Transcript of interview with Pervez Musharraf
September 10, 2002
Editor's note: Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf met with Monitor editors in Boston Sunday. Here is the transcript of the entire interview.
CSM: Let me start with a very warm welcome to President Musharraf on his first visit to The Christian Science Monitor. We are just delighted to have you here. We're also delighted to meet Foreign Minister Inam ul Haque, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, Information Minister Nisar Memon, Major General Rashid Qureshi. And finally, welcome to all the other distinguished members of the delegation. Like journalists, we are interested in a story, but we are just as interested in good conversation that helps us understand Pakistan's view of the world and its role in the monumental events of the past year.
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Listen to excerpts from Pres. Musharraf's lunch with Monitor editors:
On Pakistan-US relations
On reports of Al Qaeda in Pakistan
On the role of the army in Pakistan
Why Musharraf feels he is not a dictator
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Excerpts from the Musharraf lunch
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Pakistan: Ally or Unreliable Client ?
We invite you, Mr. President, to make any opening remarks before we begin with some questions.
Musharraf: Thank you very much. First of all I'm extremely grateful to you, to The Christian Science Monitor for having invited me for lunch and also giving me this occasion to interact with all of you. For having invited my whole delegation here and including my son. It's indeed a pleasure, and I would like to add here that myself and my family – my parents – have always been getting a copy of The Christian Science Monitor sponsored by my brother who's in Chicago, since – I don't know how many years we've been getting a copy. So that goes to the credit of the credibility and authenticity of The Christian Science Monitor.
Having said that, I obviously come from a region which is the center of attention and attraction at the moment. All that is happening around the world – important events are happening in our region, that is the South Asian region and Pakistan. I would like to – as a starter – give whatever is happening very, very briefly so we leave the rest to the informal questions.
Of course, first of all, domestically, talking of Pakistan, as far as I and my government are concerned, we came on the scene in 1999 in October and in these three years we have undertaken reforms and restructuring of the country in all its facets. The main concentration being economically viable, because we thought that nothing is possible without a stabilized economy and a progressive dynamic economy. To that extent, my finance minister is here. I give credit to my finance team; we have stabilized the economy of Pakistan. All macro-economic indicators of the country show positive growth and the future – all goes well for the economy of Pakistan.
Then, the other issue that I would like to touch on is the issue of democracy and politics in Pakistan. We are trying to – political restructuring, may I say, was one of the four areas of focus right from October 1999. We had four areas of focus: Economically viable, poverty alleviation, group governance, and political restructuring.
So in political restructuring we have brought the grass-root level change. We now have a local government in place, where we say we have empowered the impoverished. We have given the destiny of the people of Pakistan in their own hands and this is a "silent revolution" in the words of some foreign dignitaries. In fact, our international finance institutions claim this as a silent revolution. So this is the start of the political restructuring.
We are having our elections next month. All that we are trying to achieve through these elections is to introduce sustainable democracy in Pakistan, ensuring that the democratic process is not overturned, bringing checks and balances on all power brokers within Pakistan, and also ensuring that the reforms and the restructuring – the process that we've initiated – is sustained and it is not reversed. This is what we're doing on the political side.
A word on the law and order and terrorism, which is very important: We are a member of the coalition. We will remain a member. We will not allow Pakistani territory to be used by Pakistanis or non-Pakistanis for terrorist acts anywhere in the world – within or outside Pakistan. We are meeting a lot of success in our joint efforts to fight terrorism from the western side, the fallout of whatever is happening in Afghanistan coming into Pakistan on our tribal belt and also infiltrating or maybe passing through into our cities. We have taken several actions very successfully.
Our internal sectarian extremism is there, which we are handling – religious extremism and sectarian extremism. At times, the actions or the unfortunate incidents involving some actions against a church and one of the hospitals in Taxila and in a school in Murree maybe are a combination of the sectarian extremism internal and the fallout of Al Qaeda actions – a combination of these two – but we are meeting this challenge very effectively.
On the external side, the India-Pakistan relations – tension exists. There's a standoff. There's an eyeball-to-eyeball contact on the borders. I keep saying that lately the intentions of any adventurous act by the Indians, I will say – because we are not going to initiate the war – have reduced. Rhetoric has reduced. But as long as the forces remain confronting each other, the capability of an adventurous act remains. So therefore, intention may have gone down, receded. But capability remains, therefore the situation remains dangerous.
On the Western border on Afghanistan, the situation is not still in control. One needs to take certain actions, which we have certain views of our own and to bring or to extend the writ of the government on the whole of Afghanistan, improve and stabilize Afghanistan and the region because it has its fallout on integrating central Asian republics and its whole region from its economic point of view.
With this, gentlemen, I'm absolutely open to any questions that you may like to ask. I'll try my best to give you my personal views as sincerely as possible. Thank you.
CSM: You live in a tough neighborhood, that's clear to anybody. I would be interested in your thoughts on Afghanistan, which has been a rather tortured country for a long time. Do you feel now like it's finally firmly on a path to produce greater stability on your border, or should the United States and the West be doing much more than they have been doing? Recent events would indicate that things are far from settled there – an assassination attempt and a major bombing in a couple weeks.
Musharraf: Yes, I think the situation remains fluid. It's improving, but it remains fluid. We have to bring stability into Afghanistan, and that stability has not yet come. I would like to say that – in fact I've been saying this all along since we got involved in Afghanistan and the operation in Afghanistan – that if you see Afghanistan, there are seven power centers in Afghanistan – seven or eight – which are dominated by warlords.
The writ of the government has to extend to all these seven or eight power centers. And the warlords' writ in those areas needs to be reduced and the center's impact and stature needs to be enhanced. So this has to be done, this is the important factor which has not been done as yet. So this is one important factor.
The other element is the element of multi-ethnicity. It is critical to Afghanistan. Whatever we do we must ensure multi-ethnic dispensation. Now multi-ethnicity because there's a Pashtun majority which is 50 percent – some say 45 some say 55 – then there is a Tajik element; there is an Uzbek element; there is a Hazara element. These are the four main groups.
Now we have to ensure multi-ethnicity in the government. We have to ensure multi-ethnicity in any police force or military force that we create – army. It is extremely important. And creation of this multi-ethnic army, multi-ethnic police is extremely important. So one feels that the strategy ought to be that we ought to extend to these seven or eight power centers, politically, maybe the ISF needs to extend there. And then we need to have a multi-ethnic police, multi-ethnic army extending to those seven or eight centers. That's what we need to be targeting.
And then, yes, of course, this is the political side. The other is I've always been saying– there are three elements to Afghanistan. One is the military element. The other is the political element. And the third is the reconstruction element. All three must go on simultaneously. I've been saying this right in the beginning when the Taliban government was there.
Now, the reconstruction element has not even taken off. There is a Tokyo Accord which has promised I think $4 billion or $4.5 billion. But this assistance is not coming because they want– probably one is looking for political stability in Afghanistan. But this is a chicken and egg situation. I mean do you want political stability first, and then bring money? Or, money itself will bring political stability? I think the reverse is true. We must inject this money, and give the Karzai government the clout to spend this money and extend their writ through allocation of funds to these power centers that I'm talking of. So money must come, and money must be placed in the hands of the Karzai government.
Having said all this, Pakistan is totally supportive of the Karzai government. Whatever he's doing, I think he's the hope for the future of Afghanistan.
CSM: Is the United States doing enough at this stage for the reconstruction process?
Musharraf: I think the United States, yes, is doing a lot. They are the main contributors to stability in Afghanistan frankly. When I visited Afghanistan, my security was also being handled by the US troops. But as I said, this financial infusion of money into Afghanistan, in accordance with the Tokyo Accord, and extension of the writ, and this multi-ethnicity – I'm sure the United States is looking into this. At least we are interacting along these lines.
CSM: One more question, somewhat related. What do you anticipate the reactions, say between the militant communities of the Muslim world, if the United States takes action in Iraq – in your own country, for instance, and in the region?
Musharraf: Short answer is yes, it will have a negative impact.
CSM: That sounds like it would be counterproductive to the war on terror, which you have said the Iraqi fight is not your fight, but you are part of the war on the terror, and it sounds to me like you're suggesting that action in Iraq is going to make the war on terror more difficult. Is that true?
Musharraf: Well, I've been saying that we don't want to get involved in Iraq, because we've got so much on our hands really in our own region, on our western border, on the eastern border with India, domestically, that we don't want to really too much to get involved in anything that is happening around in a region where we don't even have geographic affinity. One would like to say that the world community– consensus needs to be generated on whatever has to be done, that's what I would like to say. But, certainly the agenda in Afghanistan is not over. I only hope that our involvement and commitment to Afghanistan and that region does not get diluted because of attention going somewhere else, which is very, very important for that region.
CSM: Would your opposition to action against Iraq be focused on, as you're saying, the fact that you are focused on other matters in your country, or does it extend beyond that to other concerns? And what is your view of the United States giving itself this right to attack another country and the leader of that country?
Musharraf: Well, I think domestic, into the domestic extreme elements within our domestic environment, it will give them further ammunition I think to agitate, as far as internally, Pakistan's internal environment is concerned. So that could be, that is one additional point of concern, as far as we are concerned, as far as I and my government is concerned but otherwise I think as I said the general consensus in Pakistan is that why are we being asked this question about Iraq, we don't have anything to do there? That's why we do not want to get involved.
ul Haque: I think your question is justified because it does raise a number of questions. It, in a way, changes international law and how the world has been run, and so forth. The doctrine of pre-emptive action by the United States against another country could also create instability regionally because larger countries might begin to feel that they have the right to intervene in smaller countries because these smaller countries are doing something that is wrong.
That is why the president said that an international consensus is necessary. Pakistan has always held that Iraq must implement UN Security Council resolutions, it must allow weapons inspectors in, it must assure the world that it is not manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Having said that, we still feel that there is room for diplomacy where the pressure can be exerted on Iraq to do all these things in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions. And we should exhaust all peaceful means before we resort to a military action, which should preferably be through the United Nations Security Council, not as an action by an individual country.
CSM: Did you have any particular examples in mind when you mentioned that fulfilling this doctrine on the part of the United States might encourage other large countries...
ul Haque: Well, we have heard noises from India, for example, saying that if the United States can take unilateral action in Afghanistan and in Iraq, why can't India take unilateral action against Pakistan. So that is one example that comes easily to mind. There might be others.
CSM: That's a particularly close and relevant example.
CSM: I know you have very good relations with President Karzai, and you will be meeting with him at the UN. But we've been hearing reports from the Afghan intelligence service that Al Qaeda has been in various pockets around Pakistan. They've named the cities of Gilgit and Chitral. What do you think is the next step for Pakistan to take in terms of getting rid of Al Qaeda in the region, and how soon do you think you can do it?
Musharraf: We are taking steps all over Pakistan, there is no doubt in our mind. And we have made it very clear that we don't want any foreign element without valid documents in Pakistan. That includes Al Qaeda or any foreign element. We are getting involved, in the whole of Pakistan, in our cities, on the border belt.
But many of these reports are exaggerated, in that we get information that there is some Al Qaeda elements hiding here and there, and we go and we launch an operation because our army is deployed there on the western border. In the entire tribal belt our army is fully deployed now – our army and the frontier corps, this is the second-line forces. And we have very good elements there.
We go there at night, with helicopters we surround the area, and find nothing. So many reports are exaggerated. A lot of information comes, which is unconfirmed information, and we act. But in many areas we've met successes. I mean, there is no doubt we have recovered a lot of weapons, and I think we have arrested 400 Al Qaeda members. The arrest of Al Qaeda members, the majority are by us in Pakistan.
So it's disheartening when sometimes you read that we are going back, maybe we are going soft. No, we are acting fully. And I think the forces, the CENCOM commander General Tommy Frank knows what is happening, absolutely. It is only in the media sometimes that it appears, that they are very clear. We are very clear how we are operating.
I don't think there are elements in Chitral – it's being reported in Chitral and in Gilgit area. Whenever we get information we move against them.
CSM: You've checked out those places?
Musharraf: Yes. Yes, indeed.
Press secretary: This particular report. There was a group of journalists that came to me and they said exactly what you've said – they named Chitral and Gilgit. And they said 'we would like to go there.' And I said 'you have full liberty to go there.' They went there, and they called me up from Chitral and said except for meeting a number of interesting people – no such thing.
Musharraf: Gilgit has headquarters of our frontier corps northern area. This is my division headquarters with a major general sitting there. I'd have a very poor impression of this army division if there were some members of Al Qaeda in his area operating there. It's a very peaceful area, and it's a beautiful area. A lot of tourists are even now visiting.
Information Minister Nisar Memon: May I add that perhaps the separation that has come in is because [inaudible] this year, the action against the religious elements that tend to be extremists. Subsequent to that, there has been control on that. But from time to time they emerge. The religious elements which could be different sects – now this is an internal to Pakistan where you have different sects than here. Now that emerges sometimes, and sometimes that creates a small law-and-order situation. That can be represented– may have been represented– by the journalists because we are a free press since President [Musharraf] has come, taken over the reins of the country. Press is free and, in fact, it has been said, if I may say, that the words of the people – press freedom is unprecedented in Pakistan. None of the press people have been taken in and not allowed to write. In fact, one would say the exercise of freedom sometimes is not much of a responsibility but that is the extent of political reforms that President mentioned is based on freedom of expression, which is enjoyed in our constitution. So Gilgit is specific, because I was there last week. There is sometimes the element of religious ethnicity. That may be translated by the foreign journalists as some Al Qaeda because anything religious – I must have to say, Mr. President – anything religious they tend to this see Al Qaeda which is not true.
[Unidentified member of Musharraf entourage]: Intelligence reports – as you know, there is very close cooperation between US intelligence agencies and Pakistan intelligence agencies. Any time we have received any information from US intelligence, we have always investigated and taken action as the President has indicated. The day before yesterday there was an action against suspected Al Qaeda people who were in a village [inaudible]... So action has been coordinated with US intelligence.
Musharraf: The tribal belt of Pakistan, you must be knowing, we could not intrude. The writ of government could not get inside. This is known as FATA, Federally-Administered Tribal Area.
For the first time in 150 years maybe that these troops have entered this area. Now we are operating in that area, and the army has gone in a humanitarian role. It's making roads there, it's making running dispensaries and schools. Thousands of children are now studying in those schools. Hundreds of thousands of people have been treated free.
They have been welcomed, they are being welcomed by the tribal elders in this belt. And therefore, the operation is assisted by the tribal people there, in this border belt. Therefore, we are very sure that wherever there is Al Qaeda we will get assistance and we will get information also.
But, having said that, there may be some elements in this area, some extremist elements, who may be harboring small groups of Al Qaeda. One can't write this off, the possibility.
But whenever we get this information, as we've said, we move. And the tribal elders go along with the troops now to ensure. And we've laid down certain rules and regulations of dealing with anybody who is harboring these people, according to tribal laws. And what you may be hearing or reading is that their houses will be demolished and they have to pay a certain amount of money. This is according to tribal customs, which they have agreed. That if there is anybody, any tribe harboring them, that tribe will suffer these penalties. It's laid down.
My corps commander in Peshawar is a tribal himself, by the way. My 11th corps commander is from, is an Oraxai tribe, and he has a tribal, he is [from] a very very inaccessible tribal belt. So he is handling the whole operation himself.
CSM: Do you think bin Laden is still alive?
Musharraf: [Laughter]
CSM: I'd like to ask the president a question about the religious extremes. If you look down the road into the long-term, do you think the Islamic radicals can be incorporated, can be domesticated, into a peaceful, functioning democracy? And do you have a roadmap or a timetable for how that would work?
Musharraf: First of all, a perception needs to be cleared. Pakistan is an Islamic republic, but Pakistan is a moderate Islamic republic, and I mean every word of it when I say this. If you look around the world, you see North Africa and all the Islamic countries, there is a very strong political base of the Islamic movement, of the Islamic political parties. You come anywhere to Central Asia, you go even to Turkey, and everywhere .
But if you see Pakistan, in Pakistan, no political party, religious political party, has ever, in the history of Pakistan, got more than 5 percent votes. Normally they get 1-2 percent. In the local body elections that we held in last year, the mayors, or the nazims, who was backed by religious parties didn't even get 2 percent votes, 2 percent victory. So that is the reality on ground. There are a number of political parties, religious political parties, some we have banned – these were groups and even political parties, because of their extremist action, we have banned them already – but there are a number of them who have joined hands. I am reasonably sure that the people of Pakistan will vote – and you will see the vote next month – they don't have much standing.
However whatever standing they have– now, one has to see if they are extremist in character. All of them are not extremists – they are balanced, they are moderate. But there are elements in these who have been supporting extremism. They are the ones who need to be moderated.
We are interacting with them, then we have taken certain actions like madrasa reforms. Madrasa is the religious schools. We have launched a fresh, new madrasa strategy to moderate them. These madrasas are the biggest NGOs I would say, they used to have, they have about 800,000 students having free board and lodge. But they were only teaching religious education. Now we have told them that they need to be registered, they need to adhere to certain laws and rules of the land which we have laid down in this madrasa act.
And they need to teach subjects which are in the mainstream of education. We are encouraging them through some kinds of incentives, but easier said than done. We need some resources also to execute whatever we've said. They are coming on board, I think this will go a long way to bring some moderation into the religious thinking. So we have taken certain action at the government level which will bring moderation in the minds and hearts of the extremists. This will gradually improve, I am very sure the situation will gradually improve .
After all, this is a fall-out of twenty years of war in Afghanistan, where, may I add, that for the first ten years when we were fighting the Soviets, really we were encouraging these people from all over the world. Who brought these– how did these people come into the region? They came into the region, they are living with their families, by the way. Many of them, if not most of them, in Afghanistan, these foreign elements from all over the world were living with families. They came in the days of the Soviets in huge numbers and they existed there. So therefore, gradually, once we stabilize the government in Afghanistan, I think situation will keep stabilizing and improving on the religious side, in Pakistan specially. Pakistan doesn't have that serious a problem as other countries of the world have, but there are extremists that need to be curbed, and, yeah, curbing them.
ul Haque: Radicalism doesn't really have a religion. So to say that Islamic radicals need to be reformed [inaudible]. There is a major radical force emerging for example in India. There are extremist lunatic fringes in all countries be they Christian or not. But whether all of these radicals can be brought into the democratic fold is a question I suspect nobody can really answer because some of them might be die hard thinking.
You have had examples in the United States of people who act in a radical manner. And it's impossible to control the lunatic fringe in every country. As the president has said, Pakistan is one country where even religious parties – not extremist parties – have never been able to seek electoral victories.
Musharraf: And people were worried when this operation started in Afghanistan, when you saw the BBC and CNN, it appeared as if the whole of Pakistan was up in arms. And I was all the time saying that that is not the case. If you saw the pictures on the screen, you would have realized that the people are not participating. It is only these fringe religious extremists.
ul Haque: And many of them too are not Pakistanis, they were Afghans Musharraf: If you saw the maximum thing initiated was in Karachi, where five people got killed initially and all that. Now the people who were seen on the screen were not Karachites. They were mostly Afghans and some religious extremists. But the real Karachites, never, not a single one of them was visible on the screen. It was unfortunate that this was – one thought that the whole of Pakistan– I knew for sure that the people are not with them at all. They'll just die down; it's only these few extremists.
CSM: Can you recall for us, in as much detail as you can muster, where you were on 9/11 and where you got the news and what you started thinking the first day or so?
