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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #42-01 As We Sow: U.S.-Arab Alliances
October 3, 2001

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2001/4201.html

Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact.

Eqbal Amhad: A superpower cannot promote terror in one place and reasonably expect to discourage terrorism in another place.

Rania Masri: The only way that we can secure ourselves against further terrorist activity is by finding out why they do what they do and to stop it at the roots.

Phillip Babich: Dispatching U.S. war ships and tough-talking officials to the Middle East have been among the nation's responses to suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In the midst of intense national grief, the Bush administration made ready to wage a "new kind of war." On this program, we raise critical questions about war, civil liberties, and U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

I'm Phillip Babich -- your host this week on Making Contact - an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information.

Phillip Babich: In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the Bush administration announced that it would spearhead an international coalition to fight terrorism. As we produce this show in early October 2001, the impulse for retaliation and war is strong... so are calls for peace and a just response to the tremendous loss of life.

At this moment in history, what questions should we be asking as we assess terrorism and U.S. foreign policy. Making Contact's Sarah Wiener-Boone has more.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: Phyllis Bennis, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C., and an expert on the Middle East, asks why the American public was not given time to mourn after the September 11th attacks.

Phyllis Bennis: Then I think we should be asking why attacks like this happen, not to justify them, because there is no justification, no cause, no critique, no policy difference, nothing justifies an attack on civilians. But if we're serious about preventing more, we have to be serious about looking at root causes of why things happen. And that means asking the hard questions: Why are symbols of American power seen as symbols to be opposed? To be hated by many people, not by only those who carry out the horrendous acts in New York and Washington but people who live in many many parts of the world see American power not as a bastion of light and democracy -- as many of us like to believe -- but as what keeps them from achieving democracy in their own lives.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: Rania Masri, a national board member of Peace Action, a grassroots network that works on nuclear and military issues, says it's important to seek clarification on key terms such as terrorism -- terms that we hear in our homes, in the media and in the halls of government.

Rania Masri: First of all we have to be very clear about how we define terrorism. Yes, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and Pennsylvania were acts of terrorism but aren't acts of terrorism also inclusive of the bombing of civilian planes, bombing civilian infrastructure of sanctioning an entire country and so on and so forth. So, I think first and foremost we need to identify what terrorism is, especially now that George W. Bush has basically pulled the entire nation into an open-ended war against terrorists and terrorism without defining what that is and we definitely need to define what that is. I think just by defining it and by being very clear in our definitions of it, we are going to be able to understand much more of this conflict than we do right now.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: One way we may be able to understand is to look for common denominators of U.S. policy in the Middle East region.

Paul Lubeck: There's no consistent policy in the Middle East. There's a different policy toward the Saudis, a different policy in Algeria, a different policy in Egypt depending on the strategic role of each country.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: Paul Lubeck is a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the Director of the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies. He pinpoints motivations of U.S. policy and interests in the Middle East, or what he calls the "Koran Belt."

Paul Lubeck: It's important to realize that during the Cold War, until 1989, the U.S. pursued a policy of supporting governments and supporting movements, Islamic movements, in opposition to the nationalists, the radical nationalists and the left, broadly understood. In all of these instances, the governments affiliated with the U.S. supported what we call Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Israel's Hamas. The U.S. supported the Saudis and the so-called Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, supported Pakistan's shift to a more Islamic policy and the Algerians introduced a program of Islamization and Arabization prior to their civil war.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: Despite President Bush's lack of experience in foreign affairs, his administration is not lacking in personnel with a long history of formulating U.S. policy on the Middle East. Bush's foreign policy team is headed up by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a hard-liner from the Reagan era who argues that the nation's power can be used effectively to create more power globally. And, Vice President Dick Cheney who maintained the motto, "arms for our friends, arms control for our enemies" in dealing with the Middle East when he was President Bush Sr.'s Secretary of Defense.

Phyllis Bennis: The issues of hypocrisy and double standards are not lost in people in the region. Despite enormous poverty, despite enormous disparities of wealth and income, there are educated populations throughout that region who devour news, absolutely voraciously and follow very carefully the twists and turns of Middle East policy in the region and they see the hypocrisy of it, of building up a military force of Islamist forces, as the U.S. did in Afghanistan and then turning on them, abandoning them and then turning them into criminals.

The same thing happened in Iraq throughout the 1980's. The U.S. backed Iraq against Iran in the first Gulf War -- the Iran, Iraq war. The U.S. provided military intelligence, weapons, it allowed the sale of biological seed stock -- the germs that are the basis of germ warfare, to Iraq and then, of course, in a matter of moments, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, for reasons that had less to do, even with oil, than they did with super power contention that was coming to an end between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein personally, and the Iraqi regime as a whole, and unfortunately the Iraqi population were demonized -- so much so that the continued slaughter of Iraqi innocents because of sanctions gets virtually no attention.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: Eqbal Amhad recalled another telling example of drastic shifts in U.S. policy, this time concerning the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. One of the most esteemed intellectuals in his country, Pakistan, and throughout the world, Amhad was Professor Emeritus at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts. He spoke at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1998.

