>> MEETING? WHAT MEETING?
Experts See U.S. Policy on Iraq in Crisis
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=1869887
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from Morning Edition, Tuesday , May 04, 2004
Rising U.S. casualties, confusion about U.S. efforts to end violence in places such as Fallujah, and allegations of Iraqi prisoner abuse have many questioning the viability of U.S. policy on Iraq. Many blame the lack of a clear chain of command for the chaos. Some analysts say U.S. goals for Iraq are no longer attainable. Hear NPR's Mike Shuster.
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Senior fighters escape Fallujah
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. military commanders think senior foreign fighters in Fallujah have escaped during the Marines's monthlong siege that has produced an inconsistent allied war policy.
Meanwhile, in southern Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition continues to come under deadly attacks from black-clad militiamen loyal to radical cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr.
Despite vowing to "capture or kill" the renegade sheik, the United States has refrained from using force against him or to launch an all-out assault on his Mahdi's Army. The United States fears such an attack would inflame the passions of Shi'ites in battles that also are likely to result in the deaths of civilians.
A military source said if international terrorist Abu Musaab Zarqawi was ever in Fallujah, as was suspected, he was able to escape. The source said although the Marines blocked roads leading out of the town of 300,000 residents, the cordoning was not "airtight." He said the assessment that senior fighters have left Fallujah is based on intelligence reports.
"The problem is they don't know where they have gone," the source said.
The assessment comes as the United States is sending conflicting signals about how it plans to quell the violence in Fallujah, a troublesome hot spot ever since the coalition ousted Saddam Hussein 13 months ago.
The mixed message has allowed insurgents to claim victory and has forced commanders to deny they are pulling out of the frontier town.
The confusion comes at a particularly bad time. The Bush administration is trying to contain damage from the release of photos of American service members abusing Iraqi prisoners images that reinforce the militant Arab view that the occupation force oppresses Muslims.
U.S. commanders have estimated that there are about 2,000 hard-core insurgents in Fallujah, including several hundred foreign fighters. A Pentagon official says there are probably "several thousand" foreign fighters in Iraq, many of whom entered through Syria's long desert border.
The U.S. mission around Fallujah has been marked by inconsistencies since early April, when the ambush and mutilation of four American contractors there spurred the Marines to begin an offensive to clear the town of militants.
"They are testing the water in every possible alternative to resolve this without further loss of American blood and treasure," said retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis. "The Marine commanders are faced with a Hobson's choice, and they are desperately trying to find an alternative to continued sieges, bombardment and patrols that are being shot up."
The Marines had launched a full-bore operation to kill or capture the insurgents, only to see political pressure from the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council force Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq, to stop the mission.
What followed was a tenuous cease-fire, during which the Marines attacked insurgents who came into the open or attempted to position themselves for attacks. It was during this stage that the military thinks some senior foreign fighters escaped.
The Sunni tribal chiefs, the council and Marine commanders then worked out a deal under which a new Iraqi brigade would be established to police Fallujah's mean streets. As the new brigade entered the southern sector, the Marines vacated, stirring a series of press reports that the Marines were withdrawing. Some Iraqis celebrated the "defeat."
The perception prompted Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to issue a heated denial.
"First of all, let's make sure we understand the Marines have not pulled back," Gen. Myers said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "They have not pulled back at all. Now, what we are trying to do is what we are trying to do throughout Iraq, is get Iraqis to help deal with this issue."
There also was confusion about who would run the new brigade. A former Iraqi Republican Guard general, Jassim Mohammed Saleh, arrived on the scene last week. Some military officials privately said Mr. Saleh would take command. But on Sunday, after the U.S. military command had investigated his background, a new name emerged: Maj. Gen. Mohammed Latif.
"There's another general we're looking at," Gen. Myers said. "My guess is it will not be General Saleh. He will not be their leader. It's not a reversal. As I say, the reporting on this has been very, very bad and way ahead of the pack."
The Associated Press reported from Fallujah that Gen. Latif had been imprisoned under Saddam's rule.
"He is very well thought of, very well-respected by the Iraqi general officers," said Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top Marine in Iraq. "You can just see the body language between them."
The AP said reports surfaced that Mr. Saleh was involved in crushing a Kurdish uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
In Najaf, south of Baghdad, Sheik al-Sadr's militia fired about 20 mortar rounds at a U.S. base. The Americans responded, destroying a building that was the source of the fire and killing about 20 Iraqis.
On Saturday, Sheik al-Sadr's army attacked a convoy, killing two American soldiers.
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. . . U.N. fantasy
By Bruce Fein
As was said of Napoleon's assassination of the Duc d'Enghein, President George W. Bush's inanely conducted effort to summon a secular democratic Iraq into being is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.
His latest follies unwittingly aid the enemy. The president should publicly confess his monumental miscalculations over post-Saddam Iraq, arrange for an orderly withdrawal of America's military presence, and accept the inescapable Iraqi convulsions that will follow as less horrific than would be additional aimless American casualties. As the Vietnam war taught, victory is hopeless without a discernable and plausible North Star to inform military operations.
President Bush signaled weakness to the enemy by yielding appointment authority for an interim Iraqi government on June 30 to United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Ahmed Chalabi, who had been the marquee choice of the Defense Department to extract an Iraqi democracy from Saddam's dictatorship, disappeared from the power grid faster than the Cheshire cat. Mr. Bush had earlier sneered at the United Nations for its irrelevancy and effeteness. The U.N. had opposed Operation Enduring Freedom, and had endlessly indulged Saddam's repeated violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The president's turn to an impotent and derided United Nations at the eleventh hour as violence and American deaths escalate in Iraq carries all the earmarks of desperation.
Mr. Brahimi's selection also strengthens the enemy's recruitment claim that President Bush's Iraqi democracy banner is counterfeit. The special envoy no more represents the people of Iraq than a name plucked from the New York City telephone directory. His legitimacy is universally disputed. Muhammed Bahr Uloum, a prominent Shi'ite member of the Iraqi Governing Council, has rejected Mr. Brahimi's intercession, and warned Iraqis would fight against any new government picked by the United Nations. As reported in The Washington Post, Mr. Uloum amplified: "We are not under age in need of a guardian. Iraqis are not a herd of 27 million people to be directed by Brahimi and the coalition. Iraqis will take to the streets if Brahimi insists on his view." Would Americans feel or react differently if Mr. Brahimi appointed the next president of the United States?
The special envoy's plan for naming a new government is no more legitimate than his nondemocratic selection, which provides additional fuel to the enemy. Mr. Brahimi will unilaterally appoint 25 Cabinet officers, the prime minister, a ceremonial president, and two vice presidents. His appointees will be technocrats. They will neither command popular followings nor hold political ambitions for future electoral office, an aspiration which might rivet them to popular sentiments. In other words, Mr. Brahimi's plan perversely aims to ensure the new government will not represent the Iraqi people. It will be even less democratic than President Bush's 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. And as the IGC has aroused popular ridicule, Mr. Brahimi's technocrat appointees will likewise be scorned by the Iraqi people.
President Bush's crippling limits on the sovereignty of the new appointed government makes the entire impending exercise an insulting hoax. It will be disabled from either enacting new laws, or repealing decrees issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, or controlling military operations of the United States. Indeed, its sole purpose is to baby-sit Iraq for six or seven months.
During that period, President Bush hopes an electoral code will be promulgated; political campaigns will be conducted; peaceful, free and fair elections will be held for the first time in 4,000 years, and, the Iraqi people will accept the results as legitimate. The number of people in Iraq who believe that blather can be counted on one hand with fingers left over.
The enemy has been further fortified by the commander in chief's wretched military decisions in the past weeks. Victory in Iraq requires the killing, wounding and capturing of enemy combatants period, with no commas, semi-colons or question marks. To negotiate war tactics with the enemy demoralizes troops and endows enemy leaders with popular glory and fame.
Yet President Bush permitted the enemy to negotiate a cease-fire in Fallujah to avoid casualties, tacitly conceding the United States can be forced by threats of violence into fighting by Queensbury rules. The commander in chief also replaced Marines at the front lines with Iraqi forces with dubious resolve and loyalty. The enemy, Fallujah's civilians and the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi soldiers alike, predictably celebrated their tactical defeat of America and invited imitation throughout Iraq.
In Najaf, a second edition of Fallujah is unfolding. President Bush has permitted enemy cleric Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr to negotiate a standoff with his illegal Mahdi Army. The cleric champions violence against United States troops, and has been charged with murder of a fellow religious figure. According to the newly meek commander in chief, Najaf and Sheik al-Sadr must be treated gently because widespread violence has been threatened. President Bush's meekness has transformed terrorist Sheik al-Sadr from a marginal figure to a lion.