Musharraf: Yes, I was in Karachi, I was addressing the nazims, the local government representatives, I was holding them – I had called them from all of Sindh. I was talking to them when I think he [points to press secretary] rang me up. And he said something, first my MS came and, Nadim, he came, and he told me there was something urgent. I said, 'We are having a conference. What's so urgent about it?' But then he came, he said, 'No it's really very urgent, and you must come out.' Then I went out and I spoke to him and he told me about this World Trade Center and I said 'What are you talking?' So I went and concluded the whole ceremony and then came out and then this thing started moving and we had to take the decisions.
CSM: What kind of calculations, I mean as you thought through, once it was clear as you connected the dots that Afghanistan was involved, the Taliban, that this was on your border, etc., what were you thinking about the forces that were coming to play here and what kinds of decisions you might have to make?
Musharraf: Yes, the difficult decision first was obviously whether we are part of the coalition to move against extremism in Afghanistan or not. That one was one decision that I took. That had to be taken first of all.
But more difficult than this was the decision to allow military action in Afghanistan, where we allowed utilization of airspace, logistic support, and intelligence cooperation, these three elements. That was a more difficult decision to take. But we took it that on an issue of principle, it was a principled stand which we took. And I thought that the nation will support my decision, and they did, I think, and that's how it went.
CSM: Is the nation doing any second-guessing now as the United States talks about Iraq or any other developments that have – clearly your government has stood firm – but do you hear in the streets, as it were, a growing second-guessing on Pakistan's role in all of this?
Musharraf: I think there is no doubt in the people's mind about the role of Pakistan and the decisions of my government vis-à-vis Afghanistan and whatever is happening there. I don't think it is only a fringe element of extremists who talk against it, but the majority in Pakistan do understand that the decision was correct, and they support it. There is no doubt in my mind.
But yes, there is some areas now of concern when talk is going on about Iraq, yes, there is a lot of talk in the street. It's a common talk subject now about it, and there are apprehensions, certainly, in the minds of not the extremists alone but the common man in the street, there are apprehensions.
CSM: You mentioned in your opening remarks a standoff with India. And I'm wondering what you see is the next steps that are necessary in the case of Kashmir, and what progress you see – as opposed to what some people claim is not there – but on the question of infiltration and incursions across the Line of Control.
Musharraf: As far as the Line of Control is concerned, we have said, and I have said many times, that there is nothing happening on the Line of Control. And I mean it. But having said that, it was very clear that this should lead to reciprocation, that this must lead to responses from the Indian side. It's most unfortunate that we have taken a number of steps – it is most unfortunate that I personally have taken a number of decisions, we have taken a number of actions – which have been very sensitive to our country, to myself, to my government, and the reciprocation has not come. No reciprocation whatsoever has come from the Indian side. This is unfortunate, and this is not sustainable, this is not tenable.
So when you ask what progress can be made, progress should be we must initiate a process of dialogue, India must accept that they need to talk to us, and they need to talk about all issues with Kashmir as the focus. They must accept this. And the world community must make them accept it. And I would say that the United States is playing a role and they need to play a stronger role in realizing this progress on the issue of Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
CSM: When you say "need to play a stronger role," what would that entail? How would that be manifested to your satisfaction?
Musharraf: I would leave that to the United States, I think. They know how to make issues stronger and – but I think when progress is not being made, something additional needs to be done. India keeps talking of bilateralism and bilateral relations, bilateral negotiations, bilateral addressing all this issue. But unfortunately nothing happens bilaterally. When two people are not prepared to talk, one of them is not prepared to talk. So what kind of bilateralism is that? So, we better get involved in a mediation or facilitation. And that is what the United States is doing. I must – I am grateful to the United States for the role that they are playing. And they need to keep playing this role in the – toward – the direction should be as a step one: de-escalation and initiation of dialogue between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir dispute.
CSM: Mr. President, is India waiting for the US to verify that infiltration has stopped?
Musharraf: Sorry?
CSM: Is India waiting for the US to verify that infiltration has fully stopped?
Musharraf: I think United States – first of all, there's no guarantee, there cannot be a 100 percent guarantee of stopping of infiltration. That guarantee is not possible because of the nature of the terrain there. But, everyone said, even the Indians themselves said that there is no – infiltration has gone down, even though they didn't say that it has stopped. But [the] United States itself, its own assessment was that the infiltration is not taking place. So, I think this is not a matter of numbers, or mathematical, it's an assessment, which even Indians support now that the infiltration has certainly gone down. The Indians and the United States government know that.
Now to wait for any progress that it has to – the Indians say that it hasn't stopped. Well, let's move forward, I keep saying. Let us not stop, let's move forward, let's initiate the dialogue, and things will keep moving forward.
I think their strategy is really to gain time. The Indian strategy is to gain time somehow through coercing Pakistan, internally or through their own military means, or through an indirect coercion, through world pressure. Then, they want to hold elections in Kashmir. In whatever form they are going to declare them successful, and then they are going to say that: 'Kashmir dispute does not exist and that is all, thank you very much.' This is their strategy, probably, which is very clear to us.
Now the world must understand that this strategy will not work. It has not worked in the past. You cannot sideline the issue of Kashmir. We have gone too far forward. It cannot be done, so we have to address it.
So India should be told actually not to play games really, it can't be done, not doable.
CSM: There's some talk of a consideration of making the Line of Control permanent. Is that something that you would ever consider?
Musharraf: No, we can't take that. That is not a solution because we keep saying that is the problem. For fifty years, this Line of Control has been there – with minor changes, some very minor changes. So we have been fighting the wars over this Line of Control. So how can the problem be the solution? This is not the solution. It goes beyond that.
But we've even said that we need to initiate the process of dialogue, and we need to accept the centrality of Kashmir. And then in step three, we need to eliminate through a process of elimination, eliminate whatever is unacceptable to either side. And in step four, go for a solution – there are tons of solutions given by various people. One can think of which one is for the best in the interest of the people of Kashmir and also acceptable to the people of India and Pakistan.
CSM: I understand you're trying to establish a new kind of democracy, to raise the bar for the type of candidates. You want clean candidates, clean government. From what you've seen so far, will that happen in this election? Will there be better candidates, better politicians?
Musharraf: Yes, answering the latter part first. There will be a lot of change in the faces that we will see in our assemblies and in the senate. For the reason, for several reasons, there will be up to 217 members in the past. With the imposition of the graduation standard for education, 41percent exactly of the previously elected members have gone. They are disqualified. So about 100 disqualified, that leaves 117.
We have increased the assembly standard to 352 in the center. So 352, only 117. We have given women 60 seats, reserved seats. So the open seats they'll fight, so hopefully there will be about 75 women in the assemblies to bring some kind of sobriety into the assemblies. So all this and out of those 117, I'm sure many will lose, many will be disqualified because of the stringent, because of our laying down stricter conditions for qualification and disqualification Will we have a changed [the] look of the assembly? Certainly.
Now what we are doing, having said that, I want to just say what are we trying to do? I'm carrying out, I have carried out constitutional amendments. Now theoretically, in the West, it appears rather odd that we have done that. But let me say that the Supreme Court authorized us to do it, and for very good reasons. And what we have done, basically, only, is to do a few things.
Firstly, have checks and balances on the power brokers in Pakistan. We've had prime ministers who– one prime minister, the last one, he took away the power of the president to dissolve the assembly through the 13th amendment. And he dismissed the president. He got rid of a president. He got rid of a chief justice. He got rid of a chief of army staff. He was trying to get rid of the second one, and that was me. And this is what he did.
So we need to have some kind of checks on a prime minister who is not democratic. That is our environment. You need to have a check on a president, who in the past, we have an example, where he impulsively, on his personal whims got rid of a prime minister where he should not have done that. Use the same Article 58 to be the powers to dismiss the assembly. We need to have a check on the chief of army staff who in the past– we've had three martial laws in the past before me also. So, we need to institute a system of checks and balances. This is typical to Pakistani environment, and I keep saying that democracy does not have a set formula. It has to be tailored. Some tailoring has to be done to suit your own environment.
So to that extent, we need to ensure that there are checks and balances on the power brokers. We must ensure that the military government never enters, and martial law is never imposed, and military government is never imposed on the country. We need to ensure that these reforms and restructuring that we are doing have permanence, and they continue. They are sustained. And therefore democracy, a sustainable democracy is brought in. So whatever I am doing, whatever are my amendments, they are exactly in line with this. I can challenge anybody to ask me anything on those, and we are online and I'll give the rationale. I'm not taking power, I'm giving power, in fact.
When people talk of the national security council, and they say that I'm taking power, if I was taking power I would not have the national security council because that, having removed the 13th amendment, the power of dismissing the assembly comes to the president. And it was with the president in the past until it was taken away in 1998. '97 or '98, through the 13th amendment. When you restore that the president has the power to dismiss the assembly, which had been the case. And through that, there was some check on governance by the prime minister, democratic governance of the prime minister
So what I'm doing is, I'm giving away that power to the national security council. Let an institution take the decision. Because what has been happening in the past – I'm sorry I'm taking a little longer because I think that this is the key to the issue – what had been happening in the past, if you see the last 12 years the two prime ministers, governing for twice each, there was mis-governance, there was root plunder, corruption. Now what could an efficient president do? He could sort of reprimand the prime minister, that you're not doing well, and you better improve, you're not governing well, giving specific examples of whatever wrong is going on. But it always ended with that prime minister retorting and saying, not accepting the word. And a one-to-one confrontation between the president and the prime minister used to take place.
So the result used to be either the president getting rid of the prime minister, or the prime minister impeaching the president. Because of this sort of one-to-one fight between two individuals. And this happened I think thrice or four times in these 12 years. Every time a government changed, it was a president versus a prime minister. And the third element that used to get injected was the chief of army staff.
Now every time the chief of army staff– because the army in Pakistan is the most stable organization. Now this organization has the faith of the people of Pakistan. Whatever Pakistan suffers, the people straight run to the chief of army staff. "What are you doing? You take some action. You improve the situation." Now we say that he doesn't have any constitutional role. But always he had a role to play. Because the people of Pakistan wanted him to come. I was chief of army staff for one year in '98 before I, before 99. Now I know how many people came to me and told me, "What the hell are you doing? Why are you sleeping?"
I mean it was quite, at times, even humiliating, that I was told that I am not acting. How does the chief of army staff act in the face of nothing? No institutional availment. He has two choices. He goes to the prime minister and he says, "You're not doing well and you'd better improve yourself." Now the prime minister either listens, or does not listen. Now when he doesn't listen, what does the chief of army staff do? He either sits quiet, and gets himself humiliated because he went there, couldn't do anything. Gets humiliated in the eyes of his own army, that here is our boss who went, couldn't achieve anything. Pakistan is going on as it is, going down.
The second option he has is to take over. So, how to avoid that? We can avoid that through this institution, the national security council. I have not done it to take over myself. I have done it to check the prime minister, check the president, check the chief of army staff. Let them come and sit together. And this institution has 13 members. Eight of them are civilian elected members. The ninth is the president. Hopefully the ninth one will be a civilian person, and four will be in uniform. Now, all of these nine are elected members, so there will be a balance.
If the chief of army staff is being pushed by anybody that the nation is going down and the prime minister is misgoverning, he'll have this forum to come to. And he'll take the prime minister in that forum, and if the whole forum decides that he is not doing well, then the president should act. There will never be a need of imposing martial law. And if the president is unnecessarily doing something to the prime minister, the prime minister will have this forum to act, also. And when we say, "What is the check on the president?" the check on the president, first of all, will be the mandate of the legislature, of the assembly. It's not been removed. They can impeach him, exactly as it was before.
He can be impeached. The Supreme Court, it can take notice. It has done before, it can even now do that against the president. And thirdly, when this national security council, 13 members sitting– sir, I have run a number of boards even in the army, the army is supposed to be very autocratic. When we sit on the promotion board, there are core commanders, eleven core commanders, and I am the boss. Now when seven or eight or nine are saying something, I can never go against them. How can I go against them? It can't be done.
So the president cannot impose his will when there are seven or eight members of the national security council saying something else. So there will be, I think, a lot of checks and balances on every one.
CSM: Do you see a long-term role, a political role, for the military in the security council?
Musharraf: No. The security council, another important thing to be understood is, that they will not have, repeat, will not have any executive or legislative authority. Executive and legislative authority rests with the prime minister and the assembly. I have always been saying 'What is power really? Let us define power." A lot of people say you are taking over power. And I ask them 'What is power?' Let's be clear, 'What is power?"
I think power is to govern the nation. To take executive decisions. What is the foreign policy of Pakistan. What is the economic policy of Pakistan. What is the trade policy of Pakistan. What is our strategy against India or Kashmir or Afghanistan or Taliban or whatever. What is our developmental policy. What infrastructure development has to be done, etc. etc. That is the power, and who takes those decisions? The prime minister of Pakistan. So the entire authority lies with the prime minister. But there is a requirement of checking him. Because unfortunately Pakistan has its own environment where the prime minister has been malfunctioning. He has been misgoverning. And he has been looting and plundering.
So how can we check? That check is through the article 58 (2b) resting with the president. But I have diluted that, because I brought in this national security council. I've diluted the powers of the president. Because I've seen that it used to be a one-to-one fight. It ended up in a bout between two individuals, chief of army staff drawn in, and always a confusion. So we will have an institutional method of checks. Now check is not that the power. Every one must have check. But the power to govern, and the power to run a government, and to legislate, will remain with the assembly and the prime minister.
No interference of the national security council, no say of the military whatsoever.
CSM: This is the fullest explanation I've had of the changes that you've made to date, and we appreciate it. But you know that most people are going to ask you, still, When is there going to be an election next? Have you decided on that? Before they say, "OK, now it's a democracy."
Musharraf: When are we going to have the election? The tenth of October we fixed it. The date is fixed, everything is fixed. The road map is very clear. Everything is fixed now. And we will have elections. The elected government will be in place, I don't know when the swearing in etc. is, but they will be in place in October.
CSM: And if someone like Benazir Bhutto shows up?
Musharraf: No. She's been disqualified. This is another issue which is contentious, a lot of people keep talking about my acting against her. She left Pakistan on her own will before I was on the scene. She left Pakistan in 1988 I think. 1998. In the previous government time because there were a number of cases against her. And she ran away herself. Now those cases are there, on two of them she's been convicted, on two cases, and there are 12 more cases I know of loot, plunder. Name it and that is what she and her husband have done – the one who is in Pakistan. So, she has to face trial if she comes back. And similarly, Sharif family, the ex-prime minister, they left on their own sweet will very happily in accordance with the decision – and some outside players played a role frankly – and they are there on their own will and they are not coming.
Again, the rules and regulations of qualifications and disqualifications are there. There are a number of cases against them again of loot and plunder. Dozens again. So they need to face the legal formalities again if they come. But having said all this, I would like to say these are two people who had made politics of Pakistan their family cult. I mean, we have to move out of it. We have to develop leadership in Pakistan. Is there no other leadership in PML other than they keep exchanging one, one goes the other comes, this goes, that one comes again. I mean, what kind of situation is this? We need to break away from this situation.
There are leaders, but they don't want them to emerge. Now the 14th amendment that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif brought about was total, autocratic dictatorship within his party. Nobody could have a vote of conscience, nobody could have a dissenting vote in the party. They would lose their seat. If they went against the dictates of the head of the party. This is the 14th amendment. How can you do that? And no person, any person from the party, if they vote or say anything against the wishes of the president of the party loses his seat.
So this was the 14th amendment. So he usurped total power within himself. Complete power he took over within himself, the prime minister. And that is how he got rid of the chief of army staff, he got rid of the president, he got rid of the chief justice. This is no democracy. Now we are trying to bring about democracy. It is unfortunate that I am a military man and talking of democracy, but that is what my lot what it is, and I am doing, I am doing it to the best of my ability, as I understand it, and as it suits Pakistan and mine.
CSM: Mr. President, if I might ask you, this is along the same lines as the question of democracy. Clearly in the short term, the United States is focused on the terrorism question in the region. More in the long term, American interests point to strong relations with stable democracies. I think we saw before Sept. 11 the Bush administration was placing quite a bit of emphasis on improving its relations with India for example – a large democracy, a large middle class. I'm wondering what burden does that place especially on you, as you said a military man talking about democracy, but what are the burdens placed on you as someone talking about democracy? What do you have to do to convince those critics still, observers, experts, people who know the region but yet continue to talk about the military ruler and in fact refer to your recent reforms as, if anything, consolidating the power of the military authority?
Musharraf: Yes, this is the projection unfortunately being given by the politicians in Pakistan – not all, some. This is also the projection being given by some in the media, especially in the print media. It is unfortunate that they talk of only theory. I mean, theoretically, yes, the military should not have a role. Theoretically, yes, when there's an elected government and an assembly, how can you have a national security council? Theoretically, yes, if it will hold good in the United States, it will hold good in any developed European country, but unfortunately it doesn't hold good in Pakistan.
We cannot be idealistic. We have to be pragmatic and practical. The solution that I'm hitting at is suiting the environment and the people's interest in Pakistan. And I think we have to obviously interact and project ourselves better, that we are doing this in the interest of democracy in fact. It is not letting down democracy, it is in the interest of creating sustainable democracy whatever we are doing. The world must understand. And that is why I am interacting with you and trying to convince you all the way that I may be a dictator– I may be a military man– but I am not a dictator, by the way. I take people along. I would like any one of them to say whether I'm a dictator. There's no dictatorship; there's a free press; the judiciary has never been as independent as it is now. So, there's a– [unfinished].
Just one of the things that I observe is that just to remind that when president is talking about the amendments, one thing on the 12th of May, year 2000, when the Supreme Court judgment came, it was appeal whether the rule was justifiable. That's where the Supreme Court gave a judgment that this government take over and president was correct and it was legal, absolutely, and then they say in order to achieve the objectives that he defined in October 1999 very clearly, he could also make some amendments to the constitution. But one of the conditions that I wanted to bring in was that the country's constitution will remain federal parliamentary system. That has not been tested. That's the reason when you said that when will the elections be, so that the elections are going to be of the parliament, the national assembly, the senate, and the four provincial assemblies, being the four provinces, who then will elect the senate. And this is what the parliament then selects the national assembly out of the senate. That is, the majority leader will be the prime minister. So that's the executor that the president was defining. The president remains as responsibilities same as 1973, in fact as he said his responsibility performing the nation's security....[inaudible]
Let me add one more thing. If I was a dictator, the first thing– Let me take you back to 1999, and I'll tell you an interesting thing. When I came into the government – I was thrust into the government I would say because I was in the air when everything happened and this change occurred – the first decision that I sat with my military commanders and spoke was should there be martial law. Whenever a military takeover takes place, there is a martial law. And martial law means that military personalities are put as governors, and they are called martial law administrators, and a chief takes over as chief martial law administrator, and then in every division there is a deputy martial law administrator, in every sub-district there is a sub-martial law administrator. This has been our experience of the past.
I went against it. I said, 'Let us see what has been happening in those martial laws. We come and superimpose the military on the entire civil administration. And when we leave – whether we leave after three years or ten years – we leave the administration at the same level as we came in. So, they haven't progressed. Let's not do that. Let's not superimpose ourselves. We stay away. There is no martial law.'
And I come, and I use everyone. I use civilians as my ministers, and we run the civilest administration. And we make sure that they run better. And we make sure that they improve. So I introduced a monitoring system from the side ensuring that the civil administration functions and raises its level. And there was no martial law. And I've run these three years without martial law. There was no martial law.
