<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->These developments have given rise to the following questions: Is bin Laden still alive? If alive, is he still healthy enough to be active and leading? Is he in US or Pakistani custody to be produced before the US voters on the eve of the US presidential elections? Are there differences between him and his No 2?
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In case Paki gets its F-16, OBL is in US/Paki custody and announcement will be made in Nov. <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Terror Inc
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A tale of suicide bombers, Saudi princes, cash payments to terrorist groups--and how Citigroup got caught up in all of it. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
U.S. Orders Freeze on Zarqawi Network Assets
This guy's name was brought up at UN over 2 years ago as *THE* jihadi terrorist creep #1 in eyerak and they are just *now* freezing assets belonging to his organization!! <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Paul Revere on his horse with his <i>one by sea, two by land</i> had more intelligence over 225 years ago than these guys. This is scary. <!--emo&<_<--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dry.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='dry.gif' /><!--endemo-->
French Commentary: Al-Qa'ida's Program Reflects That of Saudi Royals
Paris Le Figaro (Internet Version-WWW) in French 06 Oct 04
[Commentary by Alexandre Adler: "Washington and Riyadh: Dangerous Loosening of
Ties"]
[Text] There are numerous foreign policy questions which, without being the subject of explicit disputes since they are no interest at all to US readers, could prompt considerably different answers depending on whether Bush or Kerry is elected at the beginning of November. In particular, it is clear that the management of the NATO crisis, of relations with Putin's Russia, policy toward Latin America, or relations with Beijing will give rise to alternative solutions that will be tried in turn (though not necessarily in the form of political rotation, since we have already seen during the past four years the Bush administration converted to multilateral approaches to Venezuela and North Korea.)
But one question already seems to have been decided, and it will be the subject of a consensus between both parties: this is the Saudi question. It is indeed clear that both Kerry and Bush will, starting in November 2004, unravel the United States' oldest post-war alliance: it was indeed at the same time as the Yalta Conference, in winter 1945, that Roosevelt gave his blessing to Ibn Saud and, in return, Saudi Arabia guaranteed the United States regular oil supplies, first to end the war and then to win the peace. There have of course been rifts in the alliance, at times of particular tension: the eccentric but intelligent King Saud toyed for a while with the idea of an alliance with al-Nasir, as well as with the toughest of oil policies toward the West.
After he was deposed in the late 1950s, his replacement by the Faysal-Yamani team restored great security to the oil markets and even, once the major oil crisis of 1973-74 was past, discreet Saudi support for a policy of US distancing from a very ambitious shah of Iran. It was always possible to criticize his policy on human rights, whereas the Wahhabi kingdom was beyond reproach in Washington. It would have been possible to imagine that the end of the Cold War would prompt a realignment of the two states. This did not happen, thanks to the capricious folly of Saddam Husayn who, by attacking Kuwait, forced the Saudi kingdom to appeal once more to the US shield, a good 30 years after the United States evacuated the base at Dahran.
One of the consequences of Saddam's decline having been Arafat's sudden but brief conversion to an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, the boost to the Middle East process deprived the Saudis of the essence of their anti-Semitic arguments (who could be more Sunni than Arafat?) It also forced them to support, albeit from afar, the real reorganization of the Middle East that began at that time and that culminated in 1997 with the election of a reformist president in Iran by universal suffrage, Hojetoleslam (an intermediate rank in the Shiite clergy) Khatami. Thus both sides deferred an examination of a situation whose ins and outs had indeed changed.
What were the United States' fundamental interests in the Middle East in 1945? To guarantee the security of oil and to defeat communism and its allies. In relation to these two objectives, Israel was an unwelcome distraction, and without the purely domestic concerns of a Harry Truman seeking reelection, Washington would have aligned with Britain's stance and obstructed the emergence of an independent Jewish state, as was untiringly advocated by Secretary of State George Marshall and his unofficial assistant, Dean Acheson. Task sharing between Britain and the United States then consisted of the former supporting the Hashemite dynasty in Iraq and then Jordan-Palestine, and the latter, the United States, keeping at arm's length the Wahhabi monarchy, whose barbaric fanaticism some official historians tried to disguise as a "Puritanism very similar to that of the Mayflower pilgrims."
And what did Saudi Arabia want in 1945? To be left in peace and free to administer itself as it wanted, euphorically distributing the growing benefits of oil exploitation, actually organized by the US engineers of Aramco, and carried out on the ground by Shiite workers of the Hassa from Bahrain or Iraq enjoying no rights and subject with royal approval to strict South African-type apartheid by their Western hierarchy. Things have changed a great deal, 60 years on. Israel is no longer an unwelcome distraction for the United States.
Indeed, following the collapse of Vietnam, or rather during it, at the time of the 1973 crisis, the United States realized that it could not permit an Israeli military defeat that would have had disastrous consequences worldwide. This feeling was soon reinforced by the Israel's very active involvement in the space war project, and more generally in the development of an Israeli advanced technology industry closely allied to the US cybernetic war machine. But, even regionally, following the collapse of Christian Lebanon and the weakening of the entire Persian Gulf as a result of a still possible conjunction between the enemy brothers of Syria and Iraq, Israel remained, together with the Turkish Army, the only stable fixed point with a view to regaining control of a tumultuous region.
By that time, to the Saudi monarchy's great displeasure, the security of energy supplies to the West depended on Jerusalem, thus completely overturning the equations and the perspective of 1948. At the same time, the domestic policy launched by al-Faysal and pursued by his successors, of democratic expansion and Saud-ization of officialdom, eventually yielded fruit. Since the year 2000 the Saudi population have become larger than Iraq's, but this pressure
from a youth that are experiencing unemployment or at least economic uncertainty for the first time, makes the Saudi kingdom, structurally, a champion of high fossil fuel prices.
If Yamani was OPEC's real dove, his successor, Naimi -- entirely obedient to the seven Saudi brothers who systematically bleed the country -- is obviously a hawk. Thus we saw Saudi Arabia's hand in the aggressive OPEC strategy loudly adopted by Chavez's Venezuela (bound to Syria) and observed more or less by the declining Iraq of Saddam Husayn.
Thus the fundamental equation could be read very simply: Saudi Arabia, which no longer fears the communist and al-Nasir threat, no longer tolerates the growing engagement of the United States and particularly its oil lobby alongside Israel; the United States, and especially its oil lobby, formerly entirely committed to the Saudi cause, no longer tolerates the Wahhabi kingdom's energy policy. This is where Usama Bin Ladin comes in, in an ambiguous and complex manner. Indeed there can be no doubt that, by openly declaring war on the monarchy, and particularly on the reformist crown prince Abdallah, Usama Bin Ladin has for the time being succeeded in reconciling Washington with Riyadh.
Confronted with this common enemy, Abdallah, famously pro-European, a militant anti-Zionist and impenitent Artab nationalist, has agreed to set his complaints aside, because he simply still needs the United States in order to salvage his kingdom. Similarly, the United States now has nothing better to do than to highlight his attempts at reform. But this reparation is only temporary. And this is where the fundamental ambiguity of Usama's blueprint becomes fully apparent: in fact, by sacrificing his person and his life, the Al-Qa'ida leader was merely expressing in an extreme manner the real program of the majority tendency within the royal family, itself favorably regarded by a public increasingly won over to fundamentalism.
Set out explicitly, and without all the anti-Western and anti-Semitic claptrap, this program can be summed up in five points:
1. To reduce the US Government's arrogance by subjecting it to an outright economic decline by means of an offensive oil policy;
2. Promptly to equip Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons;
3. To wage an apparently anti-US and anti-Israeli jihad, whose sharpest point will be brandished against the Shiite menace, first in Iraq, then in Pakistan, and last in Saudi Arabia itself;
4. To make Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Cairo's Al-Azhar Theology Faculty the intellectual and political center of the Muslim world;
5. To prevent any even temporary compromise in Palestine and Kashmir in order to maintain Muslim militant combativeness, to destabilize the military leaderships of Syria and Pakistan in order to make them serve the worldwide jihad.
This five-part program is now taking place before our eyes. It would be very naive to attribute it to Al-Qa'ida alone, or, rather, its mere formulation makes us realize why, despite his powerful extremism, Bin Ladin enjoys so much approval, proceeding from within the black heart of Saudi fundamentalism, whose arteries unfortunately supply an entire region, from Marrakech to Djakarta.
Of course it is the new US president that will draw the necessary conclusions from this situation. He could adopt a defensive strategy based solely on an Israeli-Turkish-Jordanian alliance, or he could -- and this is to be hoped for -- go onto the most logical kind of offensive by finding common ground for an understanding with a New Iran.
China backs Egypt's efforts to get UN Security Council seat
Egypt-China, Politics, 12/3/2004
Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Wu Sike yesterday stressed his country's appreciation for the strenuous efforts exerted by President Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian government to settle the Palestinian issue and positive role in solving the Darfur problem.
The ambassador said that his country supported the Egyptian efforts to get a permanent membership at the Security Council, adding that contacts were underway in this respect.
In statements on the occasion of the Chinese embassy's annual celebration of Egyptian Mediamen Day, the Chinese diplomat said a delegation of 100 businessmen led by the Chinese trade minister are due in Cairo on Saturday to probe the possibility of carrying out ventures in the free zone north of Gulf of Suez to increase economic cooperation between the two countries.
A symposium on Egyptian-Chinese investment will be held on Sunday attended by many ministers, businessmen and investors from both nations, he added.
The size of trade exchange between Egypt and China reached $ 1.170 billion during the period from January till September 2004 with an increase by 51.1 percent compared to the same period last year, he said.
He pointed out to an increase in Egypt's exports to China by 49.9 percent reaching $ 151 million and China's investments reached 104 ventures till June worth $ 150 million.
He noted the Egyptian-Chinese cooperation in the fields of electronics, information, environment protection, medicine and pharmaceuticals in addition to development of northwest of Suez economic areas.
Terrorist Training Camps in Pakistan & Revelations by Terror
by careourindia
Posted on January 17, 2005 0:28 AM EST
Accessed 2 Times
Hot List Score: 8
Terrorist Training Camps in Pakistan & Revelations by Terrorists:
Indian and Foreign Sources
THE FOLLOWING has been compiled by the Indian Embassy in Washington and posted on the internet. Extremely useful for it highlights the factual position on Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism against India, in the states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. The information although slightly dated, is relevant particularly in the context of Pakistan's role as a 'front line ally' in the war against terrorism.
Terrorist Training Camps in Pakistan: US House Republican Research Committee's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, 1 February 1993:
Since the summer of 1991, the ISI has further increased its direct involvement in the training and supporting of Kashmiri Islamist terrorists. Brig. Mohammed Salim, an ISI officer, is in charge of training and supporting Kashmiri Islamists. By 1992, the ISI was operating 13 permanent, 18 temporary and 8 joint training camps for Kashmiris in Pakistan Azad Kashmir alone. Some 3,700 Kashmiri fighters were located in those camps by the summer of 1992, including terrorists who cross over from Indian Kashmir. Thus, in the spring/summer of 1992, the ISI established new training camps for Islamist terrorists where they are trained on the latest weapons.
The Director of this effort is ISI Brig. Javed, a veteran of the Afghan support effort. A special research council of Islamabad, including military and ISI officers, determines which groups and individuals are eligible to receive assistance, what type, and to what extent.
Curriculum in Training Camps:
Elementary Training for 7 to 10 days
Introduction to AK-47 rifles, Chinese pistols, rocket launchers/LMG's explosives
Art of ambushes with minimum firing practice on AK-47 Rifles and pistols plus live demonstration of explosives
Lectures and practical demonstrations in concealment, camouflage, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering
Others sent for "battle inocculation in Afghan Mujahideen War"
Training in sabotage and subversive operations
Indoctrination for armed struggle through lectures and video film
Extended Training Courses 2 to 12 weeks
Handling of sophisticated/heavy weapons including rocket launchers, MMG's/LMG's, AK-47/56/74's, MI/sniper rifles, mortars, remote control devices anti-personnel/tank mines and explosives, including IED's
Finer aspects of ambushes/raids, operation of walkie-talkie sets
Use of anti-aircraft guns and HMGs
Rock climbing/mountaineering, jungle survival, mock exercise for border crossing
First aid/para-medical training
Audio-visual education on commando operations
After initial arms training, some terrorists are imparted wireless communication training (morse and computer-based data mode) for ensuring direct link of terrorists with Pakistan authorities. Specialised training in new weapons including SVD, Dragunov sniper rifles, 12.7 mm HMGs and 82mm mortars
Revised Curriculum: In selected cases training programmes have been streamlined and extended to periods ranging between 6 months to 1 year. Emphasis is being laid on building up tough physical standards and development of leadership qualities. Educated youth, preferably with technical/science background and affiliated to pro-Pak groups are being selected for specialised and prolonged training.
US House Republican Research Committee's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, February 1, 1993: "The escalation of Islamist terrorism in western India was not sufficient for Pakistan. Therefore, Islamabad decided to begin the insertion of its own forces into the region. Soon afterward, in the early-summer of 1992, some 200 highly trained and well armed Afghan Mujahideen infiltrated into Indian Kashmir in order to assist in what was by now a full-blown armed struggle.
"Another group of 300 Afghans in command of a larger force of Pakistani-trained Kashmiris are waiting in Pakistani Kashmir for the opportune conditions in order to infiltrate into Indian Kashmir and open a new terrorist front. Meanwhile Pakistani special forces have also expanded their operations. For example, in early-August 1992, two Pakistani operatives were captured in Vijaypur, 30 km from Madras (south India), trying to blow up a train. It was a professional job, for they were members of an ISI supported group sent to assist the Kashmiri struggle. The support of secessionist terrorism has become an integral part of Pakistani diplomacy."
US House Republican Research Committee's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, September 20, 1993: "The ISI opted to keep the US/CIA out of the camps in order to hide the extent of the 'volunteer's' training programme. Indeed, thousands of Islamist trainees from Indian Kashmir, and to a lesser extent Sikhs from the Punjab, as well as hundreds of Islamists from all over the Arab and Muslim world, were routinely trained in camps originally set up strictly for the training of Afghan Mujahideen. The sites for Fuqra terrorist training are part of a complex of some 6 camps in the greater Lahore, and some 20 camps in the general Lahore area, in which Kashmiris, Sikhs, and others from India receive terrorist training. Thus at present the training and preparation of additional high quality terrorists continues to expand."
Robert Gates, then Deputy National Security Adviser to the US President, on CBC TV, February 1, 1994: "When President Bush sent me to Pakistan and India in May 1990, one of the specific requests that I made of the President of Pakistan was that they close the training camps that were providing people to carry out operations in Kashmir as well as Indian Punjab."
Le Figaro, June 23, 1994: Pakistan is responsible for the training of most of the Kashmiri separatist groups in camps located in Pakistani Kashmir. The ISI, i.e. the Pakistani military intelligence service, arms and finances the separatist groups operating within Indian Kashmir and often defines their strategy.
Guest Militants (from Pakistan and other countries) Publication Division, Hizbul Mujahideen, Jammu & Kashmir: Announcements like the following made by the Hizbul Mujahideen in Al Safa dated March 6, 1994 show the direct involvement of Pakistan nationals in terrorism in Kashmir.
Martyr Manzoor Bhai (Rawalkot),
Martyr Dawood Bhai (Azad Kashmir)
Nazir Kansour alias Assadulla
Martyr Akbar Bhai (Afghanistan)
Martyr Umar Gazi (Saudi Arabia)
Martyr Khalid Bhai
Martyr Basharat Abass (Azad Kashmir)
Martyr Utta-ul-Rehman (Dir)
Martyr Basharat Abbas (Azad Kashmir)
Martyr Abid alias Akhtar (Rahimyar Khan)
Martyr Sikander Hayat (Faisalabad)
Martyr Mohmeer Khan (Karachi)
Martyr Rehman Khan (Bardo)
Martyr Zulfikar Munshi (Sargoda)
Martyr Zulfikar Ahmed (Gujrat)
Martyr Umer Niyazi (Gujranwala)
Martyr Tariq Mohmood (Lahore)
Martyr Zafar Bhai (Gujranwala)
Martyr Amir Bhai (Dir)
Martyr Gazi Yousuf (Lahore) The report listed the names of 16 other 'martyrs' from Sialkot, Dera Ghazi Khan and Khanwali besides others from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
Involvement of ISI [Inter Services Intelligence] of Pakistan's Armed Forces. Some of the ISI agents apprehended in India:
Amjad Ali, and Mahfooz Ali both ISI trained Pakistan nationals were arrested in Delhi on March 4, 1994
Maj. Sohail Ahmed, PA No. 16742
Capt. Aftab Hussain Shah, PSS 21961
N/Sub. Mustaq Ahmed, No. 155492
Sep/Driver Fateh Mohd., No. 3231138
Amjad Ali, Mehfooz Ali Khan along with two other Pakistan nationals had been sent to Delhi by retired Major Ehsan-ul-Haq, military commander of a Lahore-based militant organisation, Islami Inquilabi Mahaz. A large number of documents, 16 kg of high explosives, seven electronic detonators, two hand grenades were among the materials found on them. They also had two sets of "Win Word" floppies containing 250 pages that included notes on RDX and TNT, the production of explosives and the manufacture of poisons from easily available substances. They had received extensive training in guerilla warfare in Afghanistan, Kotli and Bagh from ISI instructors. They had been told to establish bases in different cities of India and then strike mainly with explosives at railway tracks, bus stands, telephone lines, government and commercial buildings. They even intended to poison wells to create panic and cripple the economy by damaging the transport and communications system.
Pakistan ISI Guidelines for Terrorism: The aim of the Pakistan authorities to destabilise and break the Indian nation has been entrusted to the Pakistan Intelligence agencies particularly the ISI. It is reliably learnt that Pakistan ISI has laid down the following guidelines to gear up terrorism in the Kashmir valley and Punjab:
All trained Kashmiri/Sikh youth in Pak/POK to be infiltrated to Kashmir as soon as possible. All arms earmarked for the terrorists are to be despatched to the Kashmir valley/Punjab through secret routes
Terrorist movement in Kashmir and Punjab should be kept alive and efforts made to spread it to Ladakh, UP, Delhi, Bengal (east India), Karnataka (south India)
Maximum training camps to be opened. The location of these camps should be selected by respective militant outfits which would be surveyed and approved by a team of ISI and will be run under their close supervision. Afghan Mujahideen instructors would also be made available for training in these camps
More Afghan Mujahideen to be sent to the valley
ISI will control all militant outfits operating in the valley
The plan envisaged by the Indian government to hold elections in Jammu and Kashmir to be sabotaged
Kashmiri leaders supporting elections in Jammu and Kashmir to be eliminated/kidnapped
To kill Hindus in Punjab so that members of this community migrate out of Punjab and
Sikhs migrate to Punjab after a Hindu backlash
Terrorist Revelations - The Pakistani Connection: Revelations and disclosures made by terrorists who have been detained, consistently reveal direct Pakistani links to terrorist acts in both Kashmir and Punjab. Excerpts from disclosures by Master Ahsan Dar, Supreme Commander, Muslim Mujahideen: He and Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din Lone, who were arrested at Jawahar Nagar on December 19, 1993 in an intelligence operation soon after the return of Ahsan Dar from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK), have confirmed the continued Pakistan support to the militancy in J&K. Ahsan Dar had gone across for the fifth time in July 1993.
On his last visit (July-December 1993) to POK, he held discussions with Brig. Fahad, Col. Raja Sajjad, Col. Somail and Col. Imran, Pakistan ISI officials, who emphasised the need for reducing the number of militant outfits and bringing them under existing secessionist organisations. They wanted a qualitative upgradation in the attacks on Indian security forces by induction of highly trained and well-equipped Kashmiri militants/alien Muslims mercenaries. To achieve the above, the Pakistan ISI has shifted some training camps from Muzafarabad to places on the Pakistan-Afghan border and even inside Pakistan and at the same time, fixed the mandatory training period of militants at 3 months. During his stay in Pak/POK, Ahsan Dar infiltrated 250 militants of Muslim Mujahideen with liberal quantities of arms and ammunition. In addition to ISI officials, Ahsan Dar held discussions with Sardar Abdul Qayoom Khan, PM, POK.
