naming of things is far from a simple task.

Take the matter of this war. It is most assuredly something other than the "Afghan War," as the press sometimes calls it. After all, the biggest engagement took place on American soil, and the administration promises to wage the conflict globally, and not, primarily, against Afghans.

The "9/11 War," perhaps? But the war began well before Sept. 11, and its casualties include, at the very least, the dead and wounded in our embassies in Africa, on the USS Cole and, possibly, in Somalia and the Khobar Towers. "Osama bin Laden's War"? There are precedents for this in history (King Philip's War, Pontiac's War, or even The War of Jenkins' Ear), but the war did not begin with bin Laden and will not end with his death, which may come sooner than anyone had anticipated--including, one hopes, the man himself.

A less palatable but more accurate name is World War IV. The Cold War was World War III, which reminds us that not all global conflicts entail the movement of multimillion-man armies, or conventional front lines on a map. The analogy with the Cold War does, however, suggest some key features of that conflict: that it is, in fact, global; that it will involve a mixture of violent and nonviolent efforts; that it will require mobilization of skill, expertise and resources, if not of vast numbers of soldiers; that it may go on for a long time; and that it has ideological roots.

Americans still tiptoe around this last fact. The enemy in this war is not "terrorism"--a distilled essence of evil, conducted by the real-world equivalents of J. K. Rowling's Lord Voldemort, Tolkien's Sauron or C. S. Lewis's White Witch--but militant Islam. The enemy has an ideology, and an hour spent surfing the Web will give the average citizen at least the kind of insights that he might have found during World Wars II and III by reading "Mein Kampf" or the writings of Lenin, Stalin or Mao. Those insights, of course, eluded those in the West who preferred--understandably, but dangerously--to define the problem as something more manageable, such as German resentment about the Versailles Treaty, an exaggerated form of Russian national interest, or peasant resentment of landlords taken a bit too far. In the reported words of one survivor of the Holocaust, when asked what lesson he had taken from his experience of the 1940s, "If someone tells you that he intends to kill you, believe him."

Al Qaeda and its many affiliates consist of Muslim fanatics. They will, no doubt, find almost as many enemies among moderate Muslims as among infidels, and show them, if anything, less mercy. One hopes for a wave of revulsion among Muslims who abhor this rendition of their faith, understand the calamities of all-out war waged to erect a theocratic dystopia, and will fight these movements with no less vigor, and no more reservations, than do Christians, Jews, Hindus and, for that matter, atheists.
Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles there just one campaign. The U.S. is within range of gaining two important objectives there: smashing al Qaeda (including the elimination of its leadership), and teaching the lesson that governments that shelter such organizations will themselves perish. But what next? Three ideas come to mind.

First, if one front in this war is the contest for free and moderate governance in the Muslim world, the U.S. should throw its weight behind pro-Western and anticlerical forces there. The immediate choice lies before the U.S. government in regard to Iran. We can either make tactical accommodations with the regime there in return for modest (or illusory) sharing of intelligence, reduced support for some terrorist groups and the like, or do everything in our power to support a civil society that loathes the mullahs and yearns to overturn their rule. It will be wise, moral and unpopular (among some of our allies) to choose the latter course. The overthrow of the first theocratic revolutionary Muslim state and its replacement by a moderate or secular government, however, would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of bin Laden.

Second, the U.S. should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism. Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction. Again, American allies will flinch, and the military may shake its head at the prospect of revisiting the aborted Gulf War victory, but the costs of failing to do so, and the opportunities for success, make it good sense. The Iraqi military is weak, and the consequences of finishing off America's archenemy in the Arab world would reinforce the awe so badly damaged by a decade of cruise missiles flung at empty buildings.

Third, the U.S. must mobilize in earnest. The Afghan achievement is remarkable--within two months to have radically altered the balance of power there, to have effectively destroyed the Taliban state and smashed part of the al Qaeda--is testimony to what the American military and intelligence communities can do when turned on to a problem. But the Taliban were not the hardest case, and the airplanes dropping bombs on the enemy in Kunduz and Kandahar are in some cases older than their pilots, and suffering for lack of spare parts.