And it has succeeded because we've brought about institutional changes. We've brought institutions into being. And we function in a very institutional manner, in a very democratic manner. That is how these three years have functioned. I would like any one of them to add or subtract to what I'm saying. Don't listen to what I'm saying.
Memon: I would like to add, Mr. President, to remind that in 1971, when the change from the military took place at that time, there was a civilian who became the martial law administrator.
Musharraf: The father of Benazir Bhutto declared himself as being the prime minister of Pakistan, a civilian. He took over as the chief martial law administrator – unprecedented. This is the kind of democracy that we've been having in Pakistan. If I am trying to bring about sustainable democracy, they say: 'You're a military man, don't do it.' So who's going to do it? Nobody has been able to do it for these thirty years.
Memon: I think the proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating. The effort that we are making here is to make sure that institutions are not destroyed again. In the ten years of democracy that the president has indicated, the judiciary was destroyed, because the chief justice of the supreme court was removed summarily. The presidency was destroyed and the president was dismissed. The army was being subverted because the chief of the army staffs had been removed, one had been removed the second was about to be removed. The parliament had been subverted because the parliamentarians could not even speak out against their own parties policies ...
The effort – let us reestablish those institutions and make sure that the future government does not subvert institutions. Because a democracy does not rest on individuals, it rests on the efficacy of the institutions that run democracy: the legislature, the executive, the presidency, the judiciaries, and the press.
If we succeed in making sure that these institutions regroup and develop strength, I think democracy will succeed in Pakistan. So we will have to wait and see how these constitutional amendments work. Again, the dependence is not individuals, Benazir Bhutto is free to come back, face the courts. If she is acquitted by the courts, she can contest elections.
Mr. Nawaz Sharif was convicted of certain actions that he had taken. When his family approached us [from a] friendly country and said that we want to get out of here. And it was in a way a favor to them that they were allowed to go to that friendly country, Saudi Arabia. Now to claim that they were thrown out is not correct. They could have stayed on, faced the courts.
Musharraf: Those who say that I tell them – there are some people that you've thrown them out – I say just see the video clippings of their take off and landing in Saudi Arabia. Look at how happy they are, how glad they are, and you'll take your question back then.
[Laughter]
Musharraf: The Pakistani nationals, they should come back, they should face the judiciary. Whatever the judiciary decides, we'll abide by that. But before they face that judiciary, they cannot claim that they are leaders and they should be allowed to participate in the election.
CSM: Mr. President, you've been very generous in explaining your thinking at points of crisis. Can I take you back to May of this year when India appeared to be threatening war with Pakistan, and your country does not rule out the first strike option, and you gave a speech in which you said that if India did attack, Pakistan would "respond with its full might" (I think you said). What was it like during those days? Was it difficult? How did you make those decisions? Was it tense? Can you just describe what went on?
Musharraf: Yes, it was extremely tense, I would say. It was extremely tense because there were war clouds and they appeared to be bent on attack us. But, let me honestly tell you that my military judgment was that they would not attack us. That was my military judgment. It was based on the deterrence of our conventional forces.
Pakistan follows a strategy of deterrence in its conventional and unconventional capabilities. Now, the beauty of the deterrence is in the conventional mode. The force levels that we maintain, in the army, navy, air force is of a level, which deters aggression. Militarily, I don't want to get into the military aspect, there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that – far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself. Therefore, you may have noticed I keep saying that we are going to defend offensively, because we can launch an offensive also. That is the level of force we have.
So I was very sure that militarily, conventionally, [that] they are not going to attack us. It would be silly, because it's going to end in a stalemate. We are both going to suffer tremendous damage and loss unnecessarily, economic damage, it's going to be terrible for both the countries. So what I would like to add, finally, is that the avoidance of war was not because of our banking on our nuclear capability. Let me assure you, I think it would be most senseless, and most unbalanced view if one was to even really think of using the nuclear, getting into the nuclear mode. But thank God at the moment there is a conventional balance which deters aggression, which deters war in the region. And I'm very sure if it. I mean it.
CSM: Do you feel the level of tension with India is as high as ever at the moment? Our impression here is that things have subsided, it's quieter, but there really hasn't been a massive pullback on either side. Is it as tense as ever?
Musharraf: No, it's not. But I, as a military man, we judge the enemy's intention – and here I mean the enemy is India, of course, as far as we are concerned – through intentions and capabilities. Now intentions, initially they were talking a lot and we knew nothing [would] happen, because the capability was not there. Their forces were not moved into their assemblies for offensive. But then gradually, come May, the forces moved forward. Now they developed the capability. So the high mark of India was when they were showing the intention, as well as the capability. Now, the intention has receded, but the capability is there. So, therefore, intentions can change overnight.
If the cabinet sits, and they decide to attack, well then the intention is finished. The next day, tomorrow, the intention is over and the capability is there and anything can happen. So, therefore, I say the intention remains. We need to reduce capabilities. To a degree the capability has receded in that they've moved their high-tech assets back, air force, and some military units. But I keep saying when you take the air craft back, air craft can come back in 12 hours. It's the logistic support elements of the air force. And if you take some military elements back, unless you take the offensive military elements back, it's not de-escalating. So the Indians should know that they can't be clever on the military side. We understand everything that they are doing. They are moving some forces, but they are not really de-escalating.
CSM: What do you think India's strategy is? Is this internal BJP trying to stroke national sentiment?
Musharraf: Of course.
CSM: Or do you think there is something else going on there?
Musharraf: It's very clear. One is yes. I think– I would like to comment– on the political side they have lost face in India. I think their strategy is basically at the moment they are focused on Kashmir. The elections, they want to coerce Pakistan militarily and through an exterior maneuver, as I said. And then they want to hold elections there and bring a total close of the Kashmir dispute. Try to do that. And in the process maybe gain in popularity. The BJP gaining in popularity if they manage this exercise well. [To ministers] Would you like to add something?
ul Haque: I think it's a fairly – the policy that India is following started off as a very successful [pose]. They were able to build international community because the international community was against terror. They were trying to link the struggle in Kashmir with terrorism. And Pakistan did come under pressure, let's be quite clear.
But I think that that policy is outliving its utility, because we have taken the necessary steps to curb any movement across the line of control. Pakistan and the United States know that – even the Indians know –we are not sponsoring any movement across the Line of Control, we are not encouraging. We are actually interdicting all movement across the Line of Control. Sometimes who come go across and the Indians know that they cannot stop them, their force on the Line of Control is much larger than ours. So if anybody escapes from our side, they should be able to handle that. They know that.
Basically, they are overextending their policy, which initially met [with] success, but the returns of that policy are progressively decreasing. Because where does it all go? Is India intending to go to war with Pakistan? Does it want to impose its will not only on the Kashmiri people but on Pakistan also through military means? We do not think that that could be a sustainable policy. But the Indians are maintaining that because of their internal problems.
You know that Mr. [Advani] has now taken over as the deputy prime minister. He's moved to be a hardliner. He wants to make sure that the losses that BJP suffered in elections earlier this year in four or five states are reversed. That BJP not only continues to rule until the year 2004, but wins the election afterward. And for that we need a platform. And that platform is anti-Pakistan policy. And also that platform is making sure that Kashmir is pacified on India's terms. That is why their insistance that this election must be successful.
You know that they have arrested all the Kashmiri leaders. They're not allowing them to meet other political leaders in the so-called Kashmir committee that they themselves have formed. The basic objective is to try to calm all the Kashmiris, to make them give up their struggle. They know that Pakistanis aren't providing any support to them. They think that this is a good window of opportunity to finish off the Kashmiris.
The struggle in Kashmir isn't with them, because nobody could really sustain a struggle from outside for decade after decade after decade. It is the Kashmiris themselves who are fighting. India thinks that this is the time that they can control that.
We think that this policy is not going to succeed. We think that the only was is through a dialog. Through discussing it with Pakistan and with Kashmiris. Our position is that there is a future for the Kashmiri people which is on line. Therefore any discussion between Pakistan and India must also include the Kashmiris. To decide, what is it that they want. And this cannot be determined through military means. Hence our very simple position, that forces should move back to locations, and the two countries should sit down and discuss with the Kashmiris what is the kind of fate that they want. In the twenty-first century I think that is the only way to move forward.
CSM: You were speaking earlier about military assets. What will you be seeking from the United States now that sanctions have either been phased out or will be phased out? What will you be seeking in terms of military assistance and what is your rationale for what you are seeking?
Musharraf: Yes, indeed, as a military man, I think it is a very important question. As I've just said, conventional deterrence must never get compromised. Futuristically, it will be extremely dangerous if the conventional balance of forces is destroyed between India and Pakistan. Now, we see that India has increased its budget by 50 percent in the past three years. We see that India is both chasing weapons worth four-and-a-half billion dollars this year– [to adviser] Is that correct? [inaudible]
They are going to be the highest arms importers in the world. Now this kind of activity– and we are seeing that they are getting high-tech aircraft from Russia, from United Kingdom, from France, and they are getting surveillance equipment, electronic warfare equipment from Israel also. So gradually we are seeing a definite tilt in the conventional balance of forces. This is very dangerous. So, therefore, the United States must understand that this is dangerous and know what our requirements, certainly, would be to restore this conventional balance in two ways.
One, proactively deny India the access to this high-technology increase in their conventional potential. And secondly, whatever we were getting initially in the form of purchase of arms and – also may I add – F-16s, which we had paid for, in fact. That would be required to reestablish balance in the conventional forces.
It's very important I think.
CSM: Is your view that those F-16s were in fact not repaid? Because there are those in the US government who say that that was actually repaid when they were not delivered.
Musharraf: They were repaid after I don't know how many years and if I told you the whole story I don't know if you'd believe it.
CSM: Paid in soybeans?
Musharraf: Yes, and wheat – and in the most expensive manner. The soybean that we got was much more expensive than we could have gotten from Malaysia, and elsewhere. The transportation cost was maybe double the cost that we were saying that we will take it ourselves.
In fact, there was a time when – you won't believe it – but the F-16s that were ours, we were told that 'you'll have to pay demerit charges for them' – parking fees for these F-16s. Why are you demanding parking fees from Pakistan? We are asking you for the F-16s!
This is one of the issues which every man in the street in Pakistan knows. Really, and I have said this here, that every man in the street knows that we have been partners of the United States, we have fought a war for ten years against the Soviet Union. And let me tell you that I have seen an inscription of the Berlin Wall in one of our ex-intelligence boss's house. This was presented from the German head of intelligence. The caption reads: 'To the one who struck the first blow.' Now, the first blow of the collapse of the Berlin Wall was struck in Afghanistan, and Pakistan was there.
So, the people of Pakistan say: 'For ten years we have done that.' And our F-16s – because every Pakistani is extremely sensitive to our relations with India and Kashmir. Now anyone who is denting that is a serious issue frankly. And I've said this, that this is a very sensitive issue, this F-16 issue. Which, if ever you talk to a man in the street, he'll tell you, 'F-16? Yes, our F-16s. We need to be given our F-16s,' so that is the reality.
CSM: President Bush says he is very tight with you. What is his reaction when you bring that up?
Musharraf: Well, there are certain constraints. I won't get into an argument and discussion on that. Yes, I do want to understand the constraints. But all that I would like to say, because I am seeing it from the Pakistani point of view entirely, from my point of view, there may be some procedural and political constraints here.
But one needs to address this issue, especially in view of all that India is doing – the one-sided activity in the conventional side that India has undertaken – one needs to have a review of the constraints. It's important I think. I will maybe tell him again when I meet him.
Monitor editor Paul Van Slambrouck: President Musharraf, you have been extremely patient with your time, and I want to respect you have other engagements today. I think I can speak on behalf of all of us at the Christian Science Monitor in saying 'Thank you.' You present a very articulate, candid conversation; it's been a delight to have you here. And before you leave, publisher John Selover would like to present you with this small gift to remember the event by.
John Selover: We have high hopes for this time. We are very grateful to you to be with us. This represents our hopes for your country. And we will look forward to reporting on it. I also hope you will find this time with us, in a time of stress, some sense of refreshment for the care we found here. We are very deeply touched by your being here with us.
Musharraf: Thank you so very much.
John Selover: For the future of your country, sir.
Musharraf: Thank you. Thank you. May I have the opportunity – may I reciprocate: I think we've really had a most relaxed interaction. I'm extremely grateful to you for all the questions that you asked. They were extremely penetrating, and I think I, we, got an opportunity to explain what our point of view is very frankly. When your point of view is based on reality and truth, one doesn't mind any kind of questions. Let me say that whatever we are doing, whatever my government is doing, and whatever I am doing is based on truth and is based on Pakistan's interest and therefore I am very freely accessible to everyone, and I welcome any questions. I remain grateful to you for all the questions that you asked and having given me this opportunity to clarify Pakistan's position in a very candid manner. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for having hosted such a wonderful lunch, also. Thank you very much.
CSM : New details in Pearl murder could affect appeals
Monday, August 19, 2002
New details in Pearl murder could affect appeals
Militants claim reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered by an Arab, Pakistani police announced yesterday.
By Afzal Nadeem | Associated Press | August 19, 2002
KARACHI, PAKISTAN – Three Pakistani militants who led police to the body of Daniel Pearl claim The Wall Street Journal correspondent was murdered by an Arab two days after he tried to escape from kidnappers, investigators said yesterday.
The alleged new details of Pearl's kidnap-slaying do not exonerate British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, convicted with three others July 15. Mr. Saeed was sentenced to death by hanging; the others received life sentences.
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However, their claims could influence the appeal filed by Saeed and the others with the high court here in Sindh Province. Some of the new details conflict with evidence presented at the first trial.
Mr. Pearl was kidnapped Jan. 23 in Karachi while researching links between Pakistani Islamic extremists and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami.
Two police investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said three militants – Naeem Bukhari, Fazal Karim, and Zubair Chishti – have admitted a role in Pearl's kidnapping. However, they have not been charged, and Pakistani authorities have not even acknowledged officially that they are being held.
According to the two police officers, the militants said Saeed telephoned them on the evening of Jan. 23 and told them Pearl was en route to the Village Restaurant, where he expected to meet an Islamic activist supposedly trying to arrange an interview with a prominent cleric.
Pearl was put in one car, which was followed by another vehicle containing three other kidnappers. The two vehicles followed Mr. Bukhari, who led the convoy on a motorcycle to the shack where Pearl was to be held. According to the two investigators, Pearl tried to escape on his sixth day in captivity as he was being led to the toilet. However, he was tackled by Mr. Karim and Mr. Chishti, who beat him and shot him in the leg. The struggle made so much noise that students at a nearby Islamic school ran out onto the roof to see what was happening, police said.
A day after the escape attempt, police said, Bukhari told his fellow kidnappers that they must kill Pearl, although the officers said it was unclear who gave the order for his murder.
On the ninth day of the kidnapping, three Arabs, whom the suspects believed to have been Yemenis, were brought to the hideout, the police said. The two officers said the militants told them the Arabs were associates of Ramzi Yousef – the imprisoned mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Police said the kidnappers began asking Pearl questions about his religion and background as one of the Arabs filmed it with a video camera. Suddenly, Karim seized Pearl's hands and one of the Arabs slit his throat, the officers said. The actual murder was supposed to have been recorded but "the cameraman lost his nerve," one of the policemen said. The video was later sent to the US Consulate in Karachi, confirming Pearl's death.
The effect of the new allegations on the case against Saeed and the three others is unclear. All four were arrested in February before the tape appeared, but the government never alleged that Saeed or the others were personally involved in Pearl's murder. Authorities said they were looking for seven others in the case.
However, a taxi driver testified for the prosecution that he saw Saeed get into the car with Pearl, which differs from the three militants' account. Pakistani lawyers not involved in the case said the appeals court, which agreed to consider the case this week, could order a new trial if the policemen's account is corroborated.
At the time Pearl's body was discovered, state-run Pakistan Television said police were led to the grave by three members of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Janghvi, a radical Islamic group with links to Al Qaeda. Pearl's body was found on property owned by the Al-Rashid Trust, whose assets were frozen by the US last year after accusations it was a conduit for money to Al Qaeda.
Militants claim reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered by an Arab, Pakistani police announced yesterday.
By Afzal Nadeem | Associated Press | August 19, 2002
KARACHI, PAKISTAN – Three Pakistani militants who led police to the body of Daniel Pearl claim The Wall Street Journal correspondent was murdered by an Arab two days after he tried to escape from kidnappers, investigators said yesterday.
The alleged new details of Pearl's kidnap-slaying do not exonerate British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, convicted with three others July 15. Mr. Saeed was sentenced to death by hanging; the others received life sentences.
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However, their claims could influence the appeal filed by Saeed and the others with the high court here in Sindh Province. Some of the new details conflict with evidence presented at the first trial.
Mr. Pearl was kidnapped Jan. 23 in Karachi while researching links between Pakistani Islamic extremists and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami.
Two police investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said three militants – Naeem Bukhari, Fazal Karim, and Zubair Chishti – have admitted a role in Pearl's kidnapping. However, they have not been charged, and Pakistani authorities have not even acknowledged officially that they are being held.
According to the two police officers, the militants said Saeed telephoned them on the evening of Jan. 23 and told them Pearl was en route to the Village Restaurant, where he expected to meet an Islamic activist supposedly trying to arrange an interview with a prominent cleric.
Pearl was put in one car, which was followed by another vehicle containing three other kidnappers. The two vehicles followed Mr. Bukhari, who led the convoy on a motorcycle to the shack where Pearl was to be held. According to the two investigators, Pearl tried to escape on his sixth day in captivity as he was being led to the toilet. However, he was tackled by Mr. Karim and Mr. Chishti, who beat him and shot him in the leg. The struggle made so much noise that students at a nearby Islamic school ran out onto the roof to see what was happening, police said.
A day after the escape attempt, police said, Bukhari told his fellow kidnappers that they must kill Pearl, although the officers said it was unclear who gave the order for his murder.
On the ninth day of the kidnapping, three Arabs, whom the suspects believed to have been Yemenis, were brought to the hideout, the police said. The two officers said the militants told them the Arabs were associates of Ramzi Yousef – the imprisoned mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Police said the kidnappers began asking Pearl questions about his religion and background as one of the Arabs filmed it with a video camera. Suddenly, Karim seized Pearl's hands and one of the Arabs slit his throat, the officers said. The actual murder was supposed to have been recorded but "the cameraman lost his nerve," one of the policemen said. The video was later sent to the US Consulate in Karachi, confirming Pearl's death.
The effect of the new allegations on the case against Saeed and the three others is unclear. All four were arrested in February before the tape appeared, but the government never alleged that Saeed or the others were personally involved in Pearl's murder. Authorities said they were looking for seven others in the case.
However, a taxi driver testified for the prosecution that he saw Saeed get into the car with Pearl, which differs from the three militants' account. Pakistani lawyers not involved in the case said the appeals court, which agreed to consider the case this week, could order a new trial if the policemen's account is corroborated.
At the time Pearl's body was discovered, state-run Pakistan Television said police were led to the grave by three members of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Janghvi, a radical Islamic group with links to Al Qaeda. Pearl's body was found on property owned by the Al-Rashid Trust, whose assets were frozen by the US last year after accusations it was a conduit for money to Al Qaeda.
