[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index
][Thread Index
]
WTC: from the British press,12-15 S
- Subject: WTC: from the British press,12-15 S
- From: darnott@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 07:38:00
--=====================_7376811==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
The Independent (London)
September 12, 2001, Wednesday
TERROR IN AMERICA: ATROCITIES MAY BE DESIGNED TO PROVOKE AMERICA INTO
COSTLY MILITARY ADVENTURE: THE CHIEF SUSPECT
BYLINE: Robert Fisk
HIGHLIGHT: The shadow of suspicion for the attacks has fallen on=20
Osama bin; Laden, a Saudi dissident in exile, suspected of financing Muslim=
=20
terrorism
BODY:
I CAN imagine how Osama bin Laden received the news of the atrocities=
=20
in the United States. In all, I must have spent five hours listening to him=
=20
in Sudan and then in the vastness of the Afghan mountains, as he described=
=20
the inevitable collapse of the United States, just as he and his comrades=20
in the Afghan war helped to destroy the power of the Red Army.
He will have watched satellite television, he will have sat in the=20
corner of his room, brushing his teeth as he always did, with a mishwak=20
stick, thinking for up to a minute before speaking; he is one of the few=20
Arabs who doesn't feel embarrassed to think before he speaks. He once told=
=20
me with pride how his own men had attacked the Americans in Somalia. He=20
acknowledged that he knew personally two of the Saudis executed for bombing=
=20
an American military base in Riyadh. Could he have been behind yesterday's=
=20
mass slaughter in America? Of course, we need a health warning here. If Mr=
=20
bin Laden was really guilty of all the things he has been blamed for, he=20
would need an army of 10,000. And there is something deeply disturbing=20
about the world's habit of turning to the latest hate figure whenever blood=
=20
is shed. But when events of this momentous scale take place, there is a new=
=20
legitimacy in casting one's eyes at those who have constantly threatened=20
America.
Mr bin Laden had a kind of religious experience during the Afghan=20
war. A Russian shell had fallen at his feet and, in the seconds as he=20
waited for it to explode, he said he had a sudden, religious feeling of=20
calmness. The shell - and Americans may come to wish the opposite happened=
=20
- never exploded. The United States must leave the Gulf, he would say every=
=20
10 minutes. America must stop all sanctions against the Iraqi people.=20
America must stop using Israel to oppress Palestinians. It was his constant=
=20
theme, untouched by doubt or the real complexities of the Middle East. He=20
was not fighting an anti-colonial war, but a religious one. In the Arabia=20
that he would govern, there would be more, not less, head chopping, more=20
severe punishments, no Western-style democracy.
His supporters - Algerians, Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Gulf Arabs -=20
would gather round him in his tent with the awe of men listening to a=20
messiah. I watched them one night in Afghanistan in a mountain camp so cold=
=20
that I woke to find ice in my hair. They were obedient to him, not the kind=
=20
of obedience of schoolchildren but the sort of adherence you find among=20
people whose minds are made up. And the words they listened to were fearful=
=20
in their implications. American civilians would no more be spared than=20
military targets. This was not a man who would hesitate to carry out his=20
promises if he could. He was a man who would have appreciated the appalling=
=20
irony of creating a missile defence shield against "rogue states" but=20
unable to prevent men crashing domestic airliners into the centre of=20
America's financial and military power.
Yet I also remember one night when Mr bin Laden saw a pile of=20
newspapers in my bag and seized upon them. By a sputtering oil lamp, he=20
read them page by page in the corner of his tent, clearly unaware of the=20
world around him, reading aloud of an Iranian Foreign Minister's visit to=20
Saudi Arabia. Was this really a man who could damage America, who would=20
have laughed when he heard that the United States had placed a $ 5m (pounds=
=20
3.3m) reward on his head? Was it not America, I wondered then, which was=20
turning Mr bin Laden into the face of "world terror?" Was he really so=20
powerful and so deadly?
