Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Thursday, October 31, 2002




Iranian President Khatami attacked the idea of a US war against Iraq forcefully while in Spain this week.

Officially, Iran has all along loudly denounced the idea of a US invasion of Iraq. . The ruling ayatollahs are afraid, I think of having the US in place on both major borders--in Afghanistan and in Iraq. They would be surrounded! And, Bush after all named them as part of an axis of evil and they have reason to be afraid that they are next on his hit list.

On the other hand, the expatriate Iraqi group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, headed by the Hakim family, is hosted by Tehran and has been in close contact with the Pentagon about cooperating with an American attack. SCIRI has 10,000 troops in its al-Badr Brigade, which could come across from Iran into Iraq to support a US invasion. Although SCIRI has been criticized for these contacts by some ayatollahs, to my knowledge it has not been stopped from exploring them.

The idea of a Shi`ite-dominated Iraq, which is what would develop if Iraq had a parliamentary democracy (they are 60-65% of the population) must be appealing to Tehran.

So, I think they are of two minds about it.


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Wednesday, October 30, 2002



The Jordanian officials are conducting interrogations of Muslim fundamentalists in Jordan concering the assassination of Laurence Foley, the head of US AID in Amman. An al-Qaeda link is suspected, but it is also admitted that in the current atmosphere it could have been the act of a local group. A group called Honest People of Jordan has taken responsibility, according to UPI. The group's statement on a web site indicated they had acted because of US support for Israeli actions in the West Bank. They appear to be radical Islamists.

This brutal murder will set back, not aid their cause. Foley, 60, had devoted his life to development efforts, and was trying to help Jordanians, who, God knows, need economic development aid. It is to weep.

In the meantime, two mansions belonging to a major tribal leader in Yemen were blown up, and an al-Qaeda connection is suspected there, too. This tribal leader had cooperated with Yemeni government attempts to curb al-Qaeda activities in that country.

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Tuesday, October 29, 2002


Feuding in Northern Afghanistan

US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Finn met with warlords in Mazar-i Sharif Monday. The factional fighting between soldiers loyal to Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum and Tajik commander Muhammad Atta has roiled the hinterlands of Mazar in the past few months. The fighting is local, and often appears to break out with no order from the commander. But it is interfering in the development of the north and the return of security.

Northern Afghanistan has the mineral wealth and the infrastructure to help lead the rest of the country back to economic health if its leaders can get their act together. It is not clear, however, that just having high-level meetings with the warlords will resolve the problems. They are warlords. This is what they do--fight for territory and perks. Until the US can train a national army and can demobilize or incorporate these militias, they will likely go on fighting with one another. I suppose they can be kept partially in check by the threat of the US use of air forces against them if they get out of hand. But actually attacking Afghans now is politically difficult and could create a backlash, especially in the Pushtun south where a lot of people do not like the Americans to begin with.

The other possibility is to withhold international aid disbursements as a way of influencing the warlords. This seems to be being tried. I am not sure it can succeed.

Down the road there may be a showdown. President Karzai is already talking of sacking regional governors who can't keep the peace. This is mainly bravado, since Dostum and his forces, and Atta and his, could at the moment wipe the mat with Karzai and his tiny armed force in Kabul.

The brilliant strategy the US employed to overthrow the Taliban, of enlisting the old Mujahidin warlords in the effort, has now come back to haunt us. With Afghanistanis again in danger of starving in large numbers this winter and in desperate need of development aid, the feuds of the warlords are too costly to be borne. But there are few good options for stopping them.

Khalilzad expressed himself sanguine about the recent elections in Pakistan, which put the fundamentalist parties in charge of the Northwest Frontier, where al-Qaeda and Taliban elements are still hiding out. The parties say they want to expel US armed forces and FBI agents tracking down the terrorists. Khalilzad says that security is a Federal responsibility and that fundamentalist control of the provinces is irrelevant. This point is probably true, since the army will decide these things. But the problem is that there are many sympathizers in the army with the fundamentalists. And, moreover, the fundamentalists may well be a swing vote or a coalition partner in the Federal parliament, so they aren't just a problem in the provinces.



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Monday, October 28, 2002


Iraq War would bring increase in Terrorism: Oxford Report

Jane Merrick of the Press Association reported that the Oxford Research Group believes and Iraq war will increase terrorism by al-Qaeda against the United States. It believes that 10,000 civilians will die in an American attack on Iraq. Paul Rogers, a professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, said that Saddam would likely use chemical and biological weapons in the war. He foresaw an increase in support for al-Qaeda as a backlash against the war in the region.

Rogers thinks Saddam will try to draw the war out and make it as costly as possible for the Americans. "Almost certainly, the dominant strand of thinking within the Saddam Hussein regime is the imperative for survival. This must not be underestimated - it transcends every other objective."

Meanwhile, evidence mounts of Serbian-Bosnian involvement in supplying military materiel to Iraq.

And, at the United Nations, France is now calling for a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Security Council states, to hammer out a compromise resolution on weapons inspections in Iraq. The US has been pressing for a resolution that would be broad enough to authorize military action without the necessity of coming back to the council. Russia and France are strongly resisting such language.


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Sunday, October 27, 2002

Fate of Iraqi Political Prisoners Unknown

Iraqi organizations and notables in London have called on the Iraqi government to account for what they claim are tens of thousands of political prisoners. These were supposed to have been released in the general amnesty bestowed during the past week, but they were not. (Reported by Asharq al-Awsat).

Thousands of university professors, Shi`ite clerics, Kurds, Iraqis of Iranian extraction, and dissidents have disappeared in Iraq since 1980, especially during the uprisings of March, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War.

The call for a full accounting of the 'disappeared' and imprisoned was launched by Muhammad Bahr al-`Ulum and `Alam al-Din in London. Iraqi expatriates also addressed appeals to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to ensure that Security Council Resolution 688 requiring the Iraqi regime to ensure human rights for its citizens be implemented.

The odiousness of the Saddam Hussein regime and the fact that it has killed or imprisoned so many are among the things that make it hard for me to take a strong stand against the idea of regime change.

In other Iraq news, President Bush said in Mexico City that he is willing to go to war with Iraq without a mandate from the UN Security Council.

Earth to George: This would be a Very Bad Idea.



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Saturday, October 26, 2002

Abu Qatadah Arrested-- Key Figure in al-Qaeda

The Palestinian cleric Umar Muhammad Abu Umar ("Abu Qatada"), 40, was
arrested in a Wednesday raid on a council house in Bermondsey, south
London. Suspected by many European authorities of being a key figure in
al-Qaeda, he and his family had been missing since last December.

British authorities tracked him down after he published on the internet a treatise
called, "The Legal Vision for the September 11 Events," which attempted to
provide justification for those monstrous attacks.

He had links with Usama Bin Laden, and videos of his sermons were found
in the Hamburg apartment of hijacker Muhammad Atta. The British inability
to find him had provoked strains with France in recent months, and the French
even speculated that MI5 had him in a safe house somewhere.

Jordan also wants to extradite him, for funding terrorism, and he has been
sentenced to death in absentia there (he has Jordanian citizenship).

British courts have ruled that foreigners may be indefinitely held in prison under
the provisions of the new anti-terrorism law. Some 10 Muslim radicals are being
held at the moment, including Abu Qatada.

He has links to the Tawhid organization in Germany, and was implicated in the
funding of a Spanish terrorist cell that has now been broken up. He has given
vicious rulings or fatwas justifying the killing of the wives and children of any
Algerians who oppose the fundamentalists there.

In other words, this is a very dangerous character who appears to have fingers
in several terrorist operations and who has provided material support to them.
I'm glad he's finally in jail.


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Friday, October 25, 2002


More on Pakistan's Elections

I just wanted to emphasize that I was not at all critizing the
moves for restoration of democracy in Pakistan in my op-ed.


What I was criticizing was the contradictions in the process. General
Musharraf unilaterally amended the constitution 29 times last summer. He
placed extreme constraints on campaigning. Pakistan People's Party
campaign workers were arrested for doing whistlestop campaigning from a
train. The European Union observers report that the government polling
officials rigged the process so as to attempt to favor the pro-Musharraf
party, the Muslim League (QA). The government poured heaps of scorn on
the two major mainstream parties, the PPP and the Muslim League (N), the
latter of which had been overthrown in a military coup by Musharraf in
1999.


