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A Photographic Journal of Life
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By Judith Mann
November 16, 2001
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
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November 15, 2001
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Blasting
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Afghan
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RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
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Preventing
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November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
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Rep. Ron
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Expanding
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November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
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My
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Instead
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Wide World
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November 11, 2001
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Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
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November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
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Tariq Ali
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Schoolgirl
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November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
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Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
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Steve
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American
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November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
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Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
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Greens, Airports
and
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Dr. Susan
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Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
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A CounterPunch
Special Report
Robin Blackburn is former editor of New Left Review,
author of the renowned two-volume history of colonial
slavery and currently visiting professor at The New School,
New York. CounterPunch is proud to publish Robin's booklength
report, Terror and Empire, the first extended radical
analysis of the post September 11 world, what the terror war
is all about, and how a just war on terror could be fought and
won.
Terror and Empire
By Robin Blackburn
Chapter 3
The US Alliance with
Militant Islam
In the month or so following September 11 an astonishing
picture emerged of the
extent to which Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban had
been enjoying crucial support from supposed US friends and client
states. It became clear that a steady stream of financial contributions
from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates had furnished Al Qaeda and
the Taliban with their life blood in the days, months and years
leading up to September 11 . The US government itself paid the
Taliban authorities $42 million in 2000 for cooperation in 'war
against drugs'. Yet US courts had already established both Al
Qaeda's role in the East African embassy bombings in 1998 and
the presence of the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
The US military and intelligence community
has the most intimate relationship with the security services
of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. These states, as we know them today,
would not exist without US support. Saudi oil and Pakistani proximity
to Afghanistan led Washington to confer great importance on these
states. And it was only Saudi and Pakistani support for the Taliban--including
military units as well as lavish amounts of money, arms and training
- which allowed them to seize power in Afghanistan in 1996, displacing
the fractious alliance of mujahedeen and military men which ruled
the country from 1992. The Taliban movement received help from
bin Laden and subsequently allowed his Al Qaeda network to set
up training camps there. It was Prince Turki al Feisal, the then
head of Saudi intelligence, who first recruited bin Laden to
organise resistance in Afghanistan, with US approval. (This man
was removed from his post without explanation two months before
the attack.) For its part the Pakistani military intelligence,
the ISI, sponsors of the Taliban, welcomed the Saudi money which
bin Laden continued to attract. The US charge against the bin
Laden network was plausible partly because the ramifications
of this claim were bound to be so awkward and embarrassing for
the US authorities themselves. Another reason is that in an affair
like this, the focus of so much attention, pinning the blame
simply on a convenient but false target--say Castro, Chavez,
Saddam or Ghaddafi--would be risky and short-sighted. (Unfortunately
that does not mean that it will not be attempted at a later stage.)
While the execution of the September 11 action required comparatively
modest sums the extensive operational network and training camps
of Al Qaeda certainly demand deep pockets. This is where bin
Laden's supporters in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates come in.
An editorial in the New Republic on 24 Sept hinted at this when
it referred to Saudi Arabia's 'filthy secrets'. In an article
in the same issue Martin Peretz explained that Saudi money has
been flowing into the coffers of the bin Laden network: 'Many
Saudis--maybe even the monarchy itself--finance it, if only to
keep it engaged and out of Riyadh.' Peretz is strongly favourable
to Israel and is likely to be furnished with the best information
available to its government. Thomas Friedman in the New York
Times for September 21 also writes of a Saudi 'devil's pact'
such that the Saudi authorities 'allowed the Islamists' domestic
supporters to continue raising money, ostensibly for Muslim welfare
groups, and to funnel it to Osama bin Laden--on condition that
the Islamic extremists not attack this regime.' Further details
were vouchsafed by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker in an article
based in part on US intelligence transcripts of conversations
amongst members of the Saudi Royal Family: 'When the Saudis were
confronted by press reports that some of the substantial funds
that the monarchy routinely gives to Islamic charities may actually
have gone to Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, they denied
any knowledge of such tranfers. The intercepts, however, have
led many in the intelligence community to think otherwise. The
Bush administration has chosen not to confront the Saudi leadership
over its financial support of terror organisations and its refusal
to help in the investigation' (of September 11 ).
