Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: International Issues

  • Seven Steps to Improving US and Global Security

    An effective US response to the September 11th terrorist attacks – one that improves US and global security – must be moral, legal, and thoughtful. It must place higher value on protection of Americans on US soil than on vengeance abroad, not taking more innocent lives. It must uphold the rule of law sanctioned by the United Nations, and seek to understand what grievances against us are legitimate.

    To meet these criteria, the US can and should implement seven policy steps in order to increase both domestic and global security.

    1. Improve intelligence, and take far stronger preventative security measures. We must understand why our intelligence services failed to prevent the September 11th attacks. Why were known associates of Osama bin Laden not effectively tracked by US intelligence services? Why did the arrest of a known associate of bin Laden for suspicious behavior at a flight school weeks before the attacks not alert the FBI?

    2. Act multilaterally to bring the attackers to justice, under UN auspices and existing international treaties on terrorism and sabotage. Since the September 11th attack was an international crime against citizens of some 80 countries, perpetrators should be brought before an International Tribunal established for this purpose and tried for crimes against humanity.

    3. Prevent weapons of mass destruction from being used by terrorists. The US must give top priority and full funding to efforts to prevent chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons attacks against population centers, whether via ground vehicles, crop dusting planes, or other suspected means of delivery.

    4. Bring all nuclear weapons and fissile material in the world under control and move quickly toward banning these weapons under international law, as the US has already agreed to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the short term we must reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world to controllable numbers, on the order of 100 weapons per nuclear weapon state, to keep them out of terrorist hands. We must institute an international inventory of all nuclear weapons, weapons-grade materials and nuclear scientists, and increase financial and technological support for Cooperative Threat Reduction programs that strengthen non-proliferation efforts in the former Soviet Union. Planning should begin now for controlling Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the event of a government takeover by extremists.

    5. Immediately deploy military protection for all nuclear power plants in the US and rapidly phase out these plants. Nuclear power reactors are dormant radiological weapons located in the proximity of major US cities. Currently the NRC has them on “heightened alert,” but has no meaningful way to repel terrorist attacks on them. Flying an airplane into a nuclear reactor or waste storage site, or introducing explosives through intakes, could result in a Chernobyl-type release of radioactive materials with unimaginable consequences. Until shut down, operating nuclear power plants should be patrolled by National Guard troops and protected by anti-aircraft weapons. Radioactive waste sites and spent fuel stored at nuclear power plants, should also be guarded, as should shipments of all radioactive materials that could be used for nuclear or radiological weapons.

    6. Learn to listen. We must ask why the United States is so hated that terrorists are willing to die themselves to murder us. Is it, as President Bush said, that they hate freedom and democracy itself, or that they hate US policies – US military presence in the Middle East, our conduct of the Gulf War and economic sanctions against Iraq, our support of a despotic Saudi regime, and our ongoing economic and military support for Israel? As recently as the 1960s America was admired throughout the Islamic world precisely because it was seen as a beacon of freedom and democracy, and an opponent of autocratic colonialism. A few decades of US policy changed all that. Although our policy cannot be dictated by terrorism, short-sighted policies that fuel deep-seated and widespread hatred can and should be amended. Without considering our policies that engender such hatred, no security measures will be able to protect us from future attack.

    7. Use our power to uphold security, justice and dignity not just for ourselves and industrialized countries allied with us, but for the world, recognizing that true security is cooperative, and in the long run life in America will be only as secure as life on the planet as a whole. Some 35,000 children worldwide die quietly each day from malnutrition and preventable diseases, while America has systematically reduced foreign aid and UN funding commitments. The UN has the tools to promote justice, human rights and sustainable development, but it can’t do so without American commitment and leadership.

    Since September 11th, the world has arrived at a crossroads. America will play a major role in determining its future path. Will we resort to old instincts of applying crushing military force, intensifying hatred toward the US without substantially reducing the threat of terrorism against us? Or will we take the above steps towards making the US and the world more secure in all respects?