I do not believe that the fundamentalist parties would have done nearly as
well in a free and open election. It seems to me that in the Pushtun
regions in particular, the electorate felt that the PPP and the ML (N)
were being so determinedly marginalized by the military that one would be
throwing away one's vote in choosing them. And, the Draconian
restrictions on canvassing prevented these two parties from mobilizing
their grassroots effectively there. These had been the dominant parties
in the NWFP, after all. So, the Pushtuns, prevented from mild protest,
chose a much more extreme form of fundamentalist protest against
Musharraf's policies.


I think open democratic processes would have marginalized the religious
extremists, and that by playing Ahab to the great white whale of the
PPP/ML (N) status quo, Musharraf shot himself in the foot and produced a
hung parliament with a substantial fundamentalist representation. And, I
don't think the US put enough pressure on Musharraf to hold free and open
elections.


The theory may have been that such pressure might destabilize a valued
ally in the War on Terror. But the PPP had supported the latter effort,
and marginalizing it just allowed parties that opposed it to step into the
breach.


And, from what I can tell, the Bush administration policies of pursuing an
Iraq war, of only tepid engagement in resolving Kashmir, and of almost
complete neglect of the Israel/Palestine issue contributed heavily to the
protest vote against Musharraf, who was willy nilly yoked to those
policies.


There wasn't too much democracy this round in Pakistan. There was too
little. And, for Musharraf to try to continue to rule as a mere strongman
would have set the stage for massive protests. At least this way, Pushtun
discontent can be worked into parliamentary maneuvering instead of
violence, as Najeeb Jan rightly intimated.


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Thursday, October 24, 2002

Petition for Palestinian Children

A wonderful Israeli organization called Taayush or "living together" has launched a petition drive concerning the dire state of education for Palestinian children under Israeli occupation.

The petition can be found at:

http://taayush.tripod.com/petition.html

and it reads as below. I hope everyone will go sign it, and send money to Taayush.

Don't Abandon the Children
If you wish to sign the petition please fill the form below and press submit.
The Right to Education is Under Attack!
We, the undersigned, educators, psychologists, social workers --
people who are working for the welfare of children -- decry the
violations being committed against the well-being and
the basic right to education of Palestinian children.
Nearly one quarter of a million Palestinian children and close
to ten thousand teachers cannot reach their schools.
Approximately six hundred educational institutions have been closed
due to the continued curfew.*
Many children are exposed to danger and endless difficulties
as they make their way to school. Great injury, and perhaps even
irreversible harm, is being done to a whole generation -- the generation of the future.
Take, for example, the South Hebron cave dwellers' children,
one third of whom have dropped out of school. For months,
Jewish settlers from Maon have prevented the children from
reaching their school. The settlers have thrown stones,
harassed, and hit children who have dared to cross the path
leading to their school (the Maon settlement was built very close
to these educational facilities).
A few children have needed medical attention as a result of
wounds incurred by the stones. When parents accompanied
their children on their way to school, the police came to the
aid of the settlers, arresting the parents. In order to avoid settler
violence, the children have been forced to walk at least seven
kilometers to school, using a long detour, which takes about two hours.
Not all children can handle such long distances.
Not Surprisingly, most of the 'drop-outs' are among the youngest
children -- six and seven year olds. What will become of these children?
Education and child welfare are of utmost importance to us,
the undersigned, and we call upon the Israeli government to:
1) Immediately open the Palestinian educational institutions;
2) Stop settler intimidation and harassment;
3) Ensure that the children and teachers will safely reach
their schools so they can enjoy the basic right to education.


* According to UNICEF more than 226,000 children and
over 9,300 teachers are unable to reach their regular classrooms
and at least 580 schools have been closed due to Israeli
military curfews, closures and home confinement.
For more information on Ta'ayush -- Arab-Jewish Partnership --
visit our WebSite http://taayush.tripod.com/

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Wednesday, October 23, 2002


Parliamentary Maneuvering in Pakistan

It is being speculated in the Pakistani press that the Muslim League (QA) may be able to form a government if it allies with absolutely all of the small parties and independent members of parliament. It could cobble together a majority of seats, and would benefit from the plan to add women's slots proportionally, bringing the total to 190.

This move would allow the Muslim League (QA) to avoid an alliance with its rival, the Pakistan People's Party, or with the MMA, the coalition of fundamentalist religious parties.

While the mathematics may barely work out for the ML (QA), the resulting government would be extremely fragile. It would also be open to blackmail on the part of the tiny parties and even perhaps some individual members of parliament, since it would need virtually all its myriad partners for every important vote.

It seems to me likely that such a government would fall before too long, requiring another round of elections. This further round may or may not produce a more stable government. Were it to be called at a time, this winter, when the US had gone to war against Iraq, one can only imagine that the fundamentalist parties might just manage to win a majority of votes and take over the civilian government. This development in turn would almost certainly provoke another military coup to prevent it from happening. The secular-leaning Musharraf, now an American ally, would be at severe risk from an MMA government, and he would not likely take the risk.

Forecast: Continued political instability in Pakistan, raising real questions about the further prosecution of the War on Terror.





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Tuesday, October 22, 2002



History News Network

[http://hnn.us/articles/1053.html]


10-21-02: News Abroad

Why Those Election Results in Pakistan Are Frightening


by Juan Cole


The results of the elections held in Pakistan on October 10 have cast a shadow over the Bush administration's foreign policy. That policy has been driven by contradictory impulses -- curbing Islamic extremism, promoting democracy, beating the drums of war, and supporting dictatorial regimes friendly to the United States. The Pakistani electorate has pointed out the inconsistencies.

When we hear that Iraqis will "dance in the streets" on being liberated by American forces, we should remember that members of the Pushtun ethnic group in Pakistan have not celebrated the fall of the Taliban. When we hear that it may be necessary for the US to impose a strong ruler on Iraq initially, in preparation for democracy, we should remember that the Pakistani electorate has resoundingly rejected strongman Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.

When we hear that it is a good idea to overthrow and marginalize the secular nationalist regimes of the Middle East, we should remember Pakistan. There, sidelining the Pakistan People's Party and the mainstream Muslim League gave an opening to fundamentalists and radical Islamists who look kindly on al-Qaeda.

When we hear that a US-shaped democratic Iraq will be a beacon to the rest of the Middle East, we should remember that a democratizing Pakistan has largely returned anti-American candidates. They oppose an Iraq war and are bitter about what they see as US backing for Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's brutal repression of the Palestinians. European Union observers criticized the election as rigged toward pro-government candidates, so that the electorate may be even more bitterly anti-American and anti-Musharraf than the results show.

The Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan will be ruled by a coalition of fundamentalist Muslim parties, the Islamic Action Council (Urdu acronym: MMA). They are, as well, the largest bloc in the provincial assembly of Baluchistan. This coalition emerged as the third largest bloc in the national parliament, winning around 45 seats out of 272 contested. They were able overwhelmingly to attract Pushtun voters upset with the U.S. attack on Afghanistan. The religious parties had only won two seats in parliament in the 1997 elections.

The elections returned a hung parliament, so that one of the more secular parties may need to bring the MMA in to form a ruling coalition. Musharraf much weakened the mainstream politicians by deriding them as corrupt. Worrisomely, the fundamentalist parties may form a crucial swing vote on some issues in a divided parliament. They have already announced that they will attempt to end coeducation in schools, including universities (implying that women in the Northwest Frontier will have to go to small, inadequate women's institutes for any higher education they are allowed to seek).

The leaders of the fundamentalist parties had campaigned vigorously in winter of 2002 against the U.S. war in Afghanistan. They had called for the overthrow of Musharraf. Among their leaders, Qazi Hussein Ahmad has called for an end to the manhunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban elements hiding out in the Northwest Frontier, since they are "Muslim brethren." The religious parties want US troops and FBI agents kicked out of Pakistan.