The combination of precision weapons, Special Operations forces, and sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems indicates the beginning of a desperately needed "transformation" of the American military. But this will require something more than the $20 billion a year in defense spending increases over the budget now in the offing.
Similarly, the creation of a homeland security office without real powers, the reluctance of the government to open comprehensive, formal inquiries into the disaster of Sept. 11, and the absence of big, imaginative programs--mass scholarships for public health programs, for example, or, more ambitious yet, a really substantial program of scientific research to emancipate the West from dependence upon Persian Gulf oil--tell us that Washington is somewhere between a war footing and business as usual.

It is, of course, early yet, and many of the signs--from the B-52s pounding Taliban front lines to CIA teams scouring the Afghan hills, from enhanced spending on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control to the creation of military tribunals for foreign terrorists--indicate that the government is truly serious. But much remains to be done, beginning with acknowledging the scope of the task, and acting accordingly. Yet if after the Afghan campaign ends, the government lapses into a covert war of intelligence-gathering, arrests, and the odd explosion in a terrorist training camp, it will be a sign that it would rather avoid calling things by their true name.

-- posted by rasputin

Top 416. Nov 20, 2001 10:04 AM

» Lawhawk - Re: Cohen: World War IV - the enemy is militant Islam

In response to message posted by rasputin:

Ras,

Interesting article you posted there. Instead of WWIV, I would suggest the Thugocracy Wars (because I look at it as a series of campaigns against thugocracies around the world - this includes corrupt regimes like Iraq and militant Islamic regimes like the Taliban. It also suggests that the conflict has not as much to do with Islam as the repressive regimes and the hatred they cause against those that have nothing (or little) to do with the underlying causes.

Also, I came across this article at the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/20/intern... - bodes bad things for the Arab Taliban - it's not good to kill your hosts - especially when it says so in the Koran. Yet, that is precisely what the news appears to be reporting. The Taliban (both the Afghan and Arab factions) have completely corrupted the Koran for their own political gains, leaving nothing but hatred in their wake.

The sooner people realize that, the better.

-- posted by Lawhawk

Top 417. Nov 20, 2001 11:23 AM

» BPyles - Are Muslims Listening?

Thomas Friedman is another of my favorite writers. This article quotes a Pakistanian businessman's view that does not seem to be very widely voiced by Muslims. Think this is about only second or third article I have read of a Muslim telling it like it is. Are the Muslims listening?

Breaking the Circle

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times 11-16-01

I SLAMABAD, Pakistan

Although it was never his intention, Osama bin Laden has triggered the
most serious debate in years, among Muslims, about Islam's ability to
adapt to modernity. In Arab states this debate is still muted.
.But in Pakistan and other Muslim countries with a relatively free
press , writers are raising it openly and bluntly. Nothing could be more important.

Here's why: Many Arab-Muslim states today share the same rigid political structure. Think of it as two islands: one island is occupied by the secular autocratic regimes and the business class around them. On the other island are the mullahs, imams and religious authorities who dominate Islamic practice and education, which is still based largely on traditional Koranic
interpretations that are not embracing of modernity, pluralism or the equality of women. The governing bargain is that the regimes get to stay in power forever and the mullahs get a monopoly on religious practice and education forever.

This bargain lasted all these years because oil money, or U.S. or Soviet aid, enabled many Arab-Muslim countries to survive without opening their economies or modernizing their education systems. But as oil revenues have
declined and the population of young people seeking jobs has exploded, this bargain can't hold much longer. These countries can't survive without opening up to global investment, the Internet, modern education and emancipation of their women so that they will not be competing with just half of their populations. But the more they do that, the more threatened the religious authorities feel.