If - and we must keep repeating this word if - the shadow of the=20
Middle East falls over yesterday's destruction, then who else in the region=
=20
could produce such meticulously timed assaults on the world's only=20
superpower? The rag-tag and corrupt Palestinian nationalist groups that=20
used to favour hijacking are unlikely to be able to produce a single=20
suicide bomber. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have neither the capability nor the=
=20
money that this assault needed. Perhaps the old satellite groups that moved=
=20
close to the Lebanese Hezbollah in the 1980s, before the organisation=20
became a solely resistance movement, could plan something like this. The=20
bombing of the US Marines in 1983 needed precision, timing and infinite=20
planning. But Iran, which supported these groups, has changed out of=20
recognition since then, now more involved in its internal struggles than in=
=20
the long- dead aspiration to "export" a religious revolution. Iraq lies=20
broken, its agents more intent on torturing their own people than striking=
=20
at the country that defeated it so suddenly in 1991.
So the mountains of Afghanistan will be photographed from satellite=20
and high -altitude aircraft in the coming days, Mr bin Laden's old training=
=20
camps - and perhaps a few new ones - highlighted on the overhead projectors=
=20
in the Pentagon. But to what end? When America last tried to strike at Mr=20
bin Laden, it destroyed an innocent pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan and a=20
few of Mr bin Laden's Muslim followers in Afghanistan. For if this is a war=
=20
between the Saudi millionaire and President Bush's America, it cannot be=20
fought like other wars. Indeed, can it be fought at all without some costly=
=20
military adventure overseas.
Or is that what Mr bin Laden seeks above all else?
********************************
The Independent (London)
September 12, 2001, Wednesday
TERROR IN AMERICA: THE AWESOME CRUELTY OF A DOOMED PEOPLE
BYLINE: Robert Fisk
HIGHLIGHT: The USS Cole: Almost sunk in Aiden last year
BODY:
SO IT has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East=
=20
- the collapse of the Ottoman empire , the Balfour declaration, Lawrence of=
=20
Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four=
=20
Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab=20
land - all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a crushed,=20
humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty=20
of a doomed people. Is it fair - is it moral - to write this so soon,=20
without proof, without a shred of evidence, when the last act of barbarism=
=20
in Oklahoma turned out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it=20
is. America is at war and, unless I am grotesquely mistaken, many thousands=
=20
more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too.=20
Some of us warned of "the explosion to come". But we never dreamed this=20
nightmare. And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his theology,=
=20
his frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in front=20
of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the Russian army=
=20
in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their boundless confidence=20
allowed them to declare war on America. But this is not the war of=20
democracy vs terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming=20
hours and days. It is also about American missiles smashing into=20
Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese=20
ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana a=
=20
few days later and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by=20
America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through=
=20
refugee camps.
No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of what has=20
happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the=20
massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of=
=20
their despair but of their political immaturity, of their failure to grasp=
=20
what they had always been accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting=20
disproportionately. But we were warned. All the years of rhetoric, all the=
=20
promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut off the head of "the=20
American snake" we took for empty threats. How could a backward,=20
conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small, violent=
=20
organisations fulfil such preposterous promises? Now we know.
And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I began to=20
remember those other extraordinary, unbelievable assaults upon the US and=20
its allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterdays' casualties. Did=20
not the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and almost 100=20
french paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks with=20
unthinkable precision?
It was just 7 seconds between the Marine bombing and the destruction=
=20
of the French three miles away. Then there were the attacks on US bases in=
=20
Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt - almost successful it now turns out=
=20
- to sink the USS Cole in Aiden. And then how easy was our failure to=20
recognise the new weapon of the Middle East which neither Americans or any=
=20
other Westerners could equal: the despair -driven, desperate suicide bomber.
All America's power, wealth - and arrogance, the Arabs will be saying=
=20
- could not defend the greatest power the world has ever known from this=20
destruction.
For journalists, even those who have literally walked through the=20
blood of the Middle East, words dry up here. Awesome, terrible,=20
unspeakable, unforgivable; in the coming days, these words will become=20
water in the desert. And there will be, naturally and inevitably, and quite=
=20
immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the blood and=20
the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will be told=20
about "mindless terrorism", the "mindless" bit being essential if we are=20
not to realise how hated America has become in the land of the birth of=20
three great religions.