After he was dislodged from the post of Chief Commander Hizb-ul-Mujahideen', he formed the 'Mujahideen-e-Islam' in May 1992 and crossed over to Pakistan in August 1992 for in search of patronage for his new outfit. He was advised by Pakistan ISI officials as also Sardar Abdul Qayoom Khan, PM, POK to merge a few splinter militant outfits in the valley with his group and seek the patronage of the Muslim Conference. Acting on the directives of Pakistan agencies on his return in December 1992, he floated Muslim Mujahideen by merging four other outfits.
Disclosures by Mohd. Ramzan, former Chief Commander of Ansur-ul-Mujahideen: A Pakistani national from Faisalabad, Pakistan, was apprehended on May 11, 1994 at Udhampur, India. He was designated as Chief Commander of Ansar-ul-Mujahideen in March 1994, when three militant outfits were merged. However, in April 1994, he was persuaded to leave the outfit by Mehmood-ul-Hassan. He decided to rejoin his parent outfit Markaz Dawa-wal-Arshad (MdA) and left for Delhi on May 11, 1994.
The plan was to contact his senior leaders at Lahore, Pakistan on phone for sending more trained youth and money as directed by Shamas-ul-Rehman Afghani, Amir, NDA, in the Valley. His induction into Kashmir militancy took place while undergoing religious training in 1992 at Faisalabad (Pakistan) when he was elected by MdA. He was trained for a month at Lashkar-e-Taiba training centre located at Kunar, Afghanistan in handling of rifles of various types, pistols, anti-aircraft/field guns, BM/Stinger missiles, AP/AT mines and explosives and underwent a specialised three month commando course at Lashkar-e-Aksa training centre in Afghanistan with about 200 youths, including 5 Afghans, 5 Filipinos, 12 Kashmiris and the rest from Pak/POK.
In May 1993, in a group of 15 he was inducted into the Valley through the Gurez sector, Baramulla and brought to Ganderbal area by local activists of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al Barq. Before induction, the group was briefed by the leaders of MDA, who told them to work in close cooperation with Al Barq while maintaining a separate identity. Col. Salim of Pakistani ISI also met them at the Al Barq office, Muzaffarabad, POK, from where the group was taken to Keil Army Camp. Besides arms and ammunition, two computerised wireless sets, Rs. 2,000 to each member and Rs. 20,000 to Abu Dujana, Pakistan national and Group Chief, were issued. The Ansar-ul-Mujahideen had planned a series of actions at public places in Delhi with the help of local criminal elements aimed at creating panic before Eid.
Excerpts from disclosures by Dr. Sohan Singh, Chief of the Second Panthic Committee:
"I wanted to go to Dhaka to meet the Embassies of China, Sri Lanka, etc. to further internationalise the Khalistan issue because at present we are only confined to a limited area. We can only go to Pakistan for help at present. We have neither a printing press, nor a radio station, nor contacts with other countries. Pakistan, in fact, wants to manipulate us. We neither expected nor wanted any help from Dhaka because Pakistan was already catering to our needs and was willing to keep up the supplies according to our requirements. I have come to possess a Pakistani passport which means I am a Pak national.
"I was sent to Pakistan by Bittoo. I failed to cross the border via Rajasthan in the first attempt because the person, who was to arrange my exfiltration, had perhaps informed the police. I finally crossed over to Pakistan via Amritsar along with Bittoo and another well built Sikh youth on February 15, 1989. The local guide was waiting for us across the border.Wadhawa Singh and Bittoo were in Lahore whereas Wassan Singh was living elsewhere. Though Manochahal was also in Pakistan, I never met him.
"Among other important Sikh militants, who were in Pakistan, included the two top Babbars, Panjwar and Bittoo and many more of junior levels."
When asked to name the persons who had come from other countries to meet him in Pakistan, Sohan Singh, said: "Pak officials normally did not allow anybody to meet us but with the intervention of JEI (Jamait-e-Islami), we invited four persons, Gurcharan Singh Dhillon, Dr. Surender Singh Grewal, Amarjit Singh and one more person of WSO Canada and discussed with them the issue of establishing a radio station (refers to Radio 'Khalistan') and the funds required for it.
"They (Pakistan) had called Talwinder Singh Babbar to Pakistan. Talwinder had come there with arms and ammunition worth two crore rupees (20 million). He met me in hospital where I was getting treatment. However, the weapons brought by him were taken away by the Pakistan officials."
Revelations of Shaukat Baxi¸ son of Ghulam Mohd. Baxi, resident of Srinagar: He admitted to have contacted Amanullah Khan, Chief of JKLF in Pakistan, who instructed him to attack air force officers and also kill Lassa Kaul, Station Director, Doordarshan, Srinagar. Shaukat Baxi also confessed that he had brought arms and ammunition from Pakistan.
Mustaq Ahmed Sheikh alias Jaan Kachroo, son of Abdul Gani, resident of Srinagar: The statements of this terrorist and four companions involved in the kidnapping and murder of Prof. Mushir-ul-Haq clearly indicate that the Pakistan authorities had been organising training programmes for militants in a very systematic organised manner. They had also been keeping records of militants being trained by them, forming special squads and assigning them specific tasks for action.
Tahir Ahmed Mir, son of Gulam Rasool Mir, resident of Srinagar: One of the terrorists involved in the kidnapping and murder of H.L. Khera, General Manager, HMT revealed that in Pakistan one Tariq, an officer of Pakistan ISI accompanied them. They returned to India with 3 Kalashnikov Rifles, 3 pistols and some hand grenades.
Abdul Samad, son of Abdul Hamid, Jaipur: A huge explosive device was planted in Purohitji Ka Katla, one of the most crowded placed located in the heart of Jaipur city on March 29, 1990 to kill a large number of Hindus in this Hindu dominated area with a view to triggering off communal riots in Jaipur city. The operation was under the direction of two Pakistan nationals, Sujauddin, son of Fazluddin Sadique, House No. 245 D, Block No. 4, F-B Area, Karachi-38, and Mumtazuddin, son of Fazluddin, Karchi (Tel. No. 676376/672526).
Dhanna Singh, Damdami Taksal and Member Panthic Committee (arrested Sept.12, 1986): Revealed that Bhai Gurjit Singh, a relation of Bhindranwale, Bhai Ajaib Singh (Damdami Taksal) and Gurbachan Singh Manochahal (Member Panthic Committee) have been dealing with Pakistan. The Panthic Committee was forced to announce 'Khalistan' from the Golden Temple Complex on April 29, 1986 under the threat that Pakistan would stop assistance to extremist groups in Punjab if this announcement was not made.
Amrik Singh, son of Gian Singh Jat Sikh, resident of Shahpur Goraya, Working President of Akal Federation in Pakistan (arrested on December 11, 1986): Meetings were also held at Lahore on April 1 and 2, 1985 under the aegis of Pakistan security officers Malik, Asif and Bhati in which discussions to ensure that coordinated terrorist action among various extremist groups in Punjab took place. Sikh youth in Pakistan were provided training in subversion and sabotage in training camps at Faisalabad jail, Civil Lines (Lahore), Lala Musa Camp, Jalalpur Jathan and Shekhupura in Lahore.
Mohan Inder Singh Sachdeva alias Pushpinder Singh alias Tony, son of Kanwaljit Singh, Amritsar. Affiliated to ISYF, Canada (arrested on January 5, 1987): A consignment of arms worth US$ 250,000 was sent to Pakistan by the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) for trans-shipment to Punjab under the guidance of Satinderpal Singh Gill, ISYF, Canada. Gill had been located in Pakistan to coordinate procurement of weapons and Sikh terrorist activities in Punjab. He disclosed another plan of the ISYF to procure weapons worth about Rs. 2 million from a gunrunner Abdul Rahim of NWFP of Pakistan through Sham Singh Sindhi, a Pakistani Sikh operating under the directions of Pakistan intelligence. It was also revealed that Jalaluddin of Lahore was an important link between Sikh extremists and Pakistan and was in touch with Dr. Arjinderpal Singh Sekhon, a top Sikh terrorist leader in the USA.
Dalip Singh Rode, former driver of late Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (arrested Nov. 22, 1987): Top Sikh extremists Gurjit Singh (Convenor AISSF), Nirwair Singh and Jagir Singh (spokesmen of the Panthic Committee), Malkiat Singh Ajnala (KCF) and Ajaib Singh (Damdami Taksal) were given training in Pakistan. Iqbal Chaudhury, a Pakistan official, asked Gurjit Singh and Ajaib Singh to declare Khalistan following which Pakistan would step up supply of arms. Gurjit Singh thereafter prevailed upon the Panthic Committee on April 28, 1986, to declare Khalistan from the Golden Temple Complex. Intelligence officers of Pakistan also put some arms smugglers in touch with them.
Harjinder Singh alias Jinder alias Pataka, son of Roop Singh, resident of Mohalla Kothi, District Jammu (arrested on July 7, 1991): Harjinder Singh along with Manjit Singh crossed over to Pakistan on February 10, 1991. There Balkar Singh, Chief General of the Khalistan National Army (KNA), settled in Canada, met them and exhorted them to kill VIPs and high Government officials to create panic among the bureaucracy. The same evening, a Pakistan intelligence official Munshi handed over to them rucksacks containing 7 AK-47 rifles, with 28 magazines, 7 pistols and 14 magazines, 25 stick bombs, 7 wire-cutters and 70 kg of explosives with detonators and fuse wire.
Atinder Pal Singh, alias Harjeet Singh alias Gurbux Singh alias Virji alias Balbir Singh alias Avtar Singh, son of Trilok Singh, resident of Bhopal, Chief of KLO (arrested Oct. 4, 1988): Actively involved in the conspiracy to assassinate the late Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, crossed over to Pakistan in October 1984. After this his stock among the Pakistan intelligence authorities rose and he was taken to different jails where Sikh youth were lodged for training and indoctrination. He again visited Pakistan from September to November 1987 along with his close associate Sukhdev Singh alias Fauji, an ex-serviceman, where they were extensively trained in the handling of explosives and fabrication of IEDs. Their training also included blowing up of bridges, railway tracks and use of road mines to blow up VIP vehicles.
Ghulam Rasool Dar, son of Abdul Aziz Dar of Kupwara, Akbar Tigers (arrested Nov.7, 1990): A brigadier of Pakistan Army declared that they had decided to impart special training to Kashmiri youths and raise its own battalion to be attached with 655 Mujahid Battalion of the Pakistan Army to help their men in the Valley at an opportune time. He disclosed that wireless communication facility was being provided by the Pakistan Army so that militant outfits in the Valley can maintain contact with the Pakistan Army picket at Wahab Dar.
Shahabudin Goro, son of Abdul Salam, resident of Tanda, Uttar Pradesh, working in South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre, Delhi (arrested on March 25, 1991): Shahabuddin Gori had arranged visas for 12 Kashmiri Muslims who were going to Pakistan for arms training in October/November 1989 through Ehsan Chowdhury, a counselor in Pakistan Embassy in New Delhi. Gori visited Pakistan in February/March and met Mohd. Yousuf Shah alias Salahuddin, Patron, HuM, at Rawalpindi and was handed over one letter containing directions addressed to Ahsan Dar, then Chief, HuM, in the Valley and US$ 10,000 for delivering to Ashfaq Hussain Lone, Dy. Chief of Intelligence, HuM. He also met Dr. Ayub Thakur of the World Kashmir Federation Movement (UK) and Salahuddin at Islamabad (Pakistan). Dr. Thakur had earlier sent him Rs. 1.6 million. In November 1990, Lone had escorted Col. Tariq (Pakistan ISI) on a special mission in the Valley.
Mufti Mehrajudeen Farooqui, son of Late Mufti Mohd. Qwamuddin, resident of Srinagar: In March 1990, met Col. Assad of Pakistan ISI at Rawalpindi for coordinating training and arms supply to JKLF. Visited Nepal thrice in 1991 with Ghulam Mohd. Sheikh (code name Khalid) for meeting Kalimullah, Second Secretary, Pakistan Embassy and other Pakistan ISI officials including Brig. Noman, who went specially to meet them at Kathmandu from Pakistan. They were given Rs. 650,000 to hire a shop at Kathmandu for cover in future and a 'safe house' for stay. Kalimullah also promised another Rs. 2.2 million shortly. Earlier, they were given Rs. 400,000 at Srinagar, their expenses in Kathmandu and Rs. 1.4 million at Delhi, meant for militant outfits in theValley.
Mohd. Bhat, son of G.M. Bhat, Nagin, Srinagar (Acting Chief HuM) (arrested Apr 27, 1992): Visited Pakistan/POK twice since 1988 for long durations to undergo arms training and coordinate with Pakistan ISI officials training and funds to IUM cadres. Remained in constant touch with Lt. Gen. Durani, former Chief, ISI, Brig. Shoukat and other ISI officials. Disclosed that the Pakistan ISI is regularly funding all militant outfits and HuM was receiving large funds. ISI had directed HuM to spread militancy outside J&K, particularly to Delhi by kidnapping/killing of important political leaders to create panic/confusion in the administration and among the people. Sheikh Rashid, a Minister in the Nawaz Sharif government, has been using his influence with Pakistani ISI to help HuM for more monetary and material support.
Imtiaz Ahmed Butt alias Shabir Bhai, son of Ghulam Rasool Butt, resident of F-551, Satellite Town, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (arrested Jan. 1, 1993): Was recruited in January 1990 and given 9 months professional arms training by Pakistan Army and discharged before being picked up again in September 1990 for two 10-day training courses in use of firearms. Between these two short courses, he was also given extensive arms training at Al-Badar3 training camp at Posta Faiz, Afghanistan from October to December 1990. Twelve Pakistan nationals and 16 Kashmiri youths also received arms training along with him at Al-Badar3. In May 1991, he joined a group of 20 Pakistan/POK nationals for physical and weapons training in village Bagh by Pakistan Army personnel. After training the group joined regular Pakistan Army personnel for an attack on Indian security posts in Poonch Sector with a view to capturing a small portion of Indian territory for a corridor for free flow of arms/ammunition/men from Pak/POK to J&K State. Inducted into the Valley along with 18 Pakistan trained Kashmiri militants on September 13/14, 1991, along with a huge cache of arms/ammunition, as directed by his Pakistan ISI masters, he worked for Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.
Syed Khalid Hussain Bukhari alias Sajjad Hussain, son of Syed Khadim Hussain Bukhari, resident of Adam Sen, Hattian, Muzaffarabad (POK) (arrested on September 1992): He has disclosed that Pakistani ISI has made arrangement with Pak/POK JEI (Jamait-e-Islami) wherein the JEI is given the task of motivating and recruiting Pak/POK nationals for arms training for subsequent induction into the Kashmir Valley. Under this plan, he was picked up by JEI(POK) and was sent to Khost (Afghanistan) in December 1989 for arms training along with a group of Kashmiri militants. Besides arms training they were also exposed to fundamentalist religious doctrine. On the call of JEI, POK, Bukhari enrolled as a volunteer to fight along with Kashmiri militants. He was finally inducted into the Kashmir Valley in April 1991.
Zulfikar Ali Shah alias Amar, son of Ziarat Ali Shah, resident of Latifabad, Hyderabad, Sindh (Pakistan) (arrested on February 7, 1993): He disclosed that Pakistan ISI has floated and is financing a number of militant outfits like Islami Inqalabi Nahaz, Markaz-e-Dawat-ul-Irshad, Harkat-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami to recruit, motivate and impart arms training to youths of Pakistan and other Muslim countries at training camps in Khost and Jalalabad areas in order to make them available to ISI for induction into J&K. He himself, received 75 days arms training along with 60/70 youths from Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Algeria and Bangladesh at Farooq Training Camp (Khost) at the behest of Islami Inqalabi Nahaz. After completion of training, he with a group of 12 Pakistan and Afghan nationals was inducted into Mendhar, Poonch on February 5, 1993, by Col. Murtaza Gillani alias Pir Saheb, Maj. Hassan and Maj. Mir of Pakistan ISI.
Mushtaq Hussain alias Mattoo, son of Ghulam Hussain, resident of Poonch (POK) (arrested on December 21, 992): He had disclosed that a militant outfit 'Jamaat Mustafa' floated by JEI (POK) is run by Pakistan ISI with the help of retired Army officers of Pakistan officers Brig. Akbar Din (Retd), Maj. Fazal Hussain (Retd) and Col. Arif Khan (Retd). The sole aim of this outfit is to train Indian Kashmiri and Pak/POK youths in subversive activities for 'Liberating' Kashmir from India. He was initially motivated by JEI activists, given arms training by ISI men at Khost along with other Pak/POK youth. Thereafter he was inducted into the Jammu region by Brig. Akbar Din in December 1992.
Sujit Das, former Sub-Divisional Chairman of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA): Having voluntarily given up arms, he is now under constant threat from his erstwhile comrades. Along with another ULFA member in February 1992, he had taken 40 Bangladeshis through the Dhubri sector. He was given a Muslim name and a passport with a Pakistan visa and put on a PIA flight to Karachi in March 1992. Received by a "military type" person he was taken to Rawalpindi from where along with 12 other ULFA militants he was taken deep into the jungle under Pakistan Army security for 3 months of training. They were taught to handle AK-47s, AK-56, M20 and Browning guns as well as a variety of explosives. He was brought back to India via Bangladesh.
Gowher Ameen Meer, Hyderabad resident and student at the Nizamia Tibbi College: He disclosed that he was an agent of the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen (IUM) and that a well-knit terrorist network had been established in Hyderabad. Recruits were handpicked individually and sent via Calcutta and Bangladesh to Karachi from where they were sent on to camps for training in firearms. One of his recruits Liyakat Khan disclosed that they were in direct touch with the HuM Chief, Hilal Beg in Islamabad and under his instructions had made a list of important installations in Hyderabad, south India, to be attacked by terrorists which resulted in the explosions on August 12 and September 12, 1993.
Revelations of Pakistani links by Lal Singh alias Manjit Singh: From his interrogation, it was found that after vigilance on Punjab border was strengthened, new routes were explored and used, with the help of ISI, in the Jammu and Rajasthan sectors. As the ISI took over the entire responsibility of weapons smuggling, it began sending the shipments with the help of its own smugglers for direct delivery to the terrorists in India. Another important operational link of Lal Singh was with Altaf Hussain, Member, National Assembly, to whom he was introduced by Amirul Azim. Pakistan JEI leaders always played an important guiding and motivational role for the Sikh terrorists. At the time of Lal Singh's arrest, a piece of paper, containing the contact numbers of several foreign-based Sikh terrorists was received from him. Lal Singh confirmed that most of these foreign-based contacts were remitting large funds to the Second Panthic Committee coordinators in Pakistan.
While in the US along with Gur Pratap Virk and other terrorists he underwent mercenary training at the institute of Frank Camper in Alabama to familiarise himself with the handling of AK-47 rifles, submachine guns, weapons and a host of terrorist techniques. In his stay of over 3 years in Canada, he was associated with the ISYF and terrorist leaders like Talwinder Singh Parmar and Lakhbir Singh Rode. Lal Singh arrived in Pakistan in October 1988 and established his base at Lahore together with Satinder Pal Singh Gill and Balbir Singh. His activities over the next three years were conducted in close collaboration with the international Sikh terrorists based in Pakistan, senior ISI officials and some top activists of the Pak JEI.
