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Who is the enemy? Not a simple question in rat's nest of alliances By
Les Roka Abhinav Aima, my former roommate at Ohio University, knows something about terrorism. His family roots in Kashmir stretch almost 2,000 years but, in 1990, the Mujahideen with its terrorist cells of Islamic fundamentalism, which incidentally were backed by Pakistan, rooted them out of the area. The United States remained silent while the Indian army lost thousands of soldiers and military officers trying to deal with the bombings and terrorist-led ambushes of a movement described by Aima as "churning out from the Madrasas in Pakistan, rebounding out of Afghanistan and into the Kashmir valley." We are then hardly surprised that the Indian government and media welcome the prospect of American bombing campaigns against terrorist camps in these regions. More importantly, however, Aima and I agree that killing terrorists will not end terrorism as President Bush has so forcefully proclaimed. In our desperate attempt to understand the potentially unexplainable, we, the American public, are flooding our public discourse with cognitive dissonance. Whether we fully endorse the vast military deployment of the last few days or plead for appeasement or restraint in our military and diplomatic responses to the Sept. 11 attacks, we Americans fail miserably as students of history. After a summer of endless replays of a California congressman's political tribulations and the story of a missing Washington intern, we have become suddenly fixated on a region of the world that has been persistently neglected by the government, media, and public alike. The cliché that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing aptly applies here. For a nation that is about to embark on "the mother of all wars," we should be aware of the follies of our past policies. By the way, the following information can be easily discovered by anyone who is willing to do a little old-fashioned digging of journals, newspapers and books. No specialized access to classified documents is needed here. Let us stay for just one moment with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remember why the United States pulled out of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow? Americans protested the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. Looking for good candidates to confound Soviet military strategies, the United States struck a deal to hire and train Islamic mercenaries under the supervision of the military government of Pakistan, which was looking for ways to beef up its military (and nuclear) arsenal against India, its bitter enemy. Coincidentally, General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's current president who has pledged his support to the United States, spent a few years with a covert Pakistani agency used to train the Mujahideen that caused so much trouble in Kashmir. Terrorism certainly makes strange bedfellows. Rahul Bedi, a Dehli-based correspondent for Janes International Security News, explained that the United States, Saudi Arabia, China, Britain, France, Israel (surprise! -- which provided weapons captured from its wars with Arab neighbors), and Sudan and Algeria, which contributed, among other things, "religious motivation" lined up behind the Afghans. The fallout was devastating in the aftermath of the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1989. Not only did violence break out in the northern India region of Kashmir, but Afghanistan experienced a civil war that drove nearly half of its population out of the country. Meanwhile the post-Soviet regime of Boris Yeltsin had to deal with vicious problems in the former Soviet republic of Chechnya. Hence, a new wave of Islamic militants was ready to move on, as Bedi explained, to the next jihad, or holy war. Among those militants who had been recruiting youths to fight the Soviet threat was the man who today is our primary target in the war against terrorism -- Osama bin Laden. What is this war against terrorism? Let's focus on what it is not. This is not a war between Islam and democracy (or as the way we perceive it in the West to be). After all, terrorism is not the sole proprietorship of Islamic fundamentalist fanatics. The Tamil Tigers, the Irish Republican Army, and the Basque Euskadi ta Askatsuna, to name just a handful, also carry out acts of terror with the sponsorship of states that have been identified by many intelligence sources. They are just as much a part of the enemy in this war as Osama bin Laden, Imad Mugnihey, and Ayman Al Zawahiri. And, even if we just focus on bin Laden's primary network -- Al Qaeda, or The Base -- there are at least two dozen countries in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia that house well-organized cells of terrorists. Bedi reported that a cell even exists in China. In fact, we have to consider the prospect that some of the Middle East's most daring terrorists may not be Islamic fundamentalists. For example, Harvard Professor Laurie Mylroie, one of the nation's most widely cited scholars on Iraq, noted that Ramzi Yousef, now considered by some to be the mastermind behind the World Trade Center bomb in 1993, is a Baluch from Pakistan. Like the Palestinians, the Baluchs do not have their own homeland, living in the remote desert area of eastern Iran and western Pakistan. Well known as smugglers of drugs and weapons, the Baluchs are actually Sunni Muslims who have little in common with the Shia, the most conservative fundamentalist arm of Islam. "Through Iraq's many years of conflict with Iran," Mylroie wrote, "Iraqi intelligence developed close ties with the Baluch on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border. Above all, it used them to carry out terrorism against Iran." Folks, it becomes even more complicated. However, against this backdrop, we can begin to sort out the range of possible options and their corresponding explanations -- from doing nothing to waging an "all-out" war against terrorism. For example, a vocal minority has called for Americans to drastically reorient their social and economic policies in the aftermath of an attack that was likely motivated by a desire to see the United States humbled