Iran 'covered up nuclear spill'
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 27/06/2004)
Western intelligence officials are examining reports that Iran's Revolutionary Guards attempted to cover up a nuclear accident that occurred during the delivery of a secret shipment of weapons-grade uranium from North Korea.
The accident allegedly caused Teheran's new ?260 million international airport to be sealed off by Revolutionary Guard commanders within hours of its official opening on May 9.
The first scheduled commercial landing at the airport - an Iran Air civilian flight from Dubai - was intercepted by two Iranian air force jets and diverted to Isfahan, 155 miles away, even though it was low on fuel. At the same time, trucks were placed across the runway to prevent other aircraft from landing.
The airliner's interception, which was ordered by the Revolutionary Guards, prompted an official complaint from Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO). "No regulation in the world permits threatening a passenger plane," it said in a statement.
Seven weeks later, the showpiece airport named after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, is still closed. All commercial flights are required to use the capital's ageing Mehrabad complex.
At the time of the incident, Revolutionary Guard commanders claimed that Khomeini airport had been closed because of "security problems".
Iranian aviation officials, however, believe that Teheran wanted to cover up evidence of the previously unreported nuclear accident in 2002, linked to Iran's secret programme to build an atom bomb. Although the airport, 30 miles south of Teheran, was not ready to take commercial traffic until this spring, military flights have landed there for at least two years.
In December 2002, according to officials with access to the airport, a North Korean cargo jet delivering a consignment of nuclear technology, including some weapons-grade uranium, was being unloaded at night under military supervision. During the delivery, a container slipped and cracked on the Tarmac. All personnel in the vicinity were taken from the site and given thorough medical examinations.
Crews from the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) wearing protective suits were brought in to clean up the spillage. The scientists worked at the site for several days, staying indoors during daylight and working only in darkness.
They later determined that the site had been completely decontaminated, and Revolutionary Guards allowed airport construction to resume, confident that they had concealed the incident from the outside world.
Their attitude changed, however, after inspectors working for the United Nations-backed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) uncovered evidence in June 2003 that Iran had secretly enriched uranium to weapons grade at the Kalaye electric centrifuge plant, on the outskirts of Teheran. Iran had previously denied having the necessary technology.
The Kalaye revelations embarrassed Revolutionary Guards' commanders, who are responsible for protecting Iran's secret nuclear facilities. The findings prompted the IAEA to intensify pressure on Teheran for a full disclosure on the extent of Iran's nuclear programme, which Iranian officials continue to insist is being developed for purely peaceful purposes.
Iranian aviation officials, who cannot be named for their own security, believe that the Revolutionary Guards ordered the closure of Khomeini International Airport in case the IAEA inspectors detected deposits of enriched uranium. The airport will remain closed until Russian nuclear experts can examine the site of the spill and make sure that no traces of the illegal shipment remain.
A senior Western intelligence official said: "We are aware of the concerns being expressed by Iranian aviation experts and are trying to investigate them. The problem is that the Revolutionary Guards will not allow access to the airport to any foreign nationals, including UN inspectors."
Earlier this month the IAEA rebuked Iran over its failure to give a full account of its atomic programme as suspicions mounted that Iran is continuing with its efforts to build nuclear weapons.
Last week, American intelligence officials provided satellite evidence that they claimed showed a nuclear site at Lavizan Shiyan in Teheran. They said that it had been razed to remove evidence of research work that had been conducted there.
The airport closure reflects Iran's obsession with national security, which last week led to Revolutionary Guards seizing eight British servicemen patrolling the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran. The men were released after they were cleared of any wrongdoing.

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Al-Qaeda steals Saudi police cars for expat attacks
BY KEITH JONES in Riyadh AND PHILIP SHERWELL
(Filed: 27/06/2004)
AL-QAEDA MILITANTS in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, have stolen police cars as part of a strategy to set up fake official roadblocks to abduct or kill Westerners.
The theft of up to 15 police cars, possibly with the help of al-Qaeda sympathisers within the force, was disclosed by an international security company working in the kingdom. The militants have also painted other vehicles to resemble official ones and made replica uniforms.
The United States embassy has urged American citizens not to run security checkpoints after reports that Paul Johnson, the US engineer who was beheaded nine days ago, was taken hostage by men in uniforms driving what appeared to be a police car.
Some expatriates were said to have driven at speed through police checkpoints last week, prompting fears that they could be shot at by real officers. The Saudi authorities have installed extra checkpoints across the country, making it difficult to distinguish between legitimate and rogue roadblocks.
Officials there have denied al-Qaeda claims that their security services have been penetrated by the militants. The US State Department has said that there is no evidence that members of the Saudi security forces were involved in Mr Johnson's murder.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Britain , also contested claims of collusion in the Johnson case. He said: "I can go and buy the best English police uniform from a shop here in England." Asked about the apparent use of police cars, he added: "You can go into a garage and paint them and put these lights on them."
Foreign security consultants and Western intelligence services, however, believe that Saudi security forces have been infiltrated widely. One security report presented to a large foreign company described an alleged incident at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital a fortnight ago. Saudi men wearing military uniforms entered the building and asked staff where they could find the Westerners' offices. The guard who first directed them became suspicious and called the police, but the intruders escaped.
The same meeting was told that two men dressed in women's robes had tried to enter a secure ward at the Security Forces Hospital in Riyadh where one of the terrorists in the Al-Khobar hostage killings was being treated. The report said that the men were found only when a child saw the muzzle of a gun protruding through the robe.
Under its new leader, Saleh al-Awfi, the Saudi al-Qaeda network is believed to have targeted foreign workers, particularly Americans and Britons; Western airlines; the Saudi royal family and the oil industry. US intelligence believes that al-Qaeda has started inserting its agents at oil installations in preparation for an attack.
Awfi, a former police officer in charge of recruitment for the terror faction, became leader after the previous chief, Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, was killed in Riyadh. He is believed to have recruited members of the security forces and the military as intelligence sources. Using the cover of a car salesman, he also made trips to Europe, possibly to set up financial networks or buy arms.
A security adviser for a British multinational company has advised employees to stay in secure areas after the Saudi interior minister said that expatriates could carry guns to protect themselves.
? Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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Saudi envoy's Zionist claims 'are offensive'
By Christopher Hart
(Filed: 27/06/2004)
The Saudi ambassador to London has reinforced controversial claims by the kingdom's royal family of a link between "Zionists" and recent al-Qaeda terror attacks in the country.
In a television interview, to be broadcast today, Prince Turki al-Faisal is asked about comments made by Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto leader, that "Zionist hands" have been behind the attacks.
The ambassador replies: "When you're under attack by people who come and kill your countrymen and visitors to your country, and you see at the same time an attack on the kingdom from the outside, from Zionist circles, it is natural to make a connection."
He declined to expand on his remarks yesterday but his comments were condemned by Lord Janner of Braunstone, the former Labour MP. "In my view it is highly offensive and he must realise that the statement is totally unfounded."
"No terrorism serves the interests of Zionism. The allegation by the Crown Prince was rubbish and he must know that."
Prince Abdullah made his original remarks when he addressed a conference of leading Saudi officials and academics last month after an attack on contractors at the Yanbu oil facility that left six Westerners - including two Britons - dead.
"Zionism is behind it," he said. "It has become clear now. It has become clear to us. It is not 100 per cent, but 95 per cent that Zionist hands are behind what happened."
In his interview today, Prince Turki contends that Saudi Arabia has been subjected to concerted attacks by "so-called 'experts' with Zionist connections" for 50 years, and particularly since the terror atrocities of September 11, 2001.
"Is it beyond any comprehension or understanding that such attacks come at us from the Zionists on one side and from al-Qaeda on the other side and not make connection between them?" he asked.
The ambassador also says that the families of victims of terror attacks committed in Saudi Arabia, including Westerners, can still insist on the death penalty for their killers under Islamic sharia law, despite the offer of a state amnesty to terrorists who surrender in the next month.
He insists that the regime is doing everything it can to root out terrorists and rejects claims that the Saudi royal family's days are numbered.
Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or e-mail syndicat@telegraph.co.uk