Saudi Arabia maintains sixty Islamic
Centers spread through the world which proselytise the bleak
doctrines of the militant Wahabi sect. The supposedly charitable
and educational trusts supported by huge amounts of Saudi cash
have been used to fund madrassas, or religious schools, where
the basic needs of poor students are met but nothing is taught
except the Wahabi interpretation of the Koran and the need for
jihad. Inside Saudi Arabia itself hatred of the infidel is also
inculcated by the Wahabi-dominated educational system despite
the fact that only five per cent of the population belong to
the Wahabi sect. A New York Times report from Riyadh observes
the paradox: '(E)xtremism, born of the local, puritanical Wahabi
brand of Islam, constrains life here, shaping the way people
live and the way Saudi Arabia greets the world. The United States
seeks to build a coalition against terror with the kingdom, long
a Western business and military ally, and yet the country has
revealed itself as the source of the very ideology confronting
America in the battle against terrorism.' Hersh also explained
that one of the few members of the Royal Family who wants to
combat corruption, Crown Prince Abdullah, was also regarded as
too hostile to the US, and that the almost wholly incapacitated
King Fahd was being kept alive to prevent Abdullah's succession.
The king's inability to recognise even close friends, Hersh explains,
did not prevent the US information services releasing a picture
of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld meeting with him, ostensibly to
plan the response to September 11 .
Despite its prodigious oil wealth the
Saudi kingdom has failed to achieve rounded economic or social
development, indeed has recently been less buoyant than that
of Iraq. As a result there are many frustrated and unemployed
youths who aspire to a middle class existence but are unlikely
to obtain it. And there are upper class youths who despise their
parent's complicity in a corrupt and arbitrary order. As an educational
force the Saudi autocracy not only diffuses Wahabism but also
seeks to instil terror by judicial maiming and execution. Against
this background the fact that fifteen of the September 11 hijackers
came from Saudi Arabia is not surprising. Other hijackers came
from the Emirates and from the fundamentalist milieu in Egypt
where a stagnant and corrupt autocracy has also helped to make
middle class frustration and ressentiment a powerful force.
While Saudi and Pakistani authorities
were scared of Al Qaeda and, only dealt with it at arm's length
via 'charitable' intermediaries, they were closely involved in
the rise of the Taliban. Their support for this organisation,
itself linked to Al Qaeda, was given quite voluntarily and cannot
be explained away as an attempt to buy off the militants. The
Saudi security services supplied money and arms; the Pakistani
ISI, training, officers and military experts. The Saudis appreciated
the Taliban's narrow Deobandi theology, while their seizure of
power was one of the very few successes that could be claimed
by Pakistani state policy. . Without Pakistani and Saudi help,
the Taliban would never have seized power and the bin Laden network
would have had no haven for its training camps. Mullah Muhammad
Omar, the Taliban leader, formed an alliance with Al Qaeda because
it also could supply money and men, and because this somewhat
reduced reliance on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. No doubt the latter
were not unhappy to see Al Qaeda drawn off to Afghanistan but
they also identified with the Taliban project. The US was aware
of these developments as was explained by John Burns, reporting
from Islamabad in the New York Times just after the attacks:
'Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or I.S.I.
(was) responsible for channelling large amounts of military and
financial aid to the Taliban. Until the attacks in New York and
Washington, that support had been quietly tolerated by the United
States, despite the bitter opposition to the repressive forms
of Islamic rule imposed by the Taliban '.
A later report revealed that the ISI
was also in league with Al Qaeda: 'The intelligence service of
Pakistanhas had an indirect but longstanding relationship with
Al Qaeda, turning a blind eye for years to the growing ties between
Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, according to American officials.