Finally, President Bush relaxed the bar to appointing former Ba'athists and leaders of Saddam's military coincident with the alarming climb in United States casualties and spread of violence. Thus, Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, who served in Saddam's notorious Republican Guard, has been provisionally appointed to lead the Iraqi forces in Fallujah.
The timing of the president's relaxation reinforces the appearance of American despair and fading resolution. The enemy has been emboldened, and a wavering civilian population lost to extremists.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and international consultant with Bruce Fein & Associates and the Lichfield Group.
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Looking for the exit
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
If it wasn't a quagmire, it was certainly quagmiry. And the first prominent retired general to break ranks with President Bush's Iraq war policy was a Republican who once headed the National Security Agency and also served as a deputy national security adviser. Gen. William E. Odom, a fluent Russian speaker who teaches at Georgetown and Yale universities, told the Wall Street Journal's John Harwood staying the course in Iraq is untenable.
It was hard to disagree with Gen. Odom's description of Mr. Bush's vision of reordering the Middle East by building a democracy in Iraq as a pipedream. His prescription: Remove U.S. forces "from that shattered country as rapidly as possible."
Gen. Odom says bluntly, "we have failed," and "the issue is how high a price we're going to pay -- less by getting out sooner, or more by getting out later."
At best, Iraq will emerge from the current geopolitical earthquake as "a highly illiberal democracy, inspired by Islamic culture, extremely hostile to the West and probably quite willing to fund terrorist organizations," Gen. Odom explained. If that wasn't enough to erode support for the war, he added, "The ability of Islamist militants to use Iraq as a beachhead for attacks against American interests elsewhere may increase."
Gen. Odom, heads of the pro-Republican Hudson Institute, also calls the sum achievement of U.S. occupation of Iraq "the radicalization of Saudi Arabia and probably Egypt, too. And the longer we stay in Iraq, the more isolated America will become."
The retired four-star's proposed solution is for the U.N. and the European allies to take charge of political and security arrangements. This formal request from the U.S., says Gen. Odom, should be accompanied by a unilateral declaration that U.S. forces are leaving even if no one else agrees to come in.
The Journal's John Hardwood in his Capital Journal column asks which sounds more credible -- Gen. Odom's gloomy forecast or Mr. Bush's prediction of success? He does say which way he leans. But a company-size bevy of retired U.S. generals and admirals were in constant touch this week with a volunteer drafter putting the final touches to a "tough condemnation" of Bush administration Middle Eastern policy.
The Council of Foreign Relations organized a conference call-in for its members with Gen. Odom. A score of former U.S. ambassadors who had served in the Middle East were also discussing how to join their voices to Britain's 52 former ambassadors, high commissioners and governors who wrote to Tony Blair to accuse him of scuttling peace efforts between Israel and Palestinians. The British diplomats also took Mr. Blair to task for policies "doomed to failure" in Iraq.
One British co-signer was Paul Bergne, who until recently was the prime minister's personal envoy to Afghanistan.
It was the first time in living memory so many former envoys to the Middle East had acted as a group to denounce the government's foreign policy. They said they spoke for many serving diplomats, as well.
The retired U.S. ambassadors were as one in warning President Bush that discarding the Middle East road map to peace and substituting a plan that leaves Palestinians no hope for a viable state is tantamount to declaring war on moderation -- and jeopardizing U.S. interests all over the region.
Total alignment with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's anti-Palestinian strategy has turned even moderate Muslims against the United States. Egypt's President Mubarak said hatred of the U.S. had never reached such depths.
When Mr. Bush suddenly dropped longstanding U.S. opposition to Jewish settlements on the West Bank, rooted as they were in U.N. resolutions, Israeli settlers could not believe their luck. Mr. Sharon conceded Gaza, where 7,500 Jewish settlers had no future among 1.3 million Palestinians, but in return obtained U.S. blessings for permanent Israeli habitation in large swaths of what was to be a Palestinian state. Even illegal hilltop settlements concluded they were now safe from removal and immediately began erecting permanent structures to replace mobile homes. Israel spends $600 million a year on settlements. And Sharon's Likud stalwarts hung tough on Gaza, voting, in a non-binding resolution, to keep 7,500 Jews in 26 settlements living among 1.3 million Palestinians.
No sooner had the White House's red light flashed green than the once surreptitious, crawling annexation of the West Bank resumed in the open. Jewish West Bank settlers were jubilant while Palestinians were adrift in the Slough of Despond.
With the Right of Return for Palestinians also off the table, and no viable state of their own on the West Bank, extremist organizations will have no problem recruiting more jihadis (holy warriors) and merging terrorist operations with the underground resistance in Iraq.
Arab opinion has been inflamed to the point where Palestine and Iraq are now two fronts in the war against what Charles de Gaulle used to call "the Anglo-Saxons." Osama bin Laden is probably thinking he's some kind of strategic genius.
In Iraq, quite apart from Fallujah and Najaf, the U.S. occupation, according to the latest Gallup polls, has turned most of the population against America. In Baghdad, only 13 percent now believe the invasion and regime change it accomplished were morally justifiable. Only one-third of Iraqis believe the occupation is doing more good than harm and a majority favor an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal while conceding this could put them in greater danger. Gen. Odom presumably has his finger on the same pulse.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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U.N. BIGS 'SEAL' THE OIL DEALS
By NILES LATHEM
BENON SEVAN - "UN SWELL" PICTURE...
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/23691.htm
Letter warned contractors.
May 4, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The United Nations yesterday threw up a stone wall in the oil-for-food scandal, insisting that contracts between the world body and private companies should not be turned over to investigators.
In a defiant move that has infuriated probers, Secretary-General Kofi Annan threw his support behind a letter from former oil-for-food head Benon Sevan to officials of a Dutch company that inspected Iraqi oil shipments. The letter directed the company not to hand over documents to congressional committees and other "governmental authorities."
Sevan's shocking April 14 letter sternly reminded the company, Saybolt International, that details of its contract with the United Nations are confidential "and we would not agree to their release."
The letter was especially eye-opening because it came from Sevan, who is under investigation for accepting sweetheart oil contracts from Saddam Hussein and who supposedly was on vacation, pending retirement, when it was written.
Annan appeared taken by surprise when he was confronted with the letter on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday and said he did not see why Sevan "was involved in sending a message like this."
But yesterday, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Annan, told The Post that the letter was written by another official on Sevan's stationery and that the official was following advice of U.N. lawyers.
"The letter follows standard U.N. legal procedure," which mandates that companies cannot give documents about contracts with the United Nations to outside governmental agencies without the approval of the United Nations, Dujarric added.
The Annan spokesman said other companies participating in the $100 billion humanitarian-aid program received similar letters and that all documents will be reviewed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, who is investigating charges of corruption within the program.
"This is disturbing," said a congressional investigator.
"U.N. officials are talking about transparency in this investigation and yet they appear to be thwarting efforts to get the relevant documents. What does that say?" the investigator added.
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WHAT TO DO IN IRAQ?:
W'S CARELESS TALK ...
May 4, 2004 -- OH? Who?
Appearing Friday in the Rose Garden with Canada's prime minister, President Bush was answering a reporter's question about Canada's role in Iraq when suddenly he swerved into this extraneous thought:
"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily - are a different color than white can self-govern."
What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun "ours" is "Americans." So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans' skin. He doesn't mean that. But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters.
Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, later said the president only meant that "there are some in the world that think that some people . . . can't live in freedom." The president meant that "some Middle Eastern countries - that the people in those Middle Eastern countries cannot be free."
Perhaps that, which is problematic enough, is what the president meant. But what he suggested was: Some persons - perhaps many persons; no names being named, the smear remained tantalizingly vague - doubt his nation-building project because they are racists.
That is one way to respond to questions about the wisdom of thinking America can transform the entire Middle East by constructing a liberal democracy in Iraq. But if any Americans want to be governed by politicians who short-circuit complex discussions by recklessly imputing racism to those who differ with them, such Americans do not usually turn to the Republican choice in our two-party system.
This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts. Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides about how "all people yearn to live in freedom" (McClellan). And about how it is "cultural condescension" to doubt that some cultures have the requisite aptitudes for democracy (Bush). And about how it is a "myth" that "our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" because "ours are not Western values; they are the universal values of the human spirit." (Tony Blair)
Speaking of culture, as neoconservative nation-builders would be well-advised to avoid doing, Pat Moynihan said: "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." Here we reach the real issue about Iraq, as distinct from unpleasant musings about who believes what about skin color.
