Juan Cole * Informed Comment – War on Terror Archives
*
To: gulf2000 list Re: Vodka
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:07:52 -0400 From: Juan Cole
Below are a few excerpts from the St. Petersburg Times story on Atta’s and Alshehhi’s drinking in Hollywood, Fla. I also saw the bar staff interviewed on television, and their demeanor did not seem to me in any way forced or artificial. While, of course, this sort of thing could be a plant, it seems to me unlikely so early in the investigation, when the very identities of the perpetrators were still being established. I suppose the reporters involved could be contacted.
My point is that such behavior does not necessarily point away from Atta’s and Alshehhi’s involvement in Egypt’s al-Jihad al-Islami or Bin Laden’s al-Qa’idah, even if it is true. We already know that they committed mass murder and suicide, so what is a little bar-hopping next to that? Cultists do not behave in predictable ways.
Juan Cole History University of Michigan
Copyright 2001 Times Publishing Company St. Petersburg Times September 14, 2001, Friday SECTION: NATIONAL, Hillsborough Edition; Pg. 1A LENGTH: 1348 words HEADLINE: FBI seizes records of students at flight schools BYLINE: BARRY KLEIN, WES ALLISON, KATHRYN WEXLER and JEFF TESTERMAN Mohamed Atta, 33, may have guided American Airlines Flight 11 into the first of the two towers that later collapsed . . . The passenger list for United Airlines Flight 175 shows that a man named Marwan Alshehhi got on that plane that left Boston . . . Both men always seemed to have plenty of cash, said Azzan Ali, who befriended them last year when all were students at the aviation school. They had cell phones, American clothes and a red Pontiac they tooled around in during the two months they spent in Venice. They liked to discuss politics, Ali said, often railing angrily about Israel. . . A bar manager in Hollywood told FBI agents he saw the two men drinking heavily last week. Tony Amos, the night manager at Shuckums Bar in Hollywood, told the Palm Beach Post that Atta argued with him over his tab. When Amos asked Atta whether he could pay, Atta got offended and said, “I’m a pilot for American Airlines and I can pay my bill,” bartender Patricia Idrissi said. “They were wasted,” said Idrissi, who said she directed the two men to a Chinese restaurant a few doors down. They later returned and each ordered about five drinks, she said. The bill came to $ 48 and the men began arguing in broken English. After the confrontation with Amos, she said, Atta paid her with a $ 100 bill from a thick wad of currency in large denominations. They left her a $ 3 tip.
- Times staff writer David Adams and researchers John Martin, Cathy Wos and Caryn Baird contributed to this report, which also includes material from the Palm Beach Post.
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 19:18:57 -0400 (EDT) To: gulf2000 list
Re: al-Qa`idah Bases in Afghanistan
From: Juan Cole
The reason that I posted the Payam-i Mujahid article was to ask whether *in fact* it is possible to make a clear distinction between Bin Ladin, his organization, and the Taliban at all. The Northern Alliance does not think so, and they have less reason to think so after Ahmad Shah Mas`ud’s assassination by Bin Ladin’s Arab suicide bombers. In light of Barnett Rubin’s informed reply, it seems to me that even if it were possible for the US to go into Afghanistan and come back out with Bin Ladin and a few dozen close aides, extensive remnants of the 55th Brigade, some of the al-Qa’idah infrastructure, and several bases would remain behind. The network is probably not so personalized that it could not be re-activated even having lost its most charismatic leader.
If the Bush administration wants a propaganda coup, perhaps capturing Bin Ladin and a few others would be enough. But if it is serious about rooting out the al-Qa’idah infrastrature and the parastatal apparatuses Bin Ladin controls in Afghanistan, it is difficult to see how it can leave the Taliban in power.
I do not not in any way make light of or underestimate the difficulty of taking on the Taliban. I simply raise the question of what would be enough to achieve the basic goal of dealing an extremely damaging if not lethal blow to the network behind the butchery of over 5000 innocent civilians. There is a sense in which the network sees the Taliban state as an asset. But it seems clear, as well, that the Taliban see the network as an asset, and I am beginning to entertain the severest doubts as to whether the two can be analytically or practically disentangled.