    *David Krieger, an attorney and political scientist, is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Vote for Peace

    “The first time the first woman had a chance to say no against war she should say it.” – Jeanette Rankin

    Behold the anti-war sentiments of this Congresswoman from Montana whose pacifist ideals are nowhere to be seen nor heard in recent days. This often forgotten former Congresswoman from Montana voted against entry into both World War I and World War II, a risky gamble for peace in this war-hawk nation. Yet, believing war was not the answer and willing to take a stand in the face of weighty opposition to remain true to her beliefs, Ms. Rankin cast her vote for peace. Last week, our modern-day Jeannette Rankin, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), cast the only dissenting vote against legislation giving President Bush the authorization to wage military war against terrorism. The other politicians in our country would do well to pause in silence for a moment and listen to the sounds of conscience which resonate among the peaceloving people in the United States.

    What I find remarkable in the aftermath of the Tuesday’s devastating events is that our outspoken government leaders, especially our President, have maintained a hate-filled unilateral front using language of retaliation and revenge for the perpetrators and the country harboring them and abetting their activities. The mainstream media has reported precious little from peace groups who represent the wishes of many Americans who think that military action is not the only valid response to this tragic situation. We are continually told that more bloodshed will make us feel better. If we can beat up on some other nation’s innocents, it will ease our pain here. Misery loves company.

    The paradigm has already been set up: if you call for peace, for reconciliation and for forgiveness, you are anti-American. You are unaligned with the multitudes of grieving families across our nation and empathize too much with the enemy, who deserves no mercy. Can we be pro-peace and still be true to our country? Can we call for compassion and nonviolent responses to a tragedy this terrible? Revenge and retaliation have been perverted to mean justice, and the American public ought to be offered other options than the militaristic, one-sided vengeance which our leaders have set before us. How can our leaders call for tolerance toward Arab-Americans in our own country and in the same breath blast Arab countries with unrelenting rhetoric of retaliatory attacks?

    After all, we are all human beings, right? Nationalities are man-made creations, as are national borders. In essence, we are plotting the destruction of our own species. Is our national policy toward foreigners nothing than a mirror held up to the face of our own self-hatred? I would like to believe that the good people of America can grieve together during this time of intense loss and still not wish to create more tragedy anywhere else on our planet.

    Within the boundaries of the United States, we house many ideologies, many faith traditions, many races, and many ethnicities. Should we be so myopic to believe that there is only one acceptable response to the terrorist attacks on which all varieties of Americans concur? Does everyone want an all-out war? Many high school students in recent days have been envisioning alternative structures of government more compatible with the principles of nonviolence. Many high school students believe that meeting hate with hate multiplies hate, as first written by Martin Luther King, Jr., and that, quoting Gandhi, an eye for an eye and the world goes blind. Are these students too young and idealistic to dream of a world where their future is not jeopardized? Is their peace studies class teaching them blind optimism? They don’t think so.

    Our President says he would like to eradicate the evil in the world. Let’s take him up on this idea. Let’s stop funding the war on Palestine. Let’s stop bombing Iraq every week. Let’s stop fueling the fires of conflict in Colombia. Let’s provide healthcare to the 25% of children in America who live in poverty. Let’s teach our children to get along rather than to harbor hatred toward their enemies. Let’s take our role as the world’s superpower seriously and respond to these senseless events with dignity and restraint.

    Can we challenge our government to find a creative and meaningful way to respond to this violence while caring for our wounded nation?

    *Leah Wells is Peace Education Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Perspective of a Nobel Peace Laureate and Co-founder of Peace People

    Belfast, Northern Ireland:

    “It is with the greatest sadness that the people of the World watched the tragedy of the horrific events of Tuesday 11th September, 2001, in America.

    The day of this atrocity will remain in all our memories; it has moved many millions of people to tears of shock and sadness.

    We share in the American peoples’ grief during this time of need, and send our condolences to all.

    We understand the depth of feelings of loss and pain but we would appeal that there be no retaliation.

    Violence serves no purpose. Violence solves no problems. Retaliation would mean the further deaths of many more people. This would, in turn, add to an increasing sense of fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, being felt around the world.

    As the human family we need HOPE, and this can come from the people of the World, when they rise above their immediate feelings of pain and anger at such inhumanity, and in a calmer atmosphere allow reason to guide their decisions. In this way ‘wisdom’ can find a response to this terrible atrocity which does not add to the terrible death and destruction already perpetrated on our fellow brothers and sister in the United States.