Bin Laden's challenge was an attempt by the extreme Islamists to break out of their island and seize control of the secular state island. The states responded by crushing or expelling the Islamists, but without ever trying to reform the Islamic schools — called madrasas — or the political conditions that keep producing angry Islamist waves. So the deadly circle that
produced bin Ladenism — poverty, dictatorship and religious anti- modernism, each reinforcing the other — just gets perpetuated.

Some are now demanding the circle be broken. Consider this remarkable open letter to bin Laden that a Pakistani writer and businessman, Izzat Majeed, wrote in last Friday's popular Pakistani daily The Nation:

"We Muslims cannot keep blaming the West for all our ills. . . . The embarrassment of wretchedness among us is beyond repair. It is not just the poverty, the illiteracy and the absence of any commonly accepted social contract that define our sense of wretchedness; it is, rather, the increasing awareness among us that we have failed as a civil society by not confronting the historical, social and political demons within us. . . . Without a reformation in the practice of Islam that makes it move forward and not backward, there is no hope for us Muslims anywhere. We have reduced Islam to the organized hypocrisy of state-sponsored mullahism. For more than a thousand years Islam has stood still because the mullahs, who became de facto clergy instead of genuine scholars, closed the door on `ijtehad'
[reinterpreting Islam in light of modernity] and no one came forward with an evolving application of the message of the Holy Quran. All that the mullahs tell you today is how to go back a millennium. We have not been able to evolve a dynamic practice to bring Islam to the people in the language of their own specific era. . . . Oxford and Cambridge were the `madrasas' of
Christendom in the 13th century. Look where they are today among the leading institutions of education in the world. Where are our institutions of learning?"

The Protestant Reformation, melding Christianity with modernity, happened only when wealthy princes came along ready to finance and protect the breakaway reformers. But in the Muslim world today, the wealthiest princes like Saudi Arabia's, are funding anti-modern schools from Pakistan to Bosnia, while the dictators pay off the anti-modern mullahs (or use them to whack the liberals) rather than reform them. This keeps the soil for bin Ladenism ever fertile.

Addressing bin Laden, Mr. Majeed concluded, "The last thing [Muslims] need is the growing darkness in your caves. . . . Holy Prophet Muhammad,on returning from a battle, said: `We return from little Jihad to greater Jihad.' True Jihad today is not in the hijacking of planes, but in the manufacturing of them."

-- posted by BPyles

Top 418. Nov 20, 2001 6:01 PM

» rasputin - Taliban asks UN for help to surrender

War on Terrorism: Kunduz and Kandahar
By Justin Huggler, in Taloqan, Afghanistan
21 November 2001

The Taliban have pleaded formally with the United Nations to arrange the unconditional surrender of their forces besieged inside the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. However, the top UN envoy for Afghanistan said the UN had no presence on the ground, "and simply cannot unfortunately accede to this request".

Lakhdar Brahimi said a religious leader and another unidentified person formally approached the UN in Islamabad on Monday night saying that Taliban commanders from inside Kunduz wanted to surrender unconditionally and wanted to do it to the UN.

He said the UN secretary general Kofi Annan had been in touch with the Northern Alliance, whose forces are outside the city, and members of the international coalition, asking that they "respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and treat this question with as much humanity as possible".

Thousands of Taliban troops are trapped in and around Kunduz, their every possible means of escape cut off by the Northern Alliance troops who surround them. Among them, say Alliance commanders, are 1,000 members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network and more than 10,000 foreign Taliban volunteers who appear determined to fight to the death.

Anxious to avoid a bloodbath, the Alliance is holding back from attacking the city while it tries to help negotiate the Taliban's surrender. But grim tales come out of the city of the foreigners massacring Afghan Taliban who try to defect.

The United States has pulled the rug out from under the negotiators' feet, saying it would vehemently oppose any solution that would allow the al-Qa'ida fighters to escape. The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on Monday told reporters he would prefer the al-Qa'ida fighters to be killed, rather than to be allowed to escape alive from Afghanistan.