The intelligence service even used Al Qaeda camps to train covert
operatives for use in a war of terror against India.' The United
States was aware of such connections. Following the embassy bombings
in 1998 a State Department official, Michael Sheenan, urged that
the US should make isolating Al Qaeda a priority: 'Mr Sheenan's
memo outlined a series of actions the United States could take
toward Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates
and Yemen to persuade them to help isolate Al Qaeda. The document
called Pakistan the key, and it suggested that the administration
make terrorism the central issue in the relations between Washington
and Islamabad. The document also urged the administration to
find ways to curb terrorist money-launderingMr Sheenan's plan
"landed with a resounding thud," one former official
recalled, "He couldn't get anyone interested."'.
Washington cannot have been unaware of
Taliban theology but had long grown used to the idea that Muslim
fanatics were convenient and easily manipulated allies and that
the real enemy was secular authorities who don't truckle to the
United States. Historically the US security establishment did
not see the Islamic jihad and bin Laden terror networks as a
negative phenomenon. In the eighties such networks were financed,
trained and armed so long as they were fighting against the Russian-supported
regime in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was established in 1989 at the
high point of this effort. Subsequent to this, Muslim jihad networks
were often still seen as an ally or tool in former Soviet lands
and in parts of the Middle East. Elements of the Al Qaeda network
were active in Chechnya and former Soviet central Asia. They
were also active in Bosnia and Kosovo. The Western press did
not like to make much of it but some of the Bosnian and KLA units
resorted to terror tactics. Indeed, as a legacy of this, gangs
of ethno-religious thugs still terrorise the populations some
of the Balkan statelets set up by NATO and act as a prime conduit
for the thriving drug trade from Afghanistan to Western Europe.
[When police in Oslo made Norway's largest ever heroin seizure,
they discovered that former fighters from the Kosovo Liberation
Army controlled the distribution chain, as related in The Economist
for October 20, 2001. Of course, neither the terrorism nor the
drug-running of some KLA justifies Milosevic's repression of
the Kosovan people. In the late 1980s, the US State Department
had a soft spot for Milosevic and did nothing to avert the distinigration
of a country that was seen as a "neutral" and "socialist"
power by many in the West. Because of the demand of western creditors,
the Yugoslav government swept aside by Milosevic was unable to
pay the salaries of its soldiers, a circumstance which greatly
increased its vulnerability.]
And as we witness special powers being
conferred on Bush in the aftermath of a terror action we should
remember the decisive role played by the bombing of Moscow apartments
in the rise and rise of Vladimir Putin. The slaughter of 118
Muscovites in 1999 set the scene for a revenge panic which Putin
adroitly used first to justify a bloody offensive against the
Chechens and then to elevate himself to the Presidency. Responsibility
for these bombs has never been clarified but supporters of Islamic
jihad do seem plausible candidates as the actual perpetrators,
with or without some degree of collusion from sections of the
Chechen leadership and/or the Russian security services. The
murkiness of terror tactics have long made them the provocateur's
weapon of choice, Conrad's theme in The Secret Agent.
Free market ideology combined with anti-Communism
and suspicion of Russia to produce an extraordinary laxness when
it came to US surveillance of the bin Laden network, even long
after the 1993 World Trade Center bomb and the African embassy
bombings. Clinton sought Congressional approval for checks on
capital movements to make sure that they were not helping to
finance terrorist activity. They were blocked by the Texas Republican
Phil Gramm, who was then the chairman of the Senate's Banking
Committee, as well as by the banking industry. Gramm was reported
after September 11 2001 asstanding by his previous opposition
to any type of capital movement monitoring: ' "I was right
then and I am right now" in opposing the bill, Mr Gramm
said yesterday. He called the bill "totalitarian" and
added: "The way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them
down and kill them"' The religious authorities in Saudi
Arabia also uphold the absolute rights of property-owners and
the secular authorities allow unlimited cross-border cash transfers.
This is a country without capital gains tax, inheritance tax
or income tax. As Business Week explains: 'While Saudi Arabia
may seem like a tightly controlled society, its Hanbali system
of Islamic jurisprudence puts great emphasis on the sanctity
of private property. "What you do with your money is utterly
up to you," says Michael Field, a London-based author of
several books on business in the gulf.' In Washington "it
has fallen to Grover Norquist, the neo-conservative and free
market advocate, to give radical Islam access to the Republicans
and the Bush administration; for some time the Muslim Institute
has operated out of the offices of his Institute for Tax Reform."