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China's military threat
The Pentagon's "Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China" is a troubling document for a variety of reasons. Not the least of these is that the report makes clear that China, despite attempting a more tempered approach in recent years, is still committed to Communist ideology as it relates to foreign policy. Released in May, the report outlines how China's military buildup is in direct connection to its regional ambitions, which include challenging U.S. dominance in the Pacific. China's goal of regional hegemony is still many years off, though approaching at a pace that demands immediate attention.
China reasons correctly that it must upgrade its military, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), to U.S. armed forces standards through a prolonged concentration on increasing investment and procurement of high-tech, "network-centric" systems. As the report notes, "China's military modernization is oriented on developing the capabilities to fight and win 'local wars under high-tech conditions.' Based largely on observations of U.S. and allied operations since Operation Desert Storm [in 1991], PLA modernization envisions seeking precision-strike munitions, modern command and control systems, and state-of-the-art [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)] platforms. Beijing sees its potential future adversaries, particularly the U.S. Armed Forces, acquiring these advanced systems, and this is the driver in PLA defensive and offensive force modernization." According to the report, China's military spending will increase 11.6 percent to $25 billion this year. The amount in real terms is actually higher, the report cautions, when research and foreign purchases are added, which would bring it between $50 billion to $70 billion. Such spending makes China the third-largest defense spender after the United States and Russia. China's military imports also rose 7 percent from last year, 90 percent of which come from Russia alone.
With its ISR advancements, the PLA expects to "provide a regional, and potentially hemispheric, continuous surveillance capability," according to the report. This would include land, air, sea and space systems comparable to U.S. systems. Also included in the PLA's modernization program are space-based systems with military and intelligence potential, antisatellite systems capable of disabling enemy satellites and electronic warfare systems capable of concealing PLA movement and operations, weakening enemy air-defense early-warning systems and disrupting integrated air-defense systems. In short, these are not only the high-tech systems that the U.S. military has employed with such deadly efficiency upon lesser enemies, but they are the sort that a military would need to defeat the United States.
The balance of power in Eastern Asia is quickly shifting in China's favor, especially in regards to Taiwan. Even if high-tech nations restrict arms trade with China, it is committing more resources toward modernizing its military than any other nation in the region. It is only a matter of time. As such, it is clear that the Bush administration's security strategy of ensuring U.S. military preeminence in the world applies to both fighting terror as well as guaranteeing peace.

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Analysis: Afghanistan And Iran Confront Their Drug Problem
By Bill Samii and Amin Tarzi
The international community will mark the International Day Against Drug Abuse on 26 June. Global opium cultivation is down, but increased cultivation in Afghanistan and higher opium yields led to a 5 percent increase in illicit global opium production between 2002 and 2003. Indeed, Afghanistan leads the world in opium production, and Iran leads the world in seizures of opiates, according to the "World Drug Report 2004" released on 25 June (http://www.unodc.org/unodc/world_drug_report.html). Therefore, the fate of the world heroin market depends on events in Southwest Asia.
Since the collapse of the Taliban, the situation in Afghanistan has improved in almost every aspect except in the area of stemming opium poppy cultivation. Initially the Taliban used the income from opium to finance its regime and production rose steadily from 1996, peaking in 1999 to an estimated 4,600 tons. By 2000, Afghanistan was responsible for 70 percent of the global production of illegal opium. But in July of that year, having been hounded by the international community, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a decree banning opium cultivation in the country but not its trade (likely a gesture to gain international recognition for the Taliban regime). According to the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODCCP), opium production in Afghanistan was reduced greatly following the ban from 3,300 tons in 2000 to just 185 tons the following year.
Following the overthrow of the Taliban regime and the creation of the Afghan Interim Administration, Chairman Hamid Karzai in January 2000 banned both the cultivation and trade of opium poppies in the country. However, with the central authority's influence being limited to Kabul and a few main cities and the international military forces concentrating on the war on terrorism, drug dealers and their supporters found a good opportunity to exploit the situation.
According to UN estimates, Afghan farmers produced 3,400 tons of opium in 2002 compared to 185 tons the preceding year -- an alarming increase. The numbers have continued to worsen. In 2003, a year in which three-quarters of the global opium supply originated in Afghanistan, production increased by another 6 percent to 3,600 tons. It is projected that cultivation will increase yet again in 2004. The UN's most recent report asserts that the potential farmgate value of global opium production in 2003 is about $1.2 billion; more than 85 percent of this output was made in Afghanistan. It is estimated that 7 percent of the Afghan population -- 1.7 million people -- is directly involved in opium production. More than two-thirds of the farmers told the UN that they intend to increase poppy cultivation.
Also worrisome is the fact that opium cultivation has been introduced to regions of Afghanistan that traditionally have not grown the crop and an increasing number of Afghans are becoming addicted to heroin -- a fact that has translated into an increase in HIV cases in the country through the sharing of needles. The officially AIDS-free Afghanistan recently announced the first case of death from the disease.
UNODCCP Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa warned recently that the international community faces critical decisions, adding that if counternarcotics commitments to Afghanistan are not translated into lower levels of opium production, there is a "risk of [the] opium economy undermining all that has been achieved in creating a democratic modern Afghanistan." Costa also warned the International Conference on Counternarcotics, held in Kabul from 8-10 February, that "fighting drug trafficking equals fighting terrorism."
Costa then asked for the resources to increase the number of operations against drug laboratories and that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) also be involved in combating drugs in Afghanistan. However, NATO has so far been reluctant to commit itself to tackling this issue. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer recently stated that counternarcotics operations were not the main responsibility of the NATO-led international force. In November 2003, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson said the alliance was "going to Afghanistan because" it did not want Afghanistan to come to Europe, "whether it be in terms of terrorism or drugs." It seems that once NATO actually went to Afghanistan, Robertson's message was lost in the political shuffle, giving the drug dealers and various warlords in Afghanistan the upper hand in this dangerous game.
The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno said last week that his country is planning to be more aggressive in an effort to curb opium poppy cultivation in the country, but conceded that U.S. troops will not actively destroy the crops, Reuters reported on 17 June. Barno cited a "finite force" whose "primary focus continues to be counterterrorist operations."
International forces and local authorities have an immense challenge ahead of them: to stop the cultivation of opium poppies, to stop the trafficking of drugs, and to destroy the laboratories that process the opium into heroin.
Indeed, the level of international involvement in dealing with Afghan narcotics is a major Iranian grievance. Iran does not, furthermore, believe that its counternarcotics activities get sufficient attention or credit from the West, the ultimate destination of most opiates originating in Afghanistan. In a 1 June meeting with a visiting Kuwaiti official, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Musavi-Lari said Iran cannot afford to wait for Western help, IRNA reported. He complained about the extent of opium cultivation in Afghanistan despite the presence of military personnel from Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Iran leads the international community in intercepting the opium, morphine, and heroin that originate in Afghanistan, according to the UN (http://www.unodc.org/unodc/global_illicit_drug_trends.html). Tehran reports that approximately 2 million people in the country abuse drugs. Poor relations with the Taliban regime meant that Iran made little headway in persuading its eastern neighbor to curtail opium production. It therefore relied mainly on interdiction efforts.
Relations with Kabul now are friendly and Tehran is involved with the promotion of crop substitution plans. Iranian Deputy Agriculture Jihad Minister Gholamreza Sahrain visited the Afghan capital on 12 June to discuss these activities, IRNA reported. In a meeting with Agriculture and Livestock Minister Seyyed Hussein Anwari, the Iranian official noted that so far Tehran has provided $10 million in aid for opium eradication.
Iran is also working closely with other states that neighbor Afghanistan in an effort to create a "security belt" that will stop the narcotics shipments. In late May and early June, Ali Hashemi, head of Iran's Drug Control Headquarters (DCHQ), visited Uzbekistan. He met with his Uzbek counterpart, Kamal Dustemov, on 1 June and they discussed the necessity of regional states closing ranks in the drug control campaign, IRNA reported. The two officials expressed the belief that peace and stability in Afghanistan would be matched with reduced narcotics production. In the following days, Hashemi met with Interior Minister Zokirjon Almatov and Public Health Minister Feruz Nazirov.
In the latter meeting, Hashemi noted that there are 350 centers in Iran that treat drug addicts. Treatment and demand-reduction are receiving more and more attention in Iran. Citing a figure of 214 billion rials (about $27 million), Hashemi said in Tehran on 26 May that more than 36 percent of the country's drug control budget is allocated for prevention programs, IRNA reported. This money will go to education for young people, cultural centers, mosques, and other nongovernmental organizations. A total of 600 billion rials (about $76 million), he said, will be used for prevention and interdiction.
Hashemi's earlier comments about the success rate in treating drug addicts were not very encouraging. He said at a 12 May meeting of the drug control planning department in Rasht that 10-15 percent of the addicts are treated successfully. He added that 200,000 people in Iran are addicted to heroin and 64,000 are infected with AIDS.
Unless the Iranian government can provide the professional and social opportunities that will discourage people from abusing drugs, the addiction and HIV infection figures will probably worsen. And until opium cultivation in Afghanistan is eliminated, Iran will continue to be a consumer of these products.