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20 or 30 thousand innocent deaths and=
=20
he or she will respond as good and decent people should, that it is an=20
unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words about=20
the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a million=20
children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the 17,500 civilians killed in=
=20
Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, why we allowed one nation in the Middle=
=20
East to ignore UN Security Council resolutions but bombed and sanctioned=20
all others who did. And those basic reasons why the Middle East caught fire=
=20
last September - the Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of=
=20
Palestinians, the bombardments and state sponsored executions, the Israeli=
=20
tortures ... all these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest=20
fractional reason for yesterday's mass savagery.
No, Israel was not to blame - that we can be sure that Saddam Hussein=
=20
and the other grotesque dictators will claim so - but the malign influence=
=20
of history and our share in its burden must surely stand in the dark with=20
the suicide bombers. Our broken promises, perhaps even our destruction of=20
the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to this tragedy. America has bankrolled=
=20
Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be cost-free.=20
No longer so. It would be an act of extraordinary courage and wisdom if the=
=20
United States was to pause for a moment and reflect upon its role in the=20
world, the indifference of its government to the suffering of Arabs, the=20
indolence of its current president.
But of course, the United States will want to strike back against=20
"world terror", who can blame them? Indeed, who could ever point the finger=
=20
at Americans now for using that pejorative and sometimes racist word=20
"terrorism"? There will be those swift to condemn any suggestion that we=20
should look for real historical reasons for an act of violence on this=20
world-war scale. But unless we do so, then we are facing a conflict the=20
like of which we have not seen since Hitler's death and the surrender of=20
Japan. Korea, Vietnam, is beginning to fade away in comparison.
Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to=20
explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I=20
remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by=20
American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one would help=20
them but God. Theology vs technology, the suicide bomber against the=20
nuclear power. Now we have learnt what this means.
**********************************
The Independent (London)
September 13, 2001, Thursday
TERROR IN AMERICA: THEY CAN RUN AND THEY CAN HIDE.
SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE HERE TO STAY
BYLINE: Robert Fisk
1: With the north tower of the Trade Centre already hit, a second plane=20
approaches; 2: The plane hits the south tower, but the man is still unaware=
=20
of the collision; 3: The plane, a hijacked United Airlines 767, enters the=
=20
south tower; 4: The man hears the impact, and looks up as the plane=20
explodes in flames
BODY:
NOT LONG before the Second World War, Stanley Baldwin, who was=20
Britain's Prime Minister, warned that "the bomber will always get through".=
=20
Today, we can argue that the suicide bomber will always get through. Maybe=
=20
not all of them. We may never know how many other hijackers failed to board=
=20
domestic flights in the United States on Tuesday morning, but enough to=20
produce carnage on an awesome, incomprehensive scale. Yet still we have not=
=20
begun to address this phenomenon. The suicide bomber is here to stay. It is=
=20
an exclusive weapon that belongs to "them" not us, and no military power=20
appears able to deal with this phenomenon.
Partly because of the suicide bomber, the Israelis fled Lebanon.=20
Specifically because of a suicide bomber, the Americans fled Lebanon 17=20
years earlier. I still remember Vice-President George Bush, now George Bush=
=20
Senior, visibly moved amid the ruins of the US Marine base in Beirut, where=
=20
241 American servicemen had just been slaughtered. "We are not going to let=
=20
a bunch of insidious terrorist cowards, shake the foreign policy of the=20
United States," he told us. "Foreign policy is not going to be dictated or=
=20
changed by terror." A few months later, the Marines upped sticks and ran=20
away from Lebanon, "redeployed" to their ships offshore. Not long ago, I=20
was chatting to an Indian soldier, a veteran of Delhi's involvement in the=
=20
Sri Lanka war now serving with the UN in southern Lebanon. How did the=20
Tamil suicide bombers compare those of the Lebanese Hizbollah I asked him?=
=20
The soldier raised his eyebrows. "The Hizbollah has nothing on those guys,"=
=20
he said. "Just think, they all carry a suicide capsule. I told my soldiers=
=20
to drive at 100 miles an hour on the roads of Sri Lanka in case one of them=
=20
hurled himself into the jeep." The Hizbollah may take their inspiration=20
from the martyrdom of the prophet Hussain, and the Palestinian suicide=20
bombers may take theirs from the Hizbollah.