    In this the new millennium, the human family has an opportunity to move away from the old responses of ‘an eye for an eye’ and deal with their problems in a collective and civilised manner, befitted the great goodness that lives in every human heart.

  • To our American Friends, Written in the days Following 11 September 2001

    We are enormously saddened by the terrible news from New York and Washington, moved beyond words by the thousands of blameless lives lost and innocent hearts broken, and inspired by the magnificent response of the firefighters and rescuers. We share deeply the shock and sorrow and anger of the American people, and are outraged by the senseless barbarity of those who, as Newsday put it, “decided it would be a good idea to fly planes full of innocent Americans into buildings full of innocent Americans.”

    Our hearts are with all those, Americans and others, who are grieving and fearful. This was an atrocity aimed primarily but not not only at the United States, or even at the West whose way of life, successful economies, political and cultural affinities and predominant religions are so resented by some others—but, it almost seems, at all nations that allow their citizens to enjoy their lives and celebrate their differences. It does not represent the faithful of any religion or contribute to the solution of injustice anywhere, but expressly betrays the injunctions of the faith and the standards of justice that its perpetrators invoke.

    In one infamous stroke, this monstrous act has united the world in revulsion against the victimization of innocent people and terrorism in all its forms. Let us hope that governments will be so shaken by the scale and implications of this offense to humanity that they will declare their unequivocal rejection of such acts wherever they occur—and that in the war that has been declared against terrorism they will not in anger callously or carelessly sacrifice the lives of others who are innocent.

    As hard as it may be for the rest of us to fathom the motives of those who plan these dreadful acts and to understand the fanaticism or the desperation of those who are prepared to die for what most of us see as misguided and hopeless causes, we must suppose that they truly believe they are right and will not be persuaded otherwise. They have grievances they have decided cannot be addressed in any other way. Even now, in spite of the appalling way they are represented, we have to examine these grievances with the humanity that we would wish of others, responding magnanimously where we should and fiercely where we must, wary of falling into the trap of intolerance and of the long term consequences of our actions. The alternative is to risk an ever more ferocious and widening escalation of the horror of which we have been given such a bitter taste.

  • Rep. Barbara Lee’s Speech Opposing the Post 9-11 Use of Force Act

    Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and loved ones who were killed and injured in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Only the most foolish or the most callous would not understand the grief that has gripped the American people and millions around the world.

    This unspeakable attack on the United States has forced me to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction.

    September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.

    I know that this use-of -force resolution will pass although we all know that the President can wage war even without this resolution. However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. There must be some of us who say, let’s step back for a moment and think through the implications of our actions today-let us more fully understand their consequences.

    We are not dealing with a conventional war. We cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control. This crisis involves issues of national security, foreign policy, public safety, intelligence gathering, economics, and murder. Our response must be equally multifaceted.

    We must not rush to judgment. For too many innocent people have already died. Our country is in mourning. If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that woman, children, and other non-combatants will be caught in the crossfire.

    Nor can we let our justified anger over these outrageous acts by vicious murderers inflame prejudice against all Arab Americans, Muslim, Southeast Asians, and any other people because of their race, religion, or ethnicity.

    Finally, we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes.

    In 1964, Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to “take all necessary measures” to repel attacks and prevent further aggression. In so doing, this House abandoned its own constitutional responsibilities and launched our country into years of undeclared war in Vietnam.

    At this time, Senator Wayne Morse, on e of the two lonely votes against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, declared, “I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United StatesŠI believe that with the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake.”

    Senator Morse was correct, and I fear we make the same mistake today. And I fear the consequences. I have agonized over this vote. But I came to grips with it in the very painful yet beautiful memorial service today at the National Cathedral. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, ” As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

  • Will Tears Ever Stop?

    I can’t help crying. As soon as I see a person on TV telling the heart-rendering story of the tragic fate of their loved-one in the World Trade Center disaster, I can’t control my tears. But then I wonder why didn’t I cry when our troops wiped out some 5,000 poor people in Panama’s El Chorillo neighborhood on the excuse of looking for Noriega. Our leaders knew he was hiding elsewhere but we destroyed El Chorillo because the folks living there were nationalists who wanted the U.S. out of Panama completely.