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Ex-CIA analyst: Iran tied
to 9-11, al-Qaida
Tehran, bin Laden sought 'to cooperate against a common enemy'
Posted: June 26, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
? 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Former CIA analyst Douglas MacEachin, a member of the 9-11 commission staff, said in testimony last week Iran and its terrorist group ally Hezbollah were linked to the al-Qaida terrorist group.
Other U.S. intelligence officials said there is also evidence Iran is linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the officials, two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who were aboard the aircraft that hit the Pentagon, had stayed at the Iranian ambassador's residence in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, before entering the United States in January 2001.
MacEachin disclosed that the Iran-al-Qaida ties were revealed in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers residence complex that housed U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia. The bombing killed 19 Americans.
The attack was believed to be the work of a Saudi Shi'ite Hezbollah group with help from Iran.
"Intelligence obtained shortly after the bombing, however, also supported suspicions of bin Laden's involvement," MacEachin said. "There were reports in the months preceding the attack that he was seeking to facilitate another shipment of explosives to Saudi Arabia, and on the day of the attack he was congratulated by other members of the Islamic Army."
U.S. intelligence agencies mistakenly assumed that, since a Shi'ite group was involved, rival Sunnis were not, he said.
"Later intelligence, however, showed a far greater potential for collaboration between Hezbollah and al-Qaida than many had previously thought," MacEachin said.
Several years before the Khobar bombing, bin Laden and Iranian officials held talks on ending differences "to cooperate against a common enemy," he said.
"A small group of al-Qaida operatives subsequently traveled to Iran, and another group went to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon for training in explosives and intelligence," he said. "And Bin Laden is reported to have showed particular interest at this time in the Hezbollah truck-bombing tactics used in Lebanon in 1983 that had killed 241 U.S. Marines. So in sum, we have seen now strong but indirect evidence that bin Laden's organization did in fact play some as yet unknown role in the Khobar attack."
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from the June 24, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0624/p16s01-cogn.html
Six key questions for the future of Iraq - and its oil
By David R. Francis
In a week, the new Iraqi government takes charge of the world's second largest pool of oil. That's important not only to the Iraqis, but to motorists and other oil consumers around the world.
It is sometimes alleged that the real reason the United States invaded Iraq was to control that nation's petroleum. But if that was a hope of some neo- conservatives and US oil industry executives, the war has so far failed to achieve that objective.
Indeed, Iraq's new oil minister, Samir Ghadban, talks of taking back full sovereignty over the oil wealth July 1, of reestablishing the Iraqi National Oil Co.'s vital role in production as it used to be before Saddam Hussein, and of dismissing all US and other outside advisers, according to an interview in the London-based Financial Times.
Such words don't seem to disturb Washington. Officials there speak of "a lot of respect" for Mr. Ghadban, a British-educated technocrat who is a Shiite, and they call him "a man who knows how to get things done."
Ghadban has been talking for months to many people about how to manage his nation's oil resources, and of making some structural reforms to improve the oil industry's efficiency.
Despite a new round of sabotage, Ghadban figures that oil will still produce $16 billion in revenues this year. Today's high price of oil has meant the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-led occupation body, has had an extra $2.5 billion on top of its original budget to spend on security and development.
Up to now, the Iraqis have striven to bring their oil industry back to its pre-war production levels. Now the oil ministry faces major questions about the long-term future of Iraq's oil industry. The actual decisions are expected to await the government to be elected seven months from now. Here are the big questions.

1. Will the oil ministry invite foreign oil companies, with their capital and technical expertise, to search for and develop new oil fields and build infrastructure, thereby opening the door for US firms? Or will it leave that work to the Iraqi National Oil Co. with its skilled workers? Or will it be a mixture of both?

2. How will the oil revenues be used? At the moment, Iraq's oil revenues go into a development fund created under a United Nations resolution. Next week the Iraqis, not the occupation regime, decide how to use that fund to pay for repairs of power grids, schools, and other needs.

3. How much of the oil revenues will be used to pay off Iraq's massive debts? Already, 5 percent of that development fund is allotted to pay reparations for damage and casualties from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Some $48 billion in claims have been accepted, and $18 billion paid on them. Another $80 billion in claims have yet to be adjudicated by a UN compensation commission.
When that's finished, perhaps by the end of this year, Iraq will owe about $46 billion in compensation, calculates Bathsheba Crocker, an expert at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington.
Iraq owes another $120 billion to foreign governments and other foreign entities. The US has been striving to negotiate a dramatic reduction in that amount, perhaps by two-thirds. But at the G-8 summit earlier this month, France refused to go below a 50 percent cut. When the debt talks are over, Iraq may still owe more than $40 billion on these debts.

Full repayment of the debts, even with Iraq's huge oil wealth, is most unlikely.

4. How will the Kurds' desire for control of the northern oil fields be worked out? At the moment, the plan is for the Baghdad government to centralize the oil revenues and then distribute the benefits to the entire country, including the Kurdish areas in the north. The Kurds get some oil money directly now.

5. Will Iraq make all oil payments public and transparent in order to discourage corruption? That is being urged on all oil-producing nations by the Open Society Institute in New York, a George Soros group.