But there is no military answer to this. As long as "our" side will=20
risk but not give its lives (cost-free war, after all, was partly an=20
American invention) the suicide bomber is the other side's nuclear weapon.=
=20
That desperate, pitiful phone call from the passenger on her way to her=20
doom in the Boeing 767 crash on the Pentagon told her husband that the=20
hijackers held knives and box-cutters. Knives and box -cutters; that's all=
=20
you need now to inflict a crashing physical defeat on a superpower. That=20
and a plane with a heavy fuel load.
But the suicide bomber does not conform to a set of identical=20
characteristics. Many of the callow Palestinian youths blowing themselves=20
to bits, with, more often than not, the most innocent of Israelis, have=20
little or no formal education. They have poor knowledge of the Koran but a=
=20
powerful sense of fury, despair and self -righteousness to propel them. The=
=20
Hizbollah suicide bombers were more deeply versed in the Koran, older,=20
often with years of imprisonment to steel them in the hours before their=20
immolation.
Tuesday's suicide bombers created a precedent. If there were at least=
=20
four on each aircraft, this means 16 men decided to kill themselves at the=
=20
same time. Did they all know each other? Unlikely. Or did one of them know=
=20
all the rest? For sure, they were educated. If the Boeing which hit the=20
Pentagon was being flown by men with knives (presumably, the other three=20
aircraft were too) then these were suicide bombers with a good working=20
knowledge of the fly-by-wire instrument panel of one of the world's most=20
sophisticated aircraft.
I found it oddly revealing when, a few hours later, an American=20
reporter quizzed me about my conviction that these men must have made=20
"dummy runs", must have travelled the same American Airlines and United=20
Airlines scheduled flights many times. They would have to do that at least=
=20
to check the X- ray security apparatus at airports. How many crew, the=20
average passenger manifest, the average delays on departure times. They=20
needed to see if the cabin crew locked the flight deck door. In my=20
experience on US domestic flights this is rare. Savage, cruel these men=20
were, but also, it seems, educated.
Like so many of our politicians who provide us with the same tired=20
old promises about hunting down the guilty and, Mr Blair's contribution=20
yesterday, "dismantle the machine of terror". But this misses the point. If=
=20
the machinery is composed of knives and box-cutters, Mr Blair is after the=
=20
wrong target. Just as President Ronald Reagan was in the hours before he=20
ordered the bombing of Libya in 1986. "He can run, but he can't hide," he=20
said of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But Colonel Gaddafi could hide, and he is=
=20
still with us.
Instead of searching for more rogue states, President George W Bush's=
=20
reference to those who stand behind the bombers opens the way for more=20
cruise missiles aimed at Iraq or Afghanistan, or wherever he thinks the=20
"godfathers of terrorism may be". The Americans might do better to find out=
=20
who taught these vicious men to fly a Boeing 767.
Which Middle East airlines train their pilots for this aircraft?=20
Indeed which nations are generous in their pilot-training schemes for Third=
=20
World countries? I recall one of Iran's best post-revolutionary helicopter=
=20
pilots telling me he was given a full course on the Bell Augusta (the=20
Vietnam-era gunship) by the Pakistan air force, which itself paid retired=20
American pilots to teach them.
And if Osama bin Laden is behind the New York massacre, it's worth=20
remembering one of his aims: not just to evict the US from the Middle East=
=20
but to overthrow the Arab regimes loyal to Washington.
Saudi Arabia was top of the list when I last spoke to him, but=20
President Hosni Mubarak's Egypt and Jordan, ruled by King Abdullah II, were=
=20
among his other enemies. He would keep talking about how the Muslims of=20
these nations would rise up against their corrupt rulers. A slaughter by=20
the US in retaliation for the New York and Washington bloodbaths might just=
=20
move the Arab masses from stubborn docility to the point of detonation.
Within the region, the suicide bomber is now admired. Not because he=
=20
is a mass killer but because something invincible, something untouchable,=20
something that has always dictated the rules without taking responsibility=
=20
for the results, has now proved vulnerable. It was the same when the first=
=20
suicide bombers struck in Lebanon.
The Lebanese could scarcely believe that Israeli soldiers could die=20
on this scale. The Israeli army of song and legend had been brought low.=20
So, too, the reaction when the symbols of America's pride and power were=20
struck. The vile, if small, Palestinian "celebrations" were a symptom of=20
this, albeit unrepresentative. They matched the "bomb Baghdad into the Dark=
=20
Ages" rhetoric we heard from the American public a decade ago.