    Worse still, why didn’t I cry when we killed two million Vietnamese, mostly innocent peasants, in a war which its main architect, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, knew we could not win? When I went to give blood the other day, I spotted a Cambodian doing the same, three up in the line, and that reminded me: Why didn’t I cry when we helped Pol Pot butcher another million by giving him arms and money, because he was opposed to “our enemy” (who eventually stopped the killing fields)?

    To stay up but not cry that evening, I decided to go to a movie. I chose Lumumba, at the Film Forum, and again I realized that I hadn’t cried when our government arranged for the murder of the Congo’s only decent leader, to be replaced by General Mobutu, a greedy, vicious, murdering dictator. Nor did I cry when the CIA arranged for the overthrow of Indonesia’s Sukarno, who had fought the Japanese World War II invaders and established a free independent country, and then replaced him by another General, Suharto, who had collaborated with the Japanese and who proceeded to execute at least half a million “Marxists” (in a country where, if folks had ever heard of Marx, it was at best Groucho)?

    I watched TV again last night and cried again at the picture of that wonderful now-missing father playing with his two-month old child. Yet when I remembered the slaughter of thousands of Salvadorans, so graphically described in the Times by Ray Bonner, or the rape and murder of those American nuns and lay sisters there, all perpetrated by CIA trained and paid agents, I never shed a tear. I even cried when I heard how brave had been Barbara Olson, wife of the Solicitor General, whose political views I detested. But I didn’t cry when the US invaded that wonderful tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada and killed innocent citizens who hoped to get a better life by building a tourist airfield, which my government called proof of a Russian base, but then finished building once the island was secure in the US camp again.

    Why didn’t I cry when Ariel Sharon, today Israel’s prime minister, planned, then ordered, the massacre of two thousand poor Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the same Sharon who, with such other Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists become prime ministers as Begin and Shamir, killed the wives and children of British officers by blowing up the King David hotel where they were billeted?

    I guess one only cries only for one’s own. But is that a reason to demand vengeance on anyone who might disagree with us? That’s what Americans seem to want. Certainly our government oes, and so too most of our media. Do we really believe that we have a right to exploit the poor folk of the world for our benefit, because we claim we are free and they are not?

    So now we’re going to go to war. We are certainly entitled to go after those who killed so many of our innocent brothers and sisters. And we’ll win, of course. Against Bin Laden. Against Taliban. Against Iraq. Against whoever and whatever. In the process we’ll kill a few innocent children again. Children who have no clothes for the coming winter. No houses to shelter them. And no schools to learn why they are guilty, at two or four or six years old. Maybe Evangelists Falwell and Robertson will claim their death is good because they weren’t Christians, and maybe some State Department spokesperson will tell the world that they were so poor that they’re now better off.

    And then what? Will we now be able to run the world the way we want to? With all the new legislation establishing massive surveillance of you and me, our CEOs will certainly be pleased that the folks demonstrating against globalization will now be cowed for ever. No more riots in Seattle, Quebec or Genoa. Peace at last.

    Until next time. Who will it be then? A child grown-up who survived our massacre of his innocent parents in El Chorillo? A Nicaraguan girl who learned that her doctor mother and father were murdered by a bunch of gangsters we called democratic contras who read in the CIA handbook that the best way to destroy the only government which was trying to give the country’s poor a better lot was to kill its teachers, health personnel, and government farm workers? Or maybe it will be a bitter Chilean who is convinced that his whole family was wiped out on order of Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who could never tell the difference between a communist and a democratic socialist or even a nationalist.

    When will we Americans learn that as long as we keep trying to run the world for the sake of the bottom line, we will suffer someone’s revenge? No war will ever stop terrorism as long as we use terror to have our way. So I stopped crying because I stopped watching TV. I went for a walk. Just four houses from mine. There, a crowd had congregated to lay flowers and lit candles in front of our local firehouse. It was closed. It had been closed since Tuesday because the firemen, a wonderful bunch of friendly guys who always greeted neighborhood folks with smiles and good cheer, had rushed so fast to save the victims of the first tower that they perished with them when it collapsed. And I cried again.

    So I said to myself when I wrote this, don’t send it; some of your students, colleagues, neighbors will hate you, maybe even harm you. But then I put on the TV again, and there was Secretary of State Powell telling me that it will be okay to go to war against these children, these poor folks, these US-haters, because we are civilized and they are not. So I decided to risk it. Maybe, reading this, one more person will ask: Why are so many people in the world ready to die to give us a taste of what we give them?