Taliban commanders inside Kunduz have reportedly said that the foreign fighters are prepared to surrender if they are given a UN guarantee of safe passage from Afghanistan. But Mr Rumsfeld said he would do everything he could to prevent them being allowed to leave Afghanistan. "My preference is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner," he said.

As many as 470 Afghan Taliban are said to have been killed in three separate alleged incidents in the past five days.

"I am not optimistic that the foreigners will surrender," General Mohammed Daud of the Northern Alliance said yesterday. He said 20,000 Taliban still remain in Kunduz, more than 10,000 of them foreigners. The 1,000 al-Qa'ida fighters include a senior commander of the network, Omar al-Khatab, he claimed.

American planes are pounding the Taliban in and around Kunduz, but on the front lines the Northern Alliance guns remain silent. The Alliance has Kunduz surrounded on all sides. To the west are the forces of the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum, whose victory in Mazar-i-Sherif prompted the collapse of the Taliban across Afghanistan. To the east are an array of warlord's private armies, under the command of General Daud.

The Alliance has not attacked, General Daud said yesterday, because it wants to avoid "widespread bloodshed and destruction".

It is not only the blood of the Taliban he is worried about. Last week, Northern Alliance troops walked into a Taliban ambush, fooled by false reports that the Taliban in Kunduz had surrendered. More than 50 soldiers were killed, according to one commander.

The Alliance's sensational victories across Afghanistan have been on the back of defections by Afghan Taliban who saw which way the wind was blowing. Many of the Alliance troops now besieging Kunduz were Taliban a week ago.

If the last of the Taliban put up a serious defence of Kunduz, the battle could be far bloodier than anything yet seen. The Americans may be eager for the al-Qa'ida fighters to be killed or captured, but the Northern Alliance are far from eager to walk into the lion's den on America's behalf.

With the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan all but consigned to history, already there are signs of cracks in the loose alliance of warlords that toppled them – even between the different commanders besieging Kunduz. General Dostum said yesterday that two senior Taliban commanders were travelling to Mazar to negotiate with him. General Daud denied it. General Daud is a member of the ethnic Tajik-dominated hardcore of the Northern Alliance once led by Ahmad Shah Massood, who are calling the shots at the moment because it was they who walked into Mazar. Usually General Dostum would be a far more powerful warlord than General Daud. Already, the warlords are jostling for position.

The easy collapse of the Taliban has shown how few Afghans were ideologically committed to their fundamentalist rule. The former Taliban now manning Northern Alliance front lines are in it strictly for themselves.

-- posted by rasputin

Top 419. Nov 20, 2001 6:09 PM

» rasputin - Re: Are Muslims Listening?

In response to message posted by BPyles:

Great post Betty. I especially like the open letter from Izzat Majeed.

-- posted by rasputin

Top 420. Nov 20, 2001 7:03 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: Are Muslims Listening?

In response to message posted by rasputin:

Wow - good articles Ras, Michael, Betty - Thanks for the posts!.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 421. Nov 21, 2001 8:48 AM

» BPyles - Taleban humor

Haven't had any humor from the Taleban now for several weeks. Today Reuters released several statements by a spokesman for the Taleban breaking weeks of silence. Almost good enough for the e-mail joke circuit:

1...no longer had any contact with OBL
2...vowed to defend to the death
3...told the world to leave them alone
4. demand an end to US bombing
5...they hope mighty Allah will break America
6...forget 9-11 attacks because now there is new fighting against Islam
7...does not know where OBL is and "we do not need to see him."

Re number 6....forget...never...!

-- posted by BPyles

Top 422. Nov 21, 2001 10:05 AM

» BPyles - Reward for Bush

Taleban offering $50 million reward for Bush, "even thought we are a poor country."

Taliban reply: $50 m bounty
on Bush's head. The India Times, 11-21-01

PIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan: Osama Bin Laden did not
have the capability to carry out the September 11
terrorist attacks in the US and the $25 m dollar bounty
will not lead to his capture, a Taliban official said Wednesday.