The United States cannot win its goals in the Muslim world merely by main force. Its support of democracy will have to be wholehearted if instability of the Pakistani sort is to be avoided. How will General Musharraf cohabit with a parliament largely hostile to him? The idea bruited in Washington circles of imposing a new Hashemite king on Iraq, always hare-brained, looks especially unwise in the aftermath of the Pakistan elections.

In the new democracies it says it is fostering, the Bush administration will have to court constituencies. It cannot turn a blind eye to global flash points like Palestine and Kashmir, where Muslims feel they are being massacred and repressed. It cannot identify itself with dictators. It cannot allow the marginalization by those dictators of secular, populist parties. It cannot afford to be seen as an aggressor acting unilaterally against a Muslim country. The need for strong U.N. Security Council backing for any Iraq war is even more urgent now.

The Pakistan election results should be a wake-up call to the Bush administration.


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Monday, October 21, 2002

Afghan-Pakistani Tensions Rise

The elected leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province traded jibes on Sunday and Monday.

A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged Pakistanis to learn from past mistakes, a reference
to the ruinous policies of the Taliban. Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Omar Samad is reported by Agence
France Presse as saying, "If some radical groups that are of different stripes still adhere to pro-Taliban,
pro-Osama policies and mindset, then they still can be considered as dangerous, not only for the whole
region but most of all for Pakistan."

The Pakistan elections held Oct. 10 gave an enormous boost to pro-Taliban factions in that country. The
coalition of religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-i `Amal or United Action Council, gained 51 seats in the
national parliament and captured the provincial government of the Northwest Frontier Province. It is
also the largest party in the province of Baluchistan. These provinces border Afghanistan.

The MMA has called for an end to the manhunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants in Pakistan (over 400
have been netted), terming them "our Muslim brethren." Its leaders also want FBI and US military forces
out of Pakistan.

High ranking leaders in Kabul are clearly worried that the pro-Taliban forces in their own Pushtun areas will
be strengthened by the Pakistani election results.

Asked about Karzai's sentiments, the leader of the Jamaat-i Islami in Pakistan, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, told a
reporter for Jang that the Afghan government is the United States-backed puppet regime and its foreign
ministry is being run by the Americans.

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Sunday, October 20, 2002

Iraqi Kurds eye Kirkuk, Mosul Oil Fields

Commander Hamid Efendi, the top-ranking Kurdish militia commander in Northern Iraq, said Saturday that he was committed to taking Kirkuk and Mosul for Kurdistan if the US went to war against Iraq. Kirkuk and Mosul are where the petroleum is, and possession of them would shift the balance of power in a post-Saddam Iraq toward the Kurds. Brian Murphy reported this for the Associated Press.

Hamid Efendi's ambitions, which must mirror those of the Kurdish civilian leadership, hold many dangers for the region and for the US. The US would not welcome a diversion from the campaign for Baghdad and for regime change.

Turkey's foreign minister has bluntly threatened to invade Iraqi Kurdistan if the Kurds capture Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkey has long had a Kurdish problem in eastern Anatolia and fears dismemberment if uppity Iraqi Kurds get petroleum riches and hook up with their cousins under Turkish rule across the border. Kurds secretly want their own state, but are forced by political considerations to say they just want an autonomous region of a federal Iraq.

If Turkish-Kurdish fighting broke out in the midst of the US attack on Iraq, it could be a disaster. The US needs Incirlik airbase and other Turkish facilities, as well as fly-over rights from Turkey. Turkish-Kurdish fighting could endanger all that.

Turkey wants the oil fields given to a Turkmen enclave in northern Iraq (there is also a small Turkic community in the region). Some speculate that the US would go along with such a plan, with an eye to securing good deals for US oil companies in the aftermath and as a way of blocking Kurdish ambitions. But how the US would induce the Kurds to stand down is the question.

US Vice President Dick Cheney, while CEO of Halliburton, did considerable business in the area, especially with regard to supplying equipment to refurbish the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline. Armen Georgian speculates in "In these Times" that Halliburton and other US energy companies are eyeing the Kirkuk and Mosul fields hungrily. The implication, that Cheney wants the war in order to lift the boycott on Iraq and allow some serious money-making for his former company, seems to me a little conspiratorial. But who knows? The stated reasons for the US going to war are so thin that there must be *some* other reason.




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Saturday, October 19, 2002


Egypt releases 120 Islamists

The Egyptian government released 120 members of the Gamaa Islamiyya or Islamic Grouping from prison this past week, and is said to plan further releases. Fully 100 of these were from El Miniya.

In the course of the 1990s, the Egyptian government is said to have jailed between 20,000 and 30,000 radical Islamists. In recent years, however, the leadership of the Islamic Grouping in Tura prison has renounced violence, and all but 12,000 were said to have been released. A further large release was expected in October of 2001, but did not happen because of September 11.

The Gamaa Islamiyya leadership inside Egypt has repudiated the blind sheikh, Omar `Abdu'r-Rahman, now in Federal penitentiary in the US for his role in the first World Trade Center bombing. He had previously been the group's leader and is said to have given the fatwa or ruling allowing the assassination of Sadat. The Tura leadership has issued a 4-volume book, Correction of Misconceptions, which lays out their new, non-violent ideology.


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Friday, October 18, 2002

More on Bali bombing and al-Qaeda

I can confirm that Abu Bakar Bashir is "of Arab descent but born in Jombang, in Indonesia." Kim Sengupta reported it in the Independent. I was also told that Abu Bakar Bashir is of Hadrami origin by someone who says he went to school with him. As Dr. Freitag points out, this is not meant to say that the substantial Arab-heritage community in Indonesia is suspect, nor that no non-Arab Indonesians are involved in Jemaah Islamiyah. And, of course, the old Yemen-Indonesia connection is still lively today on all sorts of levels. Yemeni-Indonesian trade has grown substantially in recent years, e.g.

I was told by a prominent insider that he believes that Jemaah Islamiya (a tiny fringe group) has been most successful in recruiting among the Hadramis in Indonesia.

There have been some indications of this possibility in the press reports. In January of 2002, Yemen arrested some 40 Indonesian students studying at Islamic seminaries in that country, on suspicion of being involved in radical groups.

In June of 2002, six Yemenis in Jakarta were put under surveillance on suspicion of planning to blow up the US embassy there. The surveillance was done so sloppily, however, that the men noticed it and fled.

Last April, Indonesian terrorist and suspected Jemaah Islamiyah member who was charged with setting off bombs in Manila on Dec. 30, 2001, Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, was sentenced to 10 to 12 years of imprisonment after pleading guilty to a charge of illegal possession of explosives. His last name suggests an Arab origin.

Press reports allege that one of the four men being interrogated by Indonesian police in connection with the Bali bombing is a Yemeni.

One of the reasons President Megawati Sukarnoputri had earlier been reluctant to ban Jemaah Islamiyah was her fear that such a move would be exploited in the 2004 elections by the fundamentalist party, the United Development Party, headed by Hamzah Haz. Haz and his constituents, the third largest party in parliament, have been openly dismissive of the charges against Bashir and Jemaah Islamiyah. The UDP is pushing for shariah or Islamic law to replace civil law in Indonesia.

Bashir will be questioned by police on Saturday. He was named as a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah by `Umar Faruq, a Kuwaiti member of al-Qaeda captured by the Indonesians and handed over to the Americans this past summer; Faruq is now being held at Bagram in Afghanistan. Faruq had arranged for money to be sent to Jemaah Islamiyah from a wealthy Saudi patron. Bashir initially denied the existence of Jemaah Islamiyah and denied he was the head of it. His followers wear Usama Bin Laden t-shirts.

A possibly more important figure is Ridwan Isamuddin, who goes by the nisbah of Hanbali (Hambali), age 36. Born in 1966 in west Java of a peasant family, he is a member of the consultative councils both of al-Qaeda and of Jemaah Islamiyah. Hanbali fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and recruited some other Indonesian Jemaah members there for JI. Hanbali was the mastermind of a plot to blow up Western embassies in Singapore with truck bombs last December, which was foiled by good intelligence work. Hanbali is thought to have fled to Indonesia, and the Bali bombings have the same modus operandi as the earlier embassy plot. Hanbali had hosted the September 11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdar (of Yemeni origin) and Nawaf al-Hazmi in Kuala Lampur in January of 2000.