In his important study, Islam
and Capitalism, the French scholar Maxine Rodinson explained
Islam's compatibility with mercantile and financial accumulation.
The first years of the Iranian revolution saw the state given
some importance in Islamic economics but, as Olivier Roy explains,
this was 'supplanted by a less state oriented and more liberal
image, at least with respect to the economy, in Iran as in the
rest of the Muslin world.' This author adds: 'This evolution
goes hand in hand with Islamism's shift towards neo-fundamentalism
and with the diffusion of the Islamist message to a wider audience
(businessmen, students of economics, and others).' In the summer
of 2001 the Bank-e-Eqtesadi Novine became the first private bank
to be set up in Iran since the revolution, with many likely to
follow. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are well supplied not
just with financial institutions but with proudly Islamic banks.
While Islamic investors have to be careful not to enjoy the fruits
of 'usury' they are able to claim quarterly or annual 'bonuses'
and they can invest in stocks and shares because such instruments
allow them to share profits and losses. As this author explains,
the type of mercantile and financial capitalism endorsed by Islamic
ideology in Saudi Arabia, taking mainly parasitic and rentier
forms, has failed to stimulate or diversify its economy. Straddling
the latter are giant 'state-owned' corporations, notably Sabic,
Saudi Airlines and Saudi Aramco, the latter with revenues of
some $80 billion annually. The Islamist view that these instruments
of princely patronage should be broken up and turned over to
honest Islamic businesses and foundations is gaining ground.
The Al Qaeda group has had access to
the most sophisticated banking services but it combines this
with the ability to use an informal network of paperless cash
transfers, constituted by the facilities of hawala or trust brokers.
These brokers regularly transfer large sums from the Middle East
or the Indian sub-continent to North America or Europe leaving
only the most cryptic records (a telephone remark or an e-mail
saying 'Abdullah to receive twelve crates of mangoes'). The transactions
are memorised by the brokers who net off the flows in opposite
directions and make balancing payments every so often. Both here
and in the organisation of the terror actions themselves we see
different forms of the 'network society' about which Manuel Castells
writes in his book of that name. However Castells does not make
it sufficiently clear that the network society has been linked
to the rise of flexible markets and structures of capitalist
accumulation as well as to the proliferation of informational
technology. Not all 'information' has the same valency. There
is all the difference in the world between the aimless web-surfer
or chat-room participant and networks, and intranets, that dispose
of financial, human and military resources. Accounts of Al Qaeda
stress that it maintains an advanced network of the latter description.
Bin Laden himself has specialised in finance and banking, and
in commissioning and monitoring large-scale construction projects.
Even in his Afghan cave bin Laden was accompanied by mobile generators,
computers and communications equipment. A visiting Arab journalist
explained: 'The mujahideen around the man belong to most Arab
states, and are of different ages, but most of them are young.
They hold high scientific degrees: doctors, engineers, teachers.'
While it is likely that major Gulf state businesses do not speak
with one voice, and spread their bets, some of them do identify
with Al Qaeda and its campaign against a petrified social order.
The US response to the network challenge
is, as explained by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their
book Empire,
to evoke the false universality of the United States as the ultimate
custodian and guarantor of all that is valuable in human civilisation.
But these authors are wrong to equate 'imperial sovereignty'
with an imperial network, as they define it, since the latter
would tolerate and encourage a multiplicity of centres within
a capitalist world. Instead the United States sees itself as
the sole center and uses its privileged role to protect anachronisms
like the Saudi monarchy. It is true that Washington has managed
to forge an understanding with Moscow and, perhaps, Beijing.
But what it needs is a credible partner in the Islamic world
if it is to head off the danger of a 'clash of civilisations'.
And that is what it lacks.
Chapter
4
Is Terror Ever Effective?
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