Filed under
Iraq,
Karachi,
Pakistan,
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by Winter Patriot
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BBC : Moussaoui seeks Congress appearance
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Moussaoui seeks Congress appearance
By Steve Kingstone | BBC correspondent in Washington | July 3, 2002
The only man charged in connection with the 11 September attacks has asked to testify before the US Congress.
Zacarias Moussaoui claims that he, and the suspected hijackers, were under surveillance by the FBI before September, and that the US intelligence agencies allowed the attacks to happen.
This was the latest in a series of handwritten motions from Mr Moussaoui to the judge overseeing his case.
In it, he says he has "relevant information and proof" relating to the conduct of the FBI before September.
He has asked for the chance to share his thoughts with US lawmakers, who are holding hearings into intelligence failings leading up to the attacks.
Afghanistan excuse
Specifically, Mr Moussaoui says the authorities were watching at least one of the suspected hijackers last summer.
The FBI chose not to make any arrests, he said, because they wanted the 11 September attacks to go ahead, giving America an excuse, he argues, to destroy Afghanistan.
The US Government flatly denies the accusation, and is seeking the death penalty for Mr Moussaoui.
Arrested last August, he faces six conspiracy charges in connection with the attacks.
Having dismissed his court-appointed lawyers, Mr Moussaoui is now representing himself.
His latest motion also accuses the judge of wanting him executed: "You're playing games with my life" Mr Moussaoui said.
It is extremely unlikely that the defendant will get his moment in the congressional spotlight.
He faces trial later in the year.
By Steve Kingstone | BBC correspondent in Washington | July 3, 2002
The only man charged in connection with the 11 September attacks has asked to testify before the US Congress.
Zacarias Moussaoui claims that he, and the suspected hijackers, were under surveillance by the FBI before September, and that the US intelligence agencies allowed the attacks to happen.
This was the latest in a series of handwritten motions from Mr Moussaoui to the judge overseeing his case.
In it, he says he has "relevant information and proof" relating to the conduct of the FBI before September.
He has asked for the chance to share his thoughts with US lawmakers, who are holding hearings into intelligence failings leading up to the attacks.
Afghanistan excuse
Specifically, Mr Moussaoui says the authorities were watching at least one of the suspected hijackers last summer.
The FBI chose not to make any arrests, he said, because they wanted the 11 September attacks to go ahead, giving America an excuse, he argues, to destroy Afghanistan.
The US Government flatly denies the accusation, and is seeking the death penalty for Mr Moussaoui.
Arrested last August, he faces six conspiracy charges in connection with the attacks.
Having dismissed his court-appointed lawyers, Mr Moussaoui is now representing himself.
His latest motion also accuses the judge of wanting him executed: "You're playing games with my life" Mr Moussaoui said.
It is extremely unlikely that the defendant will get his moment in the congressional spotlight.
He faces trial later in the year.
BBC : US officer banned for Bush 'joke' jibe
Wednesday, June 05, 2002
US officer banned for Bush 'joke' jibe
BBC News | June 5, 2002
An officer in the United States Air Force has been relieved of his current duties for writing a letter to a local newspaper describing President George W Bush as a "joke".
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler said the president knew about the 11 September attacks on America and did nothing to warn the American people.
His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama, his presidency was going nowhere, this guy is a joke
His suspension comes under a law dating back to the American War of Independence which forbids insults directed by military officers against the president or other political leaders.
Colonel Butler was serving as vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, when he wrote the letter, published in the Monterey County Herald.
He has spent 24 years in the air force, which include duty as a combat pilot in the 1990 Gulf War.
'Unelected'
The letter suggested that Mr Bush had not come to power by legitimate means, and the war on terror was merely part of a strategy to improve his position.
"His presidency was going nowhere," it read. "He wasn't elected by the American people, but placed into the Oval Office by the conservative Supreme Court... the economy was sliding into the usual Republican pits and he needed something to hang his presidency on."
Colonel Butler's wife Stella told the newspaper he had been given a "lot of grief" over the letter by the military and planned to retire in a few weeks.
Article 88 of the code of military justice states that any commissioned officer who uses "contemptuous words" against the president, vice-president, members of Congress or state governors should be punished by court-martial.
Military sources say the last court-martial came in 1965, when an army second lieutenant was prosecuted for taking part in an anti-war protest in Texas.
But under President Bill Clinton, several army officers were disciplined - including one Air Force general who was forced into early retirement for describing the president as "gay-loving", "womanising", "draft-dodging" and "pot-smoking".
BBC News | June 5, 2002
An officer in the United States Air Force has been relieved of his current duties for writing a letter to a local newspaper describing President George W Bush as a "joke".
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Butler said the president knew about the 11 September attacks on America and did nothing to warn the American people.
His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama, his presidency was going nowhere, this guy is a joke
His suspension comes under a law dating back to the American War of Independence which forbids insults directed by military officers against the president or other political leaders.
Colonel Butler was serving as vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, when he wrote the letter, published in the Monterey County Herald.
He has spent 24 years in the air force, which include duty as a combat pilot in the 1990 Gulf War.
'Unelected'
The letter suggested that Mr Bush had not come to power by legitimate means, and the war on terror was merely part of a strategy to improve his position.
"His presidency was going nowhere," it read. "He wasn't elected by the American people, but placed into the Oval Office by the conservative Supreme Court... the economy was sliding into the usual Republican pits and he needed something to hang his presidency on."
Colonel Butler's wife Stella told the newspaper he had been given a "lot of grief" over the letter by the military and planned to retire in a few weeks.
Article 88 of the code of military justice states that any commissioned officer who uses "contemptuous words" against the president, vice-president, members of Congress or state governors should be punished by court-martial.
Military sources say the last court-martial came in 1965, when an army second lieutenant was prosecuted for taking part in an anti-war protest in Texas.
But under President Bill Clinton, several army officers were disciplined - including one Air Force general who was forced into early retirement for describing the president as "gay-loving", "womanising", "draft-dodging" and "pot-smoking".
Fire Engineering : 'Burning Questions...Need Answers': FE's Bill Manning Calls for Comprehensive Investigation of WTC Collapse
Friday, January 04, 2002
"Burning Questions...Need Answers": FE's Bill Manning Calls for Comprehensive Investigation of WTC Collapse
January 4, 2002
Fair Lawn, NJ, January 4, 2002 -- Bill Manning, Fire Engineering's editor in chief, is summoning members of the fire service to "A Call to Action." In his January 2002 Editor's Opinion, "$elling Out the Investigation" (below), he warns that unless there is a full-blown investigation by an independent panel established solely for that purpose, "the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals." Manning explained: "Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers .... The lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world."
In an interview with the New York Daily News today, Manning reiterated his call for a "full-throttle, fully resourced" investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center. He is asking members of the fire service to read "WTC 'Investigation'? A Call to Action" in the January 2002 issue of Fire Engineering and at fireengineering.com and to contact their representatives in Congress and officials in Washington to ask that a blue ribbon panel be convened to thoroughly investigate the WTC collapse.
Among those also calling for the investigation are Sally Regenhard, the mother of Christian Regenhard, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) probationary firefighter killed in the World Trade Center (WTC) attack, and founder of the Campaign for Skyscraper Safety; Give Your Voice, a civilian relatives' group headed by Michael Cartier, who lost his brother in the collapse; prominent structural engineers and fire-safety experts, and New York State Senators Charles Schumer and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
$elling Out the Investigation
By Bill Manning
Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World Trade Center.
For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car.
Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere in it does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall.
Hoping beyond hope, I have called experts to ask if the towers were the only high-rise buildings in America of lightweight, center-core construction. No such luck. I made other calls asking if these were the only buildings in America with light-density, sprayed-on fireproofing. Again, no luck-they were two of thousands that fit the description.
Comprehensive disaster investigations mean increased safety. They mean positive change. NASA knows it. The NTSB knows it. Does FEMA know it?
No. Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members- described by one close source as a "tourist trip"-no one's checking the evidence for anything.
Maybe we should live and work in planes. That way, if disaster strikes, we will at least be sure that a thorough investigation will help find ways to increase safety for our survivors.
As things now stand and if they continue in such fashion, the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals.
However, respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short time. Of course, in light of there being no real evidence thus far produced, this could remain just unexplored theory.
The frequency of published and unpublished reports raising questions about the steel fireproofing and other fire protection elements in the buildings, as well as their design and construction, is on the rise. The builders and owners of the World Trade Center property, the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, a governmental agency that operates in an accountability vacuum beyond the reach of local fire and building codes, has denied charges that the buildings' fire protection or construction components were substandard but has refused to cooperate with requests for documentation supporting its contentions.
Some citizens are taking to the streets to protest the investigation sellout. Sally Regenhard, for one, wants to know why and how the building fell as it did upon her unfortunate son Christian, an FDNY probationary firefighter. And so do we.
Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative. More important, from a moral standpoint, for the safety of present and future generations who live and work in tall buildings-and for firefighters, always first in and last out-the lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world.
To treat the September 11 incident any differently would be the height of stupidity and ignorance.
The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately.
The federal government must scrap the current setup and commission a fully resourced blue ribbon panel to conduct a clean and thorough investigation of the fire and collapse, leaving no stones unturned.
Firefighters, this is your call to action. Visit WTC "Investigation"?: A Call to Action, then contact your representatives in Congress and officials in Washington and help us correct this problem immediately.
January 4, 2002
Fair Lawn, NJ, January 4, 2002 -- Bill Manning, Fire Engineering's editor in chief, is summoning members of the fire service to "A Call to Action." In his January 2002 Editor's Opinion, "$elling Out the Investigation" (below), he warns that unless there is a full-blown investigation by an independent panel established solely for that purpose, "the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals." Manning explained: "Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers .... The lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world."
In an interview with the New York Daily News today, Manning reiterated his call for a "full-throttle, fully resourced" investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center. He is asking members of the fire service to read "WTC 'Investigation'? A Call to Action" in the January 2002 issue of Fire Engineering and at fireengineering.com and to contact their representatives in Congress and officials in Washington to ask that a blue ribbon panel be convened to thoroughly investigate the WTC collapse.
Among those also calling for the investigation are Sally Regenhard, the mother of Christian Regenhard, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) probationary firefighter killed in the World Trade Center (WTC) attack, and founder of the Campaign for Skyscraper Safety; Give Your Voice, a civilian relatives' group headed by Michael Cartier, who lost his brother in the collapse; prominent structural engineers and fire-safety experts, and New York State Senators Charles Schumer and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
$elling Out the Investigation
By Bill Manning
Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World Trade Center.
For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car.
Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere in it does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall.
Hoping beyond hope, I have called experts to ask if the towers were the only high-rise buildings in America of lightweight, center-core construction. No such luck. I made other calls asking if these were the only buildings in America with light-density, sprayed-on fireproofing. Again, no luck-they were two of thousands that fit the description.
Comprehensive disaster investigations mean increased safety. They mean positive change. NASA knows it. The NTSB knows it. Does FEMA know it?
No. Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members- described by one close source as a "tourist trip"-no one's checking the evidence for anything.
Maybe we should live and work in planes. That way, if disaster strikes, we will at least be sure that a thorough investigation will help find ways to increase safety for our survivors.
As things now stand and if they continue in such fashion, the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals.
However, respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short time. Of course, in light of there being no real evidence thus far produced, this could remain just unexplored theory.
The frequency of published and unpublished reports raising questions about the steel fireproofing and other fire protection elements in the buildings, as well as their design and construction, is on the rise. The builders and owners of the World Trade Center property, the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, a governmental agency that operates in an accountability vacuum beyond the reach of local fire and building codes, has denied charges that the buildings' fire protection or construction components were substandard but has refused to cooperate with requests for documentation supporting its contentions.
Some citizens are taking to the streets to protest the investigation sellout. Sally Regenhard, for one, wants to know why and how the building fell as it did upon her unfortunate son Christian, an FDNY probationary firefighter. And so do we.
Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative. More important, from a moral standpoint, for the safety of present and future generations who live and work in tall buildings-and for firefighters, always first in and last out-the lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world.
To treat the September 11 incident any differently would be the height of stupidity and ignorance.
The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately.
The federal government must scrap the current setup and commission a fully resourced blue ribbon panel to conduct a clean and thorough investigation of the fire and collapse, leaving no stones unturned.
Firefighters, this is your call to action. Visit WTC "Investigation"?: A Call to Action, then contact your representatives in Congress and officials in Washington and help us correct this problem immediately.
Filed under
Congress,
Hillary Clinton
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, January 04, 2002
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NYT : A Would-Be Warlord Is Given Short Shrift by New Rulers
Sunday, December 16, 2001
A NATION CHALLENGED: DISSENSION; A Would-Be Warlord Is Given Short Shrift by New Rulers
By CARLOTTA GALL | December 16, 2001
Northern Alliance soldiers forced Sayed Jaffar, the would-be governor of Baghlan province, to flee his home here and take to the mountains with his men.
Mr. Jaffar, 35, the American-educated son of a family that has traditionally held the governorship, tried to take the city of Pul-i-Khumri by force on Wednesday but was quickly repulsed by Northern Alliance troops in charge of the town.
A combined force of Tajik soldiers and Pashtun former Taliban fighters who have joined the Northern Alliance pursued him, hilltop by hilltop, from Pul-i-Khumri, to his home village here.
They rode up the mountain paths in pickups, swinging their legs and weapons over the side, hauling up anti-aircraft guns and multiple rocket launchers on heavy military trucks.
The Northern Alliance and the government in Kabul have acted firmly against Mr. Jaffar's attempts to win power by force. They have accused the United States of assisting him and calling in airstrikes against them on Wednesday during his attack on Pul-i-Khumri, an accusation the United States has denied.
Mr. Jaffar does not present a great military threat. The son of the feudal and spiritual leader of Afghanistan's Ismaili sect, an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam, he is no battle-hardened warlord and his bid for more power has been swiftly crushed. An alliance defense ministry representative, Mohammed Farid, said the government would not tolerate any action by individuals who tried to take power by force. He said the government was determined to establish security for all citizens. ''Fighting is not the way, and we will not allow it to start again,'' he said.
By afternoon, after a barrage of shells battered the hills around him, Mr. Jaffar and his cousin, Harun, the commander of some of his troops, offered to surrender, contacting the Northern Alliance general, Khalil Anderabi, by walkie-talkie.
''I am not a Talib, why are you fighting with me?'' Harun complained over the handset.
Standing on a hilltop just a mile from Kayan, General Anderabi took the call in front of his soldiers. ''I know you are not a Talib but you wanted to come with a thousand men to attack Pul-i-Khumri,'' he replied.
Harun vowed that his cousin had not intended to attack the town, only to meet and talk. General Anderabi called on them both to surrender. ''We are brothers, dear Harun, and close friends. We should stop fighting and solve this by negotiations.''
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Jaffar came on the line and agreed to surrender, asking that Northern Alliance soldiers not enter his village. But as he began to lay down conditions, the negotiations broke down and the Northern Alliance resumed their shelling.
Soldiers listening in on their walkie-talkies caught Mr. Jaffar ordering his men to pull out of the village and head for the mountains. He asked one of his commanders for a donkey for the trip. Northern Alliance soldiers laughingly broke in and said they would provide a donkey.
Gen. Atiqullah Baryalai, an alliance deputy defense minister, said tonight he hoped to negotiate with Mr. Jaffar and end the dispute peacefully. He mentioned the possibility of providing a helicopter to get Mr. Jaffar out of the area.
Four men fighting for Mr. Jaffar, who were taken prisoner and held briefly. said they had been paid to join his force and move on Pul-i-Khumri.
''He said we would go as peacekeepers, that we would go to ensure security for the people,'' said Nurullah, 24, who was wounded in the arm. The four were disarmed and then released quickly.
By CARLOTTA GALL | December 16, 2001
Northern Alliance soldiers forced Sayed Jaffar, the would-be governor of Baghlan province, to flee his home here and take to the mountains with his men.
Mr. Jaffar, 35, the American-educated son of a family that has traditionally held the governorship, tried to take the city of Pul-i-Khumri by force on Wednesday but was quickly repulsed by Northern Alliance troops in charge of the town.
A combined force of Tajik soldiers and Pashtun former Taliban fighters who have joined the Northern Alliance pursued him, hilltop by hilltop, from Pul-i-Khumri, to his home village here.
They rode up the mountain paths in pickups, swinging their legs and weapons over the side, hauling up anti-aircraft guns and multiple rocket launchers on heavy military trucks.
The Northern Alliance and the government in Kabul have acted firmly against Mr. Jaffar's attempts to win power by force. They have accused the United States of assisting him and calling in airstrikes against them on Wednesday during his attack on Pul-i-Khumri, an accusation the United States has denied.
Mr. Jaffar does not present a great military threat. The son of the feudal and spiritual leader of Afghanistan's Ismaili sect, an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam, he is no battle-hardened warlord and his bid for more power has been swiftly crushed. An alliance defense ministry representative, Mohammed Farid, said the government would not tolerate any action by individuals who tried to take power by force. He said the government was determined to establish security for all citizens. ''Fighting is not the way, and we will not allow it to start again,'' he said.
By afternoon, after a barrage of shells battered the hills around him, Mr. Jaffar and his cousin, Harun, the commander of some of his troops, offered to surrender, contacting the Northern Alliance general, Khalil Anderabi, by walkie-talkie.
''I am not a Talib, why are you fighting with me?'' Harun complained over the handset.
Standing on a hilltop just a mile from Kayan, General Anderabi took the call in front of his soldiers. ''I know you are not a Talib but you wanted to come with a thousand men to attack Pul-i-Khumri,'' he replied.
Harun vowed that his cousin had not intended to attack the town, only to meet and talk. General Anderabi called on them both to surrender. ''We are brothers, dear Harun, and close friends. We should stop fighting and solve this by negotiations.''
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Jaffar came on the line and agreed to surrender, asking that Northern Alliance soldiers not enter his village. But as he began to lay down conditions, the negotiations broke down and the Northern Alliance resumed their shelling.
Soldiers listening in on their walkie-talkies caught Mr. Jaffar ordering his men to pull out of the village and head for the mountains. He asked one of his commanders for a donkey for the trip. Northern Alliance soldiers laughingly broke in and said they would provide a donkey.
Gen. Atiqullah Baryalai, an alliance deputy defense minister, said tonight he hoped to negotiate with Mr. Jaffar and end the dispute peacefully. He mentioned the possibility of providing a helicopter to get Mr. Jaffar out of the area.
Four men fighting for Mr. Jaffar, who were taken prisoner and held briefly. said they had been paid to join his force and move on Pul-i-Khumri.
''He said we would go as peacekeepers, that we would go to ensure security for the people,'' said Nurullah, 24, who was wounded in the arm. The four were disarmed and then released quickly.
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Carlotta Gall
by Winter Patriot
on Sunday, December 16, 2001
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NYT : Anti-Taliban Factions Clash in North
Thursday, December 13, 2001
A NATION CHALLENGED: DISSENSION; Anti-Taliban Factions Clash in North
By CARLOTTA GALL | December 13, 2001
This northern Afghan town erupted in violence today as two anti-Taliban factions clashed, amid reports -- later denied by the Pentagon -- that American warplanes had intervened and bombed both sides.
Two Northern Alliance generals said the fighting began when troops loyal to Sayed Jaffar, the former governor of Baghlan Province, attacked the Northern Alliance soldiers stationed in Pul-i-Khumri, a town just south of Kunduz.
The issue was turf, they said. Sayed Jaffar had left Afghanistan in recent years, but returned this fall and wanted to govern again. He was angry, they said, that the Northern Alliance soldiers from the Panjshir Valley, primarily ethnic Tajiks, were in control of the region.