  • Who is Osama Bin Laden?

    A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting evidence, that “Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects”. CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan “multiple attacks with little or no warning.” Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks “an act of war” and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”. Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at “state sponsorship,” implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, “I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution.”

    Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra has approved the launching of “punitive actions” directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: “When we reasonably determine our attackers’ bases and camps, we must pulverize them — minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage” — and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror’s national hosts”.

    The following text outlines the history of Osama Bin Laden and the links of the Islamic “Jihad” to the formulation of US foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath.

    Prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists attacks, branded by the FBI as an “international terrorist” for his role in the African US embassy bombings, Saudi born Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war “ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders”. 1

    In 1979 “the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA” was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.2

    With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI [Inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.3

    The Islamic “jihad” was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:

    In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166,…[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, … as well as a “ceaseless stream” of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.4 The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan’s military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:

    Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert their independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by Moscow.5

    Pakistan’s Intelligence Apparatus

    Pakistan’s ISI was used as a “go-between”. The CIA covert support to the “jihad” operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, –i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be “successful”, Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the “jihad”, which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.

    In the words of CIA’s Milton Beardman “We didn’t train Arabs”. Yet according to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-aram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo, bin Laden and the “Afghan Arabs” had been imparted “with very sophisticated types of training that was allowed to them by the CIA” 6

    CIA’s Beardman confirmed, in this regard, that Osama bin Laden was not aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): “neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help”. 7

    Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA.

    With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of US military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a “parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government”. 8 The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. 9

    Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:

    ‘Relations between the CIA and the ISI [Pakistan’s military intelligence] had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia’s ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime,’… During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984…. `the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.’ Both Pakistan and the United States took the line of deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that military escalation was the best course.10

    The Golden Crescent Drug Triangle

    The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA’s covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. 11 In this regard, Alfred McCoy’s study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, “the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer, supplying 60 percent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979… to 1.2 million by 1985 — a much steeper rise than in any other nation”:12

    CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests … U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies `because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.’ In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. `Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade,’… `I don’t think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout…. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.’13

    In the Wake of the Cold War

    In the wake of the Cold War, the Central Asian region is not only strategic for its extensive oil reserves, it also produces three quarters of the World’s opium representing multibillion dollar revenues to business syndicates, financial institutions, intelligence agencies and organized crime. The annual proceeds of the Golden Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represents approximately one third of the Worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $500 billion.14

    With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 — coinciding with the build up of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics– reached a record high of 4600 metric tons.15 Powerful business syndicates in the former Soviet Union allied with organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes.

    The ISI’s extensive intelligence military-network was not dismantled in the wake of the Cold War. The CIA continued to support the Islamic “jihad” out of Pakistan. New undercover initiatives were set in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus essentially “served as a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia.” 16

    Meanwhile, Islamic missionaries of the Wahhabi sect from Saudi Arabia had established themselves in the Muslim republics as well as within the Russian federation encroaching upon the institutions of the secular State. Despite its anti-American ideology, Islamic fundamentalism was largely serving Washington’s strategic interests in the former Soviet Union.

    Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, the civil war in Afghanistan continued unabated. The Taliban were being supported by the Pakistani Deobandis and their political party the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). In 1993, JUI entered the government coalition of Prime Minister Benazzir Bhutto. Ties between JUI, the Army and ISI were established. In 1995, with the downfall of the Hezb-I-Islami Hektmatyar government in Kabul, the Taliban not only instated a hardline Islamic government, they also “handed control of training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI factions…” 17

    And the JUI with the support of the Saudi Wahhabi movements played a key role in recruiting volunteers to fight in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

    Jane Defense Weekly confirms in this regard that “half of Taliban manpower and equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under the ISI” 18

    In fact, it would appear that following the Soviet withdrawal both sides in the Afghan civil war continued to receive covert support through Pakistan’s ISI. 19

    In other words, backed by Pakistan’s military intelligence (ISI) which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical interests. The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In last few months there is evidence that Mujahideen mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia.