After Satinder Pal Singh Gill and Balbir Singh had to leave Pakistan following the attack on an Indian diplomat at Dera Sahib Gurdwara in Lahore, he became the Chief Coordinator for the Second Panthic Committee groups in Pakistan. He was also a key figure for receiving funds from the UK, USA and Canada to finance the supply of weapons and other terrorist-related activities in India. During his stay he personally handled over 5 million rupees for this purpose. During his stay in Pakistan, the ISI changed Lal Singh's accommodation four times. He was also imparted intensive training in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province of Pakistan) in the handling of AK rifles, rocket launchers and explosives. After his presence in Pakistan was exposed and the FBI and Canadians started pressing authorities for his extradition, he was advised by the Pakistan ISI to escape to India. They provided him with yet another forged passport in the name of Mohammed Iqbal Ahmed and facilitated his entry through Bombay on an Air Lanka flight. During his entry he was accompanied by a Pakistan agent Sharif.
Statements of Pakistani leaders: Perhaps the most direct evidence of Pakistan's role in aiding and assisting terrorism in India, is contained in the public statements made to this effect by important Pakistani leaders.
In his earlier term as Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Nawaz Sharif said: "The episode of Hazratbal is a glorious chapter in the four years long popular, spontaneous, indigenous and widespread uprising of the Kashmiri people".
The former Prime Minister of Pakistan Ms Benazir Bhutto saluted "the courage and fortitude of the Kashmir freedom fighters under the most arduous circumstances," even as they occupied the holiest of Muslim shrines in Kashmir, and held innocent people hostage in it, and threatened to blow it up.
Lahore, January 16, 1992 Speaking at a FRIENDS seminar, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg (Chief of Army Staff) said that "crores were being spent on keeping the Kashmiris struggle alive," and added "I wish I could tell you the details in this regard."
Sardar Sikander Hayat Khan, POK President, addressing a Jehad Conference organised by the Muslim Conference, said that "Held Kashmir would not be liberated by holding conferences and meetings and raising slogans" and urged for "extending help to the freedom fighters of Kashmir."
Press Reports from Pakistan:
May 1, 1990 In her despatch datelined Muzaffarabad, Kathy Evans of The Guardian reported: "The President of Azad Kashmir state in Pakistan, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, has accused the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front of containing 'terrorist elements.'" September 15, 1991 talking to Nawa-i-Waqt (Pakistan), Sardar Qayyum said: "Islam would strengthen freedom movement and determination of accession of Pakistan. Pakistan should courageously announce that it was extending every possible help to resistance movement as it was not a secessionist movement but movement of accession to Pakistan."
November 20, 1990 Nawa-i-Waqt, reported that Mumtaz Rathore, Prime Minister of POK had decided to utilise Rs. 430 million worth of the Zakat fund to extend practical aid to the Kashmiri militants.
Nation (Pakistan), May 13, 1991 Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting, has said that the present liberation struggle in Held Kashmir will continue till realisation of its objectives. Addressing public rallies at five different places in London and Birmingham on Saturday and Sunday, he said any deviation from the Kashmir freedom movement would be a national and religious crime.
Nation (Pakistan), November 26, 1990 Mumtaz Rathore, then Prime Minister of POK: "The very purpose of the state (of POK) is to serve as base camp for the liberation of Held Kashmir and Kashmir."
Sourced from: http://www.india-emb.org.eg/Section%207E/English3.html
Syria, the Ba`th Regime and the Islamic Movement: Stepping on a New Path?
By Eyal Zisser,
Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv, Israel
[From: Muslim World, Vol. 95, Issue 1 (January 2005)]
Abstract: Discusses the history of Ba'th regime and the Islamic
movement in Syria. Historical background of Ba'th, Neo-Ba'th and
Islam; Discussion on the Islamic rebellion against the Ba'th regime
from 1976-1982; Information on the alliance between the Islamist
forces in the Arab world and the Ba'th Regime.
Following the death of Hafiz al-Asad and the rise of his son Bashshar
to power in June 2000, a long chapter in the history of the complex
relations between religion (Islam) and the Syrian state came to an
end. Bashshar al-Asad refrained from opening his inaugural address at
the People's Assembly with the traditional Bismiallah (Bism Allah
al-Rahman al-Rahim) (In the Name of the all merciful Allah) which is
sine qua non in the speeches of any leader in the present day Arab
world, continuing his father's practice of excluding this phrase or
any other Islamic symbolism from his addresses.(n1) Nevertheless, one
of his earliest steps after assuming power was to repeal his father's
decree prohibiting the wearing of headscarves by girls in any part of
the educational system in Syria. The decree had been issued by Hafiz
al-Asad in 1982 after he succeeded in crushing and ending the Islamic
rebellion against his regime.(n2)
Does this move on the part of Bashshar signal the turning over of a
new leaf in the relationship between the Syrian Ba'th Regime and
Islamic forces, not to say the Muslim Brethren movement, in Syria? It
is still too soon to say. Nevertheless, Bashshar al-Asad's step is
significant, even if only symbolic, since it bore witness to the
regime's readiness to heal the fissures and bind the wounds left
behind by the events of the Islamic rebellion of 1976-1982, to the
point of relinquishing the regime's adherence and commitment to a
secular and even atheistic worldview that had been a cornerstone of
its past policies, replacing this view with the robes of Islam in
order to gain public legitimacy.
Following the final victory of the regime over its Islamic rivals,
Rif'at al-Asad, the president's brother and the number two man in his
regime at the time took the occasion to send the Daughters of the
Revolution (members of the Ba'th party's youth movement) into the
streets of Damascus to strip veils off the faces of women. For a long
time, it was also reported from Damascus that men refrained from
growing beards for fear of being accused of sympathy for the Muslim
Brethren, or even a membership, a crime which according to Syrian law
no. 49 from the year 1980 is punishable by death.(n3)
From this perspective, the reports from the streets of Damascus in the
spring of 1982 reminded one of the peaks of the past confrontation
between the Ba'th regime and Islamic circles in Syria. On April 25,
1967 a junior Ba'thist officer of 'Alawi origin named Ibrahim
al-Khallas published an article in the Syrian army organ Jaysh
al-Sha'b entitled "The Means of Creating a New Arab Socialist Person,"
in which he stated that "the way to fashion Arab culture and Arab
society is by creating an Arab socialist who believes that God,
imperialism and all other values that had controlled society in the
past are no more than mummies in the Museum of History.(n4)"
The article aroused angry protest among the urban Sunni population.
Strikes and anti-Ba'th demonstrations broke out in Syria's large
cities, forcing the regime to denounce the article and imprison its
author and editor. These two, the Syrian public was told, were agents
of the Central Intelligence Agency. Damascus Radio even stated that
"the article has been planted in the army organ as part of reactionary
Israeli-American plot, in collusion with anti-revolutionary elements
and merchants of religion to drive a wedge between the masses and
their leadership."(n5)
Though the Ba'th regime had to distance itself from the article there
is no doubt that the young 'Alawi officer expressed the views of many
Ba'th party activists and especially those of its radical neo-Ba'th
faction, which seized power in Syria in February 1966 to minimize the
role of religion in society and state and replace it with Arab
nationalist and secular ideology. In 1967, the Neo-Ba'th regime had to
give up, but in 1982 it seemed that the Asad regime had the upper hand.
However, twenty years after the Regime's decisive victory over its
rivals in the Muslim Brotherhood, it is becoming increasingly clear
that the last word regarding the fabric of relations between religion
and state, or even between the Ba'th Regime and Islamic circles in
Syria has yet to be said. In effect, it transpires that the two sides,
each for its own reasons, wishes to mount a new path of co-existence,
a path toward compromise between religion and state and between Islam
and the Ba'th Regime.
Historical Background -- Ba'th, Neo-Ba'th and Islam
Throughout the forty years since the Ba'th Party seized power in Syria
on March 8, 1963, Syria has been a bastion of secularism headed by an
Arab-secular regime wishing to push Islam out of the central place it
had occupied in the life of the individual, the society and the state.
This was the case under Michel 'Aflaq and his colleagues, and even
more so under his successors, members of the radical Neo-Ba'th faction
who seized power on February 23, 1966. While 'Aflaq did view Islam as
an important and even central element in the history and cultural
tradition of the Arab nation, he did not recognize it as an expression
of divine revelation, and thus as a religion of laws. He apparently
wished to see in the Arab nationalism of the Ba'th Party school a new
concept or even "religion," destined to replace Islam in the life of
the individual, the society and the state.(n6)
This trend grew stronger after the Neo-Ba'th coup in Syria in February
1966. The Neo-Ba'th challenge to Islamic forces in Syria was
unprecedented and even exceptional in its daring. The Regime forbade
preaching and religious education outside the mosques, increased its
involvement in the appointment of clerics to religious institutions in
the country, took over the management of the Waqf institutions, and
did not hesitate to arrest or even execute clerics who demonstrated
against it. The leaders of the Neo-Ba'th stood at the head of a social
coalition whose members had nothing at all to do with Islam, at least
in its Sunni-Orthodox form. This coalition was comprised of members of
the minority sects and even Sunnis from the rural areas and the
periphery in where there was practically no presence of the religious
establishment. Worth mentioning is the fact that the main political
and economic loser from the rising of this coalition was the urban
strata in which the Muslim Brotherhood had its roots; thus, it is no
wonder that the Brotherhood became the vanguard of these strata in
their struggle against the Ba'th Regime.(n7)
Hafiz al-Asad's rise to power in November 1970 led to the regime's
attempt under his leadership to open a new page in relations with
Islamic forces in the country. He wanted to widen the basis of
coalition in Syria and join this coalition with the urban Sunnis. Asad
worked to mitigate the anti-Islamic line that had characterized his
predecessors. He began to participate in prayers at Sunni mosques in
Damascus, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, raised the salaries of clerics
and actively tried to gain religious sanction for his community -- the
'Alawi community. In this, he achieved some success in the form of a
religious ruling (fatwa) handed down by the leader of the Lebanese
Shi'is community, Musa Sadr. It stated that the 'Alawis were Shi'is,
and as such were Muslims in all respects.(n8)
However, Asad's attempts to mollify religious circles in Syria and
gain their support were in vain and had perhaps come too late. In
1976, militant Muslims, some of them former activists in the Muslim
Brotherhood who had resigned from the movement and maintained only a
weak affinity with it, mounted a violent struggle against his regime
designed to bring it down and replace it with an Islamic state. Soon
after the Muslim Brotherhood joined this struggle.
The violent campaign against the Ba'th regime was in many respects a
deviation from the Muslim Brotherhood's traditional course. During the
first years after its establishment in 1944, this movement adopted a
middle path that sought to bridge the gap between religion and state.
In this framework, the Brothers were willing to accept the existing
political and socio-economic arrangement in Syria in those years, and
worked to blend into it. Thus, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood
movement took part in elections to the Parliament in the 1940s and
50s, and its representatives served as ministers in several Syrian
governments of that period. The Brothers thus concentrated their
efforts on influencing the existing political system from within in
favor of preserving and strengthening the Muslim character of the
Syrian state.(n9)
The path that the Muslim Brotherhood adopted for itself in Syria was
the inevitable result of social, economic and political circumstances.
These circumstances distinguished it from other Arab states, chiefly
Egypt, of course. Support for the movement came only from members of
the Sunni community, which constituted only 60 percent of the overall
population. Members of minority communities in the state --
Christians, 'Alawis and Druze -- who constituted some 40 percent of
the overall population, were, for obvious reasons, among the most
obdurate opponents of the movement. However, even the Sunni community
was not monolithic in its support for the movement. Many in the Sunni
street had reservations, particularly the educated, but they were not
alone. They were enchanted by the modernist-secular notions of "Arab
nationalism" from the school of the Ba'th party, "Syrian nationalism"
from the school of An un Sa'ada, a founder and leader of the Syrian
Nationalist Party (PPS), and, finally, communism. Even among the Sunni
community in the rural areas and the periphery -- constituting half of
the Syrian Sunni community -- there was no recognizable enthusiasm for
the messages of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. In those areas the
Islamic presence -- mosques and other religious institutions or even
the presence of clerics ('Ulama) -- was very small if it existed at
all. The main strongholds of support for the movement were thus to be
found among the Sunni middle class in the big cities, especially in
the northern region of the country. However, as previously mentioned,
even this support was not full and sweeping.(n10)
The challenge that the Ba'th regime, which had ruled Syria since March
1963, presented to the Islamic movement and the public it represented
was ideological, political and socio-economic. Indeed, from 1963 there
were repeated confrontations between activists of the movement, which
had in the meantime been outlawed, and the authorities. These
confrontations were mostly of a limited nature -- strikes and
demonstrations -- and usually broke out as a local reaction to
measures taken by the regime. Yet, these confrontations had a
cumulative influence.
Further contributing to the extremism that overcame the movement were
generational shifts -- the emergence of a young and militant
generation distinct in social background and education -- generally
secular -- from the movement's founders. It was also given to the
influence of Sayyid Qutb, with whom several of these activists met
while studying in Egypt. These young activists began preaching in the
spirit of Qutb's ideas. They advocated open confrontation with the
regime that was, in their view, heretical, i.e., secular and even
non-Muslim (Ba'thist with shades of 'Alawism). They were willing to
take the initiative and act independently once it became clear to them
that the veteran leadership of the Brotherhood movement was in no
hurry to adopt their notions and had reservations about a frontal
campaign against the Ba'thist regime. In the mid-1970s, one of these
activists, Marwan Hadid, established in the city of Hama the
"Battalions of Muhammad" (Kata'ib Muhammad). This was an underground,
fanatic organization that began violent activity against the regime.
In retrospect, it was the vanguard for the Islamic camp on the road to
a putsch in the Islamic revolt. There was nothing left for the veteran
leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had lost its power and
influence over rank and file activists, except to accept the
inevitable and join the revolt when it broke out.(n11)
The Islamic Rebellion Against the Bath Regime 1976-1982
From 1976 to 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood waged a violent campaign
against the Ba'th regime, known as the Islamic revolt. The "Brothers"
sought to establish an Islamic state in Syria. They succeeded in
mobilizing to their cause significant backing from among the Sunni
community that constituted a majority in the state, and took partial
control -- when the revolt reached its peak in early 1980 -- of
several cities in northern Syria. However, this was the extent of the
Brothers' achievements, and from that point on, the heavy hand of the
Regime bore down upon them. The revolt began to languish, ending in
February 1982 after the suppression of the uprising in Hama, during
which Syrian military and security forces killed thousands of
residents of the city. After the failure of the revolt, the Muslim
Brotherhood ceased to exist as an organized and active movement.
Hundreds of its activists met their deaths during its course,
thousands were sent to prison, and most of its leaders escaped over
the border.(n12)
In retrospect, it would appear that the rebellion was not a planned
and organized move. It should more accurately be viewed as a long
series of interconnecting acts of popular protest, such as trade
strikes and street demonstrations, alongside violent acts of terrorism
by Islamic activists all over Syria against the Regime, its leaders
and its institutions. These acts lacked a guiding hand, were not
accompanied by any kind of political or propaganda activity designed
to recruit Syrian public opinion to the side of the rebels, and bore
witness more than anything else to the fact that the Islamic
activists, and especially their leaders, had no overall strategy in
their struggle against the regime. It is quite possible that this is
what ultimately led to the rebellion's failure.
In the end, the Syrian Regime defeated its enemies and the Islamic
rebellion ended in total disaster for the rebels. The regime's
successful putting down of the rebellion was not only the result of
brutal methods of repression it employed against the rebels, but
mainly because it enjoyed the support of substantial portions of the
Syrian population. They preferred the continuation of the existing
regime over the alternative offered them by Islamic circles in the
country.
The Islamic revolt against the regime failed utterly, leading to the
liquidation of the Muslim Brotherhood movement as an organized
political organization in Syria. After the downfall, the Brotherhood's
leaders (those that remained alive) began looking for ways to placate
the regime. At the very least they hoped to establish a dialogue that
would enable the Brotherhood's continued activity as an organized
movement or as individuals in the state.
Against this background one can understand the readiness of the
Movement's leaders to enter into a dialogue with the Ba'th Regime. It
bore witness to the leaders' acceptance of the existence of the Ba'th
Regime in Syria since March 1963 as a fait accompli. This acceptance
also marked a return of the Movement to the path it had pursued in the
1940s and 50s: mainly the acceptance of the political and
socioeconomic order in the country and even efforts to become
integrated into it as a means or promoting minimal and specific aims
and the strengthening of the Syria's Muslim tinge, the preservation of
the slowing burning embers of Islam through education and religious
activities of those sectors of the population in which the Movement
had been active in the past.
From the mid-1990s, there was a recognizable improvement in the
regime's attitude toward Islamic circles in Syria and beyond even to
those previously involved in the Muslim Brotherhood's activities:
first, the regime began demonstrating more openness to manifestations
of religious faith among its citizens, such as traditional garb,
including veils for women, maintaining a Muslim way of life, increased
participation in festival and Friday prayer services in the mosques,
and religious preaching. Visitors to Syria returned to say that
religious schools had begun sprouting in the streets of the state --
some with governmental encouragement, some of them even named after
the president, (Madaris al-Asad li-T'alim al-Qur'an) and that
textbooks and religious propaganda were offered for sale or
distribution in the streets to all seekers. It was also reported that
the works of Sayyid Qutb were available in the country.(n13) By the
beginning of 2004, the number of religious schools all around the
country was, according to Syrian sources, 120, apart from 20 religious
institutions or study centers, 7 of them granted academic degrees.
Almost 25,000 students, 2,000 out of them were foreigners, studied in
these institutions.(n14)
In these renewed manifestations of religious faith there was of course
evidence of the existence of deep Islamic sentiment among various
sectors of the population, especially among residents of the big
cities. The Regime had not succeeded in rooting out these sentiments.
It also seems that, faced with severe social and economic problems,
chiefly the population's natural rate of increase, the rise in
unemployment and the increasing adversity of society's weakest
classes, these sentiments were likely to take root, as had happened in
neighboring Arab states. Foreign visitors in Syria in recent years
left with the impression that Sunni concentrations in the big cities
were slowly taking on a Muslim character, at least relative to the
norm in Syrian society since the Ba'th party took control, and in the
period preceding it.(n15)
Second, the Regime released most of the members of the Muslim
Brotherhood who had been in prisons in Syria since the suppression of
the Islamic Revolt at the start of the 1980s. They were released in
several presidential amnesties in December 1991 (2,864prisoners),
March 1992 (600 prisoners), November 1993 (554 prisoners), November
1995 (1,200prisoners), 1998 (250 prisoners), and November 2000 (600
prisoners).(n16)
Third, the Regime continued its efforts to "Islamize" the Alawite
community, efforts that, as will be recalled, had already begun in
1973 when Hafiz al-Asad obtained a fatwa from the Leader of the
Lebanese Shi'ite community Musa Sadr, declaring that the Alawites were
Shi'ites. Over the years hundreds of the Alawite students were sent to
Iran to engage in religious studies at Iranian religious institutions,
and at the same time the regime encouraged the activities of Iranian
clerics among the members of the Alawite community. In 1992, Asad even
initiated the construction of a mosque in the city of Qara where he
was born, near the grave of his mother Na'isa, who had died in July of
that year.(17)
Fourth, since the early 1990's, the regime permitted and even
encouraged moderate clerics, including those outside the official
religious establishment that was identified with it, to stand for
elections as independents to the People's Assembly. It should be
recalled that since the early 1990s the regime has been using the
People's Assembly as a tool to ease public pressures for change and
reforms and to promote his economic policy. On the eve of the election
to the Assembly in 1990, the Regime made an unsuccessful effort to
establish a pro-Regime moderate Islamic party under the leadership of
Muhammad Sa'id al-Buti (see below).(n18)
Nevertheless, quite a few clerics, among them Marwan Shaykhu, were
elected to the People's Assembly to those places set aside for
independent candidates. Their election as members to the People's
Assembly, as well as the considerable increase in the educational
activity of Islamic clerics in the large cities, is an apparent
indication that a new generation of Muslim activists has grown up
under the Regime's watchful eye and to a certain extent with its
encouragement and support. With the help of these clerics, the Syrian
regime is working to promote and preserve its notion of the place of
religion in the life of the state. This notion is a softened version
of the concept of Michel 'Aflaq that sought, as will be recalled, to
dwarf the status of Islam in the life of society and the state. The
Regime today thus recognizes the power and status of Islam. However,
like neighboring Arab regimes such as in Egypt or Jordan, it seeks to
preserve separation of religion and state and rejects the notion of
"political Islam" that stood at the basis of the Muslim Brotherhood
revolt from 1976 to 1982.