The issue is the second half of Moynihan's formulation - our ability to wield political power to produce the requisite cultural change in a place like Iraq. Time was, this question would have separated conservatives from liberals. Nowadays it separates conservatives from neoconservatives.
Condoleezza Rice, a political scientist, believes there is scholarly evidence that democratic institutions do not merely spring from a hospitable culture, they can also help create such a culture. She is correct; they can. They did so in the young American republic. But it would be reassuring to see more evidence that the administration is being empirical, believing that this can happen in some places, as opposed to ideological, believing that it must happen everywhere it is tried.
Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.
In "On Liberty" (1859), John Stuart Mill said "it is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say" that the doctrine of limited, democratic government "is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties." One hundred forty-five years later it obviously is necessary to say that. People who think Mill was mistaken, or that it is a mistake to doubt Iraqi faculties today, should say why.
Ron Chernow's magnificent new biography of Alexander Hamilton begins with these of his subject's words: "I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be." That is the core of conservatism.
Traditional conservatism. Nothing "neo" about it. This administration needs a dose of conservatism without the prefix.
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WHAT TO DO IN IRAQ?:
... AND THE REAL ROAD AHEAD
By AMIR TAHERI
May 4, 2004 -- WHAT to do about Iraq? I was bombarded with this question during a recent visit to the United States.
The question is based on two assumptions. First, that Iraq is about to plunge into one of the nightmare scenarios discussed by self-styled experts on TV. Second, that there is some kind of magic wand that one could wave to transform Iraq into a paradise of freedom and prosperity.
Both assumptions are false.
The nightmares are often peddled by those who had opposed the liberation because they didn't wish to see a U.S.-led coalition bring down a Third World dictator. The doomsayers' initial prediction was that, deprived of its oppressor, Iraq would plunge into civil war. That has not happened, so they now warn of chaos, and predict a nationwide insurrection against the Coalition.
But is Iraq really plunging into chaos? Anyone in contact with Iraqi realities would know that the answer is: No.
Yes, a variety of terrorist, insurgent and ordinary criminals are active in the country. Parts of Baghdad remain unsafe. Some roads, especially in the desert area bordering Jordan and Syria, are prone to attacks by bandits. And, as in many other parts of the world where criminal gangs operate, there is also some hostage-taking. But most of Iraq's 18,000 villages and 200-plus towns and cities remain as safe, if not safer, than those in some other Arab countries.
The Coalition faces a problem in Fallujah. But Fallujah accounts for no more than 4 percent of Iraq's Sunni Arab community. Other major Sunni cities - Mosul, Ramadi, even Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown - remain calm.
Fallujah has become a problem for specific reasons. It is at the heart of a region that has been the center of Sunni military elites since the creation of Iraq in 1921. It is also the capital of several Sunni Arab tribes with branches in other nations, including Syria and Jordan. And Saddam invested heavily there, especially by building housing for army, police and secret service personnel working in Baghdad. Ba'athist military and their families account for some 30 percent of the city's population. It is the Iraqi city that most resents Saddam's fall and the end of its privileges.
Yet even in Fallujah there is no evidence that a majority of the people regret liberation or want Saddam back. There are perhaps 2,000 insurgents, including dozens of non-Iraqi fighters, in the city. The fact that more than half of the city's inhabitants have left their homes shows that, though they may wish the occupation to end, they don't wish to side with the insurgents.
Those who claim that Iraq is in chaos also point to Najaf, where Muqtada al-Sadr, a 30-year-old Shiite cleric, is hiding in a number of holy shrines and mosques along with his so-called Army of the Mahdi. But talk to anyone in Najaf and you'll soon know that the overwhelming majority of the city's population wants Sadr to get the hell out. (After more than two weeks of contacts with Iraqi Shiite leaders and opinion-makers at various levels, this writer has not found anyone who supports Sadr and his shenanigans.)
Sadr is abusing the old Shiite practice of "bast," which consists of taking sanctuary in a holy shrine. But Najaf is a city of 500,000 people, while Sadr's followers number 3,000 at most.
And Sadr's quarrel with the Coalition is personal rather than principled. He resents not being given a share in the Governing Council, and is unhappy that he and 18 close associates are wanted for murder. His strategy is a typical desperado's: He hopes to force the Coalition out of Iraq, provoke chaos and, if not secure a chunk of power for himself, avoid prosecution for murder.
The Coalition would do well not to force its way into either Fallujah or Najaf. In each, it faces a group of armed men holding larger civilian populations hostage. In Fallujah, the insurgent Ba'athists are using Saddam's typical tactic of using human shields. In Najaf, Sadr and his gang use the Shiite shrines for the same purpose.
There is no nationwide insurrection in Iraq. Nor is Iraq suffering from a general breakdown in law and order. To be sure, it is no bed of roses. But the violence and insecurity are within the remit of normal in a post-liberation situation, and remain manageable.
As things stand, the Coalition does not need more troops. In fact, it should speed up withdrawals from the dozen or so cities and towns where its troops are deployed for policing, a task for which they are neither trained nor equipped. Disbanding the Iraqi army and national police was a major mistake. But that is spilt milk. What's now needed is a fast-track program to train and deploy more units of the new army and police.
What of the pundits' second assumption - that some magic wand could turn that country into an Arab Switzerland overnight? There is, of course, no such magic wand. And Iraq, while capable of moving towards pluralism, will need years to develop a stable democratic system.
When President Bush announced the start of the war to liberate Iraq, he promised to stay the course until the Iraqi people built a new democratic system. Implicit in that offer was that the Iraqis should play their part in what is by far the greatest challenge they have faced since their state was created eight decades ago.
The people of Iraq have kept their end of the bargain. They did not fight on Saddam's side, allowing the Coalition to achieve victory with remarkable ease. Since then, they've continued to do what is required of them - not only by isolating insurgents and terrorists, but also by beginning to rebuild their shattered country. As a string of recent polls, complemented by personal and anecdotal information, indicates, the overwhelming majority are still prepared to work with the Coalition to achieve their dream of a new political system based on human rights and pluralism.
The real question is: Will the Coalition keep its end of the bargain? Or will U.S. and British leaders, for reasons of domestic politics, lose their nerve, throw Iraq to the United Nations or some other ineffectual custodian and sacrifice the strategic goal of a democratic Middle East to tactical electoral considerations?
What to do in Iraq? The answer is simple: Don't lose your nerve!
Yes, Iraq can become another Vietnam - not because of anything that's happening there, but because America and its allies, for reasons of domestic politics, might panic and transform victory into defeat.
E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com
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Saudi Arabia says attackers were family
May 5, 2004
Jeddah: Saudi Arabia said yesterday that four men who killed an Australian and four other Westerners in a suspected al-Qaeda attack on a Saudi energy site were two brothers and their uncles.
One reportedly had links to a Saudi dissident group in London.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz has said he believes Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda was behind Saturday's attack in the oil and petrochemical town of Yanbu.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the shootings, which killed 57-year-old Australian Anthony Mason, two Americans and two Britons.
The gunmen dragged the corpse of one American through the streets of the Red Sea town before being shot dead by police.
Two Saudi security personnel were also killed.
Violence in the Middle East and concerns over potential disruptions to petroleum supplies have helped push oil prices to their highest levels for 13 years.
US light crude rose more than 80 cents a barrel on Monday after the killings at Yanbu, which heightened fears that militants might target oil infrastructure in the world's top crude exporter.
The interior ministry named the attackers as brothers Sami and Samir al-Ansari and their uncles Ayman and Mustafa, all Saudis.
It identified Mustafa as a suspected militant wanted by Saudi authorities who had entered the country illegally after working with well-known Saudi dissident figures abroad.
"He last left the country in 1994 to join Saad al-Fagih and Mohamed al-Mas'ari to work with them in their suspicious committee," it said. "He recently entered the country illegally, crossing the borders in order to carry out vile plans."
Fagih and Mas'ari, two British-based Saudi opposition figures promoting democratic reform in the conservative kingdom, set up the Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) in 1993.
"This is a desperate and hopeless attempt by the Saudi government to find some link (between us and terrorists), after trying many times and failing," Fagih told Reuters by telephone.
"The Saudi government has to decide if it is accusing us, Israel or al-Qaeda, and then those accusations can be taken seriously," he said in reference to initial comments by Crown Prince Abdullah blaming "Zionist hands" for the attack.
He said someone called Mustafa al-Ansari had frequented the CDLR in 1996, but he did not know if that man was the attacker.