Mohammed Saeed Haqqani, security chief at the border town
of Spin Boldak in Kandahar, one of the last remaining
provinces still in Taliban control, said the attacks on the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon were the work of Jews trying to
blacken the name of Islam.

"The US has not provided any information about his (Bin
Laden's) involvement in the attacks," Haqqani told reporters.

"He has not the telecommunications means to conduct such
activities. Being our guest we are duty bound to protect him"
and not hand him over to the US authorities.

"The Americans have offered $25 m for Osama. We will give
$50 m for (US President George W.) Bush even though we are
a poor country."

US Secretary of State Colin Powell boosted the reward for Bin
Laden from $5 mto 25 m on Tuesday, with the bounty
advertised in radio broadcasts to Afghanistan, and leaflets
distributed on the ground.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has said that
more than 22,000 tips have been received about Bin Laden
since September 11, but none has yielded results.

All good Muslims would reject the opportunity to cash in on the
bounty for Bin Laden's capture, Haqqani said.

"Being good Muslims we have a strong faith, that's why it is
not tempting to us."

Asked for proof of Jewish involvement in the September 11
strikes, Haqqani said 4,000 Jews had not gone to work at the
World Trade Centre on the day.

"And why did the television cameras know where the second
plane was going to hit?

"They are trying to eliminate Afghanistan. They are trying to
blacken our name."

The official said the US demand for Bin Laden's handover was
hypocritical given the fact that British author Salman Rushdie
was living in New York.

An Iranian fatwa condemning Rushdie to death was issued
after the Indian-born writer allegedly blasphemed Islam in his
1988 book The Satanic Verses.

"It is not clear that Osama has been involved in crimes but it is
a hard fact that Rushdie committed a crime against Islam.
Why are people taking care of him in your country?" Haqqani
said.

Bin Laden has been accused of masterminding the attacks on
September 11. The Taliban's failure to hand him over to US
authorities prompted the launch of an aerial bombing campaign
that has lasted for nearly seven weeks.

-- posted by BPyles

Top 423. Nov 21, 2001 10:49 AM

» JenL_2 - Re: Taleban humor

In response to message posted by BPyles:

Wow Betty - those Taliban statements are just incredible - here's a 11/21 AP story on the actual interview with Syed Tayyad Agha, spokesman for Mullah Mohammed Omar....

Taliban say U.S. should 'forget' Sept. 11

By HAROON RASHID, Associated Press

SPINBOLDAK, Afghanistan (AP) - A spokesman for the Taliban's leader said Wednesday it was time to "forget" about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and that the Islamic militia doesn't know where suspect Osama bin Laden is.

Syed Tayyad Agha, spokesman for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, told a news conference that the terror attacks have been superseded by U.S. attacks on Afghanistan.

"Now there is a new fighting against Muslims and Islam, and the international and global terrorists like America and Britain, they are killing daily our innocent people," he told journalists in the Afghan border town of Spinboldak.

Agha also said the Taliban have lost contact with Osama bin Laden and he is no longer under the militia's control.

"We have no idea where he is," Agha said of bin Laden. "There is no relation right now. There is no communication."

Agha said he knew of no members of bin Laden's al-Qaida network in areas under Taliban control and that contact with them had been lost "due to their communication problems."

Agha also said the Taliban would defend territory they still control after a week of retreats across Afghanistan, including their home base, Kandahar.

"They have decided to defend the presently controlled areas," he said. "We will try our best and we will defend our nation ... and we will not give any chance to anybody to disturb our Islamic rule in Kandahar and other provinces."

President Bush launched the military campaign against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed 4,000 people in the United States.

However, Agha told a group of foreign journalists in this southern border town that Sept. 11 was "America's problem" because it was carried out by people in the United States and that the Taliban was not responsible.

"This is the problem of Bush and (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair," he said. "This is not our problem."

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2