Hanbali also gave Abu Bakar Bashir refuge in Malaysia during the Suharto years, when Bashir was not welcome in his own country. And, Hanbali also hosted Zacarias Moussaoui when the latter came to Malaysia, apparently hoping it would be easier to get a US visa there.


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Thursday, October 17, 2002


Things are going from bad to worse for the US in Pakistan. Now the Muttahida Majlis-i Amal or United Action Council, which groups six religious parties, is making a bid to actually form the national government in parliament. They put forward the firebrand pro-Taliban cleric Fazlur Rahman as potential prime minister. The MMA has pledged to end US FBI and military presence in Pakistan, and to stop the manhunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants there.

As only the third largest party, the MMA is unlikely actually to be able to form the government. It may well, however, be in coalition with the Pakistan People's Party or even the Muslim League (QA), and I suppose a rotation of prime ministerships could be worked out. The idea of a fanatic like Fazlur Rahman as the Prime Minister of a nuclear state that has serious frictions with India (another nuclear state) is pretty awful to contemplate. Likewise the idea of a pro-al-Qaeda government in Pakistan is terrifying.

One danger, to which the Pakistani press is alert, is that the MMA will get too powerful and go too far, forcing another military coup and possibly throwing the country into Algeria-style turmoil.
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Wednesday, October 16, 2002


Blowback from Reagan's Afghanistan Policy

The relevant information on the role of the US in encouraging the Chinese
and the Pakistanis to arm the Mujahidin with ever more sophisticated
weaponry is in a Washington Post article of July 20, 1992, by Steve Coll,
of the Post's Foreign Service. Orrin Hatch and Ikle, with some others,
flew to Beijing to lobby for this early in 1986.


Coll also notes:


"During the mid-1980s, the CIA aided Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence agency (ISI) in establishing and supplying two secret
mujaheddin training schools in guerrilla warfare, including one that
concentrated on urban sabotage techniques, according to Yousaf. Pakistani
instructors trained by the CIA taught Afghans how to build and conceal
bombs with C-4 plastic explosives and what Yousaf estimated were more than
1,000 chemical and electronic-delay bomb timers supplied by the CIA. The
principal idea was to carry out attacks against military targets such as
fuel and ammunition depots, pipelines, tunnels and bridges, Yousaf and
Western sources said.


Some mujaheddin trained at the CIA-assisted guerrilla schools used the
materials and training supplied to carry out a number of car bombings and
other assassination attacks in Kabul under ISI direction, according to
Yousaf. By his account, a graduate of the urban sabotage school nearly
blew up future Afghan president Najibullah in downtown Kabul in late 1985,
when Najibullah was chief of the hated Afghan secret police.


"We made numerous attempts to kill Najibullah," Yousaf wrote in a recently
published memoir of the secret war titled "The Bear Trap." "


While it is true that the CIA handed off a lot of the money and
supervision to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI was merely
acting as a pass-through for the CIA. It is not as if the CIA did not
know how the billions were being used. The CIA and ISI were close allies.
The CIA was not an innocent bystander that wrung its hands as its money
went to people it did not like or support. There were lots of Pakistanis,
including some in government, who became extremely alarmed by the ISI's
growing role and its entanglement with the Afghan guerillas, fearful that
these developments would "blow back" on Pakistan (which they did).


I don't have anything against the intelligence community, and am a big
supporter of the US armed forces, and if there were anything I could do to
help them do their job against al-Qaeda better, I would. In the 1980s in
Pakistan and Afghanistan, the field agents were just doing their job.
But this policy implemented by the Reaganauts of giving the Yousafs of the
world special training and lots of bombs was to say the least extremely
unwise, and it is not the less unwise if ISI served as an intermediary.


I did not criticize US containment strategies of the Soviet Union in
general. I criticized the aggressiveness of the Reagan approach, and note
that both in Afghanistan and Central America it involved getting into bed
with very, very bad characters. This step simply was not necessary, and
its long-term consequences are most unfortunate.


Afghanistan was a small thing for the Soviet Union and was not a major
factor in its 1991 fall. Maybe a minor factor. That system couldn't have
been kept going anyway; it was bankrupt. Stirring up and helping train a
radical Islamic International to help take it down was unwise and
unnecessary.


That the looming Iraq war is being brought to us by the same people, in
the main, who thought up the Reagan Afghanistan policy should give
everyone some pause.


With regard to Wolfowitz see The Guardian, Aug. 9, 2001:


"Washington's missile defence project is instead just one manifestation of
an epochal and potentially irreversible shift in the relationship between
the US and the rest of the world. The strategy, the latest issue of Le
Monde Diplomatique notes, was first formulated in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz
and Lewis Libby (now respectively deputy secretary of defence and national
security adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney) in a confidential Pentagon
document. They said the US should prevent any "hostile power from
dominating regions" whose resources would allow it to attain great power
status; should discourage attempts by any other advanced industrial nation
to challenge US leadership or upset the established political and economic
order; and should act to prevent the emergence of any potential global
competitor. These are the people now running US defence policy."


For how badly Wolfowitz all along over-estimated Soviet strength, a
telling article appeared in the Washington Post May 18, 1989:


"Soviet Threat Has Not Abated, Pentagon Aide Says.


Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's new policy director, said yesterday that
Soviet foreign policy "continues to challenge U.S. interests around the
world" and warned that even if Moscow reduced its military forces as
promised they will remain "a powerful threat to the West." Wolfowitz's
testimony before the House Armed Services Committee underscored President
Bush's determination to reject advice calling for more dramatic responses
to the initiatives of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and stick with a
cautious approach . . . In defending the cautious reaction to Gorbachev's
announced arms cuts, Wolfowitz said that "after the announced unilateral
reductions the Warsaw Pact will still outnumber the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization in tanks, artillery and divisions by 2 to 1. The planned
reduction of 500,000 troops will still leave the Soviets with
approximately 5 million men in their armed forces, including internal
security forces, KGB border guard and military railroad and construction
units . . ."


Wolfowitz was part of the famous B Team set up in the mid-1970s to second
guess CIA estimates on Soviet military power and capabilities, which came
out with estimates that proved completely unrealistic compared to the more
accurate CIA ones. We now know even the CIA estimates were exaggerated.
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Tuesday, October 15, 2002


Saudis Refuse Participation in an Iraq War

The Saudis are again saying as loudly as they can that Saudi Arabia will not take part in any attack on Iraq. Prince Sultan, the minister of defense, said that Saudi Arabia would not "provide any assistance in any strikes against Iraq." His reasoning appeared to be that because the kingdom is host to the two holiest sites in the Muslim world--Mecca and Medina--it would be wrong for it to ally with foreigners in a war of aggression against another Muslim state. On the other hand, he put pressure on Iraq to comply with the UN weapons inspections demanded by the Bush administration.

The foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said virtually the same thing at Tiaret in Algeria after talks with the Algerian president, Abdulaziz Bouteflika. “We will refuse to enter into a war against Iraq,” he said.

He denied he had ever said he would allow the US to use Saudi territory to launch an attack on Iraq. Saud al-Faisal insisted that even if a security council resolution authorized such a war, Saudi Arabia would not take part. He insisted that a Security Council resolution, while it would impose the obligation on member states to help the UN, could not obliged them to take active part in a war. He said it was a Saudi priority "to protect Iraq against possible strikes." [-from al-Hayat and Agence France Presse].

If Saudi Arabia denies the US use of its air space, and if Jordan does likewise, this refusal would pose serious tactical problems for a US strike on Iraq.




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Monday, October 14, 2002

Bali Nightclub Bombing

The death toll keeps rising in the bombing on Saturday of two nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali. Today I saw 187 given as the number of dead, with over 300 wounded. After September 11, any such scenes of a burning blast site just tear me up inside. I think of those innocent people, just relaxing, taking a vacation from their work lives.