Sincerely,
Juan Cole History University of Michigan
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 07:19:48 -0400 (EDT) To: gulf2000 list
Pakistan About-Face
From: Juan Cole
The United States demanded last week that Pakistan close the borders with Pakistan, cut off fuel to the Taliban, open its air space to the US for an attack on Afghanistan, and indicate a willingness to have US and allied troops stationed on its soil.
The response from the right wing (the old ISI officers e.g.) of the Pakistani military was quite defiant. In an interview with Deutche-Welle’s Urdu service broadcast on Saturday 9-15, former chief of staff Aslam Beg rejected the demands as the sort that would be made on a “slave country” (ghulam mulk), and confidently predicted that neither Pakistani air space nor its soil would be opened to US forces. He complained that Pakistan had given enormous support to the US both during the anti-Soviet struggle and the Gulf War, and had been left in the lurch each time (the US cut off aid to Pakistan after the Russians left, citing the nuclear weapons program–though that existed in the 80s, too). Former Inter-Services Intelligence chief Hamid Gul spoke in a similarly defiant manner, though he said he said he realistically expected the US to be able to use Pakistani air space, given that it was a superpower. Gul attended the All-Parties conference on Saturday, held under the auspices of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami, that issued a call for non-cooperation with US moves against Afghanistan (all parties did not actually attend). It is hard to imagine that current ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mehmud, who reportedly is hand in hand with the Taliban, felt any differently.
By now, Pakistan has acceded to virtually all explicit US demands, and President Musharraf appears to be troubled and puzzled that he is also being pressured to accede to many as yet unstated demands without knowing what they are. As I write, Lt.-Gen. Mehmud is in Qandahar trying to impress on Mulla Muhammad `Umar, head of the Taliban, that he should hand over Usama Bin Ladin immediately.
The Pakistan military and what is left of its civilian bureaucracy has therefore acquiesced in President Bush’s demands, even though Pakistan has declined to involve its own troops in fighting outside the country.
What accounts for the alacrity with which Musharraf has moved on this issue? First of all, he appears to have been bluntly threatened. Dawn quotes Pakistani officials as saying, that ” ‘Pakistan has the option to live in the 21st century or the Stone Age’ is roughly how US officials are putting their case.” It is astonishing that the US is talking like this behind the scenes, if true, though presumably the blunt language is coming from aides & lower-level bureaucrats. If Aslam Beg took umbrage at Pakistanis being ordered around like servants, what does he think of them being threatened as though by mafiosi? It shows that in some senses we are already in a war, that a Manichean lining up of assets and enemies is going on, with all countries being the one or the other, willy nilly. It also reveals what those US officials think lies in store for Afghanistan (though as many have pointed out, Afghanistan doesn’t have far to go in that direction anyway).
In addition, Musharraf himself is a moderate to secular man. Early on after making his coup against Nawaz Sharif, he announced that he thought Turkey would be an excellent model for Pakistan. This remark provoked a firestorm of protest and he subsequently gave in to the enormous influence of the religious right. But having had to give in may have chafed, and he has plenty of potential allies in civil politics in Pakistan who deeply dislike the religious Right, including much of the Pakistan People’s Party (which pointedly did not attend Saturday’s All-Parties Conference). Musharraf may in part see this episode as a way of reducing the power of the religious right and reviving his mildly Ataturkist vision.
Finally, he clearly wants, and told Bush so, a resolution of the Kashmir issue under the good auspices of the US, though he was careful not to make anything a quid pro quo (people with one foot in the Stone Age are apparently anyway not in a position to present any quids). Musharraf must hope that the US will finally be eager to invest diplomatic efforts to quieten any situation that inflames Muslim political passions, and that after inflicting substantial attrition on the Bin Ladin network, the US will turn to being an honest broker on Kashmir.
Monday morning in Pakistan, the Peshawar-based Frontier Post was reporting that the Taliban had already set up anti-aircraft batteries on their side of the Khyber Pass, aiming them for the first time in Pakistan’s direction. It speculates that will be given the use of the Budbher air force base, which it once used to spy on the Soviet Union. It also reported that 50 US military personnel had already landed at Peshawar on Saturday. If true, this report suggests that Musharraf’s actual decision-making took place even faster than his tentative public statements of Friday would have suggested.