On Monday, the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia praised the kingdom's crackdown on al-Qaeda militants but re-issued a warning to the 35,000 Americans in the Gulf state to leave.
"They are making great progress. That is shown in the way they are working through the most wanted (militant) list," James Oberwetter said. "However, there is a still long way to go."
Fifty people were killed in the Saudi capital Riyadh last year in a string of suicide bombings blamed on al-Qaeda. Security forces have killed or arrested eight on a list of 26 top militants since December.
Swiss-based company ABB Lummus, targeted in Saturday's attack, said it was evacuating all 90 foreign staff from Yanbu and a project it was carrying out for a Saudi petrochemical firm would be delayed.
Reuters
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E-Notes
Saddam Circus Is Coming to Town: the Strange Story of Jacques Verges
by Michael Radu
April 14, 2004
Michael Radu, Ph.D., is co-chairman of FPRI's Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. This essay is adapted from a version that originally appeared on frontpagemagazine.com.
French celebrity lawyer Jacques Verges has announced that "at the request of the family" he has agreed to serve as defense counsel for Saddam Hussein at his upcoming trial for genocide and similar charges. The trial, which is to begin sometime this year, has been greatly anticipated ever since Saddam was captured in December, and now Verges' involvement ensures that it has all the potential of becoming an international ideological and political three-ring circus. Issues such as officials' personal responsibility for their government's acts, genocide, terrorism, and the right to a fair trial will all come under scrutiny, as seen from Verges' trademark Stalinist "anti-imperialism" viewpoint.
For those who believe that communism, and even more so Stalinism, are long dead, Verges is a living fossil, his ideology a Jurassic Park of twentieth-century criminal thought. Verges' life (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Verges) is as fascinating in its contradictions as it is revealing of a trend in the European-- especially French-- intellectual environment, whereby "justice" becomes a matter of ideology, fashion, and politics rather than of morality and law. It is only in such an environment that a lawyer who lost most of his cases (before France abolished capital punishment in 1981, Verges was nicknamed "Monsieur guillotine," given the fate of many of his clients) became famous. His books, such as On Judicial Strategy (1981), The Beauty of Crime (1988), I Defend Barbie (1988) and I Have More Memories than If I Were One Thousand Years Old (1999), have been published by the most prestigious editors, and he has been taken seriously in his relentless assaults against the co
ncepts of law, justice, and Western democracy.
Jacques Verges and his twin brother, Paul, were born in 1925 in Thailand, where their father, Raymond, was serving as a French diplomat. Raymond was a native of the French island department of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean, whose inhabitants are mostly of mixed race (Asian, European, African); Jacques' mother was Vietnamese. Based on his lineage, Jacques has perennially claimed to be a victim of racism, notwithstanding that the careers of his father and brother contradict that claim. In 1937, Raymond Verges founded the Reunion Communist Party (PCR), the local branch of the metropolitan organization. Paul, jailed as a young man for the murder of one of his father's political opponents, became a deputy and, in 1996, senator in the French parliament, to which he was reelected in 2001. He remains president of the Regional Council of Reunion and head of the PCR, the island's second largest party.
Jacques himself joined the Communist Party as a teenager, supported Charles de Gaulle during World War II (but only once Stalin had entered the war), and afterwards studied law at the Sorbonne. By 1949 he was president of the AEC (Association of Colonial Students), a communist front. There he met a fellow colonial student from then French Indochina, Saloth Sar, who became a friend for life. Saloth Sar went on to become better known as Pol Pot. Verges' connection with the Khmer Rouge continued: his disappearance from the public eye between 1970 and 1978 has been attributed by some to his joining the Khmer Rouge, and in February 2004 Verges offered to defend Pol Pot's associate and Sorbonne classmate Khieu Samphan in his upcoming trial for genocide before a UN-aided tribunal in Cambodia.
Between 1950 and 1954 Verges was in Prague, then the center of Soviet global propaganda and ideological training, as leader of one of Moscow's youth front organizations. During that period he had the privilege of meeting Joseph Stalin himself.
Upon return to France, radicalized by the Algerian war, Verges left the Communist Party and began his road to fame as a defense lawyer for Algerian terrorists. The most famous of those, and the case that won him plaudits from cultural icons of the Left such as Jean-Paul Sartre, was that of Djamila Bouhired, implicated in an Algiers cafe bombing that resulted in numerous fatalities. Ms. Bouhired was sentenced to death, but the combination of a leftist media campaign and a weak socialist government led to her release. She subsequently married Verges.
At a time when France was at war, Verges openly supported and defended terrorists and their French accomplices-- that is, traitors. He was jailed for this for two months in 1960 and temporarily disbarred.
Verges effortlessly shifted his loyalty from to Stalin to political evil in general-- he once admitted a "passionate interest in evil." Commingled in his brilliant mind were the worst of Nazism, Stalinist communism and, lately, Muslim totalitarianism. One of his French critics theorizes that his mixed-race background led to an extreme need for recognition, megalomania, and personal adventure, so that "behind an image of international lawyer of the first rank is hidden a mercenary of law" (Bernard Violet, Le Parisien, Mar. 27, 2004).
That, and an obsessive hatred for Israel, best explain his personal and professional associations and his choice of clients. The latter have included Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987; Marxist turned Islamist terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1994; Algerian terrorists linked to petty thief and Islamist terrorist Khaled Kelkal, who was killed by the police in 1995; former Marxist philosopher (and another convert to Islam) Roger Garaudy, who was convicted of Holocaust denial and fined in 1996; Slobodan Milosevic, in 2002; and now, logically enough, Saddam.
What do these clients have in common, both among themselves and with their lawyer? The same characteristics as former Nazi and now Islamist sympathizer Francois Genoud, another Verges associate. As owner of the Arab Commercial Bank in Switzerland, Genoud was the apparent financier of the Barbie case, as well as some of Genoud's Palestinian terrorism cases. These men are the ideologues and defenders, practitioners, or would-be practitioners of mass murder or genocide. Their ideology is totalitarian at its core, thus explaining the effortless movement from Marxism or Nazism to Islamism or support for it. They also share a common trait of twentieth-century European totalitarianists and present- day Islamists: hatred of Jews and Israel.
It is this background that gives away Verges' likely tactics at Saddam's trial and explain his taking up the case. This is no humanitarian response to a desperate "family request"-- indeed, Verges had volunteered to represent Saddam within days of Saddam's capture. The celebrated lawyer is on a lifelong campaign against Western values and freedoms, and the fate of his clients is not a major concern to him. They are merely cannon-fodder for him to use toward his greater goal.
As a defender of Palestinian terrorist hijackers of El Al planes in 1969, Verges claimed that the terrorists' acts were political, not criminal, and the fault of Israeli aggression. Representing Milosevic, Verges claimed that the International Court trying the Serb leader was inherently illegitimate and biased because it received outside donations from individuals such as George Soros (whom he called "not exactly a Mother Theresa") and nations such as the United States and Saudi Arabia. He threatened to call for testimony from Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder, and Jacques Chirac, "because in Dayton they recognized Mr. Milosevic as a respectable and valid interlocutor." Expect the same in a Baghdad court--after all, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld did talk to Saddam in the 1980s, and the West helped him against Iran at the time.
Verges' personal and views of the justice system in general and of morality are similarly peculiar. Thus, in The Beauty of Crime he writes: "The judges are like chefs-- they do not like to be observed when they cook," and "The world of justice is a closed, cruel world. . . . Its doors are quilted to stifle the cries, its cathedral windows to block the view" "between the dogs [prosecution] and the wolf [defendants] I'll always be on the side of the wolf-- especially when it is wounded." More relevant, and revealing, accusations in the name of society are uses of the banality of the time, while the defense must escape "the trapped terrain of consensus" to set itself "beyond good and evil, to give crime a new sense and the criminal a face. What sets them apart is the beauty." (See Denis Touret, "Un mercenaire du droit, Me Verges defend Saddam Hussein," March 2004).