    No doubt, this explains why Washington has closed its eyes on the reign of terror imposed by the Taliban including the blatant derogation of women’s rights, the closing down of schools for girls, the dismissal of women employees from government offices and the enforcement of “the Sharia laws of punishment”.20

    The War in Chechnya

    With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress’s Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. 21 The summit, was attended by Osama bin Laden and high-ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan’s ISI in Chechnya “goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war”. 22

    Russia’s main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington’s perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.

    The two main Chechen rebel armies (respectively led by Commander Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab) estimated at 35,000 strong were supported by Pakistan’s ISI, which also played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army:

    [In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers: Minister of Defense General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf, (all now retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev.23

    Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) “Chechen warlords started buying up real estate in Kosovo… through several real estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia” 24

    Basayev’s organisation has also been involved in a number of rackets including narcotics, illegal tapping and sabotage of Russia’s oil pipelines, kidnapping, prostitution, trade in counterfeit dollars and the smuggling of nuclear materials (See Mafia linked to Albania’s collapsed pyramids, 25 Alongside the extensive laundering of drug money, the proceeds of various illicit activities have been funneled towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of weapons.

    During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander “Al Khattab” who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev’s return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab’s posting to Chechnya had been “arranged through the Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya”.26

    Concluding Remarks

    Since the Cold War era, Washington has consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at same time placing him on the FBI’s “most wanted list” as the World’s foremost terrorist.

    While the Mujahideen are busy fighting America’s war in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the FBI –operating as a US based Police Force- is waging a domestic war against terrorism, operating in some respects independently of the CIA which has –since the Soviet-Afghan war– supported international terrorism through its covert operations.

    In a cruel irony, while the Islamic jihad –featured by the Bush Adminstration as “a threat to America”– is blamed for the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, these same Islamic organisations constitute a key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

    In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush Adminstration together with its NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

    Endnotes

    1. Hugh Davies, International: `Informers’ point the finger at bin Laden; Washington on alert for suicide bombers, The Daily Telegraph, London, 24 August 1998. 2.See Fred Halliday, “The Un-great game: the Country that lost the Cold War, Afghanistan, New Republic, 25 March 1996): 3. Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999. 4. Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992. 5. Dilip Hiro, Fallout from the Afghan Jihad, Inter Press Services, 21 November 1995. 6. Weekend Sunday (NPR); Eric Weiner, Ted Clark; 16 August 1998. 7. Ibid. 8. Dipankar Banerjee; Possible Connection of ISI With Drug Industry, India Abroad, 2 December 1994. 9. Ibid 10. See Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, Oxford university Press, New York, 1995. See also the review of Cordovez and Harrison in International Press Services, 22 August 1995. 11. Alfred McCoy, Drug fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive; 1 August 1997. 12. Ibid 13. Ibid. 14. Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a changing World, Technical document no 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations Publication, Vienna 1999, p 49-51, And Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000. 15. Report of the International Narcotics Control Board, op cit, p 49-51, see also Richard Lapper, op. cit. 16. International Press Services, 22 August 1995. 17. Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign Affairs, November- December, 1999, p. 22. 18.Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September 1998) 19. Tim McGirk, Kabul learns to live with its bearded conquerors, The Independent, London, 6 November1996. 20. See K. Subrahmanyam, Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals, India Abroad, 3 November 1995. 21. Levon Sevunts, Who’s calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 23 The Gazette, Montreal, 26 October 1999. 22. Ibid 23. Ibid. 24. See Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, Chechen Front Moves To Kosovo Segodnia, Moscow, 23 Feb 2000. 25. The European, 13 February 1997, See also Itar-Tass, 4-5 January 2000. 26. BBC, 29 September 1999).

    *Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montréal The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html

    Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, September 2001. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms, including commercial internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at chossudovsky@videotron.ca, fax: 1-514-4256224

  • Council for a Livable World Response to the September 11 Attacks

    The Council for a Livable World is deeply saddened by the events of September 11. We grieve for the lost lives, the injured and the affected families. We support all necessary steps to protect Americans and the rest of the world from terrorist attacks.

    For forty years, we have worked for a peaceful resolution to international conflict and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction — whether in the hands of terrorists or hostile states — remain the most serious threat to U.S. and world security. The terrorists behind the recent attacks would not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological — if they gain access to these weapons. U.S. defense and foreign policy should be directed at reducing that threat.