Juan Cole History University of Michigan ————————————————- Dawn (Karachi), 9-17-01 But the most immediate concern for the Musharraf government is the US pressure. Close associates of President General Pervez Musharraf say that he is under tremendous pressure because “events are moving at a bewildering pace.” Saturday night’s telephone call from the US President George Bush was not just to thank him on his support but to also ask what has Pakistan decided on providing logistical assistance to the military operation. The US is not keeping according to the schedule of Pakistan’s final decision; it wants a decision and a final detailed yes according to its own plans – not all of which have been shared with Pakistan.
Pakistan according to some officials wants the US to also provide it with some incentives: economic and military assistance, removal of sanctions, debt relief, active role in helping it to solve the Kashmir problem and no role of India and Israel in this military operation.
However, the signals from Washington are that while these demands will be considered sympathetically, at this point in time the only incentive that is available to Pakistan is negative. “Pakistan has the option to live in the 21st century or the Stone Age” is roughly how US officials are putting their case.
——————– Frontier Post (Peshawar) 9-16-01/9-17-01 Informed sources told The Frontier Post on Saturday that demand to provide an air base in Peshawar has also been made by the United States but whether or not such facility would be provided has not been decided yet.
Pakistan had provided a military base in Budhber to United states back in mid 50s which was used by the Americans against former soviet Union for spying purposes but was closed after famous U-2 crisis when Soviet Union had shot down a US spy plane flying in its air space.
Shujaat Ali Khan adds: About 50 US commandos landed on Peshawar Airport on Saturday early morning (2.a.m) in connection with America’s expected attack on Afghanistan, a well placed source in the airport informed The Frontier Post.
The US commandos were taken to Cherat, main station of Pak-Army Special Services Group (SSG) for further instructions.
The source added that the commandos were brought from Islamabad viva US Airforce plane that landed Islamabad Airport on Friday early morning for which the airport was closed.
Ahram on Jihad
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 20:35:06 -0400 From: Juan Cole
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/552/p4fall3.htm
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 20 – 26 September 2001 Issue No.552 Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
——————————————————————————–
A forbidden alliance?
Does Islam sanction suicide bombings? Can Muslim and non-Muslim countries join forces when launching attacks on Islamic states? Jailan Halawi monitors a growing controversy
——————————————————————————–
Many Muslim clerics, while condemning the terrorist attacks against civilians in Washington and New York, have defended suicide bombings being staged by Palestinians fighting the Israeli occupation.
At a press conference on Monday, Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, denounced the attacks on the US, describing them as “acts of terror directed against innocent people.”
Tantawi argued that a clear distinction should be made between suicide attacks carried out by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation and those of 11 September in the US.
“There is a very big difference between terrorists and those who defend their land,” Tantawi said. “We are in solidarity with the Palestinian people because they are right. As for terrorism, we denounce and combat it because it is a flagrant act of injustice against the human race.”
Tantawi added that the Americans have the right to strike back “but first they must be sure they know who was behind the attacks in New York and Washington.
“What happened in the US is an aggression on innocent children, men and women. It was a mean and hideous act. It is the right of any country, Muslim or non-Muslim, to defend itself against such aggression.”
Tantawi affirmed that countries found to be harbouring terrorists should be “punished and held in contempt.”
Abdel-Mo’tei Bayyoumi of Al- Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy was quoted as saying that for jihad to be legal it must meet
several conditions. Among them: a Muslim should not provoke aggression; should only fight those who fight him; children, women and the elderly should be spared. “There is no terrorism or a threat to civilians in jihad,”" he said.
Bayyoumi noted the attacks in the US are considered by Islam as being “unjustified terrorist acts.” But he added that attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israelis are acceptable because Palestinians do not possess the sophisticated weapons that Israel has. Were it a fair fight, he added, “you would not have found anyone ready to carry out suicide bombings.”
But other scholars strongly oppose suicide bombings, even those carried out by Palestinians. Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al-Sheikh was quoted as saying that suicide operations are “strictly forbidden in Islam” and that “one who blows himself up in the midst of enemies is performing an act contrary to Islamic teachings.”