6. What model will Iraq take for its oil industry? That of Saudi Arabia, Norway, Venezuela, or even Alaska? Alaska distributes some of its oil profits to its citizens. Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, would like Iraq to do something similar as a means of avoiding what is commonly called the "resource curse."

For most developing countries, "oil riches are far from the blessing they are often assumed to be," write Ms. Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian, an International Monetary Fund official, in a forthcoming Foreign Affairs article. "In fact, countries often end up poor precisely because they are oil rich."
Oil wealth, they note, tends to impede the development of institutions and values crucial to open, market-based economies and civil liberties, including the rule of law, protection of property rights, and political participation.
The 34 oil-rich developing countries have weak political and economic institutions. In some cases, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, they're nonexistent. Even Libya and especially rich Saudi Arabia suffer from "underdeveloped political institutions."
Oil riches often have led to high-level corruption and unchecked abuse of state power. With oil prices usually volatile, a nation relying on oil wealth sometimes faces a pattern of flush spending and then disruptive spending cuts that hurt development efforts.
Major oil revenues can also force up the value of a nation's currency on foreign-exchange markets, making it difficult for other industries to compete.
To avoid the oil curse, Birdsall and Mr. Subramanian suggest Iraq should incorporate into its constitution a provision enshrining the right of each Iraqi household to receive a share of the country's oil proceeds.
The chances of that happening appear slim. But one way or another, Washington officials say, Iraq's oil wealth must be used to serve the Iraqi people.
"Oil doesn't correlate with national success that often," a Washington official admits. In one week's time, it will be up to Iraqis to figure out how to avoid the resource curse.

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Mourning After
by Kenneth Pollack
Post date: 06.25.04
Issue date: 06.28.04
Bill Galston is one helluva debater. In the fall of 2002, well before the invasion of Iraq, I faced Bill--a University of Maryland professor and a former colleague of mine in the Clinton administration--in a public debate, and he kicked my rhetorical ass. He did it by holding up a copy of my book, The Threatening Storm, and saying to the audience, "If we were going to get Ken Pollack's war, I could be persuaded to support it. But we are not going to get Ken Pollack's war; we are going to get George Bush's war, and that is a war I will not support." Bill's words haunted me throughout the run-up to the invasion. Several months ago, I sent him a note conceding that he had been right.
The primary cause of our current problems in Iraq is the reckless, and often foolish, manner in which this administration has waged the war and the reconstruction. For that reason, when I think back to the prewar debate, the thought that nags at me most is that I, too, should have foreseen what Bill Galston did--that the Bush administration would not fight the war properly. It looms in my thinking as something that probably could have been known before the war and that, had I recognized it, might have led me down a different intellectual path.
The absence of an aggressive, threatening Iraqi WMD program was just as significant as the administration's mishandling of the occupation. But, for all of the reasons I laid out in an article in the January 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, it would have been extremely difficult to recognize this before the war. Although it is commonplace for people to come forth after the fact and insist they had known all along, the truth is that very, very few of those claiming "I told you so" actually did. There was a consensus among the governments of the world and a virtual consensus among the experts about the basic threat from Iraq; the great debate was over whether a war was necessary to remedy it. Few claimed that Iraq had no WMD programs, many of those who did seemed to have been discredited in some way or another, and they argued with less evidence than could be mustered in support of the mainstream position.
Other aspects of my rationale for why a war would ultimately be necessary--just not when and how the Bush administration waged it--have been borne out by the course of events. The human rights argument was always an important element of my thinking, and the revelations of mass starvation throughout the Shia south and mass graves throughout the country have substantiated at least this aspect of the argument.
Similarly, Saddam again proved himself to be exactly the kind of dangerous decision-maker that I, and other Iraq experts, feared would make him difficult to deter if he were to acquire nuclear weapons. Here I want to take issue with an assertion that Tom Friedman has made--that, since Saddam was not known to be suicidal, he could have been deterred, even if he were to acquire nuclear weapons. While I have the utmost respect for Tom, I think this point is ahistorical at best. The annals of warfare abound with leaders who embarked on foreign policy adventures they did not believe would result in their own destruction--political or literal--but that did. Napoleon did not think he was committing suicide when he invaded Russia, but he was. Hannibal did not think he was committing suicide when he attacked Rome, but he was. Not even Hitler thought he was committing suicide when he launched World War II, but he was. There is a long, long list of other examples.
Saddam himself had embarked on a number of monstrously risky foreign policy adventures during his 30-plus years in power--many of which could easily have proved suicidal and were seen as such even by the sycophants who comprised his inner circle. The fact that they did not lead to his fall was mostly dumb luck. Over the last year, the debriefings of senior Iraqi officials captured during the invasion have revealed that, even with roughly 100,000 ground troops massed on the Iraqi border, Saddam convinced himself that the United States would never actually launch a war and, therefore, he could continue to play games with weapons inspectors. But, this time, Saddam's luck finally ran out and his reckless and delusional risk-taking resulted in his own (political, at least) suicide.
Which is why my own thinking keeps coming back to that debate in the fall of 2002. Bill Galston was right on the money. The issue with which I constantly wrestle is whether I, too, should have foreseen that this administration would not do the job right.
To some extent, I had actually been expecting Bill's objection. Before my book was published, I asked Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Gideon Rose to critique the manuscript, and he warned me that the key question I might some day have to answer was whether I would still support a war fought without all the preparations I considered essential. Half of the argument of my book is devoted to the importance of going to war the right way (for example, by dealing with Al Qaeda and the war on terrorism first, restarting the Arab-Israeli peace process, building a large multinational coalition, employing at least 250,000 troops, and being ready to make a full commitment to what I expected would inevitably be a long and difficult process of reconstruction afterward). Gideon astutely observed that I might have to decide whether the war was still worth fighting if we were only going to do it the wrong way.
So, thanks to Gideon's caution, I was ready with a rejoinder to Bill that night. I said it was up to the American people to ensure that the Bush administration fought the war the right way. I even had evidence to back up my point. I noted that, although in the spring of 2002, Bush officials had insisted that they did not need the blessings of either Congress or the United Nations to invade Iraq, thanks to strong popular pressure, President Bush had chosen to seek out a congressional resolution of support and to go back to the United Nations to secure international sanction.
It wasn't a bad answer. In the fall of 2002, it was possible to believe that the administration would fight the war responsibly, and there was plenty of time to attend to all of the preconditions I had laid out in my book. But, even then, I harbored the fear that Bill was right and the Bush administration would not handle the war properly. Although the administration's policy in Afghanistan was still evolving, there were ominous signs that Bush officials were going to walk away from that problem as quickly as they could. Likewise, statements by some senior administration officials regarding Iraq suggested a rash determination to topple Saddam with little regard for the potential costs and risks--for example, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Woflowitz's dismissal of Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki's prescient estimate that we would need "several hundred thousand soldiers" to secure Iraq. I feared that, if they persevered in that approach, then, as I had warned in my book, a war with Iraq would create as many problems as it solved.
I still have great difficulty fathoming why the administration chose not to fight the war the right way. I remain convinced that, while reconstruction was never guaranteed to succeed, the current mess we now find ourselves in is largely, if not entirely, a product of the administration's determination to do things the wrong way.
Why did they try to fight the war (and do the reconstruction) on the cheap? Why attack with only four divisions of ground troops when roughly another four were available--and were all deployed to Iraq within the following year (albeit only to relieve the invasion force)? Why did the administration seem to go out of its way to alienate so many of our allies and devote so little time to the U.N. process? Rumsfeld's quips about "old Europe" and not needing the British to fight the war seemed deliberately calculated to frighten off potential allies. Why, too, did they dismiss all of the preparations for postwar reconstruction performed by the Department of State, usaid, the intelligence community, the uniformed services, and a host of other agencies, and instead follow Ahmed Chalabi's siren song? It would have been one thing if none of that work had ever been carried out. But, as someone who participated in many of those exercises, I know that much good planning was available and was discarded by those in the Pentagon charged with reconstruction.
These questions are among the great mysteries of the war. At present, I suspect that the answers lie in a combination of factors: The "transformationists" in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (probably including the secretary himself) wanted to prove that a big Army was unnecessary; the president's political minders probably wanted to keep the war small and inexpensive to make it more palatable to the American public; and the administration's "regime changers" wanted to demonstrate that toppling rogue regimes could be accomplished cheaply and easily to make it possible to go after others.
I still do not believe it was obvious (or even inevitable) that the administration would act so recklessly. The past record of many of the Bush principals suggested the opposite--a key element in my own thinking whenever I pondered Bill Galston's charge. Secretary of State Colin Powell was famous for a doctrine that insisted that the United States fight wars only in a highly conservative fashion--with all of the resources at the disposal of the country and all of the support that could possibly be mustered. And, in the fall of 2002 and winter of 2003, after the president decided to go back to the United Nations, Powell again seemed to be playing a major role in steering Iraq policy. When Cheney was secretary of defense, he was famous for having told (not asked) General Norman Schwarzkopf that he was getting another 250,000 troops to fight the Gulf war. Indeed, many members of the Bush foreign policy team had served in the George H.W. Bush administration, which had done a magnificent job enlisting the support of the United Nations at a time when the United Nations was not considered a useful vehicle for building a war coalition. That administration had also done everything possible to ensure the kind of broad coalition of European, Asian, and Arab allies that we needed this time as well.
In addition to reversing course in the fall of 2002 to seek both a congressional resolution authorizing the use of force and a new U.N. resolution, this Bush administration had also taken other steps that initially demonstrated a willingness to fight the war the right way. In particular, many in the administration had once supported Ahmed Chalabi's hare-brained scheme to send a few thousand lightly armed Iraqi oppositionists into Iraq, backed by nothing but U.S. air power, to try to take down Saddam's regime. But, when war suddenly became a real prospect, they dumped this nonsense and instead opted for a realistic invasion plan relying on a large American ground force--albeit one not big enough to handle postwar reconstruction.
The willingness of members of the Bush administration to abandon their past records of prudence and match Saddam's reckless and delusional behavior with their own may have been the most important element missing from my own thinking about the war. By the time the war began, I recognized that they had not taken most of the precautionary measures I had recommended (although, even then, I did not realize the extent to which they had simply dismissed all the postwar planning done by agencies other than the Pentagon), and I was already anguished over the war.
Today, even knowing what I do about our mistaken assessment of Iraq's WMD and our mistaken decisions about postwar reconstruction, I remain deeply torn about the decision to invade Iraq. At this moment, there are still positives to be weighed against the growing negatives. But, as I warned beforehand, I suspect history will judge that decision based principally upon whether reconstruction succeeds or fails. If it fails--and Iraq and the region are plunged into chaos--as current trends threaten, then it will be hard for anyone to justify the war.
Kenneth Pollack is research director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