One example is al-Buti, born in 1927, a cleric of Kurdish extraction
known for his close relations with the late President Asad. In the
sermon he held on the eve of the referendum that was to approve Asad's
election to a fifth presidential term, Buti said, for example: "Under
the leadership of President Asad, Syria became the focal point of
support for the entire Muslim world. The mosques of Damascus are
flourishing, the number of worshippers present in them is on the
increase". Buti is a graduate of the Shari'ah Faculty of the
University of Damascus where he now teaches. His doctoral thesis was
on "The Sources of Islamic Religious Law" (Usul al-Shari'ah
al-Islamiyya). Buti also has a popular religious program on Syrian
television, "Dirasat Qura'niyya." He is also well known because of the
dozens of articles and books he has written, some of which, at least
those published in the past decade, were clearly designed to grant
Islamic legitimacy to the regime of Hafiz al-Asad.(n19) For example,
Buti wrote a book on the subject of jihad. In it he sharply attacked
the Muslim Brotherhood as having acted in contravention of the
principles of Islam and of bringing about a civil war (fitna) in
Syria. He added that he opposed the establishment of a religious
party. He said, "there is always the fear that extreme elements will
infiltrate such a party and turn it into a tool for sowing dissension
and violence in society."(n20) The Muslim Brotherhood was quick to
respond that it had not been the Muslim Brotherhood that removed
itself from the nation, rather it was the Regime to which Buti granted
religious legitimacy.(n21)
The late Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Kaftaru, b. 1910-d. 2004 and of Kurdish
origin, is another clear example of a cleric who had bound his fate
with the Ba'th Regime as early as 1964, when he was appointed to this
high-ranking position. In 1974 Kaftaru founded the Abi-Nur religious
center, which became the largest center in Syria. Sal al-Din Kaftaru,
the mufti's son who runs the center, stated that around 5,000 students
from 60 countries study there. Some years later, Ahmad Kaftaru founded
a Nakshabandi order called after him, the Kaftariyya.(n22) Ahmad
Kaftaru was known for his statement: "Islam and the Regime's power to
enforce the law are twin brothers. It is impossible to think of one
without the other. Islam is the base, and the Regime's power of rule
is the protector; after all a thing without a base is destined to
collapse and fall, and a thing without a protector will end in
extinction."(n23) In a newspaper interview Kaftaru explained: "I have
known President [Hafiz] Asad for 35 years. I admire his personality
and characteristics, his dedication and his steadfastness on the
principle of faith. I know him as a determined fighter who never
relinquished national rights and did not hesitate to assist in Arab
and Islamic activities. Asad's actions in the religious spheres
assisted in enhancing religious and spiritual life all over our
country. During his rule, mosques were built, prayer houses were
renovated, religious colleges were opened, and ancient sites were
reconstructed in order to preserve the Arab and Islamic nature of this
soil. Asad told me that he wants the flag of Islam to fly on high
since to him it is a matter of faith and a path. Asad is proud of
[being] an Arab and of the Islamic faith. He said that Islam is the
revolution in the name of progress, and therefore no one has the right
to be proud of being an Arab while ignoring Islam."(n24)
Kaftaru, however, did not conceal during the interview that he and the
Islamists had no argument regarding their "vision of the last days,"
that is, the ultimate goal; they only differed on how to achieve this
goal. With this, Kaftaru exposed the limits of cooperation between
establishment clerics like himself and the Arab regimes. Scrutiny of
Kaftaru's remarks thus shows that it is in fact he, the authorities'
designated religious leader, who deserves the title of keeper of the
path of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. There is a clear connection
between him and the Brotherhood in its early days in the 1940s and
50s. They share a path of adherence to goals combined with a
willingness to show moderation, flexibility, and patience along the
way to realizing them. Kaftaru said that "manifestations of extremism
are neither wise nor logical, as anyone who hastens the arrival of
something takes the risk of losing it altogether ... Extremism is not
for the good of the homeland or for the good of peace ... The Arab
rulers and those that are not Arab accept Islam gradually, that is,
not all at once but in stages. The radical movements preach extremism,
that is their way. I evaluate their desire to be [the victory of]
Islam, but the question is not what they desire, but what can be
achieved. I personally regard cooperation with the Muslim ruler as the
only way to achieve the goal, as we should understand that these
things will not be accomplished in an hour or even in a day."(n25)
Finally, many of the leaders of the Islamic Brethren who left Syria in
the early 1980s started to come back. Among those are 'Adnan 'Uqla,
who was one of the leaders of the Islamic Revolt in between 1976-1982,
and 'Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda. Those among the movement's leaders who
were left in exile started negotiations with representatives of the
Syrian regime in order to allow them to come back to their houses.
Indeed, in late in February 1997, the Damascus press gave extensive
coverage to a letter of thanks sent to President Asad from the Abu
Ghudda family of Aleppo. In the letter, the family thanked the Syrian
president for his condolences following the death of 'Abd al-Fattah
Abu Ghudda. President Asad's condolences, like the note the bereaved
family sent, were exceptional. 'Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda had been a
leader of the "Muslim Brotherhood" movement in Syria, and between the
years 1976 and 1982 and served as its "Inspector-General" (al-Muraqib
al-'Amm). Following the 1963 Ba'th revolution, Abu Ghudda left Syria
for prolonged exile in Saudi Arabia. He continued to fight the Syrian
regime from abroad, and in his role as "Inspector-General" also led
the Islamic revolt against it. After the revolt failed, Abu Ghudda
abandoned his political activity and immersed himself in teaching and
writing. He taught at King 'Abd al-'Aziz University in Jedda and was
known for the dozens of theological works he published.(n26)
In December 1995, Abu Ghudda returned to Syria. He apparently arrived
at an arrangement with the Damascus authorities in whose framework he
was permitted to return to the city of his birth, Aleppo. The
condition was that he busy himself with matters of education and
religion and avoid all political activity. In mid-1996 he returned to
Saudi Arabia -- perhaps because of a decline in his health, or perhaps
out of disappointment and frustration with political circumstances in
Syria that did not allow him and his associates to act freely to
promote their worldview. On February 16, 1997, Abu Ghudda passed
away.(n27)
Upon learning of Abu Ghudda's passing, President Asad was quick to
send his condolences to the bereaved family. An official delegation
that included the minister of the Awqaf, the governor of Aleppo, and
the city's police chief visited the family and delivered the following
message in Asad's name: "Abu Ghudda was a man who inspired respect
during his lifetime, and therefore it is fitting that we preserve and
honor his memory in death as well." President Asad went so far as to
offer the family the use of his personal aircraft to fly the deceased
to Syria for burial. Abu Ghudda was ultimately buried in Madina, near
the grave of the Prophet Muhammad, and Asad gained the gratitude of
the bereaved family.(n28)
It became clear, however, that the regime's conditions for
reconciliation with the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood were too
difficult for them to accept. The regime demanded, for example, that
the Brotherhood's leaders repent, confess guilt and express contrition
over the Islamic revolt of 1976-1982, and commit not to renew their
political activity as an organized movement in Syria. Former Minister
of Information Muhammad Salman declared in this context that "anyone
who renounces his past conduct is authorized to return and live a
normal life in Syria and to conduct religious rites. Abu Ghudda
visited me in my office and I told him that we in Syria do not relate
to the Muslim Brotherhood as to a political party but as to
individuals."(n29) The leadership of the Brotherhood rejected these
demands, and the Inspector-General of the movement, Ali Sa'd al-Din
al-Bayanuni, explained that the atmosphere was not yet suitable for
deepening the dialogue. The Brotherhood was ready to bear some of the
responsibility for events of the past, but would not consent to return
to Syria as individuals.(n30)
Nonetheless, the Brotherhood began laying the ideological foundation
for a possible decision to return to Syria and come to terms with the
Ba'th regime. They explained that, "first, Syria did not belong solely
to the Muslim Brotherhood; it was ideologically, politically,
religiously and ethnically heterogeneous. Second, cultural and
economic developments in Syria in the last two decades created new
circumstances that cannot be ignored. Third, normalization with Israel
and the new world order were to be fought, not accepted as natural
developments and, additionally, this struggle should top the Arab list
of priorities. Fourth, there is a need for reconciliation among the
components of the nation in the face of the challenges it currently
faces, thus it was time to turn over a new leaf, and there should be
no returning to the past."(n31)
Already in 1997 it was reported on a new reconciliation initiative
between the Islamic movements and the Syrian regime suggested by
Muhammad Amin Yakan, a cleric from Aleppo. Yakan had served as the
Muslim Brotherhood's inspector-general in the 1960s, but when in the
1970s the movement adopted a policy of violence against the Ba'th
regime, he broke off his connection with it, affiliated himself with
Asad, and gained his protection. In 1998, the regime responding by
making reconciliation conditional on three steps: an expression of
regret by the Brotherhood for the rebellion of 1976-82; the return of
Brotherhood members to Syria as individuals; and a commitment to
refrain from any Muslim Brotherhood activity.(n32) In an attempt to
accede to some of these demands, the inspector-general of the
brotherhood, Sa'd al-Din al-Bayanuni, set up and headed an evaluation
committee (lajnat taqwim) to reexamine the events of the 1976- 82
rebellion. The report submitted by this committee found that some of
the acts carried out by the movement had been mistakes, but laid the
blame for them entirely on 'Adnan Sa'd al-Din, a Brotherhood leader
who had fled to Baghdad after the rebellion and was still operating
under the protection of Saddam Husayn (until the occupation of Iraq by
the U.S.) to bring down the Syrian regime. Retaliating, Sa d al-Din
attacked Bayanuni in a book entitled The Brotherhood Campaign in Syria
1976-1982 (Masirat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin 1976-1982), in which he
defended the Islamic rebellion against the Syrian regime.(n33)
On December 16, 1998 Muhammad Amin Yakan was ambushed and assassinated
by unknown persons over a land dispute between his family and
residents of a village near Aleppo. With his death his initiative came
into an end. Spokesmen for the Brotherhood, while refraining from
directly accusing the Regime for responsibility for the murder, cast
doubt on the official version that a land dispute was the motivation
for the incident and demanded that those behind it be exposed. After
the failure of the mediation attempt, Sa'd al-Din al-Bayanuni began
attacking the Syrian Regime and defined it as sectarian and 'Alawi,
another expression of his disappointment with the lack of progress in
the dialogue his movement held with this regime.(n34)
Bashshar al-Asad's New Era
The rise of Bashshar al-Asad to rule in Syria in June 2000 ostensibly
heralded the turning over of a new leaf in relations between the
Regime and the Islamic Movement in that country. As mentioned before,
Bashshar refrained from opening his inaugural address with the
"Bismiallah." The image arising from his speeches and from the
interviews Bashshar granted over the past few years is one of a person
having a totally secular view lacking any Islamic-religious nostalgia.
One also recalls in this connection the statement by Dr. Edmund
Schulenburg, the doctor with whom Bashshar trained while specializing
in ophthalmology in London, that Bashshar liked to drink wine.(n35)
Nevertheless, one of Bashshar's first steps after taking office was
the repeal of the prohibition issued by Hafiz al-Asad in early 1982
against schoolgirls in institutions of learning wearing the
headscarves. Three years later, in June 2003, it was reported from
Damascus that the Regime had promulgated a decree permitting soldiers
in compulsory service to pray in the military camps despite the fact
that policy requiring the dismissal of anyone suspected of religious
inclinations had remained unchanged.(n36) Bashshar, like his father,
promoted himself as a leader faithful to Islam, acting on its behalf
and in keeping with it. Already in July 1999 and again in November
2000 his pilgrimage to Mecca, not during the Hajj season ('Umra)
received broad coverage.(n37) The Syrian media regularly reported on
his participation in religious holiday prayers in mosques all over
Syria. Special attention was devoted to the services on the last
Friday of the month of Raman in which Bashshar participated in
December 2002, in the 'Umar Ibn al-Khattab Mosque in the city of Hama.
This city had been the focal point of the Islamic rebellion against
his father's regime in the early 1980s.(n38)
During his first year in power, Bashshar also allowed political and
other exiles to return to Syria. Already in July 2000, Bashshar
promulgated a decree allowing those who had lived outside Syria for
more than a decade to exchange their compulsory military service for
payments of ransom.(n39) In April 2001, he ordered that passports
valid for one year be issued to all Syrians residing abroad, allowing
them to return to Syria to settle their affairs with legal
authorities. While this decree was designed to allow wealthy Syrians
to return to Syria and invest their money in the country, it was
interpreted as a gesture to the Muslim Brotherhood, since it allowed
them to return to Syria as individuals. In retrospect it became clear
that only a few took advantage of these arrangements making it
possible for them to return to Syria. Many of those who approached
Syrian embassies all over world encountered bureaucratic red tape and
demands for bribes by the embassy employees.(n40)
The Muslim Brotherhood Movement exploited Hafiz Asad's death in its
effort to try and make a new beginning in its relations with the
regime in Damascus. The Movement's Inspector General, Sa'd al-Din
al-Bayanuni, stated that despite his objection to the manner in which
Bashshar had risen to power, he was prepared to extend his hand to him
in the name of the joint struggle to move Syrian society forward, but
only on condition that Bashshar indeed made a new beginning, released
political prisoners and granted political freedom and pluralism.
Bayanuni added that " Bashshar has come into the weighty inheritance
of decades of totalitarian rule, and that he is does not bear
responsibility for what happened in the past in Hama any other place,
but only for what happens after he is sworn in [to office]." He
demanded that Bashshar "Allow us to express ourselves. 5,000 of our
people have been released in the past decade, but 4,500 of our people
are in prison and almost 5,000 more are in exile, and they, together
with their families number in the tens of thousands."(n41)
The need for the Muslim Brotherhood to make its peace with Bashshar
became acute because its leaders, who had been in exile for many
years, became irrelevant in present-day Syrian realities. Moreover,
the authorities in Jordan, out of which the Movement operated in the
past several years, took a number of steps that severely limited its
activities, out of a desire to improve Jordan's relations with Syria.
Already in February 2000, Jordan closed down the Brotherhood's
political bureau as well as its information office and banned its
convening its Shra Council in Amman; it was forced to convene in
Baghdad.(n42) Incidentally, the convening of the Council in Baghdad
brought about the initiation of a dialogue between the Bayanuni
faction, considered to be the more moderate one, and the Baghdad-based
'Adnan Sa'd al-Din faction considered to be the radical one. After the
rise of Bashshar to the presidency, the Jordanians requested that
Bayanuni, himself, leave Amman where he had been residing in recent
years, and he was forced to relocate the focus of his activity to
London.(n43)
The leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood also tried to exploit this new
atmosphere of openness and dialogue created, even for a short time,
with the rise to power of Bashshar al-Asad. They hoped that under the
aegis of this new atmosphere, which some of them undoubtedly viewed as
a sign of Bashshar 's weakness, lack of experience and immaturity, the
Muslim Brotherhood could establish a new status for itself in Syria.
The Brotherhood could not ignore the challenge to the Regime voiced by
Syrian intellectuals as well as the renewed activities in Syria of
various opposition elements. For example, forums of intellectuals and
public figures sprang up all over Syria, in which serious criticism of
the regime and calls for basic changes in Syrian realities were
voiced. The fact that the voices of the Muslim Brotherhood or its
supporters were not heard inside Syria bore witness more than anything
else to how irrelevant they had become in Syria. That apparently was
the reason for the urgency with which they had to make themselves heard.
On May 3rd, 2001 the Muslim Brotherhood movement published the draft
of the "Covenant of National Honor for Political Activity" (Mithaq
Sharaf Watani Lil-'Amal al-Siyasi). The publication of the draft by
the movement came probably to remind everyone of its existence, and
even to establish a basis for joint activity with other opposition
groups in Syria. It may also have been designed at establishing a
dialogue with the Syrian regime itself, now its founder Hafiz al-Asad
had passed away. The draft stated that its aim was to "arouse a debate
that would allow for the formulation of an agreed covenant of national
honor to serve as the basis for political activity in Syria in this
sensitive and problematic period and in view of the political changes
in the international and domestic arenas ... After all, the time has
passed when a single party claimed (ownership of the Homeland). From
now on, each political group should be able to have its place on the
national map in keeping with its relative strength as expressed in
clean and democratic elections." In the draft document published in
London, the Muslim Brotherhood expressed its commitment to maintain
democratic political activity and even voiced strong condemnation of
the use of violence. The Brotherhood did, however, state that "any
dialogue must be based on a broad national consensus regarding the
basic principles on which the existence of the nation, its power and
its uniqueness is based."(n44)
As expected, the reaction of the regime to the Covenant was of total
rejection. Senior Syrian officials explained that "the Covenant
represented the attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to extricate itself
from the crisis in which it finds itself during the last decade by
adopting a new identity through which it wished to regain a role in
Syrian political life." They added that: "Anyone who is familiar with
the organizational and ideological structure of that group will not be
deluded by that Covenant. The Brotherhood is reminiscent of a person
who holds a bloody sword in hand while at the same time talks about
co-existence. This is a terrorist organization ... The Muslim
Brotherhood believes that a political and organizational vacuum exists
in Syria and that the opportunity has been created to return and fill
that vacuum ..."(n45)
The Muslim Brotherhood's hope of turning over a new leaf in its
relations with the Syrian Ba'th regime with the rise to power of
Bashshar al-Asad proved futile in view of the regime's strict position
and lack of any readiness for compromise in its relations with the
organization. On 23rd-25th August 2002, the Brotherhood held a
conference in London designed to draw up an agreed formula for the
"National Covenant". They invited people from the entire political
spectrum from both inside and outside Syria. However response to the
invitation was insignificant, and most of those who did participate
were people close to the Muslim Brotherhood, or at least those who had
not returned to Syria in recent years with the permission of the
authorities. In any event the Brotherhood's attempt to get onto the
reform bandwagon reflected the inherent danger to the regime in the
policy of openness that it encouraged. This danger was focused on the
feeling extant both inside and outside Syria that the regime was
projecting weakness and the feeling that it could even be challenged.(n46)
The Muslim Brotherhood's hopes to turn over a new leaf in its
relations with the Ba'th regime in Syria in the wake of Bashshar
al-Asad's rise to power were dashed by the Regime's harsh attitude and
lack of readiness for any compromise or contact with it. The Regime's
adherence to a stiff and even hostile line regarding the Brotherhood
was undoubtedly as sign of its self confidence considering what it
viewed as the long process of the Movement's collapse and thus its
loss of relevancy for the realities in Syria.