He also said that those who stage suicide attacks should be denied Islamic burial rites.
Another controversy is whether it is permissible for Muslims to cooperate with non-Muslims in launching attacks against a Muslim state. The controversy came following US statements that Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan, is a prime suspect behind the New York and Washington bombings. Washington has requested the cooperation of nations around the world in having him captured — as US President George W Bush said — “dead or alive.”
The US has said many Arab and Islamic states should make their position clear in case military action is taken against the Taliban — which controls 95 per cent of Afghanistan — should it refuse to hand over Bin Laden.
But Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood said in a statement that it deplores any US “aggression” against innocent Arabs and Muslims. “The Muslim Brotherhood, which condemns terrorism in all its forms, also condemns any aggression against Islam and Muslims, and any statements or steps against innocent Arabs and Muslims,” the group said in a statement.
While condemning the attacks in the US, Sheikh Youssef El- Qaradawi, a prominent Islamic scholar, affirmed that Islam forbids its followers from fighting fellow Muslims.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based satellite television station, El-Qaradawi stressed that Muslims and Arabs should not act as “tools in the hands of the Americans.” He said US “misgivings should not be a basis upon which we [Muslims] decide to engage in war against other innocent Muslims.” If it is proven that Bin Laden is involved in the US attacks — something which El-Qaradawi doubts — “he should be handed over to a Muslim country where he can face a fair trial.”
Sharing a similar view, a committee of Islamic scholars affiliated to Jordan’s Islamic Labour Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, forbidding cooperation with the US in any attack on an Islamic country.
To: gulf2000 list
Re: More Disjointed Observations
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 18:11:51 -0400 From: Juan Cole
The statistics quoted by Ami Isseroff with regard to the Palestinians’ attitude to Sept. 11 do not contradict the statement that “virtually all Muslims” have “discomfort” with the events of 9/11, nor do they settle the issue of whether the “demonstrations truly reflect unqualified support for OBL”.
The Palestinians have special grievances toward the United States for unqualifiedly supporting Israel, which has systematically displaced them and is still establishing, and using violence to back, settlements in the West Bank (where some of the settlers belong to terrorist groups like Gush Emunim). Even so, *only a quarter* of the Palestinians, despite their desperation and bitterness, expressed anything like support for the WTC bombings. It should be remembered that in the industrialized societies of the West, there is usually a fringe of 10% or so that support extremist groups or actions.
The fact remains that almost all other Muslims are horrified at the idea of the death of 5,000 + innocent persons, including women and children, and almost none of them think it fits the criteria for legitimate jihad. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. 25% of the Palestinians would be about 1.25 million people, or about .1% . It is not statistically significant.
The issue of whether the right response to this attack was the bombing of Afghanistan is a separate one, and apparently some 10% of Americans and larger percentages of European publics do not agree. That these percentages should be even larger among Muslims and especially Palestinians is hardly surprising and says nothing about revulsion toward the massive act of terror.
Opinion polling in Pakistan before the attacks suggested that only 20-25% of the public supported the Islamists even in a vague way. When the Islamist parties called for cities to go on strike and massive demonstrations to be staged on September 21, major Punjabi centers such as Lahore (pop. 5 mn.) and Faisalabad (pop. 2 mn.) openly refused to close down. One report said “not a single shop” was closed in Faisalabad, which is about the size of Houston, America’s 4th-largest city. The “demonstration” there that day, protesting Musharraf’s backing of the US, consisted of 600 bearded members of extremist religious parties. The peaceful demonstration in Lahore was bigger, but still tiny for a city of 5 million. If a majority of Punjabi Muslims in Pakistan, who constitute 60% of the population of this country of 135 mn., had seriously backed the Sept. 11 attack, then these results would be inexplicable. In fact, outside of a few rural hotbeds such as Gujranwala and Bhakkar, most Punjabis deeply dislike the Taliban, Bin Ladin, and everything they stand for.
So, if we are going to generalize about the attitudes of over a billion Muslims, let us please look beyond the (somewhat understandably) bitter and desperate population of the Gaza Strip.
cheers
Juan Cole Michigan
To: gulf2000 list
Re: response in Pakistan
Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 15:44:15 -0400 From: Juan Cole
I don’t disagree with most of what my friend Linda Walbridge writes about Pakistan, which she knows well.