in the wake of its arrogance to define the world by its capitalistic economy and cultural hegemony. Following this explanation, we embody the image of a "Great Satan" because of our wanton materialism and trivialized consumerism which potentially attracts people in societies all around the world. If we buy the foolish notion that bin Laden or similar cells of terrorists pulled off these attacks because of our arrogance (i.e. our resistance to environmental policy changes suggested at the recent Kyoto conference on global warming), would it squelch terrorism if we changed our policies? There's plenty of intelligence evidence from many sources around the world that bin Laden and similar terrorists are hardly focused on globalism and its related issues. Sadly, we may all share the shame noxious motivation for short-term profits without any consideration of long-term consequences. I would also challenge the notion that the basis for the attacks was a deep hatred for our position as a wealthy state rich in capitalistic and democratic traditions that values secular over religious influences. As Eric Bergerud, an historian at the University of California at Berkeley, noted: "If the most important insult delivered by Americans to the Islamic world is not what we do, but what we are, how can we possibly change?" Pulling our forces out of the Middle East is as equally problematic. Our continued presence in the Persian Gulf is motivated by our desire to deter an invasion of Saudi Arabia by Iraq or Iran, civil war or domestic terrorism that could disrupt oil supplies. The region is a dangerous neighborhood for many reasons. In 1998, while the world's attention was focused on the twin bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa, few noticed the killing of eight Iranian diplomats by the Taliban who claimed they were helping Afghan forces in the civil war against the Taliban. The Iranian government in Teheran talked of a military confrontation while the Taliban threatened to use SCUD missiles if Iran attacked the Afghan borders. At about the same time, India and Pakistan had tested nuclear weapons, provoking Iran to pursue its own programs on a full scale. And, in November 1998, Iraq expelled the inspectors who were trying to inventory Saddam Hussein's rehabilitated military arsenal. The subsequent air strikes against Iraq by U.S. and British forces disintegrated whatever degree of cooperation remained from the Allied coalition that Bush's father assembled in 1990 before the Persian Gulf War. Complicating the mess even further is Iran's complex character which has become more significant in a Middle East world that is completely dissatisfied with the continuing attempts by the United States to impose sanctions against Iraq. President Mohammed Khatami has dramatically changed the dynamics of Iranian politics with his attempts to reform the government but, nevertheless, the shaky nature of the country's economy and demographic makeup, still strongly dominated by conservative followers of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, makes its difficult for any Iranian leader to initiate long-term reforms. Faced with the prospect of a significantly diminished power base in Teheran, any conservative faction in Iran will not accept normalized relations with the American government. In fact, it is unlikely that Americans will change their policy toward Iran because of the country's anti-Israeli stance. It also seems unlikely that we can change our policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Even if Arafat and his Fattah party could comfortably (and it is conceivable) accept some of the settlement conditions that have been suggested by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former President Clinton, there is little evidence that the more militant wings of Palestinians represented by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad would follow suit. They flatly believe that Israel is occupied territory. As Bergerud explained, "one might say that 'moderate' opinion in the Mideast would welcome a 'moderate' settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I don't doubt it. I also doubt that people with moderate views are blowing up American civilians." Somewhat ironically, the Israel-Palestinian conflict may provide the most compelling evidence of the tremendous difficulties Americans face in their "all-out" war against terrorism. Aima, a former journalist with war experience who has extensively examined the Middle East conflict, noted, the Israeli defense ministry estimated that 40,000 Palestinians would have to be killed before their military infrastructure could be demolished. He wrote recently that "along with the thousands of identified 'terrorists' would be collateral damage -- [the] killing of thousands of civilians. By the time the dust would settle the scene would resemble genocide. The Israeli government refused to take up this option." The events of Sept. 11 undoubtedly fortified political support for our military presence in the Persian Gulf. The loss of lives and huge military costs could weaken that support especially if NATO allies or moderate supporters in the Arab world pull away from an American-led coalition. Who knows? Perhaps our military, political, and diplomatic leaders know these lessons of history all too well, and it's really just as, Doug MacDonald of Colgate University suggested, a "lot of bad policy options available according to our value system." But, as meaningful participants in the exercise of shaping our nation's destiny, we should educate ourselves to force a more productive debate on these matters. Rather than become self-absorbed in trivial matters that left us naked and vulnerable to attack in the first place, we should become voracious readers of history and challenge our leaders to present more coherent and compelling rationales for following specific strategies in our commitments around the globe. The truth is that our own blinded ignorance may ultimately be our worst enemy in this new war. One thing is for certain: the geopolitical map of the Islamic world will change, for better or worse. Let's hope that nothing more than the price of oil will be at stake.
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