The likely suspect is the Jemaah Islamiya, the same tiny set of radical cells that had targeted US naval vessels in Singapore. Among its leaders is Abu Bakar Bashir. The radical Islamists typically target tourists. This was a tactic in Egypt, as well. Such attacks have the advantage of discouraging tourism, and so they help weaken the government and prepare for its overthrow. They also discourage a Western presence and influence in a Muslim country. And, they grab headlines. It is a brutal, satanic sort of politics, perpetrated by zombies who have forfeited their humanity.

I recently had a conversation with a prominent liberal Indonesian Muslim thinker. He said that in his view Bashir's group had a peculiar ethnic basis. It was mainly comprised of Indonesians of Yemeni descent. He also maintained that the Saudi Embassy in Djakarta had made efforts in the past few decades to reach out to these Hadramawti clans and to shift them toward Wahhabism.

If he is correct, then the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiya is typical in being a tiny group of extremists without broad roots in or support from the wider society.


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Sunday, October 13, 2002

Pakistan Election Results

The Pakistan People's Party, led by Makhdoom Amin Fahim, seems set to attempt to form a government in coalition with the Muslim League (QA) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. All three have a more or less secular orientation. PPP and ML (QA) are the two largest parties in parliament.

The European Union election observers declared the Oct. 10 elections substantially flawed. It is a widespread conviction that the Musharraf military government threw many seats to the Muslim League (QA). It also attempted to delegitimize the two major parties, the Muslim League (N) and the PPP, which many blame for the remarkable showing of the religious parties, a coalition of which came in third.

The religious parties cannot form a national government, but they control the Northwest Frontier Province and may attempt to impose their fundamentalism on its people. NWFP women appear to be afraid that they will be subjected, as had happened across the border in Afghanistan. The religious parties say they will press for an end to the US military presence in Pakistan.

Musharraf's policies have all along contained important contradictions. He wanted to sideline the major parties; to hold elections; and to marginalize the religious parties. In fact he gave more attention to the first and totally failed in the last. U.S. security has certainly been damaged by this outcome.
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Saturday, October 12, 2002

The Failure of Reagan's Afghanistan Policy

The Reagan administration policy in Afghanistan was not a "most successful
departure" but, in my opinion, an absolute disaster that led in many ways
directly to September 11. The Soviet Union was already on its last legs
economically in the 1980s. As the empire collapsed, a Soviet-dominated
Afghanistan would have just become a post-Soviet Uzbekistan or
Kyrgyzstan--hardly a threat to world peace.

Instead, members of the Reagan admistration like Ikle and Wolfowitz
supported the dangerous idea of giving billions of dollars to far
rightwing Muslim militias like that of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and allowing an
Islamic International to grow up of trained terrorists targeting Soviet
boys. The US met some resistance to this idea even from the Pakistanis, so
US officials flew to Beijing to put pressure on Pakistan's ally, China, to
induce Pakistani intelligence to acquiesce in the arming of these
Islamists with extremely high-tech weaponry. In this they succeeded.

Then, having created this situation, the United States abruptly abandoned
both Pakistan and Afghanistan to the mercies of the band of warring
fanatics it had spawned and armed. In that matrix of hatred al-Qaeda and
the Taliban grew up, and that is how you get September 11. The attacks on
that day are not Reagan's fault, or Wolfowitz's, or Ikle's. They are
al-Qaeda's fault. But the conditions for them to occur were set up by
policies of actively fostering and massively funding and arming the most
reactionary and wild-eyed elements of the Islamist movement.

It was not Carter who funded the Islamists to the tune of half a billion
dollars a year. It was Reagan.

Wolfowitz has been wrong at almost every point along the way. In the
1980s he authored a report on Soviet military capabilities that we now
know vastly over-estimated them.

Wolfowitz has been the lead man on an Iraq campaign, and started agitating
for it well before September 11. In fact, Wolfowitz wanted the US
response to 9/11 to *be* an immediate Iraq campaign. Leaving al-Qaeda
alone in Afghanistan while pursuing an Iraq adventure last fall would have
been an enormous disaster, in my view.

Wolfowitz's paranoia has been about states, not terrorist groups. He was
not vindicated by September 11. Rather, he was blindsided because he did
not expect the danger to come from small fringe elements but from places
like the old Soviet Union and from China. He hates China so much that he
even stopped an order for 600,000 berets made in China for the US armed
forces.

Whether it is realistic to expect a harmonious and democratic Iraq to
emerge from a US campaign there is still a big question mark. Maybe it
could happen. Maybe it won't. But the chaos and terrorism that emerged
from Reagan's Afghanistan effort should be a reminder to us all of the law
of unintended consequences. They haven't been abrogated just because
Wolfowitz is getting his way on Iraq. And he arguably has caused US
citizens to be significantly less secure by his past actions than they
would otherwise have been.
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Friday, October 11, 2002


Opposition to Musharraf wins Big in Pakistan

Early returns available in the Pakistani elections held October 10 reveal a strong anti-Musharraf tendency among those few who could be bothered to go to the polls (turnout was reportedly light, presumably in response to Musharraf's having made it clear that the army would continue to retain ultimate power without regard to the elected prime minister).

The Muttahida Majlis-i Amal, a coalition of six small religious parties, swept the Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan provinces, gaining a larger percentage of the vote than ever before. The enormous resentments of Pushtuns in Pakistan against the US defeat of the Taliban, and of General Musharraf for having backed the U.S., were expressed in these poll results. The MMA had fielded 31 candidates for the national parliament in the NWFP, and most were winning according to estimates early Friday morning. It also won the population poor province of Baluchistan and will pick up a few seats in Karachi in Pushtun immigrant neighborhoods. The religious parties will also control the provincial governments of NWFP and Baluchistan.

Note that this outcome, while not unexpected, could not have been taken for granted. The religious parties did miserably in the last elections, in these very provinces.

Since these two provinces of Pakistan are where the al-Qaeda and some Taliban remnants are hiding out, the prospect of having highly uncooperative provincial governments there, who are hostile both to the US and Musharraf, has to be a major security concern. The parliamentarians now elected from the NWFP had called for Musharraf's overthrow last winter and had supported the Taliban. Their numbers in the national parliament, while unprecedentedly large (15%?), are still so small as to given them little power at that level.

The Musharraf loyalist party Muslim League (QA) lost out in the major Punjabi city of Lahore, but may still take Punjab province as a whole.

The Pakistan People's Party (Parliamentarian) took Sindh province, and is doing better than expected over-all. It may well be in a position to form a government in coalition with another party or parties. Its in-country leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim consulted with the Inter-Services Intelligence (the military intelligence bureau that actually makes or breaks Pakistani governments), a sign he may emerge as PM. He then flew to London to consult with expatriate PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a secular nationalist party for Urdu speakers in Karachi, seemed set to do very well in the city. This trend among the Urdu speakers to nationalism contrasts with the strong Pushtun preference for the religious parties.

The PPP, the Muslim League (N) and the Muslim League (QA) seem likely to get about a quarter of the national vote for the Federal parliament each, with the PPP delegation being perhaps somewhat larger than the other two. This outcome is being referred to as a "hung parliament," indicating a very weak PM who will be even less able to stand up to Musharraf and the military than would otherwise be the case.

Musharraf has lost big in this election. Three of the four provincial governments are opposed to him, two of them fiercely opposed. The PPP, a populist party also critical of Musharraf, may form the national government. In a hung parliament, the religious parties may emerge as a swing vote. The general is not in for a smooth ride. The PPP has pledged to rescind the 29 amendments to the constitution instituted unilaterally by Musharraf last summer, and to send the army back to the barracks.

There is likely to be trouble about all this, especially in the north, where support for Islamic radicalism seems to be growing.

The implications for Karzai's Afghanistan are also sobering. In two years will pro-Taliban parties sweep the Pushtun areas there? Will such provincial governments welcome back al-Qaeda?



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Thursday, October 10, 2002

Bin Laden and Pakistan's Elections

A letter is being distributed in Peshawar allegedly from Usama Bin Laden, urging Pakistanis to vote for the enemies of Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan's elections, which are being held October 10. Thousands of copies of the letter in Arabic and Urdu are circulating in the Northwest Frontier Province, where the religious parties feel they have a chance to capture the provincial government and the NWFP seats in the national parliament.