General Atiqullah Baryalai, deputy defense minister for the Northern Alliance, said that Sayed Jaffar was supported by American aircraft, and that one armored vehicle was destroyed and 20 Northern Alliance soldiers were killed or wounded.
''The Americans bombed us,'' he said. ''It was a very bad mistake. I called them and asked them to stop, and they said they were sorry but they kept bombing.''
But the chief spokesman for the United States Central Command denied that American warplanes had bombed Northern Alliance positions. ''The only place we've bombed since the fall of Kandahar has been the Tora Bora area,'' said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley. Admiral Quigley said he could not explain the reports of air strikes, adding that the Northern Alliance factions do not have combat aircraft.
If American planes did, indeed, bomb Northern Alliance units, it would not be the first time in the war. Two weeks ago, when the city of Kunduz fell, an American plane attacked a Northern Alliance position in a historic mud fortress inside the city, destroying seven trucks and killing several soldiers. Tajik soldiers blamed that attack on a rival warlord, saying he had called for the air strike on them because he was angry that he did not take the fortress first.
As ground forces here exchanged fire today, stray bullets and shells landed in the town. By afternoon military and civilian casualties began arriving in its two hospitals. A boy of 12 was paralyzed by a bullet to the chest, and a bride of 16 and her mother-in-law were hit by shrapnel when a shell landed by their home.
Gen. Daoud Khan, a Northern Alliance commander in Taliqan, said that in spite of the casualties the Northern Alliance held all of their positions, and Sayed Jaffar withdrew his forces for the night.
''He attacked us, and we defeated him, and he went back to his place,'' the general said.
By moving his newly assembled troops up to positions overlooking the town, Sayed Jaffar appears to have initiated the fighting. Up on the heights with his troops, he could not be reached for comment today. His cousin and representative in Pul-i-Khumri, Sayed Hasanmuddin, and Dr. Shahahmuddin, the commander of one of his military units, said they had not spoken with him since Tuesday afternoon.
Sitting in their house in Pul-i-Khumri, surrounded by guards, they said they thought two groups had clashed by mistake.
Northern Alliance troops accused Sayed Jaffar of trying to seize control of Pul-i-Khumri, and they fired shells at targets on the mountain ridge above the town. Heavy explosions shook the town as shells fired from the mountains came back in reply. Four times during the afternoon jets struck the barren brown mountains, the red flash of the impact and the deafening crack of the explosion sending people ducking for cover.
''I do not know why America is doing that'' said Gen. Khalil Anderabi, the commander of the alliance forces in Pul-i-Khumri. ''We had to fight other groups in the past, and then the Taliban, but now America? What is the matter? They better send their representatives here to see what is happening here.''
If American jets were not involved in the bombing, it is not clear whose planes could have been. But it led to intense debate and confusion on the ground.
Soldiers and townspeople suggested that America was siding with Sayed Jaffar in his efforts to gain control of the town. Others said American planes may have been firing a warning to both sides to stop fighting.
General Anderabi and other commanders said they believed Sayed Jaffar had tricked American forces into believing that there were remnants of Taliban forces in the mountains who should be attacked with air strikes.
''But we captured all the Taliban when we took the town,'' General Anderabi said. ''We have about 350 Taliban prisoners here. So where are the Taliban positions? America is fighting against our division.''
He said air strikes had killed 30 of his men today and injured 40. As he spoke a voice crackled over his walkie-talkie reporting six or seven soldiers dead in one strike. The numbers could not be immediately verified. Thirteen soldiers were brought to the military hospital, injured when their vehicle overturned, doctors said. Unlike liaison programs in Kabul or Mazar-i-Sharif, no American special forces are believed to be working with Northern Alliance troops in Pul-i-Khumri.
There were suggestions, however, that Sayed Jaffar's men were receiving some American assistance. A large column of trucks and pick-ups carrying several hundred of his soldiers moved up a mountain road to the mountain heights east of Pul-i-Khumri on Tuesday. Among them were two trucks with American equipment and back packs. It was not clear if American personnel were inside the vehicles.
Sayed Jaffar's soldiers were dressed in new padded winter clothing provided by the United States to Northern Alliance forces. They carried new weapons, which one of Sayed Jaffar's officers said had also been provided by the United States.
It is clear, however, that there is a struggle for power here.
Sayed Jaffar's family not only are feudal leaders of the Ismaili people in Afghanistan, but traditionally their family has held the position of governor of Pul-i-Khumri. Sayed Jaffar represented his father Sayed Mansur, the leader of Afghanistan's Ismaili community, who lives abroad, and filled the role of governor when the Northern Alliance was in power between 1992 to 1996.
He fled with his family when the Taliban took power and went to live in neighboring Uzbekistan but returned after the Taliban collapsed last month, brought in by the Northern Alliance, which provided him with security.
But the Northern Alliance commanders, who stayed and fought the Taliban for five years, say they have little time for Sayed Jaffar, who sat out the war in comfort and now expects to regain his old position.
''When the Taliban came he took a helicopter and escaped and he left his people behind, and did nothing to help them,'' General Anderabi said. ''We want a governor who helped the people and was here all the time.''
The Northern Alliance forces have the stronger force here. They have about 5,000 battle-hardened troops in and around the town, against Sayed Jaffar's newly assembled force, estimated at 700. General Anderabi said his men had already captured two bases belonging to Sayed Jaffar's troops on the edge of town and arrested some of the guards. They had taken five men prisoner on the front line too, he said.
The Northern Alliance defense minister, General Fahim, was in touch with both sides today, to try to put an end to the clash and also with United States forces to receive an explanation of the air strikes, Gen Anderabi said.
By CARLOTTA GALL | December 13, 2001
This northern Afghan town erupted in violence today as two anti-Taliban factions clashed, amid reports -- later denied by the Pentagon -- that American warplanes had intervened and bombed both sides.
Two Northern Alliance generals said the fighting began when troops loyal to Sayed Jaffar, the former governor of Baghlan Province, attacked the Northern Alliance soldiers stationed in Pul-i-Khumri, a town just south of Kunduz.
The issue was turf, they said. Sayed Jaffar had left Afghanistan in recent years, but returned this fall and wanted to govern again. He was angry, they said, that the Northern Alliance soldiers from the Panjshir Valley, primarily ethnic Tajiks, were in control of the region.
General Atiqullah Baryalai, deputy defense minister for the Northern Alliance, said that Sayed Jaffar was supported by American aircraft, and that one armored vehicle was destroyed and 20 Northern Alliance soldiers were killed or wounded.
''The Americans bombed us,'' he said. ''It was a very bad mistake. I called them and asked them to stop, and they said they were sorry but they kept bombing.''
But the chief spokesman for the United States Central Command denied that American warplanes had bombed Northern Alliance positions. ''The only place we've bombed since the fall of Kandahar has been the Tora Bora area,'' said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley. Admiral Quigley said he could not explain the reports of air strikes, adding that the Northern Alliance factions do not have combat aircraft.
If American planes did, indeed, bomb Northern Alliance units, it would not be the first time in the war. Two weeks ago, when the city of Kunduz fell, an American plane attacked a Northern Alliance position in a historic mud fortress inside the city, destroying seven trucks and killing several soldiers. Tajik soldiers blamed that attack on a rival warlord, saying he had called for the air strike on them because he was angry that he did not take the fortress first.
As ground forces here exchanged fire today, stray bullets and shells landed in the town. By afternoon military and civilian casualties began arriving in its two hospitals. A boy of 12 was paralyzed by a bullet to the chest, and a bride of 16 and her mother-in-law were hit by shrapnel when a shell landed by their home.
Gen. Daoud Khan, a Northern Alliance commander in Taliqan, said that in spite of the casualties the Northern Alliance held all of their positions, and Sayed Jaffar withdrew his forces for the night.
''He attacked us, and we defeated him, and he went back to his place,'' the general said.
By moving his newly assembled troops up to positions overlooking the town, Sayed Jaffar appears to have initiated the fighting. Up on the heights with his troops, he could not be reached for comment today. His cousin and representative in Pul-i-Khumri, Sayed Hasanmuddin, and Dr. Shahahmuddin, the commander of one of his military units, said they had not spoken with him since Tuesday afternoon.
Sitting in their house in Pul-i-Khumri, surrounded by guards, they said they thought two groups had clashed by mistake.
Northern Alliance troops accused Sayed Jaffar of trying to seize control of Pul-i-Khumri, and they fired shells at targets on the mountain ridge above the town. Heavy explosions shook the town as shells fired from the mountains came back in reply. Four times during the afternoon jets struck the barren brown mountains, the red flash of the impact and the deafening crack of the explosion sending people ducking for cover.
''I do not know why America is doing that'' said Gen. Khalil Anderabi, the commander of the alliance forces in Pul-i-Khumri. ''We had to fight other groups in the past, and then the Taliban, but now America? What is the matter? They better send their representatives here to see what is happening here.''
If American jets were not involved in the bombing, it is not clear whose planes could have been. But it led to intense debate and confusion on the ground.
Soldiers and townspeople suggested that America was siding with Sayed Jaffar in his efforts to gain control of the town. Others said American planes may have been firing a warning to both sides to stop fighting.
General Anderabi and other commanders said they believed Sayed Jaffar had tricked American forces into believing that there were remnants of Taliban forces in the mountains who should be attacked with air strikes.
''But we captured all the Taliban when we took the town,'' General Anderabi said. ''We have about 350 Taliban prisoners here. So where are the Taliban positions? America is fighting against our division.''
He said air strikes had killed 30 of his men today and injured 40. As he spoke a voice crackled over his walkie-talkie reporting six or seven soldiers dead in one strike. The numbers could not be immediately verified. Thirteen soldiers were brought to the military hospital, injured when their vehicle overturned, doctors said. Unlike liaison programs in Kabul or Mazar-i-Sharif, no American special forces are believed to be working with Northern Alliance troops in Pul-i-Khumri.
There were suggestions, however, that Sayed Jaffar's men were receiving some American assistance. A large column of trucks and pick-ups carrying several hundred of his soldiers moved up a mountain road to the mountain heights east of Pul-i-Khumri on Tuesday. Among them were two trucks with American equipment and back packs. It was not clear if American personnel were inside the vehicles.
Sayed Jaffar's soldiers were dressed in new padded winter clothing provided by the United States to Northern Alliance forces. They carried new weapons, which one of Sayed Jaffar's officers said had also been provided by the United States.
It is clear, however, that there is a struggle for power here.
Sayed Jaffar's family not only are feudal leaders of the Ismaili people in Afghanistan, but traditionally their family has held the position of governor of Pul-i-Khumri. Sayed Jaffar represented his father Sayed Mansur, the leader of Afghanistan's Ismaili community, who lives abroad, and filled the role of governor when the Northern Alliance was in power between 1992 to 1996.
He fled with his family when the Taliban took power and went to live in neighboring Uzbekistan but returned after the Taliban collapsed last month, brought in by the Northern Alliance, which provided him with security.
But the Northern Alliance commanders, who stayed and fought the Taliban for five years, say they have little time for Sayed Jaffar, who sat out the war in comfort and now expects to regain his old position.
''When the Taliban came he took a helicopter and escaped and he left his people behind, and did nothing to help them,'' General Anderabi said. ''We want a governor who helped the people and was here all the time.''
The Northern Alliance forces have the stronger force here. They have about 5,000 battle-hardened troops in and around the town, against Sayed Jaffar's newly assembled force, estimated at 700. General Anderabi said his men had already captured two bases belonging to Sayed Jaffar's troops on the edge of town and arrested some of the guards. They had taken five men prisoner on the front line too, he said.
The Northern Alliance defense minister, General Fahim, was in touch with both sides today, to try to put an end to the clash and also with United States forces to receive an explanation of the air strikes, Gen Anderabi said.
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Carlotta Gall
by Winter Patriot
on Thursday, December 13, 2001
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WaPo : White House Mail Machine Has Anthrax
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
White House Mail Machine Has Anthrax
By Sandra Sobieraj | Associated Press Writer | October 23, 2001
WASHINGTON –– President Bush said confidently Tuesday that "I don't have anthrax" after biohazard testing at the White House and the discovery of anthrax on a mail-opening machine at a screening facility six miles away.
All White House mail – more than 40,000 letters a week – is examined at military facilities across the Potomac River.
"Let me put it this way," Bush said. "I'm confident that when I come to work tomorrow, I'll be safe."
Asked if he was tested for the germ that has killed three people already this month, or if he was taking precautionary antibiotics, Bush replied simply: "I don't have anthrax."
At least some White House personnel were given Cipro six weeks ago. White House officials won't discuss who might be receiving the anthrax-treating antibiotic now.
On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved.
At that time, nobody could guess the dimensions of the terrorists' plot.
Now, Bush said on Tuesday, "There's no question that the evil-doers are continuing to try to harm America and Americans."
The president spoke in an afternoon Cabinet Room meeting with members of Congress, minutes after his press secretary announced that a "small concentration" of anthrax spores were found on the slitter machine that opens White House mail at a Secret Service-controlled facility on property shared by the Anacostia Naval Station and Bolling Air Force Base.
Between three and eight workers on loan from the U.S. Postal Service had access to that contaminated machine where a trace amount – anywhere from 20 to 500 spores – of anthrax was found, a senior law enforcement official said.
At least 8,000 spores must be inhaled into the lungs to get the most deadly form of anthrax. Substantially fewer spores can cause the highly treatable cutaneous form of anthrax if they enter a cut in the skin.
Inside the iron gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. regular biohazard testing has been stepped up in the past month and no traces of anthrax have been found, said presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer.
Security officials were apparently spooked even before Tuesday's discovery at Bolling, which handles mail processed through the Brentwood postal facility, and halted mail delivery to the White House complex several days earlier.
"We have not seen mail in a while," said a West Wing aide. A staffer on campus at Bolling, in southeast Washington, said the same was true there.
Two postal workers at Brentwood died of pulmonary anthrax – one on Sunday, the other on Monday.
Brentwood is where the anthrax-laced letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was first handled.
The Bolling facility, which also handles mail to the Secret Service, "has been closed for further testing and decontamination," Fleischer said. All employees there and in mailrooms within the White House complex – which includes the mansion, its East and West Wings, and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building – were being tested for exposure to anthrax.
In a statement, the Secret Service said no one connected with the mail facility at Bolling has reported anthrax-like symptoms.
Postal and health officials have said it's possible for one anthrax-tainted letter to contaminate another, meaning the anthrax found on the Bolling machinery could have come from a letter that mixed with other mail at Brentwood.
Experts believe it unlikely that a cross-contaminated letter would have contained enough anthrax to make someone sick.
Fleischer said a sweep of the Bolling facility turned up a "positive culture" around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Given that the U.S. Capitol, network TV news anchors and media companies had already been targeted by anthrax-tainted letters, an attempted attack on the White House was almost to be expected, Fleischer said.
"There is no other target, unfortunately, like the president. ... The White House has always, unfortunately, been a target – a target for terrorists, a target for people who have shot at the building," he added.
At the Treasury Department next door, recent anthrax scares prompted officials to shut down a first-floor mail room and move all mail reception and screening to an annex across the street.
Mail sent to the Supreme Court is also intercepted off-site, where inspectors open and examine everything. Their black "NBC" stamp means the mail is free of nuclear, biological and chemical contamination.
No contamination had been found there as of Tuesday afternoon, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.
© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By Sandra Sobieraj | Associated Press Writer | October 23, 2001
WASHINGTON –– President Bush said confidently Tuesday that "I don't have anthrax" after biohazard testing at the White House and the discovery of anthrax on a mail-opening machine at a screening facility six miles away.
All White House mail – more than 40,000 letters a week – is examined at military facilities across the Potomac River.
"Let me put it this way," Bush said. "I'm confident that when I come to work tomorrow, I'll be safe."
Asked if he was tested for the germ that has killed three people already this month, or if he was taking precautionary antibiotics, Bush replied simply: "I don't have anthrax."
At least some White House personnel were given Cipro six weeks ago. White House officials won't discuss who might be receiving the anthrax-treating antibiotic now.
On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved.
At that time, nobody could guess the dimensions of the terrorists' plot.
Now, Bush said on Tuesday, "There's no question that the evil-doers are continuing to try to harm America and Americans."
The president spoke in an afternoon Cabinet Room meeting with members of Congress, minutes after his press secretary announced that a "small concentration" of anthrax spores were found on the slitter machine that opens White House mail at a Secret Service-controlled facility on property shared by the Anacostia Naval Station and Bolling Air Force Base.
Between three and eight workers on loan from the U.S. Postal Service had access to that contaminated machine where a trace amount – anywhere from 20 to 500 spores – of anthrax was found, a senior law enforcement official said.
At least 8,000 spores must be inhaled into the lungs to get the most deadly form of anthrax. Substantially fewer spores can cause the highly treatable cutaneous form of anthrax if they enter a cut in the skin.
Inside the iron gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. regular biohazard testing has been stepped up in the past month and no traces of anthrax have been found, said presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer.
Security officials were apparently spooked even before Tuesday's discovery at Bolling, which handles mail processed through the Brentwood postal facility, and halted mail delivery to the White House complex several days earlier.
"We have not seen mail in a while," said a West Wing aide. A staffer on campus at Bolling, in southeast Washington, said the same was true there.
Two postal workers at Brentwood died of pulmonary anthrax – one on Sunday, the other on Monday.
Brentwood is where the anthrax-laced letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was first handled.
The Bolling facility, which also handles mail to the Secret Service, "has been closed for further testing and decontamination," Fleischer said. All employees there and in mailrooms within the White House complex – which includes the mansion, its East and West Wings, and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building – were being tested for exposure to anthrax.
In a statement, the Secret Service said no one connected with the mail facility at Bolling has reported anthrax-like symptoms.
Postal and health officials have said it's possible for one anthrax-tainted letter to contaminate another, meaning the anthrax found on the Bolling machinery could have come from a letter that mixed with other mail at Brentwood.
Experts believe it unlikely that a cross-contaminated letter would have contained enough anthrax to make someone sick.
Fleischer said a sweep of the Bolling facility turned up a "positive culture" around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Given that the U.S. Capitol, network TV news anchors and media companies had already been targeted by anthrax-tainted letters, an attempted attack on the White House was almost to be expected, Fleischer said.
"There is no other target, unfortunately, like the president. ... The White House has always, unfortunately, been a target – a target for terrorists, a target for people who have shot at the building," he added.
At the Treasury Department next door, recent anthrax scares prompted officials to shut down a first-floor mail room and move all mail reception and screening to an annex across the street.
Mail sent to the Supreme Court is also intercepted off-site, where inspectors open and examine everything. Their black "NBC" stamp means the mail is free of nuclear, biological and chemical contamination.
No contamination had been found there as of Tuesday afternoon, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.
© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
Filed under
anthrax,
Cipro,
Dick Cheney
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, October 23, 2001
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Michel Chossudovsky : Osamagate
Tuesday, October 09, 2001
"OSAMAGATE"
"Now the Taliban will pay a price" vowed President George W. Bush, as American and British fighter planes unleashed missile attacks against major cities in Afghanistan. The US Administration claims that Osama bin Laden is behind the tragic events of the 11th of September. A major war supposedly "against international terrorism" has been launched, yet the evidence amply confirms that agencies of the US government have since the Cold War harbored the "Islamic Militant Network" as part of Washington's foreign policy agenda. In a bitter irony, the US Air Force is targeting the training camps established in the 1980s by the CIA.