Eqbal Amhad: In 1985 President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men. These bearded men I was writing about in those days in the New Yorker, they were very ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans and kind of looking like they came from another century. President Reagan received them in the White House. After receiving them, he spoke to the press. He pointed towards them, I'm sure some of you will recall that moment, and said, "These are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers." These were the Afghan Mujahadeen.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: During his 1998 talk, Amhad offered recommendations to US policy makers. He urged them to avoid double standards, and to not engage in covert operations and so-called low-intensity warfare. Also, he offered this advice.

Eqbal Amhad: Do not concentrate on military solutions. Do not seek military solutions. Terrorism is a political problem. Seek political solutions.

Sarah Wiener-Boone: For Making Contact, I'm Sarah Wiener-Boone.

Phillip Babich: Muslims and other people living in the United States from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds have suffered violent attacks and harassment since September 11th. For U.S. residents of Afghan and Pakistani descent, recent developments are additionally troubling. Correspondent Nafisa Hoodbhoy has more.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: Bomb threats have forced the closure of several mosques. Even while expatriates have reported incidents of lynching across the country. A Harvard student from Pakistan, Arifa Khandwalla says the episodes have disturbed the relative harmony in which all groups lived.

Arifa Khandwalla: I had to go to the mosque recently and we were advised not to wear our usual clothing but to actually go inside the mosque and change because people were afraid of reprisals of any kind - and any kind of harassment. So, I wasn't happy about that at alll. I don't want to change the way I dress because I'm afraid of somebody else. So these things are all very upsetting and very sad. Because this is really not what America stands for.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: Afghan doctor Ghulam Mohammed Dastgir from Goshen, Massachusetts calls it ironic that Afghans who fled from the intolerance of the Taliban Regime are seeing their manifestations in the U.S. He was in Washington, D.C. recently where a colleague told him this story.

Ghulam Mohammed Dastgir: He was in a gas station and seeing that on the other isle, one Hindu and a Spanish was beaten. saying that you've killed our people, this is not your country, you get out of this one. And he said that I couldn't say anything. If I go and say, that well stop doing this, I'm the Afghan, they would have beaten me. So I just took my gas and left.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: But Americans of Afghan and Pakistani descent worry most about their region - where the U.S. is poised to strike the Taliban for harboring the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist bombings - Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network. An administrator in Connecticut, Tahira Shairzai expresses what some 200,000 Afghan-Americans may be going through.

Tahira Shairzai: Well, everybody is worried and everybody is afraid and they don't know what other misery will come to our country by invading Afghanistan. again and again.. for the past 22 years they have suffered a lot, they have lost a lot, they had no life whatsoever. So now, another big shock like this. I cannot even think about it, what will come to our people.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: The Afghans say they are paying the price for the Taliban's hosting of Bin laden - who has marriage ties with Taliban leader Mulla Umar. Ahmed Wali shairzai who worked in Saudi Arabia knew bin Laden's father - a construction magnate. He says that while bin Laden's business assets finance the Taliban - he also benefits from the relationship.

Ahmed Wali Shairzai: It seems that one of the major interests that bin Laden has in being in Afghanistan, because this is an open country. And his association with Taliban was an ideal deal with him. And the activities of other radical Arab organisations all through Northern Africa and Middle East. The money can come from any place, any nation or anybody who's interested in promoting terrorism against the West, against the Western interests in the Middle East.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: It's no secret to people in the region that the U.S. and the C.I.A. brought Islamic militants like bin Laden into Afghanistan in the 1980's to drive out the Russians. Dr. Dastgir also blames the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of the Pakistan military for propping up the Taliban for five years.

Dr. Dastgir: Talibans are not Afghans. Talibans are Pakistanis that were trained in Pakistan, trained by ISI and sent to Afghanistan. And these are the guys who have done several of this destruction and atrocities during their governing the country. I just say that they terrorising the people in Afghanistan. Their destruction is so huge that I hope America don't make the same mistake as the Russians did - they were spending $80,000 to destroy a mud house which costs only $5.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: As hundreds of thousands of Afghans flee into neighboring Pakistan to escape a U.S. strike, Pakistanis brace for civil strife. Already pro-Taliban demonstrators have clashed with those supporting Pakistan's decision to ally with the U.S. Khandwalla fears that Islamist elements in the Pakistan army could use the ensuing chaos to bring a military coup.