In the Middle East, Arabs now fear America will strike them without=20
waiting for proof, or act on the most flimsy of evidence. For it is as well=
=20
to remember how the US responded to the 1983 Marine bombings. The=20
battleship USS New Jersey fired its automobile-sized shells into the Chouf=
=20
Mountains, killing a couple of Syrian soldiers and erasing half a village.=
=20
The arrival of US naval craft off the American East Coast yesterday was a=20
ghostly replay of this impotent event.
But to this day, the Americans have never discovered the identity of=
=20
the man who drove a truck-load of explosives into the Beirut Marine=20
compound. That was in another country, in another time. Today's suicide=20
bombers are a different breed. Nurtured in whatever despair or misery or=20
perhaps even privilege, in 2001, the suicide bomber came of age.
*****************************
The Independent (London)
September 14, 2001, Friday
TERROR IN AMERICA: THE LESSON OF HISTORY: AFGHANISTAN ALWAYS BEATS ITS=20
INVADERS
BYLINE: Robert Fisk
Clockwise from left: Russian troops in Afghanistan firing artillery=20
weapons; a historical engraving showing the British invasion of Afghanistan=
=20
in the 19th century; and a Taliban T55 tank makes its way through a narrow=
=20
street in Kabul Corbis Sygma
BODY:
ON THE heights of the Kabul Gorge, they still find ancient belt=20
buckles and corroded sword hilts. You can no longer read the insignia of=20
the British regiments of the old East India Company but their bones -those=
=20
of all 16,000 of them - still lie somewhere amid the dark earth and scree=20
of the most forbidding mountains in Afghanistan. Like the British who came=
=20
later, like the Russians who were to arrive more than a century afterwards,=
=20
General William Elphinstone's campaign was surrounded with rhetoric and=20
high principles and ended in disaster. George Bush Junior and Nato, please=
=20
note. Indeed, if there is one country - calling it a nation would be a=20
misnomer - that the West should avoid militarily, it is the tribal land in=
=20
which Osama Bin Laden maintains his obscure sanctuary. Just over two=20
decades ago, I found out what it was like to be on an invasion army in that=
=20
breathlessly beautiful, wild, proud plateau. Arrested by the Russian=20
Parachute Regiment near the Salang Tunnel, I was sent with a Soviet convoy=
=20
back to Kabul. We were ambushed, and out of the snowdrifts came the=20
Afghans, carrying knives. An air strike and the arrival of Soviet Tadjik=20
troops saved us. But the mighty Red Army had been humbled before men who=20
could not write their own names and whose politics were so remote that a=20
mujahid fighter would later insist to me that London was occupied by=20
Russian troops.
Back in 1839 we British were also worried about the Russians. General=
=20
Elphinstone lead an East India Company army of 16,500 - along with 38,000=20
followers - into Afghanistan, anxious to put an end to Dost Mohamed's=20
flirtation with the Tsar, took Kandahar and entered Kabul on 30 June with=20
the first foreign force to occupy the city in modern times. Dost Mohamed -=
=20
the British Superpower of the time knew how to deal with recalcitrant=20
natives - was dispatched to exile in India, but the Afghans were not=20
prepared to be placed under British tutelage. To garrison a foreign army in=
=20
Kabul was folly, as Elphinstone must have realised when, on 1 November,=20
1840, a British official, Alexander Burns, was hacked to pieces by a mob in=
=20
the souk and his head impaled on a stake. A 300-strong British unit in the=
=20
field fled for its life back to Kabul. And when Dost Mohamed's son turned=20
up, leading an Afghan army of 30,000, Elphinstone was doomed.
He bartered his freedom in return for a safe passage back to the=20
British fort in Jalalabad, close to the Indian frontier. It was one of the=
=20
coldest winters on record and with few supplies, virtually no food and=20
false promises of safety, he led his army - their columns 10 miles in=20
length - out into the frozen desolation of the Kabul Gorge. The camp=20
followers were left by the wayside; contemporary records describe Indian=20
women attached to the British army's colonial force, stripped naked,=20
starving, raped and knifed by Afghan tribesmen, their corpses left in the=20
snow. Elphinstone had long since given up trying to protect them. Yet each=
=20
new foray down the chasm of the Kabul Gorge - I was to see the remains of a=
=20
Russian convoy littered across the same track almost 140 years later - led=
=20
to further ambushes and massacres.