The main justification for waging this war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future.
by Michel Chossudovsky | October 9, 2001
Confronted with mounting evidence, the US Administration can no longer deny its links to Osama. While the CIA admits that Osama bin Laden was an "intelligence asset" during the Cold War, the relationship is said to "go way back". Most news reports consider that these Osama-CIA links belong to the "bygone era" of the Soviet-Afghan war. They are invariably viewed as "irrelevant" to an understanding of present events. Lost in the barrage of recent history, the role of the CIA in supporting and developing international terrorist organisations during the Cold war and its aftermath is casually ignored or downplayed by the Western media.
Yes, We did support Him, but "He Went Against Us"
A blatant example of media distortion is the so-called "blowback" thesis: "intelligence assets" are said to "have gone against their sponsors"; "what we've created blows back in our face."1 In a twisted logic, the US government and the CIA are portrayed as the ill-fated victims:
The US media, nonetheless, concedes that "the Taliban's coming to power [in 1995] is partly the outcome of the U.S. support of the Mujahideen, the radical Islamic group, in the 1980s in the war against the Soviet Union".3 But it also readily dismisses its own factual statements and concludes in chorus, that the CIA had been tricked by a deceitful Osama. It's like "a son going against his father".
The "blowback" thesis is a fabrication. The evidence amply confirms that the CIA never severed its ties to the "Islamic Militant Network". Since the end of the Cold War, these covert intelligence links have not only been maintained, they have in become increasingly sophisticated.
New undercover initiatives financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade were set in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus (controlled by the CIA) essentially "served as a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia." 4
Replicating the Iran Contragate Pattern
Remember Ollie North and the Nicaraguan Contras under the Reagan Administration when weapons financed by the drug trade were channeled to "freedom fighters" in Washington's covert war against the Sandinista government. The same pattern was used in the Balkans to arm and equip the Mujahideen fighting in the ranks of the Bosnian Muslim army against the Armed Forces of the Yugoslav Federation.
Throughout the 1990s, the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was used by the CIA as a go-between -- to channel weapons and Mujahideen mercenaries to the Bosnian Muslim Army in the civil war in Yugoslavia. According to a report of the London based International Media Corporation:
"From the Horse's Mouth"
Ironically, the US Administration's undercover military-intelligence operations in Bosnia have been fully documented by the Republican Party. A lengthy Congressional report by the Republican Party Committee (RPC) published in 1997, largely confirms the International Media Corporation report quoted above. The RPC Congressional report accuses the Clinton administration of having "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base" leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic Network," of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world:
Complicity of the Clinton Administration
In other words, the Republican Party Committee report confirms unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton Administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organisations including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
The Republicans wanted at the time to undermine the Clinton Administration. However, at a time when the entire country had its eyes riveted on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Republicans no doubt chose not to trigger an untimely "Iran-Bosniagate" affair, which might have unduly diverted public attention away from the Lewinsky scandal. The Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton "for having lied to the American People" regarding his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the more substantive "foreign policy lies" regarding drug running and covert operations in the Balkans, Democrats and Republicans agreed in unison, no doubt pressured by the Pentagon and the CIA not to "spill the beans".
From Bosnia to Kosovo
The "Bosnian pattern" described in the 1997 Congressional RPC report was replicated in Kosovo. With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO's war effort.
Confirmed by British military sources, the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain's Secret Intelligence Services MI6, together with "former and serving members of 22 SAS [Britain's 22nd Special Air Services Regiment], as well as three British and American private security companies".7
While British SAS Special Forces in bases in Northern Albania were training the KLA, military instructors from Turkey and Afghanistan financed by the "Islamic jihad" were collaborating in training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.9:
Congressional Testimonies on KLA-Osama links
According to Frank Ciluffo of the Globalized Organised Crime Program, in a testimony presented to the House of Representatives Judicial Committee:
According to Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence division also in a testimony to the House Judicial Committee:
Madeleine Albright Covets the KLA
These KLA links to international terrorism and organised crime documented by the US Congress were totally ignored by the Clinton Administration. In fact, in the months preceding the bombing of Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was busy building a "political legitimacy" for the KLA. The paramilitary army had --from one day to the next-- been elevated to the status of a bona fide "democratic" force in Kosovo. In turn, Madeleine Albright has forced the pace of international diplomacy: the KLA had been spearheaded into playing a central role in the failed "peace negotiations" at Rambouiillet in early 1999.
The Senate and the House tacitly endorse State Terrorism
While the various Congressional reports confirmed that the US government had been working hand in glove with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, this did not prevent the Clinton and later the Bush Administration from arming and equipping the KLA. The Congressional documents also confirm that members of the Senate and the House knew the relationship of the Administration to international terrorism. To quote the statement of Rep. John Kasich of the House Armed Services Committee: "We connected ourselves [in 1998-99] with the KLA, which was the staging point for bin Laden..." 13
In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, Republicans and Democrats in unison have given their full support to the President to "wage war on Osama".
In 1999, Senator Jo Lieberman had stated authoritatively that "Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." In the hours following the October 7 missile attacks on Afghanistan, the same Jo Lieberman called for punitive air strikes against Iraq: "We're in a war against terrorism... We can't stop with bin Laden and the Taliban." Yet Senator Jo Lieberman, as member of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate had access to all the Congressional documents pertaining to "KLA-Osama" links. In making this statement, he was fully aware that that agencies of the US government as well as NATO were supporting international terrorism.
The War in Macedonia
In the wake of the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, the terrorist activities of the KLA were extended into Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Meanwhile, the KLA --renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)-- was elevated to United Nations status, implying the granting of "legitimate" sources of funding through United Nations as well as through bilateral channels, including direct US military aid.
And barely two months after the official inauguration of the KPC under UN auspices (September 1999), KPC-KLA commanders - using UN resources and equipment - were already preparing the assaults into Macedonia, as a logical follow-up to their terrorist activities in Kosovo. According to the Skopje daily Dnevnik, the KPC had established a "sixth operation zone" in Southern Serbia and Macedonia:
According to the BBC, "Western special forces were still training the guerrillas" meaning that they were assisting the KLA in opening up "a sixth operation zone" in Southern Serbia and Macedonia. 15
"The Islamic Militant Network" and NATO join hands in Macedonia
Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001) in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA's proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as well as "soldiers of fortune" from Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army. 16
Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the "Islamic Militant Network" are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen.
In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK). In fact, the "Islamic Militant Network" --also using Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) as the CIA's go-between-- still constitutes an integral part of Washington's covert military-intelligence operations in Macedonia and Southern Serbia.
The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded from US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget as well as by several Islamic organisations including Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Drug money is also being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. The recruitment of Mujahideen to fight in the ranks of the NLA in Macedonia is implemented through various Islamic groups.
US military advisers mingle with Mujahideen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahideen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia. And the US media calls this a "blowback" where so-called "intelligence assets" have gone against their sponsors!
But this did not happen during the Cold war! It is happening right now in Macedonia. And it is confirmed by numerous press reports, eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence as well as official statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister, who has accused the Western military alliance of supporting the terrorists. Moreover, the official Macedonian New Agency (MIA) has pointed to the complicity between Washington's envoy Ambassador James Pardew and the NLA terrorists. 17 In other words, the so-called "intelligence assets" are still serving the interests of their US sponsors.
Pardew's background is revealing in this regard. He started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channeling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. Coronel Pardew had been put in charge of arranging the "air-drops" of supplies to Bosnian forces. At the time, these "air drops" were tagged as "civilian aid". It later transpired --confirmed by the RPC Congressional report-- that the US had violated the arms embargo. And James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake.
Pardew was later involved in the Dayton negotiations (1995) on behalf of the US Defence Department. In 1999, prior to the bombing of Yugoslavia, he was appointed "Special Representative for Military Stabilisation and Kosovo Implementation" by President Clinton. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the "Bosnian pattern" in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia...
Justification for Waging War
The Bush Administration has stated that it has proof that Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. In the words of British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "I have seen absolutely powerful and incontrovertible evidence of his [Osama] link to the events of the 11th of September." 18 What Tony Blair fails to mention is that agencies of the US government including the CIA continue to "harbor" Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
A major war supposedly "against international terrorism" has been launched by a government which is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. In other words, the main justification for waging war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future.
This decision to mislead the American people was taken barely a few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Without supporting evidence, Osama had already been tagged as the "prime suspect." Two days later on Thursday the 13th of September --while the FBI investigations had barely commenced-- President Bush pledged to "lead the world to victory". The Administration confirmed its intention to embark on "a sustained military campaign rather than a single dramatic action" directed against Osama bin Laden. 19 In addition to Afghanistan, a number of countries in the Middle East were mentioned as possible targets including Iraq, Iran, Libya and the Sudan. And several prominent US political figures and media pundits have demanded that the air strikes be extended to other countries "which harbour international terrorism." According to intelligence sources, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda has operations in some 50 to 60 countries providing ample pretext to intervene in several "rogue states" in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Moreover, the entire US Legislature --with only one honest and courageous dissenting voice in the House of Representatives-- has tacitly endorsed the Administration's decision to go war. Members of the House and the Senate have access through the various committees to official confidential reports and intelligence documents which prove beyond doubt that agencies of the US government have ties to international terrorism. They cannot say "we did not know". In fact, most of this evidence is in the public domain.
Under the historical resolution of the US Congress adopted by both the House and the Senate on the 14th of September:
Whereas there is no evidence that agencies of the US government "aided the terrorist attacks" on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, there is ample and detailed evidence that agencies of the US government as well as NATO, have since the end of the Cold War continued to "harbor such organizations".
Patriotism cannot be based on a falsehood, particularly when it constitutes a pretext for waging war and killing innocent civilians.
Ironically, the text of the Congressional resolution also constitutes a "blowback" against the US sponsors of international terrorism. The resolution does not exclude the conduct of an "Osamagate" inquiry, as well as appropriate actions against agencies and/or individuals of the US government, who may have collaborated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. And the evidence indelibly points directly to the Bush Administration.
Notes
1. United Press International (UPI), 15 September 2001.
2. The Guardian, London, 15 September 2001.
3. UPI, op cit,
4. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 12 September 2001, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html.
5. International Media Corporation Defense and Strategy Policy, US Commits Forces, Weapons to Bosnia, London, 31 October 1994.
6. Congressional Press Release, Republican Party Committee (RPC), US Congress, Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base, 16 January 1997, available on the website of the Centre of Research on Globalisation (CRG) at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html. The original document is on the website of the US Senate Republican Party Committee (Senator Larry Craig), at http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm)
7. The Scotsman, Glasgow, 29 August 1999.
8. Ibid.
9. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, Arizona, 2 April 1999
10. Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998.
11. US Congress, Testimony of Frank J. Cilluffo , Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime, Program director to the House Judiciary Committee, 13 December 2000.
12. US Congress, Testimony of Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence Division, to the House Judicial Committee, 13 December 2000.
13. US Congress, Transcripts of the House Armed Services Committee, 5 October 1999,
14. Macedonian Information Centre Newsletter, Skopje, 21 March 2000, published by BBC Summary of World Broadcast, 24 March 2000.
15. BBC, 29 January 2001, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1142000/1142478.stm)
16. Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001 at http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/text_only.cfm?id=SS01025960, see also UPI, 9 July 2001. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Washington behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia, Centre for Research on Globalisation, August 2001, at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO108B.html.)
17. Macedonian Information Agency (MIA), 26 September 2001, available at the Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MNA110A.html
18. Quoted in The Daily Telegraph, London, 1 October 2001.
19. Statement by official following the speech by President George Bush on 14 September 2001 quoted in the International Herald Tribune, Paris, 14 September 2001.
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
Copyright, Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), October 2001. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) at editor@globalresearch.ca, fax 1-514-4256224.
"Now the Taliban will pay a price" vowed President George W. Bush, as American and British fighter planes unleashed missile attacks against major cities in Afghanistan. The US Administration claims that Osama bin Laden is behind the tragic events of the 11th of September. A major war supposedly "against international terrorism" has been launched, yet the evidence amply confirms that agencies of the US government have since the Cold War harbored the "Islamic Militant Network" as part of Washington's foreign policy agenda. In a bitter irony, the US Air Force is targeting the training camps established in the 1980s by the CIA.
The main justification for waging this war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future.
by Michel Chossudovsky | October 9, 2001
Confronted with mounting evidence, the US Administration can no longer deny its links to Osama. While the CIA admits that Osama bin Laden was an "intelligence asset" during the Cold War, the relationship is said to "go way back". Most news reports consider that these Osama-CIA links belong to the "bygone era" of the Soviet-Afghan war. They are invariably viewed as "irrelevant" to an understanding of present events. Lost in the barrage of recent history, the role of the CIA in supporting and developing international terrorist organisations during the Cold war and its aftermath is casually ignored or downplayed by the Western media.
Yes, We did support Him, but "He Went Against Us"
A blatant example of media distortion is the so-called "blowback" thesis: "intelligence assets" are said to "have gone against their sponsors"; "what we've created blows back in our face."1 In a twisted logic, the US government and the CIA are portrayed as the ill-fated victims:
The sophisticated methods taught to the Mujahideen, and the thousands of tons of arms supplied to them by the US - and Britain - are now tormenting the West in the phenomenon known as `blowback', whereby a policy strategy rebounds on its own devisers. 2
The US media, nonetheless, concedes that "the Taliban's coming to power [in 1995] is partly the outcome of the U.S. support of the Mujahideen, the radical Islamic group, in the 1980s in the war against the Soviet Union".3 But it also readily dismisses its own factual statements and concludes in chorus, that the CIA had been tricked by a deceitful Osama. It's like "a son going against his father".
The "blowback" thesis is a fabrication. The evidence amply confirms that the CIA never severed its ties to the "Islamic Militant Network". Since the end of the Cold War, these covert intelligence links have not only been maintained, they have in become increasingly sophisticated.
New undercover initiatives financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade were set in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus (controlled by the CIA) essentially "served as a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia." 4
Replicating the Iran Contragate Pattern
Remember Ollie North and the Nicaraguan Contras under the Reagan Administration when weapons financed by the drug trade were channeled to "freedom fighters" in Washington's covert war against the Sandinista government. The same pattern was used in the Balkans to arm and equip the Mujahideen fighting in the ranks of the Bosnian Muslim army against the Armed Forces of the Yugoslav Federation.
Throughout the 1990s, the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was used by the CIA as a go-between -- to channel weapons and Mujahideen mercenaries to the Bosnian Muslim Army in the civil war in Yugoslavia. According to a report of the London based International Media Corporation:
"Reliable sources report that the United States is now [1994] actively participating in the arming and training of the Muslim forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina in direct contravention of the United Nations accords. US agencies have been providing weapons made in ... China (PRC), North Korea (DPRK) and Iran. The sources indicated that ... Iran, with the knowledge and agreement of the US Government, supplied the Bosnian forces with a large number of multiple rocket launchers and a large quantity of ammunition. These included 107mm and 122mm rockets from the PRC, and VBR-230 multiple rocket launchers ... made in Iran. ... It was [also] reported that 400 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran) arrived in Bosnia with a large supply of arms and ammunition. It was alleged that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had full knowledge of the operation and that the CIA believed that some of the 400 had been detached for future terrorist operations in Western Europe.
During September and October [1994], there has been a stream of "Afghan" Mujahedin ... covertly landed in Ploce, Croatia (South-West of Mostar) from where they have traveled with false papers ... before deploying with the Bosnian Muslim forces in the Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka areas. These forces have recently [late 1994] experienced a significant degree of military success. They have, according to sources in Sarajevo, been aided by the UNPROFOR Bangladesh battalion, which took over from a French battalion early in September [1994].
The Mujahedin landing at Ploce are reported to have been accompanied by US Special Forces equipped with high-tech communications equipment, ... The sources said that the mission of the US troops was to establish a command, control, communications and intelligence network to coordinate and support Bosnian Muslim offensives -- in concert with Mujahideen and Bosnian Croat forces -- in Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka. Some offensives have recently been conducted from within the UN-established safe-havens in the Zenica and Banja Luka regions.
(...)
The US Administration has not restricted its involvement to the clandestine contravention of the UN arms embargo on the region ... It [also] committed three high-ranking delegations over the past two years [prior to 1994] in failed attempts to bring the Yugoslav Government into line with US policy. Yugoslavia is the only state in the region to have failed to acquiesce to US pressure.5
"From the Horse's Mouth"
Ironically, the US Administration's undercover military-intelligence operations in Bosnia have been fully documented by the Republican Party. A lengthy Congressional report by the Republican Party Committee (RPC) published in 1997, largely confirms the International Media Corporation report quoted above. The RPC Congressional report accuses the Clinton administration of having "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base" leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic Network," of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world:
Perhaps most threatening to the SFOR mission - and more importantly, to the safety of the American personnel serving in Bosnia - is the unwillingness of the Clinton Administration to come clean with the Congress and with the American people about its complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo. That policy, personally approved by Bill Clinton in April 1994 at the urging of CIA Director-designate (and then-NSC chief) Anthony Lake and the U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, has, according to the Los Angeles Times (citing classified intelligence community sources), "played a central role in the dramatic increase in Iranian influence in Bosnia.
(...)
Along with the weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and VEVAK intelligence operatives entered Bosnia in large numbers, along with thousands of mujahedin ("holy warriors") from across the Muslim world. Also engaged in the effort were several other Muslim countries (including Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey) and a number of radical Muslim organizations. For example, the role of one Sudan-based "humanitarian organization," called the Third World Relief Agency, has been well documented. The Clinton Administration's "hands-on" involvement with the Islamic network's arms pipeline included inspections of missiles from Iran by U.S. government officials... the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization ... has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. ... TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi émigré believed to bankroll numerous militant groups. [Washington Post, 9/22/96] 6
Complicity of the Clinton Administration
In other words, the Republican Party Committee report confirms unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton Administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organisations including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
The Republicans wanted at the time to undermine the Clinton Administration. However, at a time when the entire country had its eyes riveted on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Republicans no doubt chose not to trigger an untimely "Iran-Bosniagate" affair, which might have unduly diverted public attention away from the Lewinsky scandal. The Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton "for having lied to the American People" regarding his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the more substantive "foreign policy lies" regarding drug running and covert operations in the Balkans, Democrats and Republicans agreed in unison, no doubt pressured by the Pentagon and the CIA not to "spill the beans".
From Bosnia to Kosovo
The "Bosnian pattern" described in the 1997 Congressional RPC report was replicated in Kosovo. With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO's war effort.
Confirmed by British military sources, the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain's Secret Intelligence Services MI6, together with "former and serving members of 22 SAS [Britain's 22nd Special Air Services Regiment], as well as three British and American private security companies".7
The US DIA approached MI6 to arrange a training programme for the KLA, said a senior British military source. `MI6 then sub-contracted the operation to two British security companies, who in turn approached a number of former members of the (22 SAS) regiment. Lists were then drawn up of weapons and equipment needed by the KLA.' While these covert operations were continuing, serving members of 22 SAS Regiment, mostly from the unit's D Squadron, were first deployed in Kosovo before the beginning of the bombing campaign in March. 8
While British SAS Special Forces in bases in Northern Albania were training the KLA, military instructors from Turkey and Afghanistan financed by the "Islamic jihad" were collaborating in training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.9:
Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. He was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, ... Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 ... Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists. 10
Congressional Testimonies on KLA-Osama links
According to Frank Ciluffo of the Globalized Organised Crime Program, in a testimony presented to the House of Representatives Judicial Committee:
What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the "Balkan Route" that links the "Golden Crescent" of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe. 11
According to Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence division also in a testimony to the House Judicial Committee:
The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden" . Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. 12
Madeleine Albright Covets the KLA
These KLA links to international terrorism and organised crime documented by the US Congress were totally ignored by the Clinton Administration. In fact, in the months preceding the bombing of Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was busy building a "political legitimacy" for the KLA. The paramilitary army had --from one day to the next-- been elevated to the status of a bona fide "democratic" force in Kosovo. In turn, Madeleine Albright has forced the pace of international diplomacy: the KLA had been spearheaded into playing a central role in the failed "peace negotiations" at Rambouiillet in early 1999.