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Good Times, Bad Times
From the July 5 / July 12, 2004 issue: The New York Times can't decide whether or not there's a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.
by William Kristol
07/05/2004, Volume 009, Issue 41
Here is the New York Times, editorializing in high dudgeon on June 17:
Now President Bush should apologize to the American people. . . . Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. . . . Mr. Bush and his top advisers . . . should have known all along that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Here are excerpts from a front-page article by Thom Shanker in the New York Times one week later, on June 25:
Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990s were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq. . . .
The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to the New York Times several weeks ago. . . .
A translation of the new Iraqi document was reviewed by a Pentagon working group in the spring . . .
The task force concluded that the document "appeared authentic," and that it "corroborates and expands on previous reporting" about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis. . . .
The document, which asserts that Mr. bin Laden "was approached by our side," states that Mr. bin Laden previously "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative," but was now willing to meet in Sudan, and that "presidential approval" was granted to the Iraqi security service to proceed. . . .
The document is of interest to American officials as a detailed, if limited, snapshot of communications between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden, but this view ends with Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan. At that point, Iraqi intelligence officers began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location," the document states.
Members of the Pentagon task force that reviewed the document said it described no formal alliance being reached between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence. The Iraqi document itself states that "co-operation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement." . . .
The Iraqi document states that Mr. bin Laden's organization in Sudan was called "The Advice and Reform Commission." The Iraqis were cued to make their approach to Mr. bin Laden in 1994 after a Sudanese official visited Uday Hussein, the leader's son, as well as the director of Iraqi intelligence, and indicated that Mr. bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan.
A former director of operations for Iraqi intelligence Directorate 4 met with Mr. bin Laden on Feb. 19, 1995, the document states.
So much for "no link between Iraq and al Qaeda." So much for the claim of the Times editorial, and of its page-one headline the same day mischaracterizing the 9/11 Commission staff report. We look forward to the editors' apology.
More important, we look forward to the Bush administration seriously and relentlessly engaging the debate over the Saddam-al Qaeda terror connection. We hope we do not wait in vain.
Vice President Cheney did sally forth last week, the day after the release of the 9/11 Commission staff report. But he hasn't much followed up since then, and others have been mostly silent. Does the Bush team really think it can command majority support for the war in Iraq if it allows its opponents an uncontested field to make the case that Saddam had no significant links to terrorists?
After all, the situation on the ground in Iraq is likely to remain ambiguous over the next few months. So simply depending on things to turn out well after the June 30 turnover of power is, to say the least, politically risky. Large caches of weapons of mass destruction are unlikely to turn up soon. This does not mean Saddam's history of concealing his weapons programs from inspectors was not a solid ground for his removal. But it does mean that the WMD issue is not a likely winner for the administration.
The terror link issue, by contrast, should be a clear winner. Saddam and Osama had a "relationship" in the past, and sought continuing "cooperation" between their two "organizations." Could the president of the United States have simply left Saddam in power, with sanctions coming off, reconstituting his weapons programs, confident that Saddam and al Qaeda would not work together again in the future? Would this have been a reasonable course of action?
This is a genuinely important debate for the country to have in this election year. It is a good debate for the Bush administration--if it has the wit and the nerve to engage it.
--William Kristol
? Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved

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This Terrorist Is Bad Enough on His Own
By PETER BERGEN
WASHINGTON -- Despite the finding by the 9/11 commission staff that there is no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, Bush administration officials continue to insist the two worked together. As evidence, they frequently cite Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the 37-year-old Jordanian who is arguably the most dangerous terrorist in the world today. Mr. Zarqawi, who fled his Afghan training grounds after the American invasion and found safe haven in Iraq, was most likely behind the string of bombings across Iraq on Thursday that killed more than 100; in May, he beheaded Nicholas Berg, an American communications engineer working in Iraq.
The day after the 9/11 staff report came out, Vice President Dick Cheney again put forward Mr. Zarqawi. "After we went in and hit his training camp, he fled to Baghdad," Mr. Cheney said, adding that Mr. Zarqawi "ran the poisons factory in northern Iraq out of Baghdad." The administration has also pointed out that American intelligence believes Mr. Zarqawi received medical treatment in Baghdad in 2002.
So is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi really the missing link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? Actually, the evidence of his relationship with either is far from clear cut. Mr. Zarqawi runs an organization separate from Al Qaeda called Tawhid. One indication of his independence is that when he founded his training camp in Afghanistan in 2000, he did so near the western city of Herat, on the Iranian border, hundreds of miles away from Al Qaeda's camps.
Roger Cressey, who was a counterterrorism official on the National Security Council staff at that time, told me that Mr. Zarqawi's camp was set up "as much in competition as it was in cooperation" with Al Qaeda. Indeed, Shadi Abdullah, a Tawhid member apprehended in Germany in 2002, told investigators that his group saw itself to be "in rivalry" with Mr. bin Laden's, according to a German official privy to the details of the interrogation.
And in January, American forces found a letter believed to have been written by Mr. Zarqawi to Al Qaeda leaders hiding on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It requested aid in fighting the Shiites of Iraq: "You, gracious brothers, are the leaders, guides and symbolic figures of jihad and battle. We do not see ourselves as fit to challenge you if you are convinced of the idea of fighting the sects of apostasy; we will be your readied soldiers." The tone of the letter is clearly that of someone outside Al Qaeda appealing for its help. And Al Qaeda's leaders seem little interested in fomenting a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq; in the audiotapes he has released in the past year, Osama bin Laden has made no mention of the Shiites.
"The central question the administration has failed to answer is: Was there guidance or direction from the Al Qaeda leadership to Zarqawi?" Mr. Cressey, the former counterterrorism official, told me. "The evidence presented so far is there was not." At a briefing on June 17, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to agree with that assessment, saying of Mr. Zarqawi that "someone could legitimately say he's not Al Qaeda."
Mr. Zarqawi's connections to Saddam Hussein are equally tenuous. After fleeing Afghanistan, he probably spent as much time living in Iran as in Iraq. What Mr. Cheney described as the "poisons factory" Mr. Zarqawi ran was actually in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, an area protected by American jets since 1991. Mr. Rumsfeld had more control than Saddam Hussein over that part of Iraq.
As for the medical treatment Mr. Zarqawi supposedly received in Baghdad, for some time American officials thought it was a leg amputation. However, the footage of Mr. Zarqawi in the video of Mr. Berg's execution seems to show a man in possession of both limbs. And last week Mr. Zarqawi released an audiotape on a jihadist Web site containing a blistering critique of Saddam Hussein, whom he described as a "devil" who "killed the innocent."
Mr. Zarqawi is a ruthless murderer, and capturing or killing him would be a major step toward pacifying Iraq. But if he is, as President Bush has said, the "best evidence" of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the administration's case is a weak one.
Peter Bergen is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of "Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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Europe's Commitment To Iraq
By Romano Prodi and Chris Patten
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A23
The occupation of Iraq will be formally over in a matter of days. As acres of newsprint have testified, last year's invasion provoked serious divisions across Europe: between governments and peoples, within governments and among them. We share the experience of being from countries whose governments supported the invasion in the face of substantial public protest.
These European divisions over the coalition's military action spilled over into public disagreement with, and in many cases hostility toward, the power and role of the United States. In some U.S. circles, the feeling was reciprocated -- we heard a great deal about European cowardice and naivete.
These misconceptions are as widespread as they are wrong: The United States can be, and historically has been, a powerful force for good in the world and, of course, for good in Europe. But Europe has also played its part in making the world more prosperous and stable. It has been and should continue to be willing to take on its full share of the burdens of peacemaking, peacekeeping and conflict prevention across the world. For one reason or another, these views, widely shared by almost everyone in Europe, have not been heard or understood on the other side of the Atlantic.
In particular, Europeans do not underestimate the importance of the fight against terrorism. On the contrary, not only do we believe it is one of the most serious challenges to the security of our societies, we also have a long and difficult experience in dealing with this threat. Many Europeans were, however, convinced that the invasion of Iraq would make Islamist terrorism more difficult to overcome, even though all agreed that Saddam Hussein was an appalling dictator.
Debate on how and why we came to this point will occupy historians and political scientists for years to come. The state of Iraq, and its implications for the region, present a more urgent question: What now?
Three issues in particular are brought into stark relief. First, how should a superpower, indeed the superpower, exercise its global leadership role, and how should others respond? Second, how can we reinforce the effort, begun in earnest after Sept. 11, 2001, to build a global consensus on dealing with new threats -- weapons of mass destruction, gross abuses of human rights and terrorism? Third, and in response to the other two, how can we equip the United Nations system to deal with these issues appropriately and effectively -- agreeing, for example, whether and when there might be a legal justification for preventive use of force.
We cannot allow these debates to continue indefinitely, and we look forward to the report of Kofi Annan's high-level panel later this year to help resolve them. In the meantime, the situation in Iraq denies us the luxury of waiting for these proposals: A clear international consensus, now, is a necessary condition for a successful transition in that troubled country. America and Europe will have to work together to ensure an acceptable outcome in Iraq. We will all be damaged if we fail.
The stakes are extremely high: Failure could mean Iraq's disintegration. One of the most predictable developments over the coming months will be the attempt to discredit or murder the moderate leadership in each community in Iraq in an attempt to foment the civil war that could break this fragile country apart, with dangerous regional implications. An Iraq sliding into chaos would become a breeding ground for international terrorism. We are already seeing the warning signs in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan. The human cost is obvious, and compelling. Self-interest obliges us to consider the potential economic cost of instability in the world's foremost suppliers of oil. Politically, failure can only cause the divide between Europe and the United States to grow.
It is precisely to avoid this nightmare scenario that the European Commission has worked from the very beginning to promote European and international consensus on the way forward in Iraq. Since March of last year, when European leaders unanimously supported a central role for the United Nations in the postwar transition, we have worked to create a multilateral umbrella for reconstruction efforts, enabling countries that did not support the invasion to nonetheless support the transition. The participation of Russia, Iran, Turkey and others in Iraq's reconstruction is not unrelated to this work. We have backed this policy with substantial financial resources.
This month we have presented proposals for a medium-term strategy for Iraq, looking at how the EU can progressively engage with a country with which it has never had any formal relationship. We are keen to start working with a new Iraqi administration with real authority to govern, in order to develop plans for the future together. Alongside this we are aware of the need to work with Iraq's nascent civil society to promote a broader engagement. Of course, given the current uncertainties, we are not expecting any overnight miracles. Rather, as conditions allow, we hope to build the same kind of long-term relationship with Iraq as we have already with most of the Arab world, bearing in mind that the EU is the biggest trading partner and donor of development assistance for nearly all the countries of that region.
We hope, then, that the meeting we will have with President Bush today at the U.S.-EU summit in Ireland, the first meeting of the leaders of the European Union's now 25 states with the United States, will be an opportunity to demonstrate that, whatever differences we may have had, for the future we are united in a common resolve to work together, side by side as true partners to see the emergence of a pluralist, democratic Iraq, at peace with itself and its neighbors, playing a full role in the international community.
Romano Prodi is president of the European Commission. Chris Patten is European commissioner for external relations.


? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Think Again: Al Qaeda
By Jason Burke
May/June 2004
The mere mention of al Qaeda conjures images of an efficient terrorist network guided by a powerful criminal mastermind. Yet al Qaeda is more lethal as an ideology than as an organization. "Al Qaedaism" will continue to attract supporters in the years to come--whether Osama bin Laden is around to lead them or not.
"Al Qaeda Is a Global Terrorist Organization"
No. It is less an organization than an ideology. The Arabic word qaeda can be translated as a "base of operation" or "foundation," or alternatively as a "precept" or "method." Islamic militants always understood the term in the latter sense. In 1987, Abdullah Azzam, the leading ideologue for modern Sunni Muslim radical activists, called for al-qaeda al-sulbah (a vanguard of the strong). He envisaged men who, acting independently, would set an example for the rest of the Islamic world and thus galvanize the umma (global community of believers) against its oppressors. It was the FBI--during its investigation of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa--which dubbed the loosely linked group of activists that Osama bin Laden and his aides had formed as "al Qaeda." This decision was partly due to institutional conservatism and partly because the FBI had to apply conventional antiterrorism laws to an adversary that was in no sense a traditional terrorist or criminal organization.
Although bin Laden and his partners were able to create a structure in Afghanistan that attracted new recruits and forged links among preexisting Islamic militant groups, they never created a coherent terrorist network in the way commonly conceived. Instead, al Qaeda functioned like a venture capital firm--providing funding, contacts, and expert advice to many different militant groups and individuals from all over the Islamic world.
Today, the structure that was built in Afghanistan has been destroyed, and bin Laden and his associates have scattered or been arrested or killed. There is no longer a central hub for Islamic militancy. But the al Qaeda worldview, or "al Qaedaism," is growing stronger every day. This radical internationalist ideology--sustained by anti-Western, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric--has adherents among many individuals and groups, few of whom are currently linked in any substantial way to bin Laden or those around him. They merely follow his precepts, models, and methods. They act in the style of al Qaeda, but they are only part of al Qaeda in the very loosest sense. That's why Israeli intelligence services now prefer the term "jihadi international" instead of "al Qaeda."
"Capturing or Killing Bin Laden Will Deal a Severe Blow to Al Qaeda"
Wrong. Even for militants with identifiable ties to bin Laden, the death of the "sheik" will make little difference in their ability to recruit people. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently acknowledged as much when he questioned in an internal Pentagon memo whether it was possible to kill militants faster than radical clerics and religious schools could create them. In practical terms, bin Laden now has only a very limited ability to commission acts of terror, and his involvement is restricted to the broad strategic direction of largely autonomous cells and groups. Most intelligence analysts now consider him largely peripheral.
This turn of events should surprise no one. Islamic militancy predates bin Laden's activities. He was barely involved in the Islamic violence of the early 1990s in Algeria, Egypt, Bosnia, and Kashmir. His links to the 1993 World Trade Center attack were tangential. There were no al Qaeda training camps during the early 1990s, although camps run by other groups churned out thousands of highly trained fanatics. Even when bin Laden was based in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, it was often Islamic groups and individuals who sought him out for help in finding resources for preconceived attacks, not vice versa. These days, Islamic groups can go to other individuals, such as Jordanian activist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who set up his al Tauhid group in competition with bin Laden (rather than, as is frequently claimed, in alliance with him) to obtain funds, expertise, or other logistical assistance.
Bin Laden still plays a significant role in the movement as a propagandist who effectively exploits modern mass communications. It is likely that the United States will eventually apprehend bin Laden and that this demonstration of U.S. power will demoralize many militants. However, much depends on the manner in which he is captured or killed. If, like deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, he surrenders without a fight, which is very unlikely, many followers will be deeply disillusioned. If he achieves martyrdom in a way that his cohorts can spin as heroic, he will be an inspiration for generations to come. Either way, bin Laden's removal from the scene will not stop Islamic militancy.
"The Militants Seek to Destroy the West so They Can Impose a Global Islamic State"
False. Islamic militants' main objective is not conquest, but to beat back what they perceive as an aggressive West that is supposedly trying to complete the project begun during the Crusades and colonial periods of denigrating, dividing, and humiliating Islam. The militants' secondary goal is the establishment of the caliphate, or single Islamic state, in the lands roughly corresponding to the furthest extent of the Islamic empire of the late first and early second centuries. Today, this state would encompass the Middle East, the Maghreb (North Africa bordering the Mediterranean), Andalusia in southern Spain, Central Asia, parts of the Balkans, and possibly some Islamic territories in the Far East. Precisely how this utopian caliphate would function is vague. The militants believe that if all Muslims act according to a literal interpretation of the Islamic holy texts, an almost mystical transformation to a just and perfect society will follow.
The radical Islamists seek to weaken the United States and the West because they are both impediments to this end. During the 1990s, militants in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria began turning their attention abroad as they grew frustrated by their failure to change the status quo at home. The militants felt that striking at the Arab regimes' Western sponsors (the "far enemy" as opposed to the "near enemy") would be the best means to improve local conditions. This strategy, which bin Laden and those around him aggressively advocate, remains contentious among Islamic radicals, especially in Egypt.
Yet, as the March 11, 2004, terrorist bombings in Madrid revealed, attacks on the "far enemy" can still be employed with great effect. By striking Spain just before its elections, the militants sent a message to Western governments that their presence in the Middle East would exact a heavy political and human toll.
"The Militants Reject Modern Ideas in Favor of Traditional Muslim Theology"
No. Although Islamic hard-liners long to return to an idealized seventh-century existence, they have little compunction about embracing the tools that modernity provides. Their purported medievalism has not deterred militants from effectively using the Internet and videocassettes to mobilize the faithful.
At the ideological level, prominent thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb and Abu Ala Maududi have borrowed heavily from the organizational tactics of secular leftist and anarchist revolutionaries. Their concept of the vanguard is influenced by Leninist theory. Qutb's most important work, Ma'alim fi'l-tariq (Milestones), reads in part like an Islamicized Communist Manifesto. A commonly used Arabic word in the names of militant groups is Hizb (as in Lebanon's Hizb Allah, or Hezbollah), which means "party"--another modern concept.
In fact, the militants often couch their grievances in Third-Worldist terms familiar to any contemporary antiglobalization activist. One recent document purporting to come from bin Laden berates the United States for failing to ratify the Kyoto agreement on climate change. Egyptian militant leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has decried multinational companies as a major evil. Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, once told a friend how angered he was by a world economic system that meant Egyptian farmers grew cash crops such as strawberries for the West while the country's own people could barely afford bread. In all these cases, the militants are framing modern political concerns, including social justice, within a mythic and religious narrative. They do not reject modernization per se, but they resent their failure to benefit from that modernization.
Also, within the context of Islamic observance, these new Sunni militants are not considered traditionalists, but radical reformers, because they reject the authority of the established clergy and demand the right to interpret doctrine themselves, despite a general lack of academic credentials on the part of leading figures such as bin Laden or Zawahiri.
"Since the Rise of Al Qaeda, Islamic Moderates Have Been Marginalized"
Incorrect. Al Qaeda represents the lunatic fringe of political thought in the Islamic world. While al Qaedaism has made significant inroads in recent years, only a tiny minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims adhere to its doctrine. Many sympathize with bin Laden and take satisfaction at his ability to strike the United States, but that does not mean they genuinely want to live in a unified Islamic state governed along strict Koranic lines. Nor does anti-Western sentiment translate into a rejection of Western values. Surveys of public opinion in the Arab world, conducted by organizations such as Zogby International and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, reveal strong support for elected government, personal liberty, educational opportunity, and economic choice.