However, a few clarifications are in order. My point, with which she agrees, is that the Punjabis on the whole and by and large do not like the Taliban or Bin Ladin. I believe that the lack of response to the strike call in places like Lahore, Faisalabad, and Sialkot on September 21 is quite significant, since going on strike would simply have involved staying home from the shop or office, for which there would have been no government reprisals. This was the first Friday after Musharraf had acquiesced in the American alliance, so if he was to be dissuaded it would have had to be then. It clearly wasn’t an important goal for most people. Moreover, street demonstrations had not been forbidden as of that date, so the tiny size of the rallies held also seems to me to indicate reliably general public opinion in the more urbanized parts of the Punjab. Additionally, the candidates that did best in the local elections ending August 8 were supporters of either the Pakistan People’s Party or Musharraf, and both have come out strongly for the alliance with the US.
There are two reasons for which it is not in fact irrelevant what Punjabis think. First of all, they constitute the majority of the country, at some 60%. Second, most of the troops are drawn from their ranks, and Musharraf can only survive if his troops are willing to fire on Taliban supporters. While these things cannot be known to a certainty, I believe on current evidence that the Punjabi troops will in fact be willing to fight Pushtun pro-Taliban forces, whom they viscerally dislike. (There are also some Pushtun troops, though a minority, which may help explain why Musharraf has been moving anti-Taliban Pushtun officers into key positions). The fact that “Pakistan does not have revolutions, it has coups,” also should bring into question how “precarious” the government’s position really is. Street demonstrations have never in themselves brought down a Pakistani government, though they contributed to Bhutto’s fall. The all-party Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, including the PPP and other important parties, tried to get rid of General Zia for the entire 1980s, and never succeeded (he died in an airplane crash).
I agree that there is more support for the Taliban (and dislike of the US) in Peshawar and Quetta. Quetta has some 500,000 Pushtun Afghan refugees, and Baluchistan has a long history of chafing under rule from Islamabad. However, Baluchistan accounts for something like 2 percent of Pakistan’s population, and I fear I just do not see it as politically important. The Northwest Frontier Province, which is largely Pushtun, is deeply divided over the Taliban. (Peshawar *also* largely did not close down on September 21, except for the old city). But the NWF also accounts for only a small percentage of Pakistan’s population. I am rather annoyed that US news networks such as CNN, desperate for exciting “copy,” keep showing enraged crowds demonstrating in Pakistan, even though the vast majority of the country is entirely calm and you would actually have to go out of your way to find a demonstration in most of the country.
So far, despite US bombing raids on its neighbor, demonstrations have been miniscule in Pakistan. There was one in Islamabad today consisting of only 1,000 persons (it was not broken up by police, by the way). Only in Karachi have there been substantial rallies, with an estimated 12,000 coming out on September 21 and some 20,000 marching on October 12. However, Karachi is a city of 9-12 million depending on how you count, so these aren’t huge numbers either, proportionally. Moreover, most of the action has been in the area of Nazimabad, a grimy industrial section of town dominated by Pushtun immigrants. Some of the violence has involved attempted crowd raids on flour stored in mills, which suggests that the street politics has to do with larger issues than US foreign policy.
Although, obviously, the political situation in Pakistan is something that needs to be watched, so far there is no reason to believe that it is unmanageable, nor is fear of the “street” a reason not to act. Everyone kept saying that the Muslim “street” would explode and there would be an apocalypse if the US took on Iraq in 1991, but despite some large demonstrations, nothing of political importance really happened. Islamists use things like street demonstrations to attempt to intimidate their opponents and grab power, but actually can almost always be faced down, as Mubarak and others have shown.
Even the Pakistanis who support the Taliban and Bin Ladin do *not* support the attack on the WTC. Many of them do not even know about it, and those who do are convinced that Afghanistan had nothing to do with it. So, what protests there are prove nothing about “Muslims supporting the events of September 11.” And that was my larger point.
cheers
Juan Cole Michigan
HOME
This page is powered by Blogger. Isn’t yours?