The Senate and the House tacitly endorse State Terrorism
While the various Congressional reports confirmed that the US government had been working hand in glove with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, this did not prevent the Clinton and later the Bush Administration from arming and equipping the KLA. The Congressional documents also confirm that members of the Senate and the House knew the relationship of the Administration to international terrorism. To quote the statement of Rep. John Kasich of the House Armed Services Committee: "We connected ourselves [in 1998-99] with the KLA, which was the staging point for bin Laden..." 13
In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, Republicans and Democrats in unison have given their full support to the President to "wage war on Osama".
In 1999, Senator Jo Lieberman had stated authoritatively that "Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." In the hours following the October 7 missile attacks on Afghanistan, the same Jo Lieberman called for punitive air strikes against Iraq: "We're in a war against terrorism... We can't stop with bin Laden and the Taliban." Yet Senator Jo Lieberman, as member of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate had access to all the Congressional documents pertaining to "KLA-Osama" links. In making this statement, he was fully aware that that agencies of the US government as well as NATO were supporting international terrorism.
The War in Macedonia
In the wake of the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, the terrorist activities of the KLA were extended into Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Meanwhile, the KLA --renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)-- was elevated to United Nations status, implying the granting of "legitimate" sources of funding through United Nations as well as through bilateral channels, including direct US military aid.
And barely two months after the official inauguration of the KPC under UN auspices (September 1999), KPC-KLA commanders - using UN resources and equipment - were already preparing the assaults into Macedonia, as a logical follow-up to their terrorist activities in Kosovo. According to the Skopje daily Dnevnik, the KPC had established a "sixth operation zone" in Southern Serbia and Macedonia:
Sources, who insist on anonymity, claim that the headquarters of the Kosovo protection brigades [i.e. linked to the UN sponsored KPC] have [March 2000] already been formed in Tetovo, Gostivar and Skopje. They are being prepared in Debar and Struga [on the border with Albania] as well, and their members have defined codes. 14
According to the BBC, "Western special forces were still training the guerrillas" meaning that they were assisting the KLA in opening up "a sixth operation zone" in Southern Serbia and Macedonia. 15
"The Islamic Militant Network" and NATO join hands in Macedonia
Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001) in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA's proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as well as "soldiers of fortune" from Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army. 16
Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the "Islamic Militant Network" are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen.
In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK). In fact, the "Islamic Militant Network" --also using Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) as the CIA's go-between-- still constitutes an integral part of Washington's covert military-intelligence operations in Macedonia and Southern Serbia.
The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded from US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget as well as by several Islamic organisations including Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Drug money is also being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. The recruitment of Mujahideen to fight in the ranks of the NLA in Macedonia is implemented through various Islamic groups.
US military advisers mingle with Mujahideen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahideen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia. And the US media calls this a "blowback" where so-called "intelligence assets" have gone against their sponsors!
But this did not happen during the Cold war! It is happening right now in Macedonia. And it is confirmed by numerous press reports, eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence as well as official statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister, who has accused the Western military alliance of supporting the terrorists. Moreover, the official Macedonian New Agency (MIA) has pointed to the complicity between Washington's envoy Ambassador James Pardew and the NLA terrorists. 17 In other words, the so-called "intelligence assets" are still serving the interests of their US sponsors.
Pardew's background is revealing in this regard. He started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channeling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. Coronel Pardew had been put in charge of arranging the "air-drops" of supplies to Bosnian forces. At the time, these "air drops" were tagged as "civilian aid". It later transpired --confirmed by the RPC Congressional report-- that the US had violated the arms embargo. And James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake.
Pardew was later involved in the Dayton negotiations (1995) on behalf of the US Defence Department. In 1999, prior to the bombing of Yugoslavia, he was appointed "Special Representative for Military Stabilisation and Kosovo Implementation" by President Clinton. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the "Bosnian pattern" in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia...
Justification for Waging War
The Bush Administration has stated that it has proof that Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. In the words of British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "I have seen absolutely powerful and incontrovertible evidence of his [Osama] link to the events of the 11th of September." 18 What Tony Blair fails to mention is that agencies of the US government including the CIA continue to "harbor" Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
A major war supposedly "against international terrorism" has been launched by a government which is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. In other words, the main justification for waging war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future.
This decision to mislead the American people was taken barely a few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Without supporting evidence, Osama had already been tagged as the "prime suspect." Two days later on Thursday the 13th of September --while the FBI investigations had barely commenced-- President Bush pledged to "lead the world to victory". The Administration confirmed its intention to embark on "a sustained military campaign rather than a single dramatic action" directed against Osama bin Laden. 19 In addition to Afghanistan, a number of countries in the Middle East were mentioned as possible targets including Iraq, Iran, Libya and the Sudan. And several prominent US political figures and media pundits have demanded that the air strikes be extended to other countries "which harbour international terrorism." According to intelligence sources, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda has operations in some 50 to 60 countries providing ample pretext to intervene in several "rogue states" in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Moreover, the entire US Legislature --with only one honest and courageous dissenting voice in the House of Representatives-- has tacitly endorsed the Administration's decision to go war. Members of the House and the Senate have access through the various committees to official confidential reports and intelligence documents which prove beyond doubt that agencies of the US government have ties to international terrorism. They cannot say "we did not know". In fact, most of this evidence is in the public domain.
Under the historical resolution of the US Congress adopted by both the House and the Senate on the 14th of September:
The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
Whereas there is no evidence that agencies of the US government "aided the terrorist attacks" on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, there is ample and detailed evidence that agencies of the US government as well as NATO, have since the end of the Cold War continued to "harbor such organizations".
Patriotism cannot be based on a falsehood, particularly when it constitutes a pretext for waging war and killing innocent civilians.
Ironically, the text of the Congressional resolution also constitutes a "blowback" against the US sponsors of international terrorism. The resolution does not exclude the conduct of an "Osamagate" inquiry, as well as appropriate actions against agencies and/or individuals of the US government, who may have collaborated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. And the evidence indelibly points directly to the Bush Administration.
Notes
1. United Press International (UPI), 15 September 2001.
2. The Guardian, London, 15 September 2001.
3. UPI, op cit,
4. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 12 September 2001, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html.
5. International Media Corporation Defense and Strategy Policy, US Commits Forces, Weapons to Bosnia, London, 31 October 1994.
6. Congressional Press Release, Republican Party Committee (RPC), US Congress, Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base, 16 January 1997, available on the website of the Centre of Research on Globalisation (CRG) at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html. The original document is on the website of the US Senate Republican Party Committee (Senator Larry Craig), at http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm)
7. The Scotsman, Glasgow, 29 August 1999.
8. Ibid.
9. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, Arizona, 2 April 1999
10. Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998.
11. US Congress, Testimony of Frank J. Cilluffo , Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime, Program director to the House Judiciary Committee, 13 December 2000.
12. US Congress, Testimony of Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence Division, to the House Judicial Committee, 13 December 2000.
13. US Congress, Transcripts of the House Armed Services Committee, 5 October 1999,
14. Macedonian Information Centre Newsletter, Skopje, 21 March 2000, published by BBC Summary of World Broadcast, 24 March 2000.
15. BBC, 29 January 2001, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1142000/1142478.stm)
16. Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001 at http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/text_only.cfm?id=SS01025960, see also UPI, 9 July 2001. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Washington behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia, Centre for Research on Globalisation, August 2001, at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO108B.html.)
17. Macedonian Information Agency (MIA), 26 September 2001, available at the Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MNA110A.html
18. Quoted in The Daily Telegraph, London, 1 October 2001.
19. Statement by official following the speech by President George Bush on 14 September 2001 quoted in the International Herald Tribune, Paris, 14 September 2001.
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
Copyright, Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), October 2001. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) at editor@globalresearch.ca, fax 1-514-4256224.
Jane's International Security News : Vital intelligence on the Taliban may rest with its prime sponsor – Pakistan’s ISI
Monday, October 01, 2001
Vital intelligence on the Taliban may rest with its prime sponsor – Pakistan’s ISI
By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi | October 1, 2001
Pakistan’s sinister Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) remains the key to providing accurate information to the US-led alliance in its war against Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. Known as Pakistan’s ‘secret army’ and ‘invisible government’, its shadowy past is linked to political assassinations and the smuggling of narcotics as well as nuclear and missile components.
The ISI also openly backs the Taliban and fuels the 12-year-old insurgency in northern India’s disputed Kashmir province by ‘sponsoring’ Muslim militant groups and ministering its policy of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ that so effectively drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and led to their political demise.
The goings on behind the ISI’s nondescript headquarters, located behind high walls on Khayban-e-Suharwady avenue in the heart of the capital Islamabad and its operational offices in the adjoining garrison town of Rawalpindi, have dominated Pakistan’s domestic, nuclear and foreign policies – especially those relating to Afghanistan – for over two decades.
The ISI chief, Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed, who was visiting Washington when New York and the Pentagon were attacked, agreed to share desperately needed information about the Taliban with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US security officials. The CIA has well-established links with the ISI, having trained it in the 1980s to ‘run’ Afghan mujahideen (holy Muslim warriors), Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan as well as Arab volunteers by providing them with arms and logistic support to evict the Soviet occupation of Kabul.
The ISI is presently the ‘eyes and ears’ of the US-led covert action to seize Bin Laden from the Taliban, since hundreds of its agents and their Pathan ‘assets’ continue to operate across Afghanistan. Its influence with the Taliban can be gauged from the inclusion of Gen Ahmed in the Pakistani military and diplomatic delegation to the militia’s religious capital, Kandhar, in southern Afghanistan in an attempt to defuse the looming military crisis. The Pakistani delegation appealed to the Taliban, albeit in vain, to hand over Bin Laden to the US, which holds him responsible for the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington in which nearly 7000 people are feared to have died.
Founded soon after independence in 1948 to collect intelligence in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), the ISI was modelled on Savak, the Iranian security agency, and like Savak was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the SDECE, France’s external intelligence service. The 1979 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan led the CIA, smarting from its retreat from Vietnam, into enhancing the ISI's covert action capabilities by running mujahideen resistance groups against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Former Pakistani president General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who was ultimately assassinated along with his ISI chief, expanded the agency’s internal charter by tasking it with collecting information on local religious and political groups opposed to his military regime. Under Gen Zia the ISI’s Internal Political Division reportedly assassinated Shah Nawaz Bhutto, one of the two brothers of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, by poisoning him on the French Riviera in 1985. The aim was to intimidate Miss Bhutto into not returning to Pakistan to direct the multi-party movement for the restoration of democracy, but Miss Bhutto refused to be cowed down and returned home, only to be toppled by the ISI soon after becoming prime minister in 1988.
The ISI is believed to have recently formed a secret task force under Gen Ahmed comprising Interior Minister Lt Gen (retd) Moinuddin Haider and Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Muzaffar Usmani to ‘destroy’ major political parties and the separatist Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM) in southern Sindh province.
This task force has reportedly encouraged not only religious Islamic organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JuI) but also sectarian organisations such as the fundamentalist Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (which are closely linked to the Taliban and Bin Laden) to extend their activities to Sindh. These organisations are believed to have ‘slipped the ISI collar’ and begun recruiting unemployed Sindhi rural youth for the Taliban, posing a threat to Gen Musharraf's co-operation with Washington by formenting jihad against the West.
After the ignominious Soviet withdrawal from Kabul in 1989 the ISI, determined to achieve its aim of extending Pakistan's ‘strategic depth’ and creating an Islamic Caliphate by controlling Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics, began sponsoring a little-known Pathan student movement in Kandhar that emerged as the Taliban. The ISI used funds from Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's federal government and from overseas Islamic remittances to enrol graduates from thousands of madrassahs (Muslim seminaries) across Pakistan to bolster the Taliban (Islamic students), who were led by the reclusive Mullah Muhammad Omar. Thereafter, through a ruthless combination of bribing Afghanistan’s ruling tribal coalition (which was riven with internecine rivalry), guerrilla tactics and military support the ISI installed the Taliban regime in Kabul in 1996. It then helped to extend its control over 95 per cent of the war-torn country and bolster its military capabilities. The ISI is believed to have posted additional operatives in Afghanistan just before the 11 September attacks in the US.
Along with Osama bin Laden, intelligence sources say a number of other infamous names emerged from the 1980s ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan. These included Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, Virginia, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Center bombing five years later as well as a host of powerful international narcotics smugglers.
Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan’s northern tribal belt and neighbouring Afghanistan was also a vital offshoot of the ISI-CIA co-operation. It succeeded not only in turning Soviet troops into addicts, but also in boosting heroin sales in Europe and the US through an elaborate web of well-documented deceptions, transport networks, couriers and payoffs. This, in turn, offset the cost of the decade-long anti-Soviet ‘unholy war’ in Afghanistan.
"The heroin dollars contributed largely to bolstering the Pakistani economy, its nuclear programme and enabled the ISI to sponsor its covert operations in Afghanistan and northern India's disputed Kashmir state," according to an Indian intelligence officer. In the 1970s, the ISI had established a division to procure military nuclear and missile technology from abroad, particularly from China and North Korea. They also smuggled in critical nuclear components and know-how from Europe – activities known to the US but ones it chose to turn a blind eye to as Washington’s objective of ‘humiliating’ the Soviet bear remained incomplete.
A Director General, always an army officer of the rank of lieutenant general, heads the ISI, which is controlled by Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence and reports directly to the chief of army staff. As the current ISI chief, Gen Ahmed is assisted by three major generals heading the agency’s political, external and administrative divisions, which are divided broadly into eight sections:
* Joint Intelligence North: responsible for the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Kashmir insurgency. This section controls the Army of Islam that comprises Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group and Kashmiri militant groups like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (banned by the US last week), Lashkar-e-Toiba, Al Badr and Jaissh-e-Mohammad. Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz, presently commanding the Lahore Corps and a former ISI officer, reportedly heads the Army of Islam, which also controls all opium cultivation and heroin refining and smuggling from Pakistani and Afghan territory
* Joint Intelligence Bureau: responsible for open sources and human intelligence collection locally and abroad
* Joint Counter-Intelligence Bureau: tasked with counter-intelligence activities internally and abroad
* Joint Signals Intelligence Bureau: in-charge of all communications intelligence
* Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous: responsible for covert actions abroad, particularly those related to the clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technologies
* Joint Intelligence X: looks after administration and accounts
* Joint Intelligence Technical: collects all technical intelligence other than communications intelligence for research and development of equipment
* The Special Wing: runs the Defence Services Intelligence Academy and liaises with foreign intelligence and security agencies.
"The concern now for General Musharraf is whether the ISI will remain loyal to him and provide the US with credible information or continue to pursue its aims of ensuing the Taliban’s continuance in Kabul," said one intelligence officer. The US, he added, will pull out of the region once its objectives have been achieved, but Afghanistan, with its incessant and seemingly irresolute turmoil, will remain Pakistan’s neighbour for good.
By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi | October 1, 2001
Pakistan’s sinister Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) remains the key to providing accurate information to the US-led alliance in its war against Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. Known as Pakistan’s ‘secret army’ and ‘invisible government’, its shadowy past is linked to political assassinations and the smuggling of narcotics as well as nuclear and missile components.
The ISI also openly backs the Taliban and fuels the 12-year-old insurgency in northern India’s disputed Kashmir province by ‘sponsoring’ Muslim militant groups and ministering its policy of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ that so effectively drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and led to their political demise.
The goings on behind the ISI’s nondescript headquarters, located behind high walls on Khayban-e-Suharwady avenue in the heart of the capital Islamabad and its operational offices in the adjoining garrison town of Rawalpindi, have dominated Pakistan’s domestic, nuclear and foreign policies – especially those relating to Afghanistan – for over two decades.
The ISI chief, Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed, who was visiting Washington when New York and the Pentagon were attacked, agreed to share desperately needed information about the Taliban with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US security officials. The CIA has well-established links with the ISI, having trained it in the 1980s to ‘run’ Afghan mujahideen (holy Muslim warriors), Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan as well as Arab volunteers by providing them with arms and logistic support to evict the Soviet occupation of Kabul.
The ISI is presently the ‘eyes and ears’ of the US-led covert action to seize Bin Laden from the Taliban, since hundreds of its agents and their Pathan ‘assets’ continue to operate across Afghanistan. Its influence with the Taliban can be gauged from the inclusion of Gen Ahmed in the Pakistani military and diplomatic delegation to the militia’s religious capital, Kandhar, in southern Afghanistan in an attempt to defuse the looming military crisis. The Pakistani delegation appealed to the Taliban, albeit in vain, to hand over Bin Laden to the US, which holds him responsible for the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington in which nearly 7000 people are feared to have died.
Founded soon after independence in 1948 to collect intelligence in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), the ISI was modelled on Savak, the Iranian security agency, and like Savak was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the SDECE, France’s external intelligence service. The 1979 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan led the CIA, smarting from its retreat from Vietnam, into enhancing the ISI's covert action capabilities by running mujahideen resistance groups against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Former Pakistani president General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who was ultimately assassinated along with his ISI chief, expanded the agency’s internal charter by tasking it with collecting information on local religious and political groups opposed to his military regime. Under Gen Zia the ISI’s Internal Political Division reportedly assassinated Shah Nawaz Bhutto, one of the two brothers of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, by poisoning him on the French Riviera in 1985. The aim was to intimidate Miss Bhutto into not returning to Pakistan to direct the multi-party movement for the restoration of democracy, but Miss Bhutto refused to be cowed down and returned home, only to be toppled by the ISI soon after becoming prime minister in 1988.
The ISI is believed to have recently formed a secret task force under Gen Ahmed comprising Interior Minister Lt Gen (retd) Moinuddin Haider and Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Muzaffar Usmani to ‘destroy’ major political parties and the separatist Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM) in southern Sindh province.
This task force has reportedly encouraged not only religious Islamic organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JuI) but also sectarian organisations such as the fundamentalist Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (which are closely linked to the Taliban and Bin Laden) to extend their activities to Sindh. These organisations are believed to have ‘slipped the ISI collar’ and begun recruiting unemployed Sindhi rural youth for the Taliban, posing a threat to Gen Musharraf's co-operation with Washington by formenting jihad against the West.
After the ignominious Soviet withdrawal from Kabul in 1989 the ISI, determined to achieve its aim of extending Pakistan's ‘strategic depth’ and creating an Islamic Caliphate by controlling Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics, began sponsoring a little-known Pathan student movement in Kandhar that emerged as the Taliban. The ISI used funds from Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's federal government and from overseas Islamic remittances to enrol graduates from thousands of madrassahs (Muslim seminaries) across Pakistan to bolster the Taliban (Islamic students), who were led by the reclusive Mullah Muhammad Omar. Thereafter, through a ruthless combination of bribing Afghanistan’s ruling tribal coalition (which was riven with internecine rivalry), guerrilla tactics and military support the ISI installed the Taliban regime in Kabul in 1996. It then helped to extend its control over 95 per cent of the war-torn country and bolster its military capabilities. The ISI is believed to have posted additional operatives in Afghanistan just before the 11 September attacks in the US.