The letter says in part:

"My brothers of Pakistan: Deliver yourselves from Musharraf, who has brought you ignominy. This call is directed particularly at the clerics among you. Defend your brothers who are engaged in jihad, and do not give the invaders and their allies an opportunity to finish off our brethren." [Cole translation from the Arabic].

The letter blames Musharraf for taking severe steps against al-Qaeda members and delivering some to the United States. It also alleges that Musharraf has given up on the Muslims of Kashmir.


2) Attack on US Marines

According to Asharq al-Awsat, which has done interviews with the families and friends of the two men who opened fire on US marines on Failaka Island in Kuwait on Tuesday, they were animated by resentments against the U.S. and Israel.

Anis Ahmad Ibrahim al-Kandari was said by his relatives to be reclusive in recent months. He had fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and returned to Kuwait in August of 2001. He was detained, his relatives said, for a considerable time by Kuwaiti security on his return. They say that he was not active in any organization, and that the attack was an individual one. He viewed the American presence in Kuwait, they say, as a form of Western colonialism.

He was also increasingly angry about the treatment of Palestinians by the Sharon government, especially a recent Israeli assault at the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Yunis.

Jasim Hamad Mubarak al-Hajiri, Anis's cousin, appears to have been motivated by the same sentiments.

Al-Kandari and al-Hajiri are more likely to have been acting locally than taking orders from Bin Laden. From the press reports it sounds to me as though they were the sort of depressed loners who might well have carried out such an attack on their own. After all, it was not particularly well planned, and despite their cold-blooded murder of a brave member of the US armed forces, they accomplished almost nothing from a strategic point of view. It looks to me like the amateurish action of a local cell, or perhaps just a couple of local individuals--despite the obvious link to al-Qaeda via Afghanistan.

In a way, the possibility that this was a local, individual action is more scary than if it were coordinated from abroad, since there are large numbers of individuals in the region who are dissatisfied with US policies. An Iraq war will not decrease their number.

The Kuwaiti government has rounded up at least 26 bystanders or malcontents in the wake of the attack.

There are now reportedly 10,000 U.S. troops in Kuwait, up from 5,000 late last spring.


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Wednesday, October 09, 2002



History News Network

10-07-02: Fact & Fiction

Jerry Falwell on Muhammad


By Juan Cole

Mr. Cole is professor of Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and author of Sacred Space and Holy War (I. B. Tauris, 2002). His web site is www.juancole.com.


Jerry Falwell, the fundamentalist televangelist, has said, "I think Muhammad was a terrorist." On CBS's Sixty Minutes, the reverend contrasted Moses and Jesus as men of peace with Muhammad, whom he saw as warlike. News of the slur ricocheted through the Muslim world, and crowds rioted in Kashmir, raising questions as to whether Falwell himself is exactly promoting love and peace.

Falwell's comments are problematic for many reasons, not least with regard to historical accuracy. Muhammad forbade murder and the killing of innocents, and never used terror as a weapon in his struggles against his aggressive pagan enemies. Far from glorifying aggression, the Koran says (2:190), "Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you, but do not begin hostilities, for God does not love aggressors."

As for the contrast to other prophets, it is not as clear as Falwell suggests. Biblical narratives depict Moses as a murderer and leader of a slave revolt, and while he was a liberator, it is difficult to see him as a pacifist. The Romans crucified Jesus of Nazareth because they saw him as a subversive, and historians know too little about his life to be sure they were entirely wrong. Many of the patriarchs and prophets celebrated by Christian fundamentalists were arguably terrorists or even genocidal, including Joshua.

Quite aside from the historical record, Falwell's remarks are misleading as to his own position. He and other fundamentalist leaders have repeatedly condemned Christian pacifism and have militantly supported a whole raft of wars and military interventions. If he believes that Jesus preached love and peace, Falwell has not exemplified those teachings himself. In the 1980s, Falwell even vocally supported the Reagan administration's military aid to the radical Muslim extremists who later coalesced into al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

European civilization has long been perplexed and scandalized by Muhammad, who succeeded in founding a world religion that rivals Christianity. Most early Christian attacks on Islam actually depicted it as an idolatrous religion, one of the great black legends ever fostered. Islam is nothing if not single-mindedly monotheistic. The first Latin translation of the Koran, carried out in 1143 by Robert of Ketton, was incomplete and marred by sarcasm and even obscenity. Its motive was not understanding but refutation.

Dante (1265-1321) placed Muhammad in the ninth circle of hell, writing:

How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism

In fact, since Muhammad and the Meccans had never been Christians, it is difficult to see how they could be condemned for fomenting Christian schism.

Martin Luther promoted and wrote a preface to a 1543 Latin edition of the Koran by Theodore Bibliander, saying "I have wanted to get a look at a complete text of the Qur 'an. I do not doubt that the more other pious and learned persons read these writings, the more the errors and the name of Muhammad will be refuted. For just as the folly, or rather madness, of the Jews is more easily observed once their hidden secrets have been brought out into the open, so once the book of Muhammad has been made public and thoroughly examined in all its parts, all pious persons will more easily comprehend the insanity and wiles of the devil and will be more easily able to refute them." The dangers of this sort of religious bigotry, which once directed at Muslims can begin to spill over onto other religious communities, should be obvious.

In contrast, the Romantic sage and writer Thomas Carlyle (d. 1881) spoke for moderns in insisting on Muhammad's sincerity. (Another Western black legend about Muhammad was that he knew he was a charlatan). Of the prophet he wrote, "A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!" He went on to observe of Islam, "To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that; -glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world . . . I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame."

The admiration of Muhammad's achievements visible in this modern writer marks a turning point in Western culture, away from narrow religious bigotries and toward a humanist ability to appreciate the best in world civilization. Falwell in contrast is promoting religious hatred for his own purposes. The rest of us should resist his scary agenda by learning more about Muhammad and Islamic civilization, and gaining a secular appreciation of their contributions to our world.


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Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Saddam Hussein says he refuses to resign and will remain in power, attempting to dampen down the rumors flying in Europe that he might step down in order to avoid a war with the United States. This is not a big surprise, since Saddam's whole purpose in life is to be a dictator. Besides, if he resigned his life would not be worth a plugged dinar.

Jordan has started a major round-up of illegal aliens from Iraq resident in that country. Apparently they fear if there is another US-Iraq war, these undocumented Iraqis might turn to terrorism in the kingdom.

Jordan's armed forces will conduct military exercises in south Jordan with their counterparts from the US, Oman, the UAE, and Egypt beginning in mid-October.

The Iranian foreign minister, who will meet his British opposite number Jack Straw tomorrow, says he will stress to the British that Tehran firmly opposes any US unilateral military action against Iraq.


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Monday, October 07, 2002

Falwell on Muhammad

Jerry Falwell's absurd charge on CBS's Sixty Minutes on Oct. 6 that the Prophet Muhammad was a terrorist was leaked late last week and has attracted some reaction in the Gulf region and farther afield.

According to Agence France Presse, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi responded by saying, "This insult of the holy Prophet Mohammed by a Christian priest is part of a propaganda war by the US mass media and the Zionists."

The Secretary General of the organization that groups the foreign ministers of Muslim countries (Organization of the the Islamic conference), Abdul Wahed Belqeziz, commented that the remarks were "proof that the US wants political, cultural and military domination of the world." He added that "Islamic countries, and above all the OIC, must not stay silent in the face of such unashamed accusations, and must not permit this clash of religions and civilisations sought by the expansionist and aggressive Zionists."

Kashmiri Muslims, already pretty upset over their living conditions, rioted over the remark, clashing with Indian police. There were calmer processions of protest among Muslims in India, who were targeted earlier this year by the Hindu nationalist government of Gujerat for widespread massacre.

In contrast to the general feeling in the Gulf region that Zionists put Falwell up to this statement, the Anti-Discrimination League's Abraham Foxman condemned Falwell's statements. Falwell is part of a fundamentalist movement known as Christian Zionism, and has often championed what he perceives as Israeli interests, but seasoned observers stress that the fundamentalists have their own agenda and do not need or take direction from others.