    The United States cannot deal with terrorism, or national security in general, through a unilateral approach. Only multilateral efforts can limit access to weapons of mass destruction. The first steps include reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to the lowest possible level by negotiating, signing, and ratifying the START III treaty, approving a Protocol that strengthens the verification and enforcement provisions of the Biological Weapons Convention, and seeking Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    Because of their enormous arsenals, high priority should be placed on close U.S.- Russian relations to advance our mutual interests in combating terrorism, reduce and safeguard nuclear weapons and prevent the proliferation of weapons and materials to other countries and groups. More money should be put towards these efforts, as recommended by the Baker-Cutler Commission earlier this year.

    In our campaign against terrorism, Russia can provide significant intelligence, logistics and staging areas. However, a unilateral United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty could seriously jeopardize Russian cooperation. The Administration should abide by the ABM Treaty and stop threatening to abrogate it in order to deploy a national anti-missile system.

    At the same time, we should not spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the frantic pursuit of a national missile defense that does not work. National missile defense is no more feasible today than it was September 10. Experts have repeatedly warned that terrorist attacks by those smuggling weapons across our borders or bombing key buildings is a much greater threat than “rogue states” launching missiles with a return address. Recent events have proved them correct.

    When Congress considers the annual Defense Authorization and Appropriation bills, it should significantly reduce the Administration’s request for $8.3 billion for missile defense. The Senate Armed Service Committee’s earlier decision to cut $1.3 from the 2002 missile defense budget and allocate those funds to other military accounts, including anti-terrorism, was a very prudent approach.

    We support increased appropriations that relate directly to the terrorist attacks. Strengthening airport security, putting marshals on airplanes, improving customs control, increasing human intelligence and adding funds to the Cooperative Threat Reduction program are a much higher priority than spending hundreds of billions of dollars on an unproven technology for missile defense to meet the least likely threats.

    Congress has been acting in a bi-partisan manner in support of the President by focusing on the terrorist crisis. We believe it would be a serious mistake and an incorrect diversion from the crisis to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and to deploy a national missile defense that is not ready. Such action could destroy the international coalition against terrorism.

  • Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Statement on 9-11 Terrorist Attacks

    Our hearts go out to the victims and families of the vicious and premeditated terrorist attacks against the people of the United States.

    These attacks make clear that people everywhere are vulnerable to fanatics, propelled by hatred, who are determined to inflict terrible injuries, even at the cost of their own lives.

    President Bush has vowed to bring the attackers to justice, but revenge is not sufficient. It is also not effective in dealing with people who are suicidal. We are faced with the dilemma of how to prevent future attacks by suicidal people without becoming a police state.

    Not military strength, nor nuclear weapons, nor missile defenses can protect us from such attackers, willing to die in the perpetration of their terrorist acts.

    Since we cannot end our vulnerability, we must find new policies that will restore an atmosphere free from violence in our world. The challenge we now face is to find the wisdom to develop new policies, based on justice and human dignity, to end the threats before us.

  • Declaration of NaturwissenschaftlerInnen-Initiative

    Statement Against violence – for prudence

    Speechless and horror-stricken, with our deepest regret and compassion for all victims and their relatives, we have to take note of this most unbelievable act of terrorism in history. We would like to express our sympathy to all citizens of the United States of America.

    As part of the peace-movement, the Initiative of Engineers and Scientists rejects all forms of terrorism and violence. We are shaken by this insane act of unrestricted violence that will solve none of our problems, but drive us further into desperation and a circle of violence.

    This crime was not necessary to prove the vulnerability of highly technologized industrial nations – they are not to be technologically secured against their own high end technology.

    There is no way to escape from this helplessness, merely political and humanitarian steps to minimize it. Acts of revenge and military retaliation will not solve the problem. We appeal for prudence, particularly for those who are in political charge.

    We would like to propose to the United Nations: The United Nations shall invite all head of states and governments of the world, all parliaments and NGO´s – immediately – to gather for a world – peace – conference, in order to work on courageous steps (in the spirit of the frequently cited New Thinking) to solve wars and conflicts, and to work against such senseless outbreak of violence.

    Dortmund, Sept. 11th 2001, 6:30 p.m. +49 (0) 231 – 57 52 02 Reiner Braun, Executive Director