Even those who believe "Islam is the solution" disagree over precisely what that solution might be and how it might be achieved. Radical militants such as bin Laden want to destroy the state and replace it with something based on a literal reading of the Koran. However, some political Islamists want to appropriate the structures of the state and, in varying degrees, Islamicize them, usually with a view toward promoting greater social justice and outflanking undemocratic and powerful regimes. An example of the latter would be the Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) movement, currently led by veteran activist Qazi Hussein Ahmed. JI represents a significant swath of Pakistani popular opinion, and although it is tainted by appalling levels of anti-Semitism, it has taken a stance against bin Laden and the Taliban when politically feasible. Often, as in Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey, such groups are relatively moderate and can serve as useful interlocutors for the West. They should not be rejected out of hand as "Islamists"; refusing to engage them only allows the extremists to dominate the political discourse.
"The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Is Central to the Militants' Cause"
Wrong. Televised images of Israeli troops violently repressing Palestinian protesters in the occupied territories certainly reinforce the militants' key message that the lands of Islam are under attack and that all Muslims must rise up and fight. However, although a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help alleviate political tensions in the region, it would not end the threat of militant Islam.
The roots of contemporary Sunni Islamic militancy cannot be reduced to any single, albeit thorny, problem. Militants feel the umma is under attack. In their view, Israel is merely the West's most obvious outpost--as it was when it became a Crusader kingdom in the 12th century. If the Jewish state disappeared, the Islamists would still fight in Chechnya, Kashmir, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, and Algeria. Their agenda is typically determined by local grievances, often with lengthy histories. For instance, although bin Laden was already calling for a boycott of U.S. goods to protest support for Israel in the late 1980s, he had never been involved in an attack on an Israeli target until recently. His primary focus has always been to topple the regime in his homeland of Saudi Arabia. Likewise, Zawahiri's lengthy 2002 book, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner--part autobiography, part militant manifesto, which first appeared in serial form in 2001--focuses almost exclusively on the author's native Egypt.
Moreover, considerable support for the Islamic cause stems from Muslims' sense of humiliation. A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would still leave the "Zionist entity" intact, would therefore offer little succor to the wounded pride of any committed militant or, more crucial, to the pride of those in the wider community who support and legitimize extremism and violence.
"Sort Out Saudi Arabia and the Whole Problem Will Disappear"
No. Saudi Arabia has contributed significantly to the spread of radicalism through the government-subsidized export of its Wahhabist strand of hard-line Islam. This policy arose from the turmoil of the late 1970s, when outrage over government corruption and the royal family's decadence prompted hundreds of Islamic radicals to occupy the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The 1978-79 Shiite revolution in Iran threatened Saudi leadership in the Muslim world and offered a cautionary tale of the fate that could await the House of Saud. In an effort to appeal to religious conservatives and counter the Iranian regime, the royal family gave the Wahhabi clerics more influence at home and a mandate to expand their ideology abroad.
Since then, Saudi money disbursed through quasi-governmental organizations such as the Muslim World League has built hundreds of mosques throughout the world. The Saudis provide hard-line clerics with stipends and offer financial incentives to those who forsake previous patterns of worship. In Pakistan, money from the Persian Gulf has funded the massive expansion of madrasas (Islamic schools) that indoctrinate young students with virulent, anti-Western dogma. This Saudi-funded proselytism has enormously damaged long-standing tolerant and pluralist traditions of Islamic observance in East and West Africa, the Far East, and Central Asia. Wahhabism was virtually unknown in northern Iraq until a massive push by Gulf-based missionaries in the early 1990s. And many of the mosques known for radical activity in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada were built with donations from private and state sources in Saudi Arabia.
The inequities of the Saudi system--in which most people are very poor and ruled by a super-rich clique--continues to create a sense of disenfranchisement that allows extremism to flourish. Many of the most militant preachers (and some of the Saudi hijackers who perpetrated the September 11 terrorist attacks) come from marginalized tribes and provinces. A more inclusive style of government and a more just redistribution of resources would undercut the legitimacy of local militants and deny radicals new recruits. Yet, while such reforms might slow the spread of Wahhabism and associated strands outside Saudi Arabia, in much of the world the damage has already been done. As with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saudi Arabia is one of the many causes of modern Islamic militancy, but it has no monopoly on blame.
"It Is Only a Matter of Time Before Islamic Militants Use Weapons of Mass Destruction"
Calm down. Although Islamic militants (including bin Laden) have attempted to develop a basic chemical or biological arsenal, those efforts have been largely unsuccessful due to the technical difficulty of creating, let alone weaponizing, such materials. As one of the first journalists to enter the research facilities at the Darunta camp in eastern Afghanistan in 2001, I was struck by how crude they were. The Ansar al-Islam terrorist group's alleged chemical weapons factory in northern Iraq, which I inspected the day after its capture in 2003, was even more rudimentary. Alleged attempts by a British group to develop ricin poison, but for the apparent seriousness of the intent, could be dismissed as farcical.
Nor is there any compelling evidence that militants have come close to creating a "dirty bomb" (a conventional explosive packaged with radioactive material). The claim that Jose Padilla, an alleged al Qaeda operative arrested in the United States in 2002, had intended to deploy a dirty bomb has been largely discounted--it was an aspiration rather than a practical plan. Constructing a dirty bomb is more difficult than most imagine. Although the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that more than 100 countries have inadequate control of radioactive material, only a small percentage of that material is lethal enough to cause serious harm. It also requires considerable technical sophistication to build a device that can effectively disperse radioactive material. Some have also voiced the fear that militants might obtain a "prepackaged" working nuclear warhead from Pakistan. However, that would only be a plausible scenario if an Islamic regime came to power, or if high-ranking elements of the Pakistani military developed greater sympathy for the Islamists than currently exists.
The 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack in Japan highlights the difficulties terrorist groups face in deploying weapons of mass destruction. Despite possessing sophisticated research facilities funded by an estimated $1 billion in assets, the group failed nine times to launch a successful attack prior to the incident in the Tokyo subway system. (Even then, the fatalities were mercifully limited to a dozen people.) Confronted with such constraints, Islamic militants are far more likely to use conventional bombs or employ conventional devices in imaginative ways--as was the case with the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Spain.
"The West Is Winning the War on Terror"
Unfortunately, no. The military component of the war on terrorism has had some significant success. A high proportion of those who associated with bin Laden between 1996 and 2001 are now either dead or in prison. Bin Laden's own ability to commission and instigate terror attacks has been severely curtailed. Enhanced cooperation between intelligence organizations around the world and increased security budgets have made it much harder for terrorists to move their funds across borders or to successfully organize and execute attacks.
However, if countries are to win the war on terror, they must eradicate enemies without creating new ones. They also need to deny those militants with whom negotiation is impossible the support of local populations. Such support assists and, in the minds of the militants, morally legitimizes their actions. If Western countries are to succeed, they must marry the hard component of military force to the soft component of cultural appeal. There is nothing weak about this approach. As any senior military officer with experience in counterinsurgency warfare will tell you, it makes good sense. The invasion of Iraq, though entirely justifiable from a humanitarian perspective, has made this task more pressing.
Bin Laden is a propagandist, directing his efforts at attracting those Muslims who have hitherto shunned his extremist message. He knows that only through mass participation in his project will he have any chance of success. His worldview is receiving immeasurably more support around the globe than it was two years ago, let alone 15 years ago when he began serious campaigning. The objective of Western countries is to eliminate the threat of terror, or at least to manage it in a way that does not seriously impinge on the daily lives of its citizens. Bin Laden's aim is to radicalize and mobilize. He is closer to achieving his goals than the West is to deterring him.
Jason Burke is chief reporter for Britain's Observer and author of Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003).