My own response to Falwell's comments has appeared at the History News Network:

http://hnn.us/articles/1018.html




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Saturday, October 05, 2002

The Real Reasons for the Iraq War

Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (9/29/02) argued that the Iraq
war is actually aimed at securing an empire for the United States, and that the
other reasons given are a cover:

http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/issue_d369495ba6c610e900c3.html

I agree with Bookman that the reasons the Bush administration has been
giving for going to war with Iraq do not make much sense, and therefore
the administration must be driven by a less public agenda.

The terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and human rights arguments
with regard to Iraq all have significant flaws and none speaks to why
deterrence is not preferable.

I believe there are two main reasons for the drive to war. One
is to protect Israel (and perhaps Saudi Arabia, as well), from
Iraqi projections of power based on weapons of mass destruction
capabilities. I don't believe the fear is so much that the WMD would
actually be used, as that Iraqi WMD would necessarily impose certain
constraints on Iraq's rivals for influence in the Middle East. It is a
fear of the Clausewitzian use of the threat of WMD. Note that the US lost
the Vietnam War because it did not feel it could invade North Vietnam, and
in turn it was Soviet and Chinese WMD capabilities that induced this
caution. The US does not want to be in a similar position in the Middle
East any time in the near future, and nor does it want its allies to be.

The second reason is the power vacuum in the Persian
Gulf. The British withdrew as the colonial power in the Gulf in 1969,
leaving the region defenseless. The old British Trucial States policy,
whereby they entered into treaties with and propped up relatively small
principalities, had bequeathed to the Gulf tiny rich states. (Such small
states were largely swallowed up in 19th century Europe in wars or
projects of national unification, but the British artificially propped
them up in the Gulf). This situation was inherently unstable, especially
with the oil price boom of the 1970s.

Nixon and Kissinger, bogged down in Vietnam, hoped that they could induce
the shah of Iran to replace the British as the policeman of the Gulf for
Western interests. This accounts for the US willingness to sell the shah
the fanciest weapons in its arsenal; the shah ended up with more
hovercraft than the US army had. The shah's 1975 police action in Dhofar
in Oman, aimed at containing the influence of the Communist People's
Republic of Yemen, formed part of this new role. Of course, the US had to
abandon this security doctrine in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in
Iran, 1978-79.

The Gulf returned to having a power vacuum. But by now Saddam Hussein had
consolidated his hold on power and he volunteered to succeed the British
as the major power in the Gulf, by attacking Iran. The US was not
initially disturbed by the Iraqi attack on Iran, and I have heard US
sailors refer to the US navy during the Iran-Iraq War as virtually an
adjunct to the Iraqi war effort. By keeping both Iraq and Iran tied down
and weak, the war postponed the time when the US would have to get
involved in a major way. The U.S. had not originally wished to commit to
policing the Gulf, and even initially refused a Kuwaiti request to allow
Kuwaiti tankers to fly the US flag so as to be marked as neutral in the
Iran-Iraq war. Only when the Kuwaitis threatened to turn to the Soviets
for protection did the US relent.

Kuwait later became necessary to Iraqi aspirations because it brought
along with it a deep water port on the Gulf and lots of new wealth to
support military expansion at a time when Iraq was burdened with heavy war
debts.

Iraq's aggressive approach to establishing hegemony over the Gulf
threatened US interests and allies this time, and as a result the US moved
in to push Iraq back in 1991 and then to become the major power in the
Gulf itself. However, it was able to project its power only through its
carrier fleet and the naval base in Bahrain, lacking substantial
land-based military facilities of the sort it enjoys in Japan and Korea.
Saudi Arabia is not really suitable for such facilities because of Muslim
religious sensibilities about unbelievers in the holy land. The Gulf
principalities are small and inappropriate to this purpose.

I believe that the civilian leadership of the Defense Department wants
major US land bases in the Gulf, so as not to be dependent entirely on
carriers. Iraq would be perfect for this purpose, and indeed is the only
really viable site for a large concentrations of US soldiers aside from
Iran and Oman. That is, if the US is to be the major Power in the Gulf,
it needs bases commensurate with that role, and Iraq is among the few
countries that can supply them.

I do not believe this endeavor is exactly imperium. Rather, it is simply
old-style Sphere of Power diplomacy. No colonies are being established in
the classic European sense (and nor are Germany and Japan such colonies).
And, I don't believe the US really wanted to take it on back in the 1970s
or 1980s. It has been drawn in as the new Gulf Power, willy nilly, by
unstability in the region. Given the dependence of the US and its allies
on Gulf petroleum, that instability is highly undesirable. If it could be
ended simultaneously with the removal of a thorn in the American side like
Saddam, the hawks think, then all to the good. My argument does not
concern Iraqi petroleum. It is Gulf petroleum as a whole that is at
issue. Iraqi petroleum is fungible, like all petroleum, and I cannot
understand why it would matter to the market what regime pumped it.

We have known for some time that Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
sees the world as a very dangerous place and believes in active
pre-emptive steps to reduce the dangers. He supported Reagan's aggressive
response to leftist advances in the 1980s, which was a departure from
simple containment of the Soviet Union. Wolfowitz would apparently like
to see India and China, and perhaps the Russian Federation as well, broken
up into smaller and weaker entities. The Middle East is already
politically fragmented in a desirable way from this perspective, but US
and NATO dependence on Gulf petroleum and the dangers of rentier states
aggrandizing themselves through acquiring WMD capacities suggest it as
both a more urgent and an easier target than the others mentioned.

Wolfowitz's is to my mind a very, very dangerous view of the world, and
his plans will quite likely end up substantially reducing our security
rather than enhancing it, as we have already seen in the case of the
Reagan Afghanistan policy, which helped create blowback in the form of
al-Qaeda.


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Friday, October 04, 2002

Iraqi Shiites

[Question:]

>In an op-ed in NYT today Frank Smyth says the great majority of Iraqi
>Shi'is are Akhbaris, and hence do not follow the clerical leadership
>characteristic of the rival school, dominant in Iran, the Usulis.
>(Akhbaris believe in the ability of all believers to interpret the
>Traditions, akhbar, of the Imams, while Usulis say all believers must
>follow the rulings of a top mojtahed, now known as grand ayatollahs). Is
>this really true re Iraqi Shi'a?--I would like Juan Cole and others who
>know Iraqi Shi'ism to comment. In the op-ed it is used as an argument of
>why we should not be afraid that Iraqi Shi'is would be pro-Iranian.

[Cole replies:]

The major Shiite clerics of Iraq have been Usulis, adhering to the
jurisprudential school that says that ordinary Shiites should implicitly
obey their clerics and that clerics have wide lattitude in using reason to
derive the law. This is the same school as predominates in Iran.


My Shiite Iraqi contacts are all Usulis.


A few Akhbari works get published time to time in Iraq. This is the
school that is more literalist, gives a somewhat less exalted position to
the clerics, and adopts a "strict constructionist" approach to the law.
These publications make me think that some small Akhbari communities
survive. I think they are almost certainly a minority.


It has been alleged to me by Shaykhis of the Ihqaqi school in Kuwait that
large numbers of Iraqi Shiites have embraced the Shaykhi school in the
past two decades. (There has also been a strong Shaykhi movement in
Pakistan). Shaykhis are esotericists and are considered heretical by the
Khomeinists. It is impossible for me to gauge whether these claims about
a Shaykhi revival in Iraq are true.


So, I believe the allegation that Iraqi Shiites are largely or even
significantly Akhbari is simply a gross error.


What is true is that Iraqi Shiites are more rural and less clerically
oriented than Iranian ones, and clearly value their identity as Arab
nationalists. It is these considerations, rather than abstract school,
that are relevant to their attitude to Iran.


I suspect the writer has mixed up Iraq with Bahrain. A majority of
Bahraini Shiites are Akhbaris, and that sectarian difference did make them
less enthusiastic about Khomeini. My Bahraini friends, including clerics,
were flabbergasted at Khomeini's 1988 decree that the Islamic state could
set aside essential legal prescriptions like pilgrimage for state
purposes.