The Ba'th Regime -- Defender of Islam
The stiff attitude of the Ba'th Regime towards the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood over the past decades was aided to no small degree by the
closer ties between the latter and the radical Islamic movements in
the Arab world. Indeed, during recent years Damascus has become a site
of pilgrimage for the leaders of radical Islamic groups from all
corners of the Arab world. Among visitors to the Syrian capital were
Hasan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Hizballah and Husayn
Falallah, the movement's spiritual leader; Hasan Turabi, leader of the
Islamic movement in Sudan; Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, leader of the
Palestinian Hams movement, and Sunni Muslim leaders from Lebanon,
Tunisia, Algeria and Jordan.(n47) Ishaq al-Farhan, leader of the
Jordanian Islamic Action Front, visited Damascus in January 1997,
where he signed a working paper determining a framework for
cooperation between Islamic forces in Jordan and the Ba'th party.(n48)
The Palestinian Islamic movement also made Damascus a center: the
Islamic Jihad movement erected its headquarters in Damascus and Hamas
established its information office in the Syrian capital.(n49)
To an onlooker, the pilgrimage to Damascus seemed unbelievable. In the
past, the Syrian Ba'th regime was seen as the stronghold of secularism
in the Arab world and, to a great extent, it continued to present
itself as such. Its secular outlook was one of the main reasons for
its campaign against the Syrian Islamic movement. The transformation
of Damascus into a lighthouse for Islamic fundamentalist movements of
the Arab world was thus inherent in an alliance of interests that
originated in Syria's being the only Arab state still committed to the
struggle with Israel. In the eyes of these movements, Asad and his
regime remained the last defense against the peril of Western
expansion, especially that of Israel, into the Arab and Muslim
expanse. In addition, it bears note in this context that the strategic
pact between Damascus and Teheran also pushed Islamic circles
throughout the Arab world to view the Syrian regime favorably.(n50)
The alliance between the Islamist forces in the Arab world and the
Ba'th Regime was, of course, a harsh blow to the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood, which had in the past had bases and strongholds in Iraq,
Saudi Arabia and Jordan and even in Egypt, aided by the regimes but
also by the Islamic activists in those countries. Indeed, it appeared
that the Syrian Islamic Movement outside Syria borders was slowly
dying out. For example, it was reported from Amman in mid-1998 that at
the Muslim Brotherhood Conference initiated by members of the Syrian
movement with the aim of garnering support for their struggle against
the Ba'th Regime, it was severely criticized, and one of the Jordanian
participants in the conference spoke out accusingly against them
saying that: "Syria is the only Arab state standing up to Israel
granting support to every opposition to the Zionist occupation.
Therefore, it is impossible for an Arab or a Muslim to attack it and
try to harm it and its leadership."(n51)
Following the election of Bashshar to the presidency, these movements
called on Bashshar to turn over a new leaf in his relations with the
Islamic movements in his country. "The countries of Greater Syria
(Bilad al-Sham) comprise one of the arenas of Islamic activity, and
have also played a historic role as a barrier in defending the nation
against foreign invasion ... Misunderstandings increased in the 1980s
at the time of great distress, but we hope that your era will be a new
era, and therefore a new leaf must be turned and Law No. 49 (which
sets the death penalty for membership in the Muslim Brotherhood) must
be repealed."(n52) Among the signatories to the appeal were members of
Islamic movements in Tunisia, Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon. Even more
biting and mincing no words was the Secretary General of the Islamic
Action Movement in Jordan, 'Abd al-Latif 'Arabiyyat, who called on
Bashshar to "Put an end to that policy of discrimination and
repression that has characterized the Syrian Regime regarding the
Muslim Brotherhood since the early 1980s. 'Arabaiyyat's movement,
which has been known since the mid-1990s for its efforts to grow
closer to the Syrian regime, seems to have decreased its enthusiasm
for that regime, and has also decided not to participate in the
delegation of Jordanian opposition parties that went to Damascus to
congratulate Bashshar al-Asad on his rise to rule.(n53)
This bore witness to the interest-guided alliance between the Ba'th
Regime and the fundamentalist movements in the Arab world, an alliance
which serves these movements in their efforts to promote their own
political interests, and at the same time serves the Syrian Regime in
its efforts to maintain political stability in Syria and promote the
Regime's status at home and abroad. However, it appears that in the
moment of truth the Syrian Regime is liable to discover that the
support from the Islamic movements could prove somewhat shaky and that
despite the benefits of this alliance, it does not lack in
liabilities. Indeed, one of the results of this alliance with the
radical movements in the Arab world was Syria's involvement --
sometimes without wishing to and thus without the knowledge of its
authorities -- in acts of terrorism by these movements in various Arab
states.
Indeed, following the September 11th attacks in New York and
Washington, it became known that some of al-Qa'ida activists were of
Syrian origin or lived in Syria for some years. The Syrian Regime was
ready to fully cooperate with the American war against Usama Bin
Ladin's al-Qa'ida organization and provided intelligence information
which, according to American sources, saved American lives. After
al-Qa'ida attacks in Istanbul in November 2003, the Syrians arrested
and deported to Turkey, at the request of the Turkish authorities, 22
Turks who studied in the Abi-Nur religious center in Damascus for
their possible involvement in these attacks. Syrian authorities also
announced that they were considering not allowing non-Syrians to come
and study in the religious centers in the country in the future.(n54)
Islam in Syria -- A View to the Future
The failure of the Islamic Rebellion in Syria in the early 1980s bears
witness to several of the limitations and even basic weaknesses of
political Islam in the Arab world today. This failure has its roots
first and foremost in the failure of radical religious circles to
break out of the traditional circle of support for them towards other
sectors of the population, first of all towards many of the clerics
themselves, some of whom opposed the Islamic Rebellion. Another
objective should have been the "Holy Trinity" of intellectuals, the
urban middle class (mainly businesspersons), and army officers. These
groups and of course the rural Sunni population remained the Ba'th
Regime's staunch supporters. Moreover, it would appear that the
difficulties presented by the structure and character of Syrian
society to these radical elements did not decrease with the passage of
time. The multi-ethnic nature and, moreover, the increasing weight of
the minority sects in the apparatuses in Syrian life will continue to
present a stumbling block before attempts by religious circles to test
their strength and challenge the political and social order in the
country.
This begs the question of whether relations between religion and the
state as they have been determined at the end of the long path
traveled by both religious circles and the Ba'th Regime have really
reached the end of that path. Ostensibly, they have, since it would
appear that the Syrian Regime has succeeded in finding the proper
formula fitted to the realities in Syria today allowing it grapple
intelligently with state-religion relations without really
backtracking from its basic conception of these relations while not
pushing religious circles to the wall turning them willy-nilly into
enemies. The concept of an "Islamic State," and in Syrian terms -- an
ethnic-Alawite secular rule dressed in Islamic symbols and cooperation
to the point of an alliance -- grants the Regime a sense of
convenience and freedom of political action which it had never known
in the past.
Nevertheless, despite these facts, which have ostensibly rendered the
renewal of radical Islam impossible, to say nothing of its gaining
control over Syria, one cannot ignore the socioeconomic processes that
this country has undergone in the past several decades that have
contributed to the changing face of Syrian society. As is known, the
Ba'th Regime's support base is in the rural population whether Sunni
or members of minority groups. In the past, the Regime succeeded in
integrating this population in Syria's various apparatuses, mainly in
the security-military and the political apparatuses. This integration
granted the rural population a means of progress and social mobility,
which they had never known in the past. Members of the population of
rural areas and the periphery repaid the Regime by lending it their
support in difficult times. For example, during the Islamic Rebellion,
there was almost complete tranquility in the rural areas, including
among the Sunnis. However, the accelerated process of urbanization in
Syria in the past several years has threatened to turn things around
since the masses of immigrants from the rural areas into the towns are
no longer committed to the Ba'th Regime. On the contrary, because of
the difficulties they have encountered in integrating into life in the
large towns, poverty, hardship and misery has aroused in them a sense
of being neglected by the establishment, and thus the Regime
controlling it. This has resulted in a return to religion.(n55)
Thus it is clear that the concept of "secularism" that had been the
guiding light of the Syrian Regime for many years is now facing
bankruptcy, or at least irrelevancy in everything regarding the
man-on-the-street in Syria. It appears that Syria reflects a trend in
the Arab world, mainly the Islamization of the daily life of the
individual and of society. Political Islam whose aim was to bring down
Arab regimes has totally failed, but the fact remains that the
populations in most of the Arab world feel closer to Islam than they
did in the past.
At this stage, it seems that the Syrian Regime has succeeded in
dealing with the process of Islamization that Syrian society is
undergoing because of its readiness to don the cloak of and cooperate
with religious circles just so that they do not challenge it and do
grant it legitimacy. This was borne out in the spring of 2003, in the
Regime's unprecedented willingness to allow soldiers to pray while on
army bases.(n56) Of course the question is: will this approach allow
for long term coexistence between the Ba'th Regime and Islamic
circles, hungry for power and influence, energetically trying to grant
an Islamic tinge to the lives of the individuals, the society and the
state? The latter have apparently not said the last word, and in any
future crisis that may break out in Syria, for example against a
socioeconomic backdrop, they might once more fulfill an important
function since they already enjoy increasing power and status within
important sectors of the population. Also worthy of mention is the
fact that the United States' conquest of Iraq has the potential of
weakening the Syrian Regime, the only remaining Ba'th Regime in the
Arab world, and this may potentially strengthen Islamic forces even in
the long term.
Indeed, Syrian spokesmen have over the past several years renewed
their warning against the wave of Islamism that is apparently waiting
for the right moment or might exploit the relative political openness
in Syria following the rise of Bashshar to the presidency and turn
Syria into another Algeria, as explained by a Syrian intellectual:
"The young in Syria who have been exposed to the empty slogans of the
Ba'th Party, feel lost and without a path, and this pushes them into
the arms of Fundamentalist Islam."(n57) But for this reason the regime
campaign against reformists in Syria in spring 2001 was supported by
many as explained by Muhammad Aziz Shukri of the University of
Damascus: "The problem is that the leaders of the Reformist Camp want
to achieve everything all at once, but the sudden announcement of
elections would create a confrontation between the Ba'th Party and
Islamic circles in Syria, and one must ask what the results would be
and what would happen afterwards? I don't want to jump from a reality
in which we find ourselves today to the kind of "rotten" situation
existing in Algeria, in which everyone is trapped between the army and
the Islamic circles and no one knows who is killing whom and why."(n58)
Syrian political sources frankly explained that: "The decision by the
Authorities to end the Damascus Spring (the holding of intellectual
forums) in early 2001 was not because of fear of these forums, after
all, most of the activists in them were from the left-wing Marxist
stream or were liberals, and in any event they were inconsequential as
compared to the potential inherent in the religious stream. Thus, the
fear was that the religious stream would exploit what was perceived as
a weakness on the part of the Regime in order to renew its activities
(in the guise of political or cultural reforms) under various names.
This is a phenomenon that must be carefully monitored, since opening
the door wide to all of the forces existing in Syria might provide the
opportunity that radical Islam was waiting for."(n59) Indeed, Syria
was the only country in the Arab world that did not broadcast Usama
Bin Laden's videotapes on television, in case anyone in the state
might mistakenly adopt his path.(n60)
Indeed, on April 2004, for the first time after more then twenty
years, Syrian radical Islamists who returned from Iraq after fighting
there the Americans, attacked a UN building in Damascus. Some members
of the terrorist group that carried out the attack were killed in the
incident, and others were arrested. But the question remained were
there other local Islamist groups to be found in Syria like that one.(n61)
In sum, the Ba'th Regime in Syria as well as Islamic circles in that
country have mounted a new path, a middle path designed to reach
compromise and create a bridge between Islam and the state. This path
fits in with the realities in Syria beginning in the 1990s, and has
within it the possibility for Islamic circles to regain some of the
practices that allowed their political activities in the years
immediately following independence; and for the regime the return to
traditional Islamic patterns of relations between religion and state.
This new path symbolizes the end of a chapter in relations between the
Islamic movement and the Ba'th Regime as well as relations between
state and religion in Syria, but this chapter, especially in the way
it has ended, it is not the last in the saga.
Endnotes
---(n1.) See Tishrin (Damascus), July 18, 2000; see also al-Sharq
al-Awsat (London), July 19, 2000.
---(n2.) Al-Hayat (London), December 25, 2000; al-Safir (Beirut), 29
December 29, 2000.
---(n3.) See Patrick Selae, Asad of Syria: the Struggle for the Middle
East (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 332-338; Umar F. 'Abdallah, The
Islamic Struggle in Syria (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1983), 189. See also
an interview by the author with Syrian official, Washington, June 23,
1996.
---(n4.) Sere Jaysh al-Sha'b (Damascus), April 25, 1967.
---(n5.) Jaysh al-Sah'b, 9 May 1967; see also R. Damascus, May 7, 1967
(MER, Middle East Record -- 1967 (Jerusalem, 1971), 159.
---(n6.) For more on 'Aflaq's thought, see Sylvia G. Haim (ed.) Arab
Nationalism, An Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976), 61-65; Salem N. Babikian, "A partial Reconstruction of Michel
'Aflaq Thought," The Muslim World, Vol. 67 (1977), 280-294; Tarif
Khalidi, "A Critical Study of the Political Ideas of Michel 'Aflaq,"
Middle East Forum, Vol. XLII, No. 2 (1966), 55-68; Gordon H. Torrey,
"The Neo-Ba'th -- Ideology and Practice,
Pinoeer-
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>For keeping terror alive </b>
Wilson John
Since September 11, 2001, Pakistan has been widely, and publicly, acclaimed as an ally in the Global War on Terrorism by the United States. Early this year, the Bush Administration presented a Bill titled Targeting Terrorists More Effectively Act of 2005 to the Congress for budgetary approval. Section 232 of the Bill carries the sub-heading Pakistan and states: "Since September 11, 2001, the Government of Pakistan has been an important partner in helping the United States remove the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and combating international terrorism in the frontier provinces of Pakistan." The Bill sought the congressional approval for $797,000,000 as aid to Pakistan in 2005.
Given this background, it is important to re-assess the state of terrorism in Pakistan as on today. Let us go step by step and address three crucial questions. First, which were the terrorist groups active in Pakistan before September 11, 2001? Second, are they active today? Third, who were the leaders of these groups and what is their status? Before the Al Qaeda launched the Twin Tower attack on the US, Pakistan was home to Harkat-ul Ansar, Harkat-ul Mujahideen, Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). All these groups had deep linkages to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and had actively taken part in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the late 1980s. They had common linkages.
The top leadership of these groups were drawn from madarsas and mosques in Pakistan - more specifically from Karachi and Peshawar. A confidential Government report, prepared by the Deputy Commissioner of Sheikhupura at the behest of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said at least 38 training camps were set up in various parts of Pakistan to recruit and train terrorists. Besides these centres, 43 terrorist facilitating centres were set up in Karachi's madarsas. In the last four years, almost all of these training camps and centres have been dismantled or destroyed. The terrorist groups have either split or gone underground. But none has been exterminated.
Harkat-ul Ansar, one of the most notorious terrorist groups to emerge from the Binori mosque complex in Karachi, is today, on paper, non-existent. This is the story that Pakistan has sold to the Bush Administration. In reality, the group is today known as Jamiat-ul Ansar and is far from dead. The group's chief, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, who spearheaded the terrorist activities in Jammu & Kashmir, is a free man. Khalil's group has strong linkages with extremist religious groups like Sipah-e-Saheba (SSP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ). Both these groups profess and promote rabid anti-Shia views and have been involved in sectarian violence and systematic killing of Shia professionals. Both the groups, after September 11, have been providing shelter and support to al Qaeda and Taliban elements fleeing Afghanistan after the destruction of the Taliban.
These groups played a pivotal role in the regrouping of Al Qaeda and Taliban in Pakistan and were involved in suicide bomb attacks on US consulates in Pakistan and the brutal murder of American journalist, Daniel Pearl. Khalil has extensive network of camps and shelter houses in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. One of the five terrorist training camps destroyed by the US bombing missions in Afghanistan belong to Khalil's group. Khalil was arrested in August 2004 and released on December 17, 2004.
Khalil's destroyed camp was operating under the patronage of Qari Saifullah Akhtar, one of his close associates. Akhtar also happened to be the torch-bearer for another terrorist group, Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) which acted as a hub of jihad with linkages that stretched from Chechnya to Manila and a cluster of training camps in Afghanistan where it trained fighters for Chechnya and Central Asian Republics besides the SSP and LJ cadres operating within Pakistan. Akhtar, was an adviser to Mullah Omar and was one of the few who escaped with him when the US fighter jets pounded Kandahar following the September 11 attack.
Akhtar was caught in Dubai last year and is today in one of the Pakistani prisons. Since no charges have been framed against him and there doesn't seem to be any interest on the part of the US security and intelligence agencies to interrogate him or put him on trial in the US, there is every chance that he might be quietly released if and when the Musharraf regime finds work for him.
Â
This deduction is not hard to make given the Pakistan Government's past record. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, when a shocked Bush Administration leaned heavily on General Musharraf, the latter ordered a crackdown on all militant and terrorist groups operating in Pakistan. The top leaders of these groups were arrested. But none of them was charged under Pakistan's stringent anti-terrorist legislation. Instead, they were booked under a tame legal provision, Maintenance of Public Order, which is more prohibitory in nature. As a result, they were all either released by the Government or ordered to be released by the courts. Nothing much has changed since then. The recent release of Maulana Abdul Jabbar is a case in point.
Jabbar was responsible for gathering Pakistan's first group of suicide bombers and carried out three successful attacks on Christian institutions - at Protestant International Church in Islamabad on March 17, 2002, Christian School at Gharial near Murree on August 5, 2002, and Taxila Christian Hospital on August 9, 2002. Jabbar was a middle-rung leader in Khalil's group before he joined hands with Maulana Masood Azhar to form a splinter group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, in January 2000. Although Jabbar's name had surfaced in the three suicide attacks, he was arrested late 2003 and was released a few months later because the police concluded that he had a change of hearts. Jabbar is close to Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
Like Jabbar, Maulana Masood Azhar too remains free. Azhar was a member of Harkat-ul Ansar before he was arrested in India, only to be released in December 1999 in exchange of the passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814. Within days of release, he announced the formation of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) at a press conference organised at the Karachi Press Club. Azhar was instrumental in reviving terrorism in Kashmir and openly boasted of being responsible for several of the suicidal attacks in India. Although he was kept under house arrest on quite a few occasions, he was never charged under any terrorist laws. The intelligence agencies, which once propped him up, engineered split within the group to cut down his growing clout. Azhar today maintains a low profile but is free.
Â
The story of Lashkar-e-Toiba and its chief Hafiz Saeed is no different. Saeed was arrested on December 31, 2001, but was set free in November 2002. Since then, he has been strengthening his group and planning new terrorist operations in the coming days. Coinciding with the ban on his group, Saeed delinked LeT from its parent organisation, Markaz Dawat-ul Irshad, changed the name of the latter to Jamaat ul-Dawa and announced the shifting of the former to Kashmir with a new leader, Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri. Last year, addressing the Pakistan Ulema Convention at Lahore, Saeed said: "We do not fear America. We can defeat it through jihad very easily, but General Musharraf is holding us up. He has become the biggest enemy of jihad, and if we can get him out of the picture, we can take care of the infidels." In March 2004, Saeed claimed that his group has recruited more than 7000 youngsters for the Kashmir jihad.
<b>If the American public wants to pay $7.9 billion to a country which shelters such terror groups and leaders, God Bless America.</b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Modi visa episode and this Ripudaman episode has brought this aspect of terrorism and geopolitics into sharper focus. The fact that there is a proxy war being fought by enemies of India through their proxies in other goverments is understood but not as clearly as it should. India's media, public and strategists should take this threat seriously and expose it thoroughly. These b@stards use the cover of human rights and wheel-chair distribution business and inflict the most damage to India. This aint politics, this aint diplomacy either, these activities should be labelled as hostile acts and its perpetrators declared enemies of India. <!--emo&:furious--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /><!--endemo-->:
There should be a public website hosted by GOI that lists these people who indulge in anti-India activities.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050406/asp/...ory_4581318.asp
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF THE LAW
<i>The judge who acquitted the two accused in the Kanishka case was doing his duty by the law. It is the Canadian state whose role in the investigations is suspect, argues Jay Bhattacharjee</i>
Many Indians, who know something of Canada, either through personal contact or through books, literature and the media, have a largely positive image of that country and its institutions. Memories of the disgraceful Komagata Maru episode in the early years of the 20th century have either been forgotten or have been attributed to the British colonial heritage, of which Canada too has been a part.
For years, Canada has been viewed in these shores as a more genteel, equitable, stable and prosperous northern neighbour of the United States of America. It had a working social-democratic framework that did very well by its populace; more important, the Canadians had not been swayed by the jingoism and the great-power syndrome that characterized American posturings in the global arena over the last century.