Arifa Khandwalla: My concern is that if these elements of the army take over, then the country is going to be caught in the grip of Talibanization. Amongst the poor people, I think its already happening. And I'm just afraid that Pakistan will become a radically fundamentalist Muslim nation, where women are treated the same way as in Afghanistan. Where people lost their freedoms that they have right now.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: Acting under U.S. pressure, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have withdrawn their recognition of the Taliban. The only country in the world to support the Taliban - Pakistan - has opposed its replacement by The Northern Alliance. Dr. Dastgir says that although the alliance's most prominent leader - Ahmed Shah Masood - was assasinated a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks, this does not diminish their chances of victory.

Dr. Dastgir: Killing of Ahmed Shah Masood will not change the front-line to the benefit of the Taliban. General Fahim who has replaced him is a very good soldier. All groups are united behind him in the Northern Alliance and they're all fighting the common enemy in different areas. Also, I heard there is a rise against the Taliban and if that spreads to the rest of the country - which several times has happened in Pakhtia, in Khost, then the Taliban will be disappeared on its own.

With U.N. backing, the Northern Alliance has struck a deal with deposed monarch Zahir Shah to call a `loya jirga' - Afghan parliament - in Afghanistan. The 87-year-old King Zahir Shah has lived in Rome since he was overthrown in a Soviet-backed coup by his cousin, Daud in 1973. Shairzai says the interim setup is meant to unite Afghans who lived as one people before the Russians divided them on grounds of race and region.

Ahmed Wali Shairzai: Suppose we started with a clean slate tomorrow. And things were really in the hands of Afghans to form their own government. The biggest issue that will be right in front of them is national unity. There are still veterans of the former government of Afghanistan who are living in exile in different parts of the world. And I would try to present a plea to all of them to get united, come back and form a government in Afghanistan. And to reestablish what was really lost within the past 20 years. Which is the national unity.

But people from the region caution the U.S. that bombing a war ravaged Afghanistan will further trigger off anti-U.S. sentiment and strengthen extremists in the region. Tahira Shairzai urges peaceful methods to isolate the terrorists and those who harbor them.

Ahmed Wali Shairzai: If these other countries who are helping them, especially Pakistan and some Arabic countries stop helping them in any way possible. What choice will they have. Except they have to surrender. This is my only hope and the dream of all Afghans. To be rid of the Taliban and the terrorists.

Nafisa Hoodbhoy: For the National Radio Project, I'm Nafisa Hoodbhoy.

Phillip Babich: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, please visit our web site at radioproject.org, that's radioproject.org.

Bush's "new kind of war" has also meant rollbacks for civil liberties. Making Contact's Damian Irizarry has more.

Damian Irizarry: During all major U.S. wars, the Civil War, World War I, World War II and Vietnam, the government restricted civil liberties in the name of preserving national security. In response to the attacks of September 11, the Bush Administration proposed legislation that is among the most sweeping law enforcement changes in years. Bush established the office of Homeland Security and proposed to change immigration, intelligence and privacy laws. Kit Gage, with the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom says we have to ask what national security really means.

Kit Gage: Everybody bands around the term national security and I think part of the problem with using it, it's kind of like terrorism, it has very deep symbolic meaning to a lot of people but it doesn't have much in the way of specifics.

Damian Irizarry: In the name of national security, the Bush Administration crafted an anti-terrorism bill. Some of the measures in this legislation include expanding wire tapping authority, detaining non-U.S. citizens suspected of being a terrorist without a court order, eliminating state Bar Association ethics rules that limit the ability of the U.S. Justice Department officials to approve undercover investigations, collecting DNA samples from all convicted felons and vastly broadening national and global surveillance operations. Do new threats deserve new laws? Kit Gage.

Kit Gage: National security covers a whole bunch a different kinds of things, and if for example you're talking about what the necessity of going after the people who committed the terrible attacks on September 11, then everyone agrees with that because what was committed were horrible crimes. Those crimes were already against the law, against domestic law, against international law, and there is extraordinary authority that the government already has to pursue all over the country and in a lot of ways all over the world people who had anything to do with those acts.

Damian Irizarry: Shortly after the attack, Bush appointed Tom Ridge, then Governor of Pennsylvania, to head the office of Homeland Security. This office will coordinate 46 government agencies against terrorist suspects in the United States. Ridge will work jointly with Army General Wayne Downing? At the Pentagon. One reason for military prominence says Douglas Valentine, a researcher and author on national security issues, is that Bush wants to establish a court system that is not as constrained as our current judicial system.