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Thursday, October 03, 2002

More on Pakistani Elections

There is increasing speculation in the Pakistani press that of the 272 seats in the Pakistani parliament, nearly half (around 120) will go to the Muslim League (QA), led by Mian Azhar. This wing of the Muslim League represents itself as hearkening back to the secular principles of Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Qa'id-i A`zam. It has taken positions close to those of General Musharraf, and the other parties accuse it of positioning itself as the "King's Party," such that it is being given preferential treatment by the government.

Analysts suggest that the Muslim League (QA) will be able to form a government in coalition with some supportive smaller parties. One might be the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a secularist nationalist party for Urdu-speaking Muhajirs in Sindh province.

Journalist Nusrat Javeed has reported that Musharraf's pollsters are projecting that the Pakistan People's Party, led by Makhdum Amin Fahim, will gain 55-60 seats in the initial elections, which will be augmented proportionally when the appointed seats for women and minorities are added in.

Such a result would put the Pakistan People's Party (traditionally populist-left in rhetoric but often led by big landlords) in the opposition. Likewise the rump Muslim League (N), which remains loyal to former PM Nawaz Sharif (who, however, remains in exile in Saudi Arabia).

A Muslim League (QA) coalition with the MQM would be strongly secular in orientation and generally supportive of Musharraf policies. Even Mian Azhar, however, insists that the prime minister and not the president should chair the new National Security Council, on which the heads of the military branches will serve, and which will have the right collectively to dismiss parliament. The danger is that both the PPP and the Muslim League (N) continue to have major support, and if they feel too far marginalized they might resort to street politics, with demonstrations that could turn violent. Javeed observes, however, that there have been elections in the recent past in which the PPP has done no better in terms of seats won, if her projections are valid, so that there are not strong grounds for resentment.

(In reply I would suggest that resentment is inevitable, since the PPP leader Benazir Bhutto was excluded from running, and since there is a widespread feeling that Musharraf is throwing the election to the Muslim League (QA).)

In the past, the small fundamentalist religious parties have never gotten more than 5% of the seats in parliament, and in 1997 they did so poorly as to be virtually left with no effective voice there. Some analysts are suggesting that they may make a comeback in this election. If they got 5% of the seats, that would be only about 13. But some say they will get over 20, heading toward an unprecedented 10%, and that many of their victories will occur in the Pushtun-dominated Northwest Frontier Province. One analyst suggested that they may even be able to take the NWF provincial government. They are united as the Muttahida Majlis-i `Amal or United Working Council.

The Jamaat-i Islami leader Qazi Hussein Ahmad (himself a Pushtun) predicts that if the Americans are rattling loud sabres against Iraq at the time of the elections, the MMA may do even better.

An MMA victory for the fundamentalists in the Northwest Frontier Province would have extremely negative consequences for US security. This is the region in which many al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants are hiding out, and is a potential base for striking at US troops in Afghanistan and against the Karzai government. The MMA is pro-Taliban and virulently anti-American. Qazi Hussein Ahmad denies that al-Qaeda even exists. A hostile provincial government could seriously impede continued US and Pakistani efforts at counter-insurgency in this region.

My own analysis is that Pushtuns are divided over religious politics, with many resenting the disaster the Taliban led people into. The MMA lost very badly last winter, given the thoroughgoing American victory. Resentments may help them win more seats than usual, especially in the NWFP, but I suspect that they will have more difficulty dominating the province than analysts realize.
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Wednesday, October 02, 2002


History News Network

9-30-02: Culture Watch

The Misuses of Anti-Semitism


By Juan Cole

Mr. Cole is professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and author of Sacred Space and Holy War (I.B. Tauris, 2002). His website is: www.juancole.com.

Harvard President Lawrence Summers has equated favoring university divestment from Israeli stocks with anti-Semitism. Summers has for some time misunderstood the duties of his office to include bullying professors, and in this recent equation he is profoundly wrong. He and others who are taking this tack are also pursuing an extremely dangerous and troubling course with dire implications for civil liberties.

In twentieth century American history, Jews were excluded from admission to some private universities, denied the right to rent or buy certain houses, and suffered from false stereotypes. Prominent Americans like Henry Ford spewed vile slanders about them. These bigoted exclusions were profoundly wrong, as were those visited on African-Americans and Asian-Americans.

Prejudice and discrimination against Jews is iconic of ethnic hatred because of the Nazi holocaust. The Holocaust makes the dangers of a pervasive hatred of a particular people palpable, and for that reason it is a deeply human event, in the sense that it affects all humankind. The cry of "Never again" is a key support in the struggles of all civil libertarians and human rights workers.

But some use "Never again" in a far more disturbing way, as a warrant for imprisoning, crushing or dispersing the Palestinian people. The state of Israel is a project of Jewish nationalism that is as legitimate as any other national project. But Israel as a state is not perfect and cannot be above criticism in democratic societies, including practical criticism.

The Israeli state is in violation the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (which forbids the mistreatment of civilian populations under military occupation), and of too many Security Council resolutions to list. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seems intent on seizing more Palestinian land. Over a fifth of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation are acutely or chronically malnourished, according to US AID and the United Nations.

Ariel Sharon's arrogant trampling on the basic human rights of Palestinians is often justified by reference to the horrible incidents of terrorism suffered by Israel in the past two years. These suicide bombings are unspeakable. A sober estimation of their impact, however, would reveal that about 300 Israelis have died in them per year. More innocent Palestinian civilians, including women and children, have been killed in Israeli military action against the terrorists than have Israeli civilians in the terrorist attacks. The terrorists have amounted to a few dozen individuals, whereas almost all the 3.2 million Palestinians in the occupied territories have been peaceful.

Israel's current harsh lockdown of the entire West Bank would not be countenanced in other similar international situations. Would the United Kingdom have been justified in militarily occupying all of Ireland and keeping all Irish under strict curfew in their houses because of the terrorist attacks of the Irish Republican Army? In the 1970s, after all, the Northern Irish death toll was similar to what Israel has suffered in the past two years. It is hard not to conclude that a certain amount of racism toward west Asians like the Palestinians allows the world to turn a blind eye to such collective punishment.

Sharon's policies are widely perceived in the rest of the world to be an extension of those of the United States. A U.S. F-16 was used by Israel to attack a terrorist leader in an apartment building full of civilians, resulting in numerous civilian deaths. The footage of such events is shown repeatedly throughout the Middle East. The U.S. government keeps silent about Israeli human rights abuses. Sharon's iron fist is creating waves of new anti-Americanism in the rest of the world at a time when our country is still reeling from the September 11 attacks and attempting to dampen the flames of terrorism. With friends like Ariel Sharon, who needs enemies?

University communities have very little impact on world affairs and can exercise influence only through writing or through local campus actions. The false and monstrous equation of practical criticism of Ariel Sharon's policies with anti-Semitism is designed to silence voices critical of those policies, and to make the divestment movement look as though it were motivated merely by bigotry.

In the 1980s, many campuses saw a successful campaign for divestment against South Africa, a racist regime with which U.S. and Israel governments and industry at times collaborated. Only fringe voices would have suggested that the campaign was animated by prejudice against white people or by anti-Semitism. Summers's statements are most urgently dangerous because they cheapen the phrase "anti-Semitism," and thereby weaken its force and its power in the struggle for civil liberties and human rights for everyone.


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Tuesday, October 01, 2002



1) Yemen has arrested four French nationals of Arab origin in a town 400 kilometers south of the capital of Sanaa on suspicion of having links to al-Qaeda. French officials say the 4 were studying at an Islamic Institute. French Muslim fundamentalists, especially those connected to the radical Armed Islamic Group, have been an important component of al-Qaeda.

2) Abdullah Naseri, the head of the Iranian news agency, has been summoned before a judge for having conducted and published the results of a poll that showed that 74.7 percent of Iranians favor renewing diplomatic relations with the United States. It is still surreal to me after all this time that the Mullas can put people on trial for conducting opinion polls.

3) The Palestinian National Council and prominent leaders like Mahmud Abbas are reported by Reuters to have strongly critiqued the "mistakes" of the current uprising or Intifada (implying that they are taking a stand against suicide bombing). Since the suicide bombing has been not only a vicious bloodbath visited on innocent Israelis but also perhaps the worst political blunder any movement of national liberation has ever made, such rethinking can only be to the good.


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