This attractive image of Canada in Indian eyes might have been inexorably damaged because of the verdict handed out by a judge in the British Columbia supreme court in the trial of two persons charged with blowing up an Air-India plane, Kanishka, in 1985. The judge, Bruce Ian Josephson, in the landmark case, Her Majesty the Queen Against Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri (R v. Malik and Bagri, 2005 BCSC 350), acquitted both the accused of all charges brought against them by the Canadian state prosecutors. While the curtain came down on Canadaâs longest and most expensive trial, the denouement has raised a host of questions and doubts that need to be addressed.
Predictably, South Block and the mandarins in the Indian foreign services have reacted with silence. This can be partly explained as the usual genuflection of the Indian elite in its interactions with Europeans and North Americans. The standard explanation given for this low-key stance is that the Kanishka trial was Canadaâs internal affair and the victims were Canadian citizens, albeit of Indian origin. Both these contentions are wrong; the aircraft was the property of India and the crew, as well as a dozen passengers at least, were Indian citizens. Moreover, Canada was duty-bound, under a host of international treaties and conventions, to provide requisite security to an Indian aircraft operating legitimately from its soil. There is, thus, a clear locus standi for the republic of India and its government to voice their concerns about the trial and its conclusions.
Going back to the decision of the judge, it should be emphasized that it would be wrong of the people of this country to target him. For one, he repeatedly referred to the âunspeakable tragedyâ, its âterrible aftermathâ and the âhorrific nature of these cruel acts of terrorism, acts which cry out for justiceâ. Nevertheless, while handing out his verdict of acquittal, he also underlined that âjustice is not achieved, however, if persons are convicted on anything less than the requisite standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Despite what appear to have been the best and most earnest of efforts by the police and the Crown, the evidence has fallen markedly short of that standardâ. Josephson was doing his duty by the law and standards of justice of a civilized legal system; the Canadian state was not, irrespective of the judgeâs generous certificate.
The general legal principle applied in this trial is very similar to Indian norms. The judge was clear that the proof produced during the proceedings should be beyond âreasonable doubtâ. According to him, this âis the essence of the Rule of Law and cannot be applied any less vigorously in cases of horrific crimes than it is with respect to any other offence under the Criminal Codeâ. He went on to quote three judgments (in R. v. Burlingham, 1995, R. v. Kirkness, 1991, and R. v. Evans, 1991) of the supreme court of Canada which affirmed that the specific nature of a crime or facts of a particular case had no bearing on the requirement that an accused was entitled to the full protection of the law and that the prosecution must be held to the same standard of proof in all proceedings.
In R. v. Lifchus (1997), the Canadian supreme court had laid down the following principles: âThe accused enters these proceedings presumed to be innocent. That presumption of innocence remains throughout the case until such time as the Crown has on the evidence put before you satisfied you beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. The term âbeyond a reasonable doubtâ has been used for a very long time and is a part of our history and traditions of justice. A reasonable doubt is not an imaginary or frivolous doubt. It must not be based upon sympathy or prejudice.â
The judge also relied upon another important ingredient of Canadian law, namely the âVetrovec cautionâ. The essence of a Vetrovec caution is the recognition that witnesses, by their very nature, are suspect, and hence the search for independent confirmation or support for a witnessâs evidence. In other words, when there are doubts about the evidence of a prosecution witness, it may be necessary to find confirmatory evidence before relying on it.
It is on the basis of these sound principles that the judge acquitted the two accused. However, the judge has not exonerated the Canadian state and its two major agencies, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the equivalent of our CBI, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, an amalgam of our IB and RAW. For 16 years, these organizations prevaricated and conspired to let the guilty parties walk away. When they did bring the case to trial, as a result of sustained pressure from the Indo-Canadian community and international circles, they did so on the flimsiest of evidences. One senior Canadian official now says that Ottawa told investigators they were not âto touch Air Indiaâ.
The Canadian government was unduly influenced by a Pakistan-inspired campaign that harped on Indian civil rights failures and used them as an excuse to thwart investigation into terrorist activities among the Canadian Sikh diaspora, specifically in British Columbia. The CSIS was also responsible for destroying valuable evidence on tapes that contained interviews with suspects. And then there is the turf battle between the RCMP and CSIS.
Finally, what took the cake was the decision to base the entire prosecution case on the testimony of witnesses who were paid by the Canadian government to come forward. Josephson just did not buy the evidence of these tainted persons. What puts Ottawa in an even worse light is the latest revelation that India had officially warned Canada of a threat to Air India aircraft two months before the Kanishka explosion. Clearly, it is not the Canadian judicial system that has failed but the state machinery that has performed dismally, similar to our most venal ones. Bhagalpur has been replicated in Vancouver. There is a lesson here for citizens of both the countries.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Rice changed terrorism report
Julian Borger
Saturday April 23, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12...41,00.html
A state department report which showed an increase in terrorism incidents around the world in 2004 was altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics, it emerged yesterday.
The country-by-country report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, has come out every year since 1986, accompanied by statistical tables.
This year's edition showed a big increase, from 172 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 to 655 in 2004.
Much of the increase took place in Iraq, contradicting recent Pentagon claims that the insurgency there is waning.
Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics.
A Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, has written an angry letter about the change to Cameron Hume, the state department's inspector general, arguing that Ms Rice's decision "denies the public access to important information about the incidence of terrorism".
<b>Mr Waxman said: "There appears to be a pattern in the administration's approach to terrorism data: favourable facts are revealed while unfavourable facts are suppressed."
Ms Rice's spokesman, Richard Boucher, denied the change was politically inspired and said Ms Rice had decided the statistics would be better handled by the national counter-terrorism centre. </b>
However, intelligence officials said there were no immediate plans to publish the figures. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
by B.Raman
<b>INTERNATIONAL JIHADI TERRORISM--A US PERSPECTIVE</b>--<i>PART I</i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"There were 52 incidents in Kashmir that were included in the chronology that was issued last year; 284 in 2004. The number of victims in Kashmir in 2003 was 776; in 2004, it was 1,872. The number of killed in Kashmir in 2003 was 111; and in 2004, it was 434. And in the chronology that we are issuing, you will see that is listed under -- for each of the individual incidents, listed under India, but it identifies Kashmir as the location for the attack." (Zelikow)
"And just to clarify, of course, all attacks in Kashmir occurred in either India or Pakistan.' (Laughter) (Zelikow) He could not satisfactorily explain whether the figures relating to J&K included in the latest analysis included only incidents which had taken place inside J&K or also included incidents in Indian and Pakistani territory outside Kashmir which, in the NCTC's view, were related to Kashmir<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>INTERNATIONAL JIHADI TERRORISM: A US Perspective</b>---<i>Part II </i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->4. Another point which I have been stressing whenever and wherever I could is that the US has been unwise in projecting Islam as a monolothic religion, the global jihadi movement as a monolith, and bin Laden as the undisputed leader of the global jihadi movement and in imparting to him a larger than life size image as a master strategist, a Napoleon of the global jihadi movement<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> "The global jihadist movement â including its most prominent component, al-Qaâida â remains the preeminent terrorist threat to the United States, US interests and US allies. While the core of al-Qaâida has suffered damage to its leadership, organization, and capabilities, the group remains intent on striking US interests in the homeland and overseas. During the past year, concerted antiterrorist coalition measures have degraded al-Qaâidaâs central command infrastructure, decreasing its ability to conduct massive attacks. At the same time, however, al-Qaâida has spread its anti-US, anti-Western ideology to other groups and geographical area<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->16. It is surprising that these experts, who often tend to over-focus on the writings and statements of the late Abdullah Azam, have paid so little attention to the interview given by an unidentified leader of the HUM (then known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar) to Kamran Khan of the "News" of Islamabad in February,1995, which was carried by the paper under the title <b>"Jihad World-Wide". </b>This interview contained a detailed account of the role of the HUM in the jihad in the Southern Philippines. <b>Kamran Khan</b> subsequently came out with another investigative report on the efforts of Ramzi Yousef to export jihad to Saudi Arabia.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>INTERNATIONAL JIHADI TERRORISM: A US Perspective--<i>Part III </i></b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->India has been a major beneficiary of the decision of the Bush Administration to transfer the responsibility for the compilation and analysis of statistical data relating to significant international terrorist attacks from the Counter-Terrorism Division of the State Department to the newly-created National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) presently headed by John Brennan as the acting Director.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->11. However, it fails to take note of the sanctuaries enjoyed by the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and other Indian terrorist organisations in Bangladesh territory and of the activities of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), a member of bin Laden's International Islamic Front ( IIF), from Bangladesh territory. As in the case of Pakistan, in the case of Bangladesh too, one is struck by a marked reluctance in the State Department to openly articulate concerns over the emergence of the country as a new web of jihadi terrorism, with serious implications for South and South-East Asia. To be concluded <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A radio talk show this morning (which claims of 10 million listeners nationwide) had a hearty laugh on this "breaking news", So for whatever it's worth:
al-Qaida Suspect Arrested in Pakistan
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Authorities arrested the nation's most-wanted militant, the head of al-Qaida operations in Pakistan who had a $10 million bounty on his head, and said Wednesday they now were "on the right track" to catch <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>THE AL QAEDA STRIPTEASE CONTINUES</b> <i>by B.Raman</i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->14. In my three decades with the Indian intelligence, I have learnt one lesson. Never make a tall claim. Tall claims have a nasty way of coming back to haunt you.
15. <b>Will the arrest of Abu Faraj turn out to be yet one more striptease act in the long show in Pakistan since the beginning of 2002 or will it be the prelude to the ultimate striptease, namely, the arrest or neutralisation of bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? I wish I had the answer.</b>
16. One does not know when the ultimate striptease will come about. So long as the show lasts, let us not leave the ringside seat. Interesting days and sights ahead<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--emo& --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Please look at this site on terrorism and give your comments. It seems to be done by children, very well done actually. Appears to be peace oriented in a nice and fair way (as opposed to hungama oriented peacniks).
Go thru all the flash presentations in their entirity <b>(dont skip intro)</b>
Thanks
http://www.effortsunited.com/
Atlantic Monthly
June 2005 Pg. 49
<b>How We Would Fight China</b>
<i>The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was</i>
By Robert D. Kaplan
For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacificâand when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland. It's not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when the Marines stormed them in World War II. In the coming decades China will play an asymmetric back-and-forth game with us in the Pacific, taking advantage not only of its vast coastline but also of its rear baseâstretching far back into Central Asiaâfrom which it may eventually be able to lob missiles accurately at moving ships in the Pacific.
In any naval encounter China will have distinct advantages over the United States, even if it lags in technological military prowess. It has the benefit, for one thing, of sheer proximity. Its military is an avid student of the competition, and a fast learner. It has growing increments of "soft" power that demonstrate a particular gift for adaptation. While stateless terrorists fill security vacuums, the Chinese fill economic ones. All over the globe, in such disparate places as the troubled Pacific Island states of Oceania, the Panama Canal zone, and out-of-the-way African nations, the Chinese are becoming masters of indirect influenceâby establishing business communities and diplomatic outposts, by negotiating construction and trade agreements. Pulsing with consumer and martial energy, and boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate, China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America's liberal imperium.
How should the United States prepare to respond to challenges in the Pacific? To understand the dynamics of this second Cold Warâwhich will link China and the United States in a future that may stretch over several generationsâit is essential to understand certain things about the first Cold War, and about the current predicament of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the institution set up to fight that conflict. This is a story about military strategy and tactics, with some counterintuitive twists and turns.
The first thing to understand is that the alliance system of the latter half of the twentieth century is dead. Warfare by committee, as practiced by NATO, has simply become too cumbersome in an age that requires light and lethal strikes. During the fighting in Kosovo in 1999 (a limited air campaign against a toothless enemy during a time of Euro-American harmony; a campaign, in other words, that should have been easy to prosecute) dramatic fissures appeared in the then-nineteen-member NATO alliance. The organization's end effectively came with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, in the aftermath of which, despite talk of a broad-based coalition, European militaries have usually done little more than patrol and move into areas already pacified by U.S. soldiers and Marinesâa job more suggestive of the United Nations. NATO today is a medium for the expansion of bilateral training missions between the United States and formerly communist countries and republics: the Marines in Bulgaria and Romania, the Navy in Albania, the Army in Poland and the Czech Republic, Special Operations Forces in Georgiaâthe list goes on and on. Much of NATO has become a farm system for the major-league U.S. military.
The second thing to understand is that the functional substitute for a NATO of the Pacific already exists, and is indeed up and running. It is the U.S. Pacific Command, known as PACOM. Unencumbered by a diplomatic bureaucracy, PACOM is a large but nimble construct, and its leaders understand what many in the media and the policy community do not: that the center of gravity of American strategic concern is already the Pacific, not the Middle East. PACOM will soon be a household name, as CENTCOM (the U.S. Central Command) has been in the current epoch of Middle Eastern conflictâan epoch that will start to wind down, as far as the U.S. military is concerned, during the second Bush administration.
The third thing to understand is that, ironically, the vitality of NATO itself, the Atlantic alliance, could be revived by the Cold War in the Pacificâand indeed the re-emergence of NATO as an indispensable war-fighting instrument should be America's unswerving aim. In its posture toward China the United States will look to Europe and NATO, whose help it will need as a strategic counterweight and, by the way, as a force to patrol seas more distant than the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic. That is why NATO's current commander, Marine General James L. Jones, emphasizes that NATO's future lies in amphibious, expeditionary warfare.
Let me describe our military organization in the Pacificâan area through which I have traveled extensively during the past three years. PACOM has always been the largest, most venerable, and most interesting of the U.S. military's area commands. (Its roots go back to the U.S. Pacific Army of the Philippines War, 1899-1902.) Its domain stretches from East Africa to beyond the International Date Line and includes the entire Pacific Rim, encompassing half the world's surface and more than half of its economy. The world's six largest militaries, two of which (America's and China's) are the most rapidly modernizing, all operate within PACOM's sphere of control. PACOM hasâin addition to its many warships and submarinesâfar more dedicated troops than CENTCOM. Even though the military's area commands do not own troops today in the way they used to, these statistics matter, because they demonstrate that the United States has chosen to locate the bulk of its forces in the Pacific, not in the Middle East. CENTCOM fights wars with troops essentially borrowed from PACOM.
Intersection of PACOM and CENTCOM is India. India is central to the stability
Quietly in recent years, by negotiating bilateral security agreements with countries that have few such arrangements with one another, the U.S. military has formed a Pacific military alliance of sorts at PACOM headquarters, in Honolulu. This is where the truly interesting meetings are being held today, rather than in Ditchley or Davos. The attendees at those meetings, who often travel on PACOM's dime, are military officers from such places as Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines.
Otto von Bismarck, the father of the Second Reich in continental Europe, would recognize the emerging Pacific system. In 2002 the German commentator Josef Joffe appreciated this in a remarkably perceptive article in The National Interest, in which he argued that in terms of political alliances, the United States has come to resemble Bismarck's Prussia. Britain, Russia, and Austria needed Prussia more than they needed one another, Joffe wrote, thus making them "spokes" to Berlin's "hub"; the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan exposed a world in which America can forge different coalitions for different crises. The world's other powers, he said, now need the United States more than they need one another.
Unfortunately, the United States did not immediately capitalize on this new power arrangement, because President George W. Bush lacked the nuance and attendant self-restraint of Bismarck, who understood that such a system could endure only so long as one didn't overwhelm it. The Bush administration did just that, of course, in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, which led France, Germany, Russia, and China, along with a host of lesser powers such as Turkey, Mexico, and Chile, to unite against us.
In the Pacific, however, a Bismarckian arrangement still prospers, helped along by the pragmatism of our Hawaii-based military officers, five time zones removed from the ideological hothouse of Washington, D.C. In fact, PACOM represents a much purer version of Bismarck's imperial superstructure than anything the Bush administration created prior to invading Iraq. As Henry Kissinger writes in Diplomacy (1994), Bismarck forged alliances in all directions from a point of seeming isolation, without the constraints of ideology. He brought peace and prosperity to Central Europe by recognizing that when power relationships are correctly calibrated, wars tend to be avoided.
Only a similarly pragmatic approach will allow us to accommodate China's inevitable re-emergence as a great power. The alternative will be to turn the earth of the twenty-first century into a battlefield. Whenever great powers have emerged or re-emerged on the scene (Germany and Japan in the early decades of the twentieth century, to cite two recent examples), they have tended to be particularly assertiveâand therefore have thrown international affairs into violent turmoil. China will be no exception. Today the Chinese are investing in both diesel-powered and nuclear-powered submarinesâa clear signal that they intend not only to protect their coastal shelves but also to expand their sphere of influence far out into the Pacific and beyond.
This is wholly legitimate. China's rulers may not be democrats in the literal sense, but they are seeking a liberated First World lifestyle for many of their 1.3 billion peopleâand doing so requires that they safeguard sea-lanes for the transport of energy resources from the Middle East and elsewhere. Naturally, they do not trust the United States and India to do this for them. Given the stakes, and given what history teaches us about the conflicts that emerge when great powers all pursue legitimate interests, the result is likely to be the defining military conflict of the twenty-first century: if not a big war with China, then a series of Cold Warâstyle standoffs that stretch out over years and decades. And this will occur mostly within PACOM's area of responsibility.
To do their job well, military officers must approach power in the most cautious, mechanical, and utilitarian way possible, assessing and reassessing regional balances of power while leaving the values side of the political equation to the civilian leadership. This makes military officers, of all government professionals, the least prone to be led astray by the raptures of liberal internationalism and neo-conservative interventionism.
The history of World War II shows the importance of this approach. In the 1930s the U.S. military, nervous about the growing strength of Germany and Japan, rightly lobbied for building up our forces. But by 1940 and 1941 the military (not unlike the German general staff a few years earlier) was presciently warning of the dangers of a two-front war; and by late summer of 1944 it should have been thinking less about defeating Germany and more about containing the Soviet Union. Today Air Force and Navy officers worry about a Taiwanese declaration of independence, because such a move would lead the United States into fighting a war with China that might not be in our national interest. Indonesia is another example: whatever the human-rights failures of the Indonesian military, PACOM assumes, correctly, that a policy of non-engagement would only open the door to Chinese-Indonesian military cooperation in a region that represents the future of world terrorism. (The U.S. military's response to the Asian tsunami was, of course, a humanitarian effort; but PACOM strategists had to have recognized that a vigorous response would gain political support for the military-basing rights that will form part of our deterrence strategy against China.) Or consider Korea: some Pacific-based officers take a reunified Korean peninsula for granted, and their main concern is whether the country will be "Finlandized" by China or will be secure within an American-Japanese sphere of influence.
<b>PACOM's immersion in Asian power dynamics gives it unusual diplomatic weight, and consequently more leverage in Washington. And PACOM will not be nearly as constrained as CENTCOM by Washington-based domestic politics. Our actions in the Pacific will not be swayed by the equivalent of the Israel lobby; Protestant evangelicals will care less about the Pacific Rim than about the fate of the Holy Land.</b> And because of the vast economic consequences of misjudging the power balance in East Asia, American business and military interests are likely to run in tandem toward a classically conservative policy of deterring China without needlessly provoking it, thereby amplifying PACOM's authority. Our stance toward China and the Pacific, in other words, comes with a built-in stabilityâand this, in turn, underscores the notion of a new Cold War that is sustainable over the very long haul. Moreover, the complexity of the many political and military relationships managed by PACOM will give the command considerably greater influence than that currently exercised by CENTCOMâwhich, as a few military experts have disparagingly put it to me, deals only with a bunch of "third-rate Middle Eastern armies."
The relative shift in focus from the Middle East to the Pacific in coming yearsâidealistic rhetoric notwithstandingâwill force the next American president, no matter what his or her party, to adopt a foreign policy similar to those of moderate Republican presidents such as George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon. The management of risk will become a governing ideology. Even if Iraq turns out to be a democratic success story, it will surely be a from-the-jaws-of-failure success that no one in the military or the diplomatic establishment will ever want to repeatâespecially in Asia, where the economic repercussions of a messy military adventure would be enormous. "Getting into a war with China is easy," says Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret who developed the weapons strategy for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s as a CIA officer and is now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in Washington. "You can see many scenarios, not just Taiwanâespecially as the Chinese develop a submarine and missile capability throughout the Pacific. But the dilemma is, How do you end a war with China?"