In Legal Apartheid, Verges writes that the old notions of honor demonstrated at Thermopylae, Waterloo, and Stalingrad, were ended with Hitler, whose adversaries could only be subhuman. Referring to Kosovo, he says that NATO follows on Hitler's steps in its contempt, charged with fear and hatred, for those [i.e. Milosevic's Serbs] who would contest its hegemony. More radical still, for Verges "racism is simply replaced by the ideology of human rights in the exclusive version of Gens. Powell and Clark, butchers of the peoples of Vietnam, Iraq, and Serbia. . . . 'Human rights' is the pretext for the murder of civilians in the Balkans, the starving of Iraqi children, and poppy cultivation in Afghanistan." (Touret, "Un Mercenaire du droit")
In many ways Verges has been a path breaker for radical lawyers everywhere. His approach to the defense of terrorists has been followed by lawyers in the United States and Germany, especially. He blurred the lines between defense, representation, and ideological comradeship with the accused, and sought to transform legal cases against individuals into global tribunals against "the system"--to put the court, the judges, and democracy on the stand. He has already made clear that he will try to bring world leaders to testify in Baghdad and found enablers in the media speculating that such tactics "could be a huge embarrassment for the United States, France, and other countries." ("World leaders should take stand in Saddam trial: lawyer," AFP, Dec. 20, 2003)
That would, of course, depend on the Iraqi judges and the rules to be decided in Baghdad. If Western human rights groups and defense lawyers succeed in making the Saddam trial an international affair, they will offer Verges another platform for his anti-Western psychopathic obsessions and Saddam the opportunity for revenge against Washington and London and, perhaps, a chance to save his skin. If, however, common sense and morality set the rules, Verges will not only lose the case--that is to be expected-- but, given his age, also lose his last chance to promote the counter-values of totalitarianism of which he is the premier living representative.
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Radical Islam in the Maghreb
by Carlos Echeverr?a Jes?s
Carlos Echeverr?a Jes?s is professor of International Relations at Open University in Madrid, professor on Mediterranean security at the Escuela Superior de las Fuerzas Armada, lecturer at the NATO Defence College in Rome on North Africa and Mediterranean issues, and an analyst on Islamist terrorism at the Centre for Analysis and Prospective of the Guardia Civil in Madrid.
The Maghreb (from the Arabic word for "West") region is made up fives states:
Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Their main common characteristics are the Arabic language, Islam, and historical ties with the Arab world, subsaharan Africa, and Mediterranean Europe. They are also all members of the Arab League and of the Islamic Conference Organization (OIC). Radical Islam and terrorism have spread throughout the region and acquired a high level of militancy. All the states suffer from potential or real Islamist opposition. Radical Islamists believe that the Maghrebi regimes, which have traditionally collaborated with the Christians and the Jews, must be subverted. They gained strength from the bitterness engendered by the 1991 Gulf War; the Bosnian, Chechen, and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts beginning later in the decade; and, more recently, the U.S.-led coalition's defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
Algeria's experience after it permitted multiparty elections in 1989, which brought Islamists into power, caused fear in other Maghreb countries and in the West that their democratization could lead to similar takeovers or internal strife. Since 1989, more than 120,000 civilians, military and police personnel, and radical Islamists have been killed in Algeria. Though the circumstances of the Algerian crisis have been uniquely Algerian, the problem is not. Radical Islam in the Maghreb has long been a problem in the region. While no government in North Africa is likely to be overthrown by radical Islamists in the coming years, all will have to deal with the challenges to their rule from moderate Islamist political components and, in a number of countries, also from Islamist terrorists. The region not only faces direct terrorist threats, but also poses a problem to the rest of the world, due to Al Qaeda and the other transnational terrorism groups who have origins there. Secret
ary of State Colin Powell's November 2003 visit to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia reflects the importance of the region to the United States. In the 1990s, moderate Islamists in Algeria and Morocco, the two countries that initially tolerated the movement, focused on penetrating the civil society and occupying the maximum ground in social sectors. They now publish newspapers and have a significant presence in Moroccan universities. In Algeria, natural disasters such as the 2001 floods in Algiers' Bab-el-Oued borough and the 2003 earthquake in the great Algiers region, together with widespread unemployment or
ECHEVERR?A
| Orbis 2
underemployment produced by economic restructuring, have been exploited by both the legal and illegal Islamist groups to gain support. But unlike the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example, the Islamist groups in Algeria and Morocco have not yet been able to use their presence and activism in trade associations to gain control of those groups.
Algeria
The development of a radical Islamist movement has been a major feature of Algerian political life since the mid-1970s, especially after the death of President Houari Boumedi?ne, the Republic's first president, in December 1978.1 Boumedi?ne had adopted a policy of Arabization that included phasing out the French language. French professors were replaced by Arabic speakers from Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, many of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The troubles began in 1985, when the Mouvement islamique alg?rien (MIA), founded to protest the single-party socialist regime, began attacking police stations. Escalating tensions amid declining oil prices culminated in the Semoule revolt in October 1988. More than 500 people were killed in the streets of Algiers in that revolt, and the government was finally forced to undertake reforms. In 1989 it legalized political parties, including the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), and over the next two years the Islamists were able to impose their will in many parts of the country, targeting symbols of Western "corruption" such as satellite TV dishes that brought in European channels, alcohol, and women who didn't wear the hiyab (the Islam veil). FIS victories in the June 1990 municipal elections and in the first round of the parliamentary elections held in December 1991 generated fears of an impending Islamist dictatorship and led to a preemptive interruption of the electoral process
in January 1992. The next year saw an increase in the violence that had begun in 1991 with the FIS's rhetoric in support of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, the growing presence of Algerian "Afghans"--Algerian volunteer fighters returning from the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan--and the November 1991 massacre of border guards at Guemmar, on the border between Algeria and Tunisia.2
Until mid-1993, victims of MIA, Islamic Salvation Army-AIS (the FIS's armed wing), and Islamic Armed Group (GIA) violence were mostly policemen, soldiers, and terrorists. Later that year the violence expanded to claim both foreign and Algerian civilians. In September 1993, the bodies of seven foreigners were found in various locations around the country.3 Dozens of judges, doctors, intellectuals, and journalists were also murdered that year. In October 1993 Islamists vowed to kill any foreigner remaining in Algeria after December 1; more than 4,000 foreigners left in November 1993. As writer Tahar Djaout, assassinated some years
1 Hugh Roberts, "Radical Islamism and the Dilemma of Algerian Nationalism: The Embattled
Arians of Algiers" Third World Quarterly, April 1988, p. 556.
2 Mohamed Issami, Le FIS et le terrorisme. Au coeur de l'enfer Algiers, Le Matin ?ditions, 2001, pp.
255-73.
3 Lara Marlowe, "Algeria: Macabre Arithmetic," Time, Dec. 13, 1993.
Maghreb
3
later by the GIA, put it, "two visions of society separated by ten centuries" were at war. The GIA, which released its first communiqu? in late 1993, believes that the best government is a universal caliphate based on the model of the four Rashidin, successors of the Prophet.
The government's main priorities in these years were combating terrorism and cleansing the mosques so that it could become the sole purveyor of the Islamic religion. In 1995, its sustained pressure on the terrorist groups' supply lines made it increasingly difficult for them to procure weaponry. At the time, the army was launching major offensives aimed at confining the terrorist groups and generally putting them on the defensive. The movement's operations seemed to indicate that it was gaining organizational efficiency, and its terrorist attacks in France in 1995 suggested it was seeking public-relations successes to compensate for defeats within Algeria and to increase its credibility with outside supporters. Rivalries within the movement increased that year, with the AIS and GIA fragmented by the army's pressures and internal strife. In January 1996 the GIA, which wanted to oust the government militarily, declared war on the AIS, which did not rule out finding a political
solution to the crisis.
In 1996, there were 14 armed Islamist groups acting in Algeria, six of whom enjoyed some kind of organized support in Europe. Each group had its own arms depots and militants, and all of them were trying to "inherit" the European support networks. The AIS, led by the Emir Madani Merzag, a veteran of Qaddafi's Islamic Legion, enjoyed the support of clandestine networks in France. The GIA, led then by the new emir Antar Zouabri, comprised 600-650 armed men and enjoyed thesupport of intellectuals and religious leaders such as Abu Qutada and Abu Hamza in Northern Europe, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. Completing the picture of Algerian radical Islam are marginal groups such as the GIA led by Emir Kada Benchiha, composed of Algerian Afghans and Bosnians, and the GIA led by Emir Mohamed Mossab, both of which rejected Zouabri's leadership. (The Mossab GIA's Italian support network, the Djamel Lounici's group, was dismantled by Italian police early in 1996.).