Along with Osama bin Laden, intelligence sources say a number of other infamous names emerged from the 1980s ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan. These included Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, Virginia, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Center bombing five years later as well as a host of powerful international narcotics smugglers.
Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan’s northern tribal belt and neighbouring Afghanistan was also a vital offshoot of the ISI-CIA co-operation. It succeeded not only in turning Soviet troops into addicts, but also in boosting heroin sales in Europe and the US through an elaborate web of well-documented deceptions, transport networks, couriers and payoffs. This, in turn, offset the cost of the decade-long anti-Soviet ‘unholy war’ in Afghanistan.
"The heroin dollars contributed largely to bolstering the Pakistani economy, its nuclear programme and enabled the ISI to sponsor its covert operations in Afghanistan and northern India's disputed Kashmir state," according to an Indian intelligence officer. In the 1970s, the ISI had established a division to procure military nuclear and missile technology from abroad, particularly from China and North Korea. They also smuggled in critical nuclear components and know-how from Europe – activities known to the US but ones it chose to turn a blind eye to as Washington’s objective of ‘humiliating’ the Soviet bear remained incomplete.
A Director General, always an army officer of the rank of lieutenant general, heads the ISI, which is controlled by Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence and reports directly to the chief of army staff. As the current ISI chief, Gen Ahmed is assisted by three major generals heading the agency’s political, external and administrative divisions, which are divided broadly into eight sections:
* Joint Intelligence North: responsible for the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Kashmir insurgency. This section controls the Army of Islam that comprises Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group and Kashmiri militant groups like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (banned by the US last week), Lashkar-e-Toiba, Al Badr and Jaissh-e-Mohammad. Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz, presently commanding the Lahore Corps and a former ISI officer, reportedly heads the Army of Islam, which also controls all opium cultivation and heroin refining and smuggling from Pakistani and Afghan territory
* Joint Intelligence Bureau: responsible for open sources and human intelligence collection locally and abroad
* Joint Counter-Intelligence Bureau: tasked with counter-intelligence activities internally and abroad
* Joint Signals Intelligence Bureau: in-charge of all communications intelligence
* Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous: responsible for covert actions abroad, particularly those related to the clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technologies
* Joint Intelligence X: looks after administration and accounts
* Joint Intelligence Technical: collects all technical intelligence other than communications intelligence for research and development of equipment
* The Special Wing: runs the Defence Services Intelligence Academy and liaises with foreign intelligence and security agencies.
"The concern now for General Musharraf is whether the ISI will remain loyal to him and provide the US with credible information or continue to pursue its aims of ensuing the Taliban’s continuance in Kabul," said one intelligence officer. The US, he added, will pull out of the region once its objectives have been achieved, but Afghanistan, with its incessant and seemingly irresolute turmoil, will remain Pakistan’s neighbour for good.
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Lahore,
Pakistan,
Ramzi Yousef,
Rawalpindi,
Taliban
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, October 01, 2001
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WSWS : White House lied about threat to Air Force One
Friday, September 28, 2001
White House lied about threat to Air Force One
By Jerry White | September 28, 2001
The White House has been caught in a lie about the alleged terrorist threat against Air Force One which it had cited as the reason for President Bush’s absence from Washington for most of September 11. According to reports by CBS News and the Washington Post, White House officials have stated that the Secret Service never received a phone call warning of a direct threat to the president’s airplane. The government’s reversal has gone largely unreported in the media.
In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush’s movements became a matter of controversy within political and media circles. As the destruction in New York and Washington unfolded and unconfirmed reports emerged of a car bomb at the State Department and the danger of further hijackings, Bush, who began the day in Florida, was whisked from one military installation to another by the Secret Service.
Looking pale and shaken, he taped a brief initial message from an underground bunker at an air force base in Louisiana. Several hours later—when all non-US military aircraft in American air space had been grounded—Bush was flown to another fortified location at the Strategic Air Command headquarters in Nebraska. The president did not return to Washington until 7 p.m., nearly 10 hours after the initial attack.
Bush’s failure to quickly return to Washington sparked pointed criticism, including from within the Republican Party. Under conditions of a massive attack on US civilians, involving the destruction of a symbol of American financial power and the partial destruction of the nerve center of the American military, any appearance of indecisiveness or panic on the part of the US president was of great concern to the American political and financial elite.
New York Times columnist William Safire, a one-time Nixon aide and fixture within the Republican Party, suggested that Bush had panicked and all but abandoned his post in the first hours of the crisis. Writing in a September 12 op-ed piece, Safire said, “Even in the first horrified moments, this was never seen as a nuclear attack by a foreign power. Bush should have insisted on coming right back to the Washington area, broadcasting—live and calm—from a secure facility not far from the White House.”
Stung by such criticisms, Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove and other top administration officials worked feverishly to reassure the political, corporate and military establishment, and bolster Bush’s authority among the population at large. By the afternoon of September 12, the Associated Press and Reuters were carrying stories, widely circulated throughout the media, that were intended to diffuse criticism of Bush’s actions the previous day. They quoted a White House spokesperson saying, “There was real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets of terrorist attacks and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was headed for the White House.” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer repeated this claim at an afternoon news briefing that same day, saying the Secret Service had “specific and credible information” that the White House and Air Force One were potential targets.
In a further column in the New York Times on September 13, entitled “Inside the Bunker,” Safire described a conversation with an unnamed “high White House official,” who told him, “A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that ‘Air Force One is next.’” Safire continued: “According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.”
Safire reported that this information was confirmed by Rove, who told him Bush had wanted to return to Washington but the Secret Service “informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts.”
Two weeks after these astonishing claims, the administration has all but admitted it concocted the entire story. CBS Evening News reported September 25 that the call “simply never happened.”
The fact that top officials, at a time of extraordinary crisis and public anxiety, lied to protect the president’s image has immense implications. If, within 24 hours of the terror attacks, the White House was giving out disinformation to deceive the American public and world opinion, then none of the claims made by the government from September 11 to the present can be taken for good coin.
If Bush lied about his activities on the day of the attacks, why should anyone assume he has not lied about the government’s investigation, the identity of the perpetrators, the motives and aims of US war preparations, and the intent and scope of expanded police powers demanded by his administration to wiretap, search and seize, and detain suspects?
This entire episode provides ample grounds for the American people to treat all claims by the government with the utmost suspicion and not accept any of its assertions without independent and verifiable information.
The duplicity of the government is all the more significant since the Bush administration has taken the position that people not only in the US, but throughout the world, must accept on faith its assertions that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network are responsible for the attacks, and that the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan bears direct responsibility because it harbors bin Laden.
It is quite possible that bin Laden played a role in the September 11 atrocities. To date, however, Bush has offered no evidence, and, apparently, has no intention of doing so. Instead the administration insists that the American people place blind trust in the White House and give it a blank check for waging war and trampling on civil liberties.
The phony Air Force One story not only exposes the duplicitous methods of the Bush administration, it also underscores the shamelessness and complicity of the media. When the White House came out with the story of a terrorist phone threat against the president’s plane, the media uncritically repeated it, with banner headlines and chilling segments on the evening news. As it has throughout the present crisis, the media functioned unabashedly as a propaganda arm of the government.
But when the White House, two weeks later, retracted the story, most networks failed to even report the fact, as did leading newspapers such as the New York Times. The Washington Post, for its part, buried the government’s about-face on its inside pages. No media outlet made an issue of this incriminating admission, or discussed its broader implications.
Well before the official retraction, it was widely accepted in the Washington press corps that the administration had made up the Air Force One story. In her column in the September 23 New York Times, Maureen Dowd noted that Karl Rove had “called around town, trying to sell reporters the story— now widely discredited —that Mr. Bush didn’t immediately return to Washington on Sept. 11 because the plane that was headed for the Pentagon may have really been targeting the White House, and that Air Force One was in jeopardy, too” (emphasis added).
Dowd and her colleagues believed the government was lying, but the public had no way of knowing the story was not credible since the news media refused to openly challenge it.
There may be another reason for the silence of the press. The story handed out on September 12 by Rove, Fleischer and other White House officials raised issues even more explosive and potentially damning than Bush’s feckless behavior on September 11.
Safire pointed to one such question in his September 13 New York Times column. Referring to the White House claim that the terrorists had knowledge of secret information about Air Force One, Safire asked: “How did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides? That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House—that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.”
Safire’s entirely valid question as to how a supposed terrorist could have knowledge of such top-secret and sensitive information has never been taken up by the media at large, or addressed by the government.
If, indeed, such a phone call took place, it would raise an alternate theory of contact between the terrorists and one or another agency of the government at least as plausible as that suggested by Safire: Namely, that the call was not a threat, but rather a tip-off from an informant for the US who had knowledge of the plans and activities of the terrorists.
The World Socialist Web Site does not claim to have an answer to these questions. But it is legitimate and necessary to raise them, especially since they are posed by the government’s own statements.
One thing is clear: the government lied to the people of America and the world. Either it lied on September 12 when it issued the story of the threat to Air Force One, or it lied two weeks later when it retracted the story. The millions of people who are being told they must accept unbridled militarism and the gutting of their democratic rights in the name of a holy war against terrorism must draw the appropriate conclusions from this indisputable fact.
By Jerry White | September 28, 2001
The White House has been caught in a lie about the alleged terrorist threat against Air Force One which it had cited as the reason for President Bush’s absence from Washington for most of September 11. According to reports by CBS News and the Washington Post, White House officials have stated that the Secret Service never received a phone call warning of a direct threat to the president’s airplane. The government’s reversal has gone largely unreported in the media.
In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush’s movements became a matter of controversy within political and media circles. As the destruction in New York and Washington unfolded and unconfirmed reports emerged of a car bomb at the State Department and the danger of further hijackings, Bush, who began the day in Florida, was whisked from one military installation to another by the Secret Service.
Looking pale and shaken, he taped a brief initial message from an underground bunker at an air force base in Louisiana. Several hours later—when all non-US military aircraft in American air space had been grounded—Bush was flown to another fortified location at the Strategic Air Command headquarters in Nebraska. The president did not return to Washington until 7 p.m., nearly 10 hours after the initial attack.
Bush’s failure to quickly return to Washington sparked pointed criticism, including from within the Republican Party. Under conditions of a massive attack on US civilians, involving the destruction of a symbol of American financial power and the partial destruction of the nerve center of the American military, any appearance of indecisiveness or panic on the part of the US president was of great concern to the American political and financial elite.
New York Times columnist William Safire, a one-time Nixon aide and fixture within the Republican Party, suggested that Bush had panicked and all but abandoned his post in the first hours of the crisis. Writing in a September 12 op-ed piece, Safire said, “Even in the first horrified moments, this was never seen as a nuclear attack by a foreign power. Bush should have insisted on coming right back to the Washington area, broadcasting—live and calm—from a secure facility not far from the White House.”
Stung by such criticisms, Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove and other top administration officials worked feverishly to reassure the political, corporate and military establishment, and bolster Bush’s authority among the population at large. By the afternoon of September 12, the Associated Press and Reuters were carrying stories, widely circulated throughout the media, that were intended to diffuse criticism of Bush’s actions the previous day. They quoted a White House spokesperson saying, “There was real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets of terrorist attacks and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was headed for the White House.” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer repeated this claim at an afternoon news briefing that same day, saying the Secret Service had “specific and credible information” that the White House and Air Force One were potential targets.
In a further column in the New York Times on September 13, entitled “Inside the Bunker,” Safire described a conversation with an unnamed “high White House official,” who told him, “A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that ‘Air Force One is next.’” Safire continued: “According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.”
Safire reported that this information was confirmed by Rove, who told him Bush had wanted to return to Washington but the Secret Service “informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts.”
Two weeks after these astonishing claims, the administration has all but admitted it concocted the entire story. CBS Evening News reported September 25 that the call “simply never happened.”
The fact that top officials, at a time of extraordinary crisis and public anxiety, lied to protect the president’s image has immense implications. If, within 24 hours of the terror attacks, the White House was giving out disinformation to deceive the American public and world opinion, then none of the claims made by the government from September 11 to the present can be taken for good coin.
If Bush lied about his activities on the day of the attacks, why should anyone assume he has not lied about the government’s investigation, the identity of the perpetrators, the motives and aims of US war preparations, and the intent and scope of expanded police powers demanded by his administration to wiretap, search and seize, and detain suspects?
This entire episode provides ample grounds for the American people to treat all claims by the government with the utmost suspicion and not accept any of its assertions without independent and verifiable information.
The duplicity of the government is all the more significant since the Bush administration has taken the position that people not only in the US, but throughout the world, must accept on faith its assertions that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network are responsible for the attacks, and that the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan bears direct responsibility because it harbors bin Laden.
It is quite possible that bin Laden played a role in the September 11 atrocities. To date, however, Bush has offered no evidence, and, apparently, has no intention of doing so. Instead the administration insists that the American people place blind trust in the White House and give it a blank check for waging war and trampling on civil liberties.
The phony Air Force One story not only exposes the duplicitous methods of the Bush administration, it also underscores the shamelessness and complicity of the media. When the White House came out with the story of a terrorist phone threat against the president’s plane, the media uncritically repeated it, with banner headlines and chilling segments on the evening news. As it has throughout the present crisis, the media functioned unabashedly as a propaganda arm of the government.
But when the White House, two weeks later, retracted the story, most networks failed to even report the fact, as did leading newspapers such as the New York Times. The Washington Post, for its part, buried the government’s about-face on its inside pages. No media outlet made an issue of this incriminating admission, or discussed its broader implications.
Well before the official retraction, it was widely accepted in the Washington press corps that the administration had made up the Air Force One story. In her column in the September 23 New York Times, Maureen Dowd noted that Karl Rove had “called around town, trying to sell reporters the story— now widely discredited —that Mr. Bush didn’t immediately return to Washington on Sept. 11 because the plane that was headed for the Pentagon may have really been targeting the White House, and that Air Force One was in jeopardy, too” (emphasis added).
Dowd and her colleagues believed the government was lying, but the public had no way of knowing the story was not credible since the news media refused to openly challenge it.
There may be another reason for the silence of the press. The story handed out on September 12 by Rove, Fleischer and other White House officials raised issues even more explosive and potentially damning than Bush’s feckless behavior on September 11.
Safire pointed to one such question in his September 13 New York Times column. Referring to the White House claim that the terrorists had knowledge of secret information about Air Force One, Safire asked: “How did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides? That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House—that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.”
Safire’s entirely valid question as to how a supposed terrorist could have knowledge of such top-secret and sensitive information has never been taken up by the media at large, or addressed by the government.
If, indeed, such a phone call took place, it would raise an alternate theory of contact between the terrorists and one or another agency of the government at least as plausible as that suggested by Safire: Namely, that the call was not a threat, but rather a tip-off from an informant for the US who had knowledge of the plans and activities of the terrorists.
The World Socialist Web Site does not claim to have an answer to these questions. But it is legitimate and necessary to raise them, especially since they are posed by the government’s own statements.
One thing is clear: the government lied to the people of America and the world. Either it lied on September 12 when it issued the story of the threat to Air Force One, or it lied two weeks later when it retracted the story. The millions of people who are being told they must accept unbridled militarism and the gutting of their democratic rights in the name of a holy war against terrorism must draw the appropriate conclusions from this indisputable fact.
WP : Kissinger: Destroy The Network
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
Destroy The Network
By Henry Kissinger | September 12, 2001
An attack such as yesterday's requires systematic planning, a good organization, a lot of money and a base. You cannot improvise something like this, and you cannot plan it when you're constantly on the move. Heretofore our response to attacks, and understandably so, has been to carry out some retaliatory act that was supposed to even the scales while hunting down the actual people who did it.
This, however, is an attack on the territorial United States, which is a threat to our social way of life and to our existence as a free society. It therefore has to be dealt with in a different way -- with an attack on the system that produces it.
The immediate response, of course, has to be taking care of casualties and restoring some sort of normal life. We must get back to work almost immediately, to show that our life cannot be disrupted. And we should henceforth show more sympathy for people who are daily exposed to this kind of attack, whom we keep telling to be very measured in their individual responses.
But then the government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended -- with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it. That system is a network of terrorist organizations sheltered in capitals of certain countries. In many cases we do not penalize those countries for sheltering the organizations; in other cases, we maintain something close to normal relations with them.
It is hard to say at this point what should be done in detail. If a week ago I had been asked whether such a coordinated attack as yesterday's was possible, I, no more than most people, would have thought so, so nothing I say is meant as a criticism. But until now we have been trying to do this as a police matter, and now it has to be done in a different way.
Of course there should be some act of retaliation, and I would certainly support it, but it cannot be the end of the process and should not even be the principal part of it. The principal part has to be to get the terrorist system on the run, and by the terrorist system I mean those parts of it that are organized on a global basis and can operate by synchronized means.
We do not yet know whether Osama bin Laden did this, although it appears to have the earmarks of a bin Laden-type operation. But any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack, whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack, must pay an exorbitant price.
The question is not so much what kind of blow we can deliver this week or next. And the response, since our own security was threatened, cannot be made dependent on consensus, though this is an issue on which we and our allies must find a cooperative means of resistance that is not simply the lowest common denominator.
It is something we should do calmly, carefully and inexorably.
The writer is a former secretary of state.
By Henry Kissinger | September 12, 2001
An attack such as yesterday's requires systematic planning, a good organization, a lot of money and a base. You cannot improvise something like this, and you cannot plan it when you're constantly on the move. Heretofore our response to attacks, and understandably so, has been to carry out some retaliatory act that was supposed to even the scales while hunting down the actual people who did it.
This, however, is an attack on the territorial United States, which is a threat to our social way of life and to our existence as a free society. It therefore has to be dealt with in a different way -- with an attack on the system that produces it.
The immediate response, of course, has to be taking care of casualties and restoring some sort of normal life. We must get back to work almost immediately, to show that our life cannot be disrupted. And we should henceforth show more sympathy for people who are daily exposed to this kind of attack, whom we keep telling to be very measured in their individual responses.
But then the government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended -- with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it. That system is a network of terrorist organizations sheltered in capitals of certain countries. In many cases we do not penalize those countries for sheltering the organizations; in other cases, we maintain something close to normal relations with them.
It is hard to say at this point what should be done in detail. If a week ago I had been asked whether such a coordinated attack as yesterday's was possible, I, no more than most people, would have thought so, so nothing I say is meant as a criticism. But until now we have been trying to do this as a police matter, and now it has to be done in a different way.
Of course there should be some act of retaliation, and I would certainly support it, but it cannot be the end of the process and should not even be the principal part of it. The principal part has to be to get the terrorist system on the run, and by the terrorist system I mean those parts of it that are organized on a global basis and can operate by synchronized means.
We do not yet know whether Osama bin Laden did this, although it appears to have the earmarks of a bin Laden-type operation. But any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack, whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack, must pay an exorbitant price.
The question is not so much what kind of blow we can deliver this week or next. And the response, since our own security was threatened, cannot be made dependent on consensus, though this is an issue on which we and our allies must find a cooperative means of resistance that is not simply the lowest common denominator.
It is something we should do calmly, carefully and inexorably.
The writer is a former secretary of state.
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