Like the nations involved in World War I, and unlike the rogue states everyone has been concentrating on, the United States and China in the twenty-first century would have the capacity to keep fighting even if one or the other lost a big battle or a missile exchange. This has far-reaching implications. "Ending a war with China," Vickers says, "may mean effecting some form of regime change, because we don't want to leave some wounded, angry regime in place." Another analyst, this one inside the Pentagon, told me, "Ending a war with China will force us to substantially reduce their military capacity, thus threatening their energy sources and the Communist Party's grip on power. The world will not be the same afterward. It's a very dangerous road to travel on."
The better road is for PACOM to deter China in Bismarckian fashion, from a geographic hub of comparative isolationâthe Hawaiian Islandsâwith spokes reaching out to major allies such as Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and India. These countries, in turn, would form secondary hubs to help us manage the Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian archipelagoes, among other places, and also the Indian Ocean. The point of this arrangement would be to dissuade China so subtly that over time the rising behemoth would be drawn into the PACOM alliance system without any large-scale conflagrationâthe way NATO was ultimately able to neutralize the Soviet Union.
Whatever we say or do, China will spend more and more money on its military in the coming decades. Our only realistic goal may be to encourage it to make investments that are defensive, not offensive, in nature. Our efforts will require particular care, because China, unlike the Soviet Union of old (or Russia today, for that matter), boasts soft as well as hard power. Businesspeople love the idea of China; you don't have to beg them to invest there, as you do in Africa and so many other places. China's mixture of traditional authoritarianism and market economics has broad cultural appeal throughout Asia and other parts of the world. And because China is improving the material well-being of hundreds of millions of its citizens, the plight of its dissidents does not have quite the same market allure as did the plight of the Soviet Union's Sakharovs and Sharanskys. Democracy is attractive in places where tyranny has been obvious, odious, and unsuccessful, of course, as in Ukraine and Zimbabwe. But the world is full of gray areasâJordan and Malaysia, for exampleâwhere elements of tyranny have ensured stability and growth.
Consider Singapore. Its mixture of democracy and authoritarianism has made it unpopular with idealists in Washington, but as far as PACOM is concerned, the country is, despite its small size, one of the most popular and helpful in the Pacific. Its ethnically blind military meritocracy, its nurturing concern for the welfare of officers and enlisted men alike, and its jungle-warfare school in Brunei are second to none. With the exception of Japan, far to the north, Singapore offers the only non-American base in the Pacific where our nuclear carriers can be serviced. Its help in hunting down Islamic terrorists in the Indonesian archipelago has been equal or superior to the help offered elsewhere by our most dependable Western allies. One Washington-based military futurist told me, "The Sings, wellâthey're just awesome in every way."
PACOM's objective, in the words of a Pacific-based Marine general, must be "military multilateralism on steroids." This is not just a question of our future training with the "Sings" in Brunei, of flying test sorties with the Indian air force, of conducting major annual exercises in Thailand, or of utilizing a soon-to-open training facility in northern Australia with the approval of our alliance partners. It's also a matter of forging interoperability with friendly Asian militaries at the platoon level, by constantly moving U.S. troops from one training deployment to another.
This would be an improvement over NATO, whose fighting fitness has been hampered by the addition of substandard former-Eastern-bloc militaries. Politics, too, favors a tilt toward the Pacific: tensions between the United States and Europe currently impede military integration, whereas our Pacific allies, notably Japan and Australia, want more military engagement with the United States, to counter the rise of the Chinese navy. This would work to our benefit. The Japanese military, although small, possesses elite niche capabilities, in special-forces and diesel-submarine warfare. And the aggressive frontier style of the Australians makes them cognitively closer to Americans than even the British.
Military multilateralism in the Pacific will nevertheless be constrained by the technical superiority of U.S. forces; it will be difficult to develop bilateral training missions with Asian militaries that are not making the same investments in high-tech equipment that we are. A classic military lesson is that technological superiority does not always confer the advantages one expects. Getting militarily so far ahead of everyone else in the world creates a particular kind of loneliness that not even the best diplomats can always alleviate, because diplomacy itself is worthless if it's not rooted in realistic assessments of comparative power.
At the moment the challenges posed by a rising China may seem slight, even nonexistent. The U.S. Navy's warships have a collective "full-load displacement" of 2.86 million tons; the rest of the world's warships combined add up to only 3.04 million tons. The Chinese navy's warships have a full-load displacement of only 263,064 tons. The United States deploys twenty-four of the world's thirty-four aircraft carriers; the Chinese deploy none (a principal reason why they couldn't mount a rescue effort after the tsunami). The statistics go on. But as Robert Work, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, points out, at the start of the twenty-seven-year Peloponnesian War, Athens had a great advantage over Sparta, which had no navyâbut Sparta eventually emerged the victor.
China has committed itself to significant military spending, but its navy and air force will not be able to match ours for some decades. The Chinese are therefore not going to do us the favor of engaging in conventional air and naval battles, like those fought in the Pacific during World War II. The Battle of the Philippine Sea, in late June of 1944, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Surigao Strait, in October of 1944, were the last great sea battles in American history, and are very likely to remain so. Instead the Chinese will approach us asymmetrically, as terrorists do. In Iraq the insurgents have shown us the low end of asymmetry, with car bombs. But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art. That is the threat.
There are many ways in which the Chinese could use their less advanced military to achieve a sort of political-strategic parity with us. According to one former submarine commander and naval strategist I talked to, the Chinese have been poring over every detail of our recent wars in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf, and they fully understand just how much our military power depends on naval projectionâthat is, on the ability of a carrier battle group to get within proximity of, say, Iraq, and fire a missile at a target deep inside the country. To adapt, the Chinese are putting their fiber-optic systems underground and moving defense capabilities deep into western China, out of naval missile rangeâall the while developing an offensive strategy based on missiles designed to be capable of striking that supreme icon of American wealth and power, the aircraft carrier. The effect of a single Chinese cruise missile's hitting a U.S. carrier, even if it did not sink the ship, would be politically and psychologically catastrophic, akin to al-Qaeda's attacks on the Twin Towers. China is focusing on missiles and submarines as a way to humiliate us in specific encounters. Their long-range-missile program should deeply concern U.S. policymakers.
With an advanced missile program the Chinese could fire hundreds of missiles at Taiwan before we could get to the island to defend it. Such a capability, combined with a new fleet of submarines (soon to be a greater undersea force than ours, in size if not in quality), might well be enough for the Chinese to coerce other countries into denying port access to U.S. ships. Most of China's seventy current submarines are past-their-prime diesels of Russian design; but these vessels could be used to create mobile minefields in the South China, East China, and Yellow Seas, where, as the Wall Street Journal reporter David Lague has written, "uneven depths, high levels of background noise, strong currents and shifting thermal layers" would make detecting the submarines very difficult. Add to this the seventeen new stealthy diesel submarines and three nuclear ones that the Chinese navy will deploy by the end of the decade, and one can imagine that China could launch an embarrassing strike against us, or against one of our Asian allies. Then there is the whole field of ambiguous coercionâfor example, a series of non-attributable cyberattacks on Taiwan's electrical-power grids, designed to gradually demoralize the population. This isn't science fiction; the Chinese have invested significantly in cyberwarfare training and technology. Just because the Chinese are not themselves democratic doesn't mean they are not expert in manipulating the psychology of a democratic electorate.
What we can probably expect from China in the near future is specific demonstrations of strengthâlike its successful forcing down of a U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane in the spring of 2001. Such tactics may represent the trend of twenty-first-century warfare better than anything now happening in Iraqâand China will have no shortage of opportunities in this arena. During one of our biennial Rim of the Pacific naval exercises the Chinese could sneak a sub under a carrier battle group and then surface it. They could deploy a moving target at sea and then hit it with a submarine- or land-based missile, demonstrating their ability to threaten not only carriers but also destroyers, frigates, and cruisers. (Think about the political effects of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, off the coast of Yemen in 2000âand then think about a future in which hitting such ships will be easier.) They could also bump up against one of our ships during one of our ongoing Freedom of Navigation exercises off the Asian coast. The bumping of a ship may seem inconsequential, but keep in mind that in a global media age such an act can have important strategic consequences. Because the world media tend to side with a spoiler rather than with a reigning superpower, the Chinese would have a built-in political advantage.
What should be our military response to such developments? We need to go more unconventional. Our present Navy is mainly a "blue-water" force, responsible for the peacetime management of vast oceanic spacesâno small feat, and one that enables much of the world's free trade. The phenomenon of globalization could not occur without American ships and sailors. But increasingly what we will need is, in essence, three separate navies: one designed to maintain our ability to use the sea as a platform for offshore bombing (to support operations like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan); one designed for littoral Special Operations combat (against terrorist groups based in and around Indonesia, Malaysia, and the southern Philippines, for example); and one designed to enhance our stealth capabilities (for patrolling the Chinese mainland and the Taiwan Strait, among other regions). All three of these navies will have a role in deflecting China, directly and indirectly, given the variety of dysfunctional Pacific Island republics that are strengthening their ties with Beijing.
Our aircraft carriers already provide what we need for that first navy; we must further develop the other two. The Special Operations navy will require lots of small vessels, among them the littoral-combat ship being developed by General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin. Approximately 400 feet long, the LCS requires only a small crew, can operate in very shallow water, can travel very fast (up to forty knots), and will deploy Special Operations Forces (namely, Navy SEALs). Another critical part of the littoral navy will be the Mark V special-operations craft. Only eighty feet long, the Mark V can travel at up to fifty knots and has a range of 600 nautical miles. With a draft of only five feet, it can deliver a SEAL platoon directly onto a beachâand at some $5 million apiece, the Pentagon can buy dozens for the price of just one F/A-22 fighter jet.
Developing the third type of navy will require real changes. Particularly as the media become more intrusive, we must acquire more stealth, so that, for example, we can send commandos ashore from a submarine to snatch or kill terrorists, or leave special operators behind to carry out missions in an area over which no government has control. Submarines have disadvantages, of course: they offer less of a bombing platform than aircraft carriers, and pound for pound are more costly. Nevertheless, they are the wave of the future, in no small measure because protecting aircraft carriers from missile attack may slowly become a pursuit of diminishing returns for us.
Our stealth navy would be best served by the addition of new diesel submarines of the sort that Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Sweden already have in the water or under developmentâand which China will soon have too. But because of our global policing responsibilities, which will necessarily keep us in the nuclear-sub business, we're unlikely to switch to diesel submarines. Instead we will adapt what we've got. Already we are refitting four Trident subs with conventional weapons, and making them able to support the deployment of SEAL teams and eventually, perhaps, long-range unmanned spy aircraft. The refitted Tridents can act as big mother ships for smaller assets deployed closer to the littorals.
None of this will change our need for basing rights in the Pacific, of course. The more access to bases we have, the more flexibility we'll haveâto support unmanned flights, to allow aerial refueling, and perhaps most important, to force the Chinese military to concentrate on a host of problems rather than just a few. Never provide your adversary with only a few problems to solve (finding and hitting a carrier, for example), because if you do, he'll solve them.
Andersen Air Force Base, on Guam's northern tip, rep- resents the future of U.S. strategy in the Pacific. It is the most potent platform anywhere in the world for the projection of American military power. Landing there recently in a military aircraft, I beheld long lines of B-52 bombers, C-17 Globemasters, F/A-18 Hornets, and E-2 Hawkeye surveillance planes, among others. Andersen's 10,000-foot runways can handle any plane in the Air Force's arsenal, and could accommodate the space shuttle should it need to make an emergency landing. The sprawl of runways and taxiways is so vast that when I arrived, I barely noticed a carrier air wing from the USS Kitty Hawk, which was making live practice bombing runs that it could not make from its home port in Japan. I saw a truck filled with cruise missiles on one of the runways. No other Air Force base in the Pacific stores as much weaponry as Andersen: some 100,000 bombs and missiles at any one time. Andersen also stores 66 million gallons of jet fuel, making it the Air Force's biggest strategic gas-and-go in the world.
Guam, which is also home to a submarine squadron and an expanding naval base, is significant because of its location. From the island an Air Force equivalent of a Marine or Army division can cover almost all of PACOM's area of responsibility. Flying to North Korea from the West Coast of the United States takes thirteen hours; from Guam it takes four.
"This is not like Okinawa," Major General Dennis Larsen, the Air Force commander there at the time of my visit, told me. "This is American soil in the midst of the Pacific. Guam is a U.S. territory." The United States can do anything it wants here, and make huge investments without fear of being thrown out. Indeed, what struck me about Andersen was how great the space was for expansion to the south and west of the current perimeters. Hundreds of millions of dollars of construction funds were being allocated. This little island, close to China, has the potential to become the hub in the wheel of a new, worldwide constellation of bases that will move the locus of U.S. power from Europe to Asia. In the event of a conflict with Taiwan, if we had a carrier battle group at Guam we would force the Chinese either to attack it in portâthereby launching an assault on sovereign U.S. territory, and instantly becoming the aggressor in the eyes of the worldâor to let it sail, in which case the carrier group could arrive off the coast of Taiwan only two days later.
During the Cold War the Navy had a specific infrastructure for a specific threat: war with the Soviet Union. But now the threat is multiple and uncertain: we need to be prepared at any time to fight, say, a conventional war against North Korea or an unconventional counterinsurgency battle against a Chinese-backed rogue island-state. This requires a more agile Navy presence on the island, which in turn means outsourcing services to the civilian community on Guam so that the Navy can concentrate on military matters. One Navy captain I met with had grown up all over the Pacific Rim. He told me of the Navy's plans to expand the waterfront, build more bachelors' quarters, and harden the electrical-power system by putting it underground. "The fact that we have lots of space today is meaningless," he said. "The question is, How would we handle the surge requirement necessitated by a full-scale war?"
There could be a problem with all of this. By making Guam a Hawaii of the western Pacific, we make life simple for the Chinese, because we give them just one problem to solve: how to threaten or intimidate Guam. The way to counter them will be not by concentration but by dispersion. So how will we prevent Guam from becoming too big?
In a number of ways. We may build up Palau, an archipelago of 20,000 inhabitants between Mindanao, in the Philippines, and the Federated States of Micronesia, whose financial aid is contingent on a defense agreement with us. We will keep up our bases in Central Asia, close to western Chinaâamong them Karshi-Khanabad, in Uzbekistan, and Manas, in Kyrgyzstan, which were developed and expanded for the invasion of Afghanistan. And we will establish what are known as cooperative security locations.
A cooperative security location can be a tucked-away corner of a host country's civilian airport, or a dirt runway somewhere with fuel and mechanical help nearby, or a military airport in a friendly country with which we have no formal basing agreement but, rather, an informal arrangement with private contractors acting as go-betweens. Because the CSL concept is built on subtle relationships, it's where the war-fighting ability of the Pentagon and the diplomacy of the State Department coincideâor should. The problem with big bases in, say, Turkeyâas we learned on the eve of the invasion of Iraqâis that they are an intrusive, intimidating symbol of American power, and the only power left to a host country is the power to deny us use of such bases. In the future, therefore, we will want unobtrusive bases that benefit the host country much more obviously than they benefit us. Allowing us the use of such a base would ramp up power for a country rather than humiliating it.
I have visited a number of CSLs in East Africa and Asia. Here is how they work. The United States provides aid to upgrade maintenance facilities, thereby helping the host country to better project its own air and naval power in the region. At the same time, we hold periodic exercises with the host country's military, in which the base is a focus. We also offer humanitarian help to the surrounding area. Such civil-affairs projects garner positive publicity for our military in the local mediaâand they long preceded the response to the tsunami, which marked the first time that many in the world media paid attention to the humanitarian work done all over the world, all the time, by the U.S. military. The result is a positive diplomatic context for getting the host country's approval for use of the base when and if we need it.
Often the key role in managing a CSL is played by a private contractor. In Asia, for example, the private contractor is usually a retired American noncom, either Navy or Air Force, quite likely a maintenance expert, who is living in, say, Thailand or the Philippines, speaks the language fluently, perhaps has married locally after a divorce back home, and is generally much liked by the locals. He rents his facilities at the base from the host-country military, and then charges a fee to the U.S. Air Force pilots transiting the base. Officially he is in business for himself, which the host country likes because it can then claim it is not really working with the American military. Of course no one, including the local media, believes this. But the very fact that a relationship with the U.S. armed forces is indirect rather than direct eases tensions. The private contractor also prevents unfortunate incidents by keeping the visiting pilots out of troubleâsteering them to the right hotels and bars, and advising them on how to behave. (Without Dan Generette, a private contractor for years at Utapao Naval Station, in Thailand, that base could never have been ramped up to provide tsunami relief the way it was.)
Visiting with these contractors and being taken around foreign military airfields by them, I saw how little, potentially, the Air Force would need on the ground in order to land planes and take off. Especially since 9/11 the Air Force has been slowly developing an austere, expeditionary mentality to amend its lifestyle, which has historically been cushy in comparison with that of the other branches of the armed forces. Servicing a plane often takes less on the ground than servicing a big ship, and the Air Force is beginning to grasp the concept of light and lethal, and of stealthy, informal relationships. To succeed in the Pacific and elsewhere, the Navy will need to further develop a similar outlookâthinking less in terms of obvious port visits and more in terms of slipping in and out in the middle of the night.
The first part of the twenty-first century will be not nearly as stable as the second half of the twentieth, because the world will be not nearly as bipolar as it was during the Cold War. The fight between Beijing and Washington over the Pacific will not dominate all of world politics, but it will be the most important of several regional struggles. Yet it will be the organizing focus for the U.S. defense posture abroad. If we are smart, this should lead us back into concert with Europe. No matter how successfully our military adapts to the rise of China, it is clear that our current dominance in the Pacific will not last. The Asia expert Mark Helprin has argued that while we pursue our democratization efforts in the Middle East, increasingly befriending only those states whose internal systems resemble our own, China is poised to reap the substantial benefits of pursuing its interests amorallyâwhat the United States did during the Cold War. The Chinese surely hope, for example, that our chilly attitude toward the brutal Uzbek dictator, Islam Karimov, becomes even chillier; this would open up the possibility of more pipeline and other deals with him, and might persuade him to deny us use of the air base at Karshi-Khanabad. Were Karimov to be toppled in an uprising like the one in Kyrgyzstan, we would immediately have to stabilize the new regime or risk losing sections of the country to Chinese influence.
We also need to realize that in the coming years and decades the moral distance between Europe and China is going to contract considerably, especially if China's authoritarianism becomes increasingly restrained, and the ever expanding European Union becomes a less-than-democratic superstate run in imperious regulatory style by Brussels-based functionaries. Russia, too, is headed in a decidedly undemocratic direction: Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, reacted to our support of democracy in Ukraine by agreeing to "massive" joint air and naval exercises with the Chinese, scheduled for the second half of this year. These unprecedented joint Russian-Chinese exercises will be held on Chinese territory.
Therefore the idea that we will no longer engage in the "cynical" game of power politics is illusory, as is the idea that we will be able to advance a foreign policy based solely on Wilsonian ideals. We will have to continually play various parts of the world off China, just as Richard Nixon played less than morally perfect states off the Soviet Union. This may well lead to a fundamentally new NATO alliance, which could become a global armada that roams the Seven Seas. Indeed, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Germans, and the Spanish are making significant investments in fast missile-bearing ships and in landing-platform docks for beach assaults, and the British and the French are investing in new aircraft carriers. Since Europe increasingly seeks to avoid conflict and to reduce geopolitics to a series of negotiations and regulatory disputes, an emphasis on sea power would suit it well. Sea power is intrinsically less threatening than land power. It allows for a big operation without a large onshore footprint. Consider the tsunami effort, during which Marines and sailors returned to their carrier and destroyers each night. Armies invade; navies make port visits. Sea power has always been a more useful means of realpolitik than land power. It allows for a substantial military presence in areas geographically remote from states themselvesâbut without an overtly belligerent effect. Because ships take so long to get somewhere, and are less threatening than troops on the ground, naval forces allow diplomats to ratchet up pressure during a crisis in a responsibleâand reversibleâway. Take the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962. As the British expert H. P. Willmott has written, "The use of naval power by the Americans was the least dangerous option that presented itself, and the slowness with which events unfolded at sea gave time for both sides to conceive and implement a rational response to a highly dangerous situation."