Between 1995 and 1999 the Algerian government applied an antiterrorist strategy based on three pillars: a military offensive by the army, security forces, and the intelligence services; a political offensive; and a more subtle propaganda war. Military Offensive. Military and civilian assets working together proved highly efficient in arming village guards and other paramilitary units for self defense. Over the course of 1995 the authorities distributed weapons among villagers in the countryside, and in small towns the people were guarded against Islamist activists by self-defense groups who called themselves Patriots (which were legalized in January 1997). By the beginning of 1996 the army had significantly increased the percentage of territory it controlled and turned the tide against the rebels. The AIS and GIA came to depend less on classic guerrilla warfare and more on a strategy of destabilization, including using explosives for bomb attacks on crowded markets. Booby-tr
apped cars, assassinations, and roadblocks were proof that the terrorists could no longer launch major military attacks. They were taking the battle away
ECHEVERR?A
| Orbis 4
from the mountains and plains and into the cities and the desert areas of southern Algeria, where the country's vital hydrocarbon wealth is located. The extension of violence to the south, following a GIA threat to oil workers when the government signed contracts with foreign oil companies BP, Total, Repsol, and Arco, was a significant new security development. In February 1996, the international Arabic-language press published the GIA's threat to kill any employees of Algerian companies such as Sonatrach and Naftal or any of their foreign partners who did not abandon their work immediately, as well as army reservists who left their home areas. In September 1996, GIA's Emir Zouabri pronounced a death sentence on anyone who participated in the privatization of state enterprises or worked in the hydrocarbons sector, on the grounds that the revenue from foreign oil companies was bolstering the regime. The increase in civilian casualties entailed by the new terrorist strategy fu
eled divisions within the ranks of the Islamist movement that helped the army negotiate a cease-fire with the AIS.
Political Offensive. After President Liamine Zeroual, the former Defense Minister who had been appointed president by the High Council of State in 1994, decided to hold elections in November 1995, the Algerian establishment agreed to a clear division of labor. While the president's main task was to campaign for the elections, the army and security services would intensify their operations to ensure maximum security for them. Moderate Islamist candidates steered a careful path between their Islamist identity and respect for the constitution and electoral laws, which forbid parties based on religion and the use of mosques for political activities. Zeroual won the election, in which 75 percent of the Algerian electorate reportedly participated, with a comfortable majority of 61 percent, and even the FIS accepted the results. A clemency law was passed that allowed members of armed groups to give themselves up to the security forces.
Given the election results, Washington concluded that Algeria's regime had won the war against Islamists, a conclusion that belied the Clinton administration's earlier prediction that the Algerian regime would be toppled by a bloody insurrection. The visit of high-level U.S. officials to Algiers in the first quarter of 1996 signaled new U.S. cooperation. In December 1996, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service detained Anwar Haddam, head of the banned FISparliamentary mission abroad, in Washington pending deportation hearings.4 Counterterrorism. Meanwhile, on the border with Niger, which was thought to be a potential source of weapons for the terrorist groups, the government arranged for the Agadez and Tahoua areas to be policed by joint patrols made up of the Army, the Gendarmerie, the Tassara vigilante committees, the Popular Front for the Liberation of the North, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and the Front for the Liberation of Tamoust. Other former rebel organ
izations were invited to join the patrols, which seemed likely to help restore authority over the northern regions.
4 Haddam was freed in 2000 and remains in the United States; he faces a death sentence in
Algeria.
Maghreb
5 The Algerian-Malian border has also been important in counterterrorism strategies. In the mid-1990s Algeria played an important role as mediator in Bamako's struggle with Twareg and Arab rebels in the north of the country. But the situation remained tense and unstable in the west, around the Moroccan border, where disparate armed groups appeared to be coordinating their activities and seemingly finding routes to safe haven in Morocco. Political Institutions. In 1997 the government completed forming all the various elected institutions required under its new constitution. In a November 1996 referendum considered to be the cornerstone of true democracy in Algeria, Algerians had voted to amend the constitution to concentrate power in the presidency and to prevent political parties from exploiting religion. In June 1997 Algerians went to the polls for the first parliamentary elections in six years and elected the first multi-party government. In municipal and provincial polls
held in October 1997, the National Democratic Union, a government-sponsored party, won over half of the vote; the former ruling party, the National Liberation Front-FLN, came in second, with one-fifth of the vote. The elections were the final part of an institutional process aimed at increasing the regime's legitimacy and consolidating its powers. It provided roles for moderate Islamist parties, including leadership of several ministries. As an additional concession, it reenacted the law generalizing the use of the Arabic language, which had been frozen in 1996. The law called for completing the process of generalizing the use of Arabic by July 1998. The election campaigns provoked an increase in both GIA massacres of civilians and in disputes among the former FIS's leadership. The side led by Rabah K?bir and the exiled leadership favored making the FIS respectable and seeking its legalization. In parallel, the AIS negotiated a cease-fire that opened the door to its reinserti
on in the political arena. The cease-fire was implemented after Abdelaziz Bouteflika became president in 1999. Meanwhile, brutal GIA attacks on vulnerable settlements alienated its potential supporters and led to the formation in 1998 of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which owed its existence directly to Osama bin Laden. Led by Hassan Hattab, the GSPC is active in the forests and mountains of Kabylia, which provide a refuge for terrorist cells despite the profusion of self-defense groups there. The group specializes in attacks against the armed forces and security services. In 2003, it was involved in the kidnapping of 32 Western tourists in the south of Algeria.
Propaganda War. In February 1996, the Interior Ministry issued a strongly worded warning to the Algerian press not to publish reports of security-related matters deriving from non-official sources. A few days later, the Ministry revived at the offices of Algeria's newspapers the censorship committees first established in 1994. The government also took control of the flow of security-related information to the Arabic media abroad. But it faced an additional problem: out of the 10,000 mosques in the country, 2,600 were not under the control of an employee of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which was trying to find practical means of clarifying the role of imams and provincial religious affairs directors in teaching Islam. In
January 1997, Minister of Religious Affairs Ahmed Merani pointed out that his
ECHEVERR?A
| Orbis 6
Ministry was doing its best to protect mosques from corruption and keep them solely places of worship, not venues for politicking. Radical Islamist attacks against popular Islam also remained a threat. An October 1996 attack on a Tijania Sufi mosque at Kardan underlined the growing dichotomy between the radical Islamists' quest for extreme Islamic orthodoxy and more traditional, local forms of belief and worship.
When he was elected president in 1999 (in an uncontested election), President Bouteflika inherited a flagging peace process. He paid special attention not only to the fight against terrorism but also to national reconciliation, through the Civilian Concord Law that had been approved by referendum. In 2000, more than 6,000 members of the AIS and other groups returned to their homes, the president asserts. In February 2000, at Marrakesh, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen announced that Washington planned to expand and enhance its contacts with Algeria. Washington has supported normalization of Algeria's relations, including Algeria's adherence to NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue and enhanced U.S.-Algerian cooperation on security and defense matters, which began even before the 9/11 attacks.5
Libya
During the 1990s, Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi staged a fierce campaign against radical Islamists in Libya, especially the armed groups in the eastern part of the country, which has witnessed clashes between these groups and government security forces. In June 1996 eight Libyan policemen were killed in an attack carried out by Islamists in Darnah, in the east. In 1996-97 Libya negotiated with several Gulf capitals and Sudan for extradition of Libyan Islamists trained in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.6 Some 70 out of 300 Arab veterans of that war residing in Sudan were Libyans, and Tripoli believed that there was a connection between these Libyan "Afghans" and the Sudanese government. At the same time, Qaddafi continued to support some radical Islamist groups abroad through Dawaa al-Islamiya, which was an active Libyan instrument for external propaganda. The regime has curtailed this practice with the normalization of its international relations in recent
years, and in 1994 Qaddafi promised President Zeroual to cease providing support for Algerian Islamists. This pledge came after Libya had been accused of helping those groups cross into Algeria through the Libyan desert after receiving training in camps in Sudan. In September 1995 Egypt claimed to have evidence of the existence in neighboring Sudan of twenty camps for training terrorists to operate in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, and Libya. The next year, Algerian Islamists claimed that hundreds of FIS activists who had taken refuge in Libya had disappeared in mysterious circumstances after Algiers and Tripoli signed a security cooperation agreement. In 1998, there were reports of armed confrontations between Islamists and security forces in Benghazi, in the core of eastern Libya, and the Libyan
5 "Boutef Rides his Luck" Africa Confidential, Feb. 18, 2000.
6 Ray Takeyh, "Qadhafi and the Challenge of Militant Islam," Washington Quarterly, Summer 1998.
Maghreb
7
government released through Interpol the first international alert against Osama bin Laden. Since 9/11, Libya has played an active role in the international war on terror, through its full participation at the Ministerial Conference of Interior Ministers of the Western Mediterranean, as an observer in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership's Barcelona Process, at the UN, and in bilateral cooperation with former enemies such as the UK and the United States. After the U.S.-led war on Iraq, it also agreed to dismantle its WMD.