Douglas Valentine: What they want to do is establish military tribunals, but the rationale that they're trying to foist on the American public without any congressional consideration is that military tribunals are necessary because if you catch a terrorist in the United States. And let's say that he says there's a bomb on a plane and the bomb is going to go off in thirty minutes -- you have to be able to extract from him the information of where that bomb is so you can dismantle it. So even torture would now be allowed also they're saying that these military tribunals would have the authority to actually execute a terrorist withing thirty days of his conviction. Because in this war against terrorism we can no longer afford to have judicial appeals and all the constitutional remedies that are afforded to common criminals.

Damian Irizarry: The problem, says Valentine, is that there is no clear definition of who a terrorist is. The closest definition we have, says Valentine, comes from a C.I.A. program during the Vietnam War. Under the C.I.A.'s Phoenix Program, which is the model for the Homeland Security Office, a terrorist suspect was anyone accused by a single anonymous source.

Douglas Valentine: The Phoenix Program was a C.I.A. operation during the Vietnam War which pretty much is the model for the Homeland Security Council. The C.I.A. set up the Phoenix directorate in Vietnam in order to identify and capture and then interrogate and either assasinate or dispose of Viet Cong terrorists. So they set up this whole elaborate system and what it did was it coordinated thirty intelligence and operational agencies -- just like this Homeland Security Council is going to do. The way they went about identifying who a suspect was that could then be brought before a military tribunal, just like Bush is proposing, the way those suspects were identified was by an anonymous informant. Sometimes the people who were informing were informing on people that they had a grudge against, a personal grudge like somebody ran off with somebody's girlfriend so he went to the authorities and said so and so is a Viet Cong sympathizer. Other times the Viet Cong itself had infiltrated the program and they would put the names of loyal citizens onto these lists of suspected and potential subversives.

Damian Irizarry: As the balance between security and civil liberties shift, both Valentine and Gage say that it is important to have an informed public that is active in shaping the debate.

Douglas Valentine: There is a responsibility on the part of every American to educated himself about what the heck is happening here. It's not going to be fed to you over the internet by the media You're going to have to go out and look for the information and take some pains to learn what's going on.

Kit Gage: This is a time when we all will have to know what it is we're doing, why it is we're doing it and what kinds of laws are going to be changed and to the extent that any of us disagree with some of the things that are being done. Absolutely this is the time when those voices need to be able to be heard.

Damian Irizarry: For Making Contact, I'm Damian Irizarry.

Phillip Babich: For some final thoughts, we have these comments from Eqbal Amhad on an Arabic term we often hear equated with terrorism.

Eqbal Amhad: Jihad, which has been translated to you a thousand times as Holy War, is not quite just that. Jihad is a word that means to struggle. It could be a struggle by violence or a struggle by non-violent means. There are two forms, the small Jihad and the big Jihad. The small Jihad involves violence, the big Jihad involves struggles with self. Those are the concepts of Jihad. The reason I'm mentioning this is that Islamic history, Jihad as an international violent phenomenon had disappeared in the last 400 years, for all practical purposes. It was revived suddenly with American help in the 1980's.

When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan and the military dictator of Pakistan which borders Afghanistan saw an opportunity in it and launched a jihad there against godless communism. The United States saw a golden opportunity to mobilize one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the Evil Empire. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits because he was not only an Arab, he was also a Saudi, he was not only a Saudi, he was also a multimillionaire willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting people for the Jihad against Communism. This fellow was an ally. Then, he remained an ally. He turned at a particular moment. In 1990 the U.S. goes into Saudi Arabia with forces. Saudi Arabia is the holy place of Muslims- Mecca and Medina. There had never been foreign forces there.

Now in 1990 during the Gulf War they went in, in the name of helping Saudi Arabia to defeat Saddam Hussein. Osama bin Laden remained quiet. Then Saddam was defeated. Saddam is defeated but American troops stayed on and finally bin Laden started his Jihad with the other occupiers. His mission is to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. His earlier mission was to get Russian troops out of Afghanistan. Look these are tribal people. Their code of ethics is tribal. Tribal code of ethics consist of two words, loyalty and revenge. You are my friend, you keep your word then I am loyal to you. You break your word and I go on my revenge part. For him, America has broken its word. They are going to be a lot more. These are the chickens of the Afghanistan war coming home to roost.

That was Eqbal Amhad, recorded in 1998. Amhad passed away in May 1999. Thanks to David Barsamian and Alternative Radio for that recording.

That's it for this edition of Making Contact: a look at U.S. responses to the September 11th attacks. Thanks for listening. And, special thanks to David Barsamian and Alternative Radio for recorded portions.

Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law, executive director. Associate producers, Stephanie Welch and Shereen Meraji. Women's desk director, Lisa Rudman. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Administrative coordinator, Rosalyn Fay. And, I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or if you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. You can also go to our website at radioproject.org (repeat).

Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter trio. Bye for now.