Submarines have been an exception to this rule, but their very ability to operate both literally and figuratively below the surface, completely off the media radar screen, allows a government to be militarily aggressive, particularly in the field of espionage, without offending the sensibilities of its citizenry. Sweden's neutrality is a hard-won luxury built on naval strength that many of its idealistic citizens may be incompletely aware of. Pacifistic Japan, the ultimate trading nation, is increasingly dependent on its burgeoning submarine force. Sea power protects trade, which is regulated by treaties; it's no accident that the father of international law, Hugo Grotius, was a seventeenth-century Dutchman who lived at the height of Dutch naval power worldwide. Because of globalization, the twenty-first century will see unprecedented sea traffic, requiring unprecedented regulation by diplomats and naval officers alike. And as the economic influence of the European Union expands around the globe, Europe may find, like the United States in the nineteenth century and China today, that it has to go to sea to protect its interests.
The ships and other naval equipment being built now by the Europeans are designed to slot into U.S. battle networks. And European nations, which today we conceive of as Atlantic forces, may develop global naval functions; already, for example, Swedish submarine units are helping to train Americans in the Pacific on how to hunt for diesel subs. The sea may be nato's and Europe's best chance for a real military future. And yet the alliance is literally and symbolically weak. For it to regain its political significance, NATO must become a military alliance that no one doubts is willing to fight and kill at a moment's notice. That was its reputation during the Cold Warâand it was so well regarded by the Soviets that they never tested it. Expanding NATO eastward has helped stabilize former Warsaw Pact states, of course, but admitting substandard militaries to the alliance's ranks, although politically necessary, has been problematic. The more NATO expands eastward, the more superficial and unwieldy it becomes as a fighting force, and the more questionable becomes its claim that it will fight in defense of any member state. Taking in yet more substandard militaries like Ukraine's and Georgia's too soon is simply not in NATO's interest. We can't just declare an expansion of a defense alliance because of demonstrations somewhere in support of democracy. Rather, we must operate in the way we are now operating in Georgia, where we have sent in the Marines for a year to train the Georgian armed forces. That way, when a country like Georgia does make it into NATO, its membership will have military as well as political meaning. Only by making it an agile force that is ready to land on, say, West African beaches at a few days' or hours' notice can we save NATO.
And we need to save it. NATO is ours to leadâunlike the increasingly powerful European Union, whose own defense force, should it become a reality, would inevitably emerge as a competing regional power, one that might align itself with China in order to balance against us. Let me be even clearer about something that policymakers and experts often don't want to be clear about. nato and an autonomous European defense force cannot both prosper. Only one canâand we should want it to be the former, so that Europe is a military asset for us, not a liability, as we confront China.
The Chinese military challenge is already a reality to officers and sailors of the U.S. Navy. I recently spent four weeks embedded on a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Benfold, roaming around the Pacific from Indonesia to Singapore, the Philippines, Guam, and then Hawaii.
During my visit the Benfold completed a tsunami-relief mission (which consisted of bringing foodstuffs ashore and remapping the coastline) and then recommenced combat drills, run from the ship's combat-information centerâa dark and cavernous clutter of computer consoles. Here a tactical action officer led the response to what were often hypothetical feints or attacks from China or North Korea.
Observing the action in the combat-information center, I learned that although naval warfare is conducted with headphones and computer keyboards, the stress level is every bit as acute as in gritty urban combat. A wrong decision can result in a catastrophic missile strike, against which no degree of physical toughness or bravery is a defense.
Sea warfare is cerebral. The threat is over the horizon; nothing can be seen; and everything is reduced to mathematics. The object is deception more than it is aggressionâgetting the other side to shoot first, so as to gain the political advantage, yet not having to absorb the damage of the attack.
As enthusiastic as the crew members of the Benfold were in helping the victims of the tsunami, once they left Indonesian waters they were just as enthusiastic about honing their surface and subsurface warfare skills. I even picked up a feeling, especially among the senior chief petty officers (the iron grunts of the Navy, who provide the truth unvarnished), that they might be tested in the western Pacific to the same degree that the Marines have been in Iraq. The main threat in the Persian Gulf to date has been asymmetric attacks, like the bombing of the Cole. But the Pacific offers all kinds of threats, from increasingly aggressive terrorist groups in the Islamic archipelagoes of Southeast Asia to cat-and-mouse games with Chinese subs in the waters to the north. Preparing to meet all the possible threats the Pacific has to offer will force the Navy to become more nimble, and will make it better able to deal with unconventional emergencies, such as tsunamis, when they arise.
Welcome to the next few decades. As one senior chief put it to me, referring first to the Persian Gulf and then to the Pacific, "The Navy needs to spend less time in that salty little mud puddle and more time in the pond."
Robert D. Kaplan is an Atlantic correspondent and the author of Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground, forthcoming in September from Random Houseâthe first of several books he is writing about the armed forces.
Crossposted from the other forum:
Remaking Central Asia
Taking the liberty of posting in full this interesting article:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Most major media outlets have spelled out with a profusion of details the "exact" events that led to the death of what some claim to have been hundreds of people in the eastern Uzbekistan town of Andijan on May 13. Led by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the world media condemned much-maligned Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov for yet another bloody and ruthless suppression of "public dissent". Yet, all the details so far provided do not explain who the real players were or their end objectives.
It is certain, however, that the puzzle cannot be solved unless the London factor is understood. The answers lie in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Liverpool. The old British colonial establishment, with former intelligence officer Bernard Lewis as its mentor, appears to have set in motion a series of events that will bring endless bloodshed to Central Asia. London's objective would appear to be to keep both China and Russia under an open-ended threat. At this point, there is no one who can better serve this "Lewis Doctrine" than Muslims nurtured in Britain - the Hizbut-Tehrir (HT).
Ferghana Valley's importance
The most significant aspect of the violent incident in Andijan is that it occurred in the Ferghana Valley, a confluence of three former Soviet republics - Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Andijan is located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Osh, Kyrgyzstan, where the seed crystal for the March uprising against Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev was planted. Within a span of 48 hours after the uprising began in Osh, Akayev was gone.
Andijan is also about 25 miles east of Namangan, the hotbed of the Saudi-funded Wahhabi form of Islamic extremism. Juma Namangani, now dead, was the leader of the movement that began in Namangan. The Ferghana Valley's 7 million inhabitants make it the most densely populated region in Central Asia. In other words, Andijan is in the heart of Ferghana Valley, and is the key to controlling it.
For years, Central Asian governments have pointed to the valley as a hotbed of Muslim extremists aiming to set up an Islamic state in the region. Largely ethnically Uzbek, the valley is split between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in a confused patchwork of Soviet-era borders that often leave enclaves of one country surrounded by the territory of another. In general, Uzbekistan holds the valley floor, Tajikistan holds its narrow mouth and Kyrgyzstan holds the high ground around. Though the valley mouth is narrow, the actual valley is vast at 22,000 square kilometers (8,500 square miles), and the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains that rise above it are only dimly visible, but they are the main source of the water that fertilizes the valley.
During the Soviet era, the valley was a major center of cotton and silk production, and the hills above are covered by walnut forests. The valley also has some oil and gas. That scene has not changed much. What has changed significantly since the1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, is its integration with the "free world", and that process has made Central Asia economically decrepit and turned it into a hotbed of transnational Islamic militants, controlled and funded by outside forces. Recently, the Kyrgyz media reported of personnel of the country's border control services saying that the illegal entry of foreign nationals and individuals without any citizenship into Kyrgyzstan was on the rise. What is important to note is that these militants were not parachuted out of airplanes: they are coming through Afghanistan and Pakistan. It could very well be a ticking time bomb for India, China and Russia.
Footsoldiers of foreign powers
Apart from various Islamic preachers, two major Islamic groups function in the Ferghana Valley, whose common objective is to change the regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. These are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the HT. While the IMU openly thrives on violence, the HT is strongly promoted by the United Kingdom, where it is headquartered, as peaceful. But records indicate that that the IMU and the HT work hand-in-hand. Most of the IMU recruits are from the HT, according to Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on world terrorist outfits. Gunaratna claims that Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the US, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian of Chechen origin who has remained active in the Iraqi insurgency against the US occupying forces, were both once members of the HT.
The relationship between the Taliban and the IMU pre-dates September 11. In September 1996, after the Taliban had captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldashev - long-time adversaries of Karimov and considered the founders of the IMU - held a press conference in the city to announce the formation of the IMU. Namangani, who had served as a Soviet paratrooper in Afghanistan in the 1980s, became the group's leader (or amir) and Yuldashev its military commander. Their aim was to topple Karimov and turn Uzbekistan, and ultimately the whole of Central Asia, into an Islamic state. The Taliban provided them with a place to shelter and train, and to plot against Karimov. It is also said that Yuldashev developed contact with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the two became supportive of each other. Although Karimov is a target of the IMU, in recent months he has identified the HT as the greater threat. Following the Andijan incident, Uzbek authorities again blamed the HT.
Unlike the IMU, which has concentrated its role in Central Asia, with the Ferghana Valley as the focus, the HT is an international Islamic movement. It is headquartered in London, but also has a strong organizational presence in Birmingham, Liverpool and Bradford. The UK group was co-founded by Omar Bakri Mohammed, who went to the UK after being expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1986. The HT's present leader is an information technology professional from the Indian sub-continent, Jalaluddin Patel.
The HT was established in 1953 in Palestine by a well-known religious figure, the judge of the appellate Sharia court in Jerusalem, Takieddin al-Nabahani al-Falastini (1909-1979). According to available reports, the group's first UK-based website was hosted by the London Imperial College - but following complaints to the college authorities, the site was closed down until a new host could be found. The group now posts in its own name as Hizbut-Tehrir.
Although portrayed as non-violent by British authorities, Bakri's links to bin Laden are widely known. Excerpts of a letter to Bakri from bin Laden, sent by fax from Afghanistan in the summer of 1998, were published in the Los Angeles Times. Bakri later released what he called bin Laden's four specific objectives for a jihad against the US: "Bring down their airliners. Prevent the safe passage of their ships. Occupy their embassies. Force the closure of their companies and banks." Many of those who follow HT activities are intrigued that the group is not more discreet. For instance, its website in 2003 carried "A Cry of Imam from the Muslims of Uzbekistan." In that article, the "imam" gave the call "to destroy Karimov" . Similar calls have been issued to oust the Jordanian and Turkish authorities. These are not empty threats. The HT is a huge organization. Some claim it has at least 10,000 footsoldiers in Central Asia. A few thousand more are lurking in Pakistan and Afghanistan. HT also has a strong presence in North Africa.
As one Indian analyst pointed out, Osh and Jalalabad, the cities that spearheaded the regime change in Kyrgyzstan, happen to be HT strongholds. HT is making huge gains in an entire belt stretching from the Ferghana provinces of Namangan, Andijan and Kokand (contiguous to Osh and Jalalabad) to the adjacent Penjekent Valley (Uzbekistan) and Khojent (Tajikistan).
The Lewis Doctrine
Writing for the Jamestown Foundation Journal (Vol 2 Issue 4), Stephen Ulph, in his article "Londonistan", seemed intrigued by that fact that scores of violent Islamic movements remain anchored in London. He writes:
It [London] is also a center for Islamist politics. You could say that London has become, for the exponents of radical Islam, the most important city in the Middle East. A framework of lenient asylum laws has allowed the development of the largest and most overt concentration of Islamist political activists since Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Just ask the French, whose exasperation with the indulgent toleration afforded to Algerian Islamic activists led them to dub the city dismissively as "l'antechambre de l'Afghanistan". They certainly have a point. Many of bin Laden's fatwas [religious edicts] were actually first publicized in London. In fact, the United Kingdom in general seems to differ from other European states in the degree to which it became a spiritual and communications hub for the jihad movement ...
Ulph does not, however, ask why it is that London remains an "Aladdin's Cave", chock-full of Islamic dissidents. Britain is no longer a military or economic power of substance. In order to be an almost-equal partner in the Atlantic alliance, Britain has two important ingredients to offer to the United States: first, its ability to undo the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and parts of the Indian sub-continent through the use of people living in London's Aladdin's cave; and second, its control of world currency movements through the City of London.
The West's policy - in other words, the policy of the Anglo-Americans, as the European Union does not have a policy worth citing - toward the Middle East has long been formulated by Bernard Lewis. The British-born Lewis started his career as an intelligence officer and has remained in bed with British intelligence ever since. Avowedly anti-Russia and pro-Israel, Lewis reaped a rich harvest among US academia and policymakers. He brought president Jimmy Carter's virulently anti-Russian National Security Council chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski, into his fold in the 1980s, and made the US neo-conservatives, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, dance to his tune on the Middle East in 2001. In between, he penned dozens of books and was taken seriously by people as a historian. But, in fact, Lewis is what he always was: a British intelligence officer.
To understand the "Lewis Doctrine", one must read the statement he made in Canada recently while discussing his article, "Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East" (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005). "During the Second World War, Nazi Germany and the allies had all sorts of odd friends," Lewis said on that occasion. "When [Prime Minister Winston] Churchill was asked in the House of Commons about Britain's new ally, Russia, he replied that if Hitler would invade hell, 'I would find occasion to support the devil'. In this way, there is nothing odd about an alliance between Saddam [Hussein] and al-Qaeda." Or, one might be expected to conclude, between London and the Hizbut-Tehrir.
In 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over power in Iran and the West was in a quandary, Lewis sucked Brzezinski into his notion that "Koranic evangelism" could be a very useful political tool against Russia in the long term. His Time magazine story at the time, "The Crescent of Crisis", ended with the following telling observation:
In the long run there may even be targets of opportunity for the West created by ferment within the crescent. Islam is undoubtedly compatible with socialism, but it is inimical to atheistic communism. The Soviet Union is already the world's fifth largest Muslim nation. By the year 2000, the huge Islamic populations in the border republics may outnumber Russia's now dominant Slavs. From Islamic democracies on Russia's southern tier, zealous Koranic evangelism might sweep across the border into these politically repressed Soviet states, creating problems for the Kremlin ... Whatever the solution, there is a clear need for the US to recapture what [Henry] Kissinger calls the "geopolitical momentum". That more than anything else will help maintain order in the crescent of crisis.
The recent developments in Uzbekistan have all the hallmarks of the same process. This time the objective is to weaken China, Russia, and possibly India, using the HT to unleash the dogs of war in Central Asia. It is not difficult for those on the ground to see what is happening. The leader of the Islamic Party of Tajikistan, Deputy Prime Minister Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, has identified HT as a Western-sponsored bogeyman for "remaking Central Asia". He said: "A more detailed analysis of HT's programmatic and ideological views and concrete examples of its activities suggests that it was created by anti-Islamic forces. One proof of this is the comfortable existence this organization enjoys in a number of Western countries, where it has large centers and offices that develop its concept of an Islamic caliphate." It is evident that Turajonzoda has seen through this game. But he has little capability to stop the juggernaut once it has been unleashed.
It is not a lack of understanding on the part of American neo-conservatives associated with the Bush administration, but their keenness to use the "Lewis Doctrine" to achieve what they believe is justified that promises untold danger. How important a brains-trust is Lewis to the neo-conservatives? Just read the words of Richard Perle, a leading neo-conservative who remains a close adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "Bernard Lewis has been the single-most important intellectual influence countering the conventional wisdom on managing the conflict between radical Islam and the West."
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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National Counterterrorim Center's Report for 2004
No prizes for guessing at to which country was the biggest victim of terrorism last year <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Check out the site too: http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp seems to be pretty comprehensive site with lots of data, analysis, query and analytics tools etc.
Things to chew over for the meat in the sandwich
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->August 18, 2005
Supporting China's growth means straight talk with another powerful friend, writes Hugh White.
WE OFTEN speak of our alliance with the US as based on shared values, and indeed it is. But there are important differences in what the two countries think of values, and especially the link between values and power.
Those differences are central to our thinking about the future of Asia.
John Howard, visiting Washington last month, starkly displayed these differences when he and President George Bush spoke on the touchstone issue of China. Standing next to Howard, Bush described US relations with Beijing as "complex" and "complicated". "We've got issues when it comes to values," he said, and asked Howard to "work together to reinforce the need for China to accept certain values as universal".
<b>Howard turned him down, flat. He told Bush: "We have a good relationship with China. It's not just based on economic opportunity. We are unashamed in developing our relations with China. I'll do everything I can in the interests of Australia to ensure it develops further." The day before he said his approach was "to build on the things that we have in common, and not become obsessed with the things that make us different".</b>
That harsh word "obsessed" points to the depth of the differences. For Howard, values and power can be treated separately. <b>He acknowledges that China and Australia have different values, but does not agree with Bush that China's values undermine its claims to regional power. He accepts those claims as legitimate. Indeed, he thinks that China's ascent to some kind of economic and political leadership in Asia is in Australia's interest. That is why he is going to the East Asian Summit.</b>
<b>For Bush, and for most Americans, the opposite is true. They are keen to benefit from China's growing economy. But they do not accept China's claim for a share of power in Asia, because they believe only countries that share America's values can legitimately exercise such power. Power and values are so deeply intertwined in American thinking they cannot be separated. </b>"Obsessed" might not be too strong a word.
Now that the differences are clear, the question is whether the two allies are going to agree tacitly to differ, or are going to do something about it. The temptation is strong to just let things lie because, as Howard says, a US-China conflict is not inevitable. But hoping for the best is not good policy. If we want to maximise our chances that 20 years from now we can enjoy strong relations with both the US and China, there are three key questions which Australia needs to consider.
<b>First</b>, we need to decide just how far we are willing to go in accepting Chinese leadership in Asia. Clearly we are happy to see China's influence grow. But presumably we would not want China to become a dominant regional hegemonic power. Where in between does the limit lie?
<b>Second</b>, we need to decide what role we want the US to play in the new balance of power in Asia. Clearly we want the US to stay engaged, to balance China and prevent it dominating the region. But the implication of Canberra's support for Chinese regional leadership is that the US will need to concede some power and influence to China, because competition for strategic influence is a zero-sum game. So how much power and influence do we want the US to concede to China? What kind of residual role do we want the US to play? And what are the chances of it being happy to accept that role?
<b>Third</b>, how do other regional powers fit in? In particular, what role does Japan have in Asia's new power structure? Sixty years after the end of the Pacific war, it is clear that Japan cannot and should not be denied forever a normal role in the strategic affairs of Asia, especially if China's power grows. If the US role is reduced, are we happy to see Japan's role increased? <i>(The Convict-decendant Ozzie has completely neglected to mention a Country to China's South)</i>
Of course, all these questions interconnect. Australia, by its support for China's growing regional influence, is promoting a profound transformation in the strategic architecture of Asia, with immense implications for
Australia's security, including our alliance with the US. Australia needs to consider what the outcomes of that process might be, and which of those outcomes would be best for us.
<b>For what it's worth, my hunch is that Australia's interests would be best served if the US allowed China a somewhat bigger regional role, in return for China allowing Japan a larger say in regional affairs. </b>That would make a very different region from the one we live in now, with many new challenges for Australia. We seem a long way from it now, but things are moving very quickly. We need to get our act together.
The first essential step is to start a very frank discussion with Washington, in which the big questions of power and values are put squarely on the table.
Hugh White is a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute and professor of strategic studies at Australian National University.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
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