Morocco
In the early 1990s, its European proponents claimed that the Kingdom of Morocco was on a new liberal path, politically and economically, that deserved Europe's support to stem the tide of radical Islam in the Maghreb. Rabat often pointed to the danger of Islamism in Algeria or Egypt as a way of demonstrating the advantages of its own regime. King Hassan's decision to send 1,200 troops to join the forces of the anti-Saddam coalition on the Saudi-Kuwait border in the 1991 Gulf War, even if they were not be used for the liberation of Kuwait, was less than popular and sent a frisson of resentment around the country.7
Morocco's Islamists are barred from setting up parties, denied legal status as associations, and kept under a close watch. But they have been allowed to gather, arrange social events, publish newspapers, and preach a stricter adherence to Islamic values. None of the groups advocates violence, but certain violent factions do exist in Morocco, as was evident in 1994, when a cell of the Moroccan Combatant Islamic Movement (MIC) assassinated two Spanish tourists at the Atlas Asni Hotel in Marrakesh. Morocco accused the Algerian Secret Service of being behind the attack and imposed a visa requirement for Algerians wishing to enter the country, leading the Algeria to close the border. In fact, the radical Islamist groups had been operating in Morocco since the early '90s, led by Moroccan "Afghans" who led attacks such as those against a McDonald's in Casablanca and the Soci?t? Marocaine de D?pot Bank in Oudja in 1993 and against the Makro department store in Casablanca in 1994. Af
ter their arrest in France, in 1997 a Paris court sentenced members of the MIC network involved in the Atlas Asni Hotel attack.Moroccan police arrested a group of arms smugglers made up of 12 Moroccan members of the Jamaat al-Adl wal-Ihsan (Justice and Charity) and five Algerian GIA members in 1995, seizing a number of Kalashnikovs and pistols, homemade explosives, radio transmitter-receivers, and night-vision equipment. Two months later Morocco sentenced eight people for smuggling weapons to Algerian armed groups.
Clashes broke out in Casablanca in January 1997 between security forces and hundreds of students, most of whom were Islamists who had been attending the trial of three of their comrades. Several people were injured. The Islamists had imposed strikes and sit-ins, much as the General Union of Moroccan Students had done in the 1960s, and stirred up tension on the campuses. They continue to engage in grassroots activism in trade unions, especially the Democratic Confederation of
7 Jonathan Farley, "The Maghreb's Islamic Challenge" World Today, Aug.-Sept. 1991, pp. 149-50.
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| Orbis 8
Labour. For the time being, they have not created a specific Islamist trade union, as the FIS did with its Workers Islamic Trade Union. However, they are attaining positions in several professional sections of existing trade unions and have demonstrated their intention to foment strikes and obstruct any agreements' being reached between the unions and the government.
At the end of the 1990s, the social and political conditions in Morocco were favorable for radical Islam. These conditions included a concentration of wealth, corruption at various levels of the administration, and high unemployment (especially among those of age 15-25). The political class in Morocco and in Europe feared that demanding social justice and freer political expression would produce popular explosions in the absence of King Hassan's agile exercise of power. However, since Hassan II's death in August 1999, his son, Mohammed VI, has embarked on a careful process of transition and modernization. Moderate Islamists are becoming relevant in politics through the Hizb al-Adala wal-Tanmiyya (Justice and Development Party-PJD), and radical Islamists are also getting some protagonism.
The PJD has been effective in its frontal opposition against the steps taken in 1999 by socialist then-prime minister Abderrahmane Yussufi to reform the Mudawwana, the code of personal status. In March 2000 it staged a "One Million March" in Casablanca to protest the reforms. Legislative and local elections held in 2002 and 2003 evidence the wide support they enjoy. By March 2002, Lib?ration warned of the presence of "fundamentalist gangs organized as private militia groups spreading a reign of terror among the suburbs." In Fez, terrorists had set up roadblocks to identify drivers and hunt down alcohol users, something that carries an ugly ring of events in Algeria in the 1990s.
Along with the rise of political Islam came a new terror threat. Since 9/11, the international activities of Islamist terrorism and the presence of Moroccans in its midst--17 Moroccans are imprisoned in Guantanamo--has been an issue of growing concern to the security forces, the intelligence service, and the armed forces.
A combined operation led by the head of the internal information service, Gen. Amidou Laanigri, thwarted May 2002 attacks against Western warships in the Straits of Gibraltar. These would-be attacks demonstrated the presence of an increasingly globalized Islamist terrorist network extending throughout North Africa and Europe. The 17 Moroccans held in Guantanamo Bay provided the information that permitted the arrest of three Saudis apparently acting as liaisons for Al Qaeda and four Moroccan accomplices. They had apparently received instructions on carrying out terrorist attacks in Morocco from Mullah Bilal, who was responsible for Al Qaeda operations in North Africa and the Middle East. They appeared in court in Casablanca in June 2002, and it seemed clear that since the start of 2001 the suspects had been recruiting prospective terrorists from the Moroccan wing of the Islamic Combatant Group-GIC, which has links to the Algerian GSPC. Fear of infiltration by Islamist extremi
sm within the state's own ranks is another danger. In January 2003, the Royal Gendarmerie arrested an army sergeant, Yusef Amani, who had stolen Kalashnikov rifles from the Guercif barracks,intending to provide them to an Islamist cell in Meknes.
Maghreb
9
All these trends were dramatically confirmed by the May 2003 synchronized suicide attacks in Casablanca, which left 45 dead and dozens wounded. Since then, hundreds of militants in the Salafiya Djihadia Moroccan network and alleged Al Qaeda members have reportedly been arrested. For the time being, Morocco has approved rigid counterterrorism legislation and reinforced its links with international partners such as France, Spain, and the United States to combat the globalized radical Islamist terrorism threat. In this context, the king, who has this prerogative as the supreme religious authority in the country, instructed the parliament in December 2003 to pass a new personal code modernizing the Mudawwana.
Tunisia
Since November 1987, when he took over from former Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba, President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali has fought against radical Islamists in the Republic and tried to undercut the Islamist Harkat Nahida party's support by creating jobs and development. During the 1990s, the regime appropriated the slogans of Islamists and made itself the champion of youth, providing job opportunities for the poor and unemployed. President Ben Ali has developed a system of social assistance for disadvantaged communities through a solidarity fund run by the presidency, a program that has won UN support as a model for other countries and regions.
But since becoming the first Mediterranean country to sign an EU Association Agreement in 1995 toward establishing a free-trade zone with the EU by 2010, Tunisia is in a delicate transition period. Liberalization of the economy and privatization have brought tensions. The number of new job seekers will rise over the next few years, and unemployment levels are already reaching about 15 percent. With a small domestic market (the total population is about 10 million), Tunisia has to compete for foreign direct investment with countries of the Mediterranean as well as Eastern Europe and Asia.
The government's fears of radical Islam and its obsession with security threaten to further undermine its political position.8 Islamism in Tunisia has traditionally been a reaction to the secularization programs of presidents Bourguiba and Ben Ali and to President Ben Ali's growing personality cult, but it has also been activated from abroad. In the 1989 general elections, the last attended by the Islamists, even the government's unpublished polls showed Harkat Nahida candidates polling over 50 percent in some constituencies. The next year Islamists applied formally, as Ennahda (Renaissance), for registration as a political party, which was refused on the grounds that it was a religious organization, not a political party. Shortly thereafter Ennahda was implicated in bombing a building in Tunis belonging to the government party. One hundred leading members of the party were detained and its newspaper banned.9
8 Nicolas Demezieres, "La Tunisie, ou le triumphe du `tout-s?curitaire'," Relations Internationales et
Strat?giques, Winter 1994, pp. 128-30.
9 Farley, "The Maghreb's Islamic Challenge," p. 151.
ECHEVERR?A
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The terrorism threat from neighboring Algeria has aroused concern in Tunisia since the early 1990s, especially after an attack in Guemmar, on the Algerian border, in November 1991 and the appearance of clear signs of links between Algerian terrorist groups and Tunisian Islamists. In summer 1992 a large trial in Tunis confirmed the extent of Islamism in the armed forces and the real threat of coup d'?tat: 50 of 171 Ennahda members, and many of its so-called Commandos of Sacrifice, came from the military/security apparatus.10 A major diplomatic incident between Tunisia and the UK was provoked in 1993 when Ennahda's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, who had been sentenced to death in absentia for alleged involvement in terrorism in Tunis, was granted asylum by the British Home Office. The affair illustrates the differences in perception between the Maghreb countries and the Western countries on questions of political rights, as Algerian and Tunisian officials were prompt to point out
in September 2001.
The veteran Foreign Affairs minister, Habib Ben Yahia, initiated discussion of terrorism in the Arab League in 1993, and Tunis has been in regular consultation with allies such as Algeria, Egypt, and Tunis, exchanging information and coordinating activities, for a decade. More recently, Tunisia's economic growth, improved education and living standards for the rising middle class, and coercive security measures against real and suspected terrorists have kept Islamist politics quiescent. To Tunis, Algeria's problems only showed the folly of allowing elections that include Islamists. Many Tunisians are reluctant to support a cause that seems to threaten economic growth. Ennahda has been silenced at home and the activities of its exiled leader curtailed.11 The involvement of Tunisian terrorists in Al Qaeda's assassination of Commandant Ahmed Shah Massoud in Tajikistan on September 9, 2001, and, above all, the April 2002 suicide car bombing in Djerba's La Ghriba Synagogue, which
left 19 dead and dozens wounded, only intensified Tunis' counterterrorism efforts.12
Mauritania
The Islamic Republic of Mauritania's recognition of the State of Israel in 1995, its perpetual ethnic problems, its weakness, and its chronic security deficit have led to an upsurge of radical Islamist activism over the past decade. In 1995, Mauritanian authorities launched the first massive police operation against radical Islamist networks, and the next year they began a major crackdown on arms smuggling into Algeria, focusing on the triangle of arid territory defined by it, Western Sahara, and Mali.13 More than 40 suspects were arrested in connection with
10 In this trial of 279 Islamists, 265 were found guilty of offenses against the state and 46 received
life sentences.
11 Maha Azzam, "Recent Developments Among Islamist Groups" in Volker Perthes, ed., Political
Islam and Civil Society in Northern Africa. Four Approaches, Ebenhausen/Isartal, Stiftung Wissenschaft und
Politik, May 1998, p. 19.
12 ?lise Colette, "Comment Massoud a ?t? pi?g?," Jeune Afrique/l'Intelligent, Feb. 11-
17, 2002.
13 The need to bring this area under control is evidenced by the build-up in 2003 of a
Maghreb
11
contraband arms formerly belonging to the Azawad's Malian Touareg rebels, one among many rebel movements that are the real actors in the volatile Sahelian region. While Mauritania undoubtedly had its own reasons for cracking down on illicit arms dealings, Algiers presumably encouraged these moves. Algiers' influence is strong in Nouakchott. Also, the Algerian oil industry, which controls 55 percent of production and distribution of oil-based products in Mauritania, was reportedly considering the possibility of prospecting for oil and gas along the Mauritanian coast, a region that is becoming of more and more interest after exploration there by Australian and British oil companies in 2003. In summer 2003, a coup attempt against President Ould Taya highlighted the need for the West to support this country, which, because of its location in the extremely sensitive region connecting the Maghreb with subsaharan Africa, must not become a failed state.
The West and the Maghreb: Lessons Learned
Fear that the FIS triumph in Algeria could lead to Islamist takeovers throughout North Africa left most Western governments secretly siding, although weakly, with the Algerian government in the early 1990s. The Europeans additionally feared that turmoil in the Maghreb might mean waves of immigrants and/or refugees to Europe. At the same time, the Islamists' free-market economic programs, promoting an "Islamic" economy in which the state would disengage from most economic activities, made it seem that removing the economic, social, and political causes for these movements was the best option.14 The Maghreb states had in fact all been vulnerable to the advance of radical Islam since the end of the 1980s, as impoverished masses sought refuge in Islam during the turbulent process of modernization and globalization.
The most important security concern for the Maghreb in the mid-1990s was that Europe might play the role of home base for the Islamists, as was true for some European countries. At that time, European governments were reluctant to speak of an "Islamist International," but it was clear to a number of North African governments that radical Islam had external sources--arms trade and funding through Europe, connected with smuggling and drugs. It was also clear that Islamist terrorism had begun to affect European interests, with acts including the assassination of Europeans in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco or Tunisia; the hijacking of the Air France Airbus in Algiers in December 1994 and of two Air Algeria aircrafts over Spain in 1994; the series of bombings in France in 1995-96; and arms trafficking in Belgium, France, Germany, and Spain.
Western governments, mainly in Europe, finally asked whether the political agendas of radical Islamists in the Maghreb were strictly focused on confrontation with their own governments or if elements of a substantial transnational agenda against the West could be identified. The Maghreb regimes hoped their European facility in the southern Algerian city of Tammanrasset for the U.S. National Security Agency.
14 Pedro Moya, "The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism and the Future of Democracy in North
Africa," Interim Report of the Subcommittee on the Mediterranean Basin International Secretariat of the North
Atlantic Assembly, Nov. 1994.
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counterparts would begin to crack down on the GIA and other groups in the terrorists' support networks, but it took years for their hopes to be fulfilled. Finally in 1995 a number of European nations began to reinforce bilateral and multilateral links with North Africa.
In Algeria, the government's counter-insurrectionist strategy, begun in 1992, eventually reduced the number of active radical Islamists. Both Algeria and Morocco have explored how to coopt Islamist opposition forces within the system, as with the Society for Peace Movement (formerly Hamas) and Islah (formerly Ennahda) in Algeria and the PJD in Morocco, isolating only the violent factions. At the same time, for the radical Islamists, the West--even if it is seen as apathetic to the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine, Afghanistan, or Iraq--is an attractive refuge. The Islamist networks have exploited disputes between European and Maghreb states, such as that between Paris and Algiers after the interruption of elections in 1992, and among the European states themselves, such as the one between the northern and southern European countries on the nature of these networks in Europe. The reluctance of a number of Western countries to do their part in combating terror
ism in the Maghreb only strengthened the Islamists. The Europeans' belief that conflicts in the Maghreb did not significantly affect their national interests, along with the fact that the greater impact of this terrorism was on France, the former colonial power and the European country with the largest Maghrebi population, increased other Western countries' reticence to coordinate their counterterrorism efforts. That Rashid Ghannouchi found asylum in the UK, Anwar Haddam in the United States, and Rabah K?bir in Germany, all engaging in activism until the authorities finally decided to control their activities, was only the visible part of the iceberg. Radical Islamists from the Maghreb enjoyed Western liberties during the 1990s on European, American, and also Canadian soil, attaining the rights of "political activists" while actually feeding clandestine terror networks.
Fortunately, increased government networking began in the Mediterranean as globalization called for coordinated approaches to transnational issues. The Algerian government finally started to benefit from overt or covert European initiatives to dismantle the Islamists' European networks and to cut supplies and money. Members of Djamal Lounici's terrorist group were arrested in summer 1995 in Italy and tried there in April 1997. Lounici had been sentenced to death in Algiers in a separate trial for his involvement in the attack at Houari Boumedi?ne International Airport in 1992. In December 1996, Italy and Morocco signed an additional protocol to their 1987 Cooperation Agreement concerning terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking. Maghreb states and the West must continue to work together on terrorism, which is increasingly involving citizens from both areas, some holding dual nationalities.15
At the level of inter-Arab relations, Tunisia's and Egypt's counterterrorism efforts at the Arab League and the OIC have had more rhetorical than operational results. In December 1993, Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia claimed that Sudan was
15 Fran?ois Soudan, "Maghreb-?tats-Unis: L'ami alg?rien," Jeune Afrique/l'Intelligent, Jan. 5-11,
2003, p. 39.
Maghreb
13
home to the Islamist International, as reflected in the meeting of Hassan el Turabi's Arab and Islamic Popular Congress in Khartoum and another, larger conference in 1995. Washington accused members of the Sudanese Delegation to the UN of being involved in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. The firm U.S. policy towards the Sudanese regime in 1995-96 was instrumental in stopping this Sudanese support to radical Islamist groups in the Maghreb. Algerian terrorist groups found their main sources of weapons supply in the Maghreb and other African countries (Morocco, Libya, Chad, or Mali) in the mid-nineties. They benefited from the lack of either border control or cooperation among states in the region. The improvement of Algerian-Libyan and Algerian-Malian cooperation made it possible to crack down on these sources of weapons. Since 9/11, the Arab Maghreb Union, which held its first meeting since 1994 in January 2002, has been working to develop common criteria
for joint analysis of terrorism. For the time being, the increasingly motivated radical Islamist groups in the Maghreb and abroad are proving that they can function with minimal resources. Despite the shutdown of funding sources, weapons and explosives remain easy to obtain. The most important lesson learned by the Maghreb and the West is that radical Islamist terrorism must no longer be able to benefit from the lack of a common international consensus on what constitutes terrorism and the absence of coordinated counterterrorism initiatives.
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