Elphinstone secured the safety of himself, a few officers and a party=
=20
of English ladies. The last British guardsmen were cut down on the heights,=
=20
surrounded by thousands of Afghans, firing to the last round, the company=20
commander dying with the Union flag wrapped around his waist. Days later,=20
the last survivor of the massacres, galloping his exhausted horse Jalalabad=
=20
was attacked by two Afghan cavalry. Hacking them away from him, he broke=20
his sword, Hollywood-style, on one of the men. But with his horse dying=20
beneath him, he reached the British fort. It was to date the greatest=20
defeat of British arms in history.
The British clung to Afghanistan as if it was a jewel in the crown.=20
Under the Treaty of Gandamak, the Amir Yakub Khan could rule Kabul and a=20
British embassy would be opened in the city. But within months, in 1879,=20
the residency was under siege, its few occupants fighting - once more - to=
=20
the last man. With the embassy on fire, the handful of Britons inside made=
=20
repeated forays into the ranks of the Afghans. "When charged," a later=20
British account would claim, "the Afghan soldiers ran like sheep before a=20
wolf". But within hours, the British were fighting from the burning roof of=
=20
the residency, slashed to bits with swords, stripped and their bodies=20
burned. The Consul, born to a French father and an Irish mother, was Major=
=20
Sir Pierre Louis Napoleon Cavagnari, KCB, CSI. A British journalist with=20
the Kabul Field Force found a few scorched bones in the residency yard;=20
they included, no doubt, Sir Pierre's remains.
Ironically, one of Elphinstone's successors was visiting the site of=
=20
the 1842 massacre in 1880 when he heard that his army - this was the Second=
=20
Afghan War - had been attacked in a remote semi-desert called Maiwand where=
=20
the 30th Bombay Infantry was fighting off thousands of ghazi warriors who=20
were charging suicidally at British cannon and Egyptian colonial troops.=20
Savage in their assaults, waving green Islamic banners and utterly heedless=
=20
of their own lives - and the word "suicidal" is not used loosely here -=20
they threw themselves among the British.
We were to conduct a military inquiry into the disaster that followed=
=20
and now, in the fragile, yellowing pages of the Indian British Army's=20
Intelligence Branch report we can find chilling evidence of what this=20
meant. Captain Wainwaring was to recall how "the whole of the ground to the=
=20
left of the 30th Native Infantry, and between it and the Grenadiers, was=20
covered with swarms of ghazis and banner-men. The ghazis were actually in=20
the ranks of the Grenadiers, pulling the men out and hacking them down with=
=20
their swords ...". A young Afghan woman - all we know is that her name was=
=20
Malaleh - feared that the tribesmen might withdraw and so tore off her=20
veil, holding it above her head as a flag and charging at the Grenadiers=20
herself. She was shot down by British rifle fire. But the British fled. In=
=20
all, they lost 1,320 men including 21 officers, along with 1,000 rifles and=
=20
at least 600 swords.
The Great Game was supposed to be about frontiers - about keeping a=20
British- controlled Afghanistan between the Indian Empire and the Russian=20
border - but it was a history of betrayals. Those we thought were on our=20
side turned out to be against us. Until 1878, we had thought the Amir Sher=
=20
Ali Khan of Kabul was our friend, ready to fight for the British Empire -=20
just as a man called Osama bin Laden would later fight the Russians on=20
"our" behalf - but he forbade passage to British troops and encouraged the=
=20
robbery of British merchants.
He had "openly and assiduously endeavoured ... to stir up religious=20
hatred against the English," our declaration of war had announced on 21=20
November, 1878. The Amir's aiding and abetting of the murder of the British=
=20
Embassy staff was "a treacherous and cowardly crime, which has brought=20
indelible disgrace upon the Afghan people," Sir Frederick Roberts announced=
=20
in 1879 when, yet again, the British had occupied Kabul. The Amir's=20
followers "should not escape ... penalty and ... the punishment inflicted=20
should be such as will be felt and remembered ... All persons convicted of=
=20
bearing a part (in the murders) will be dealt with according to their=20
deserts." It was an ancient, Victorian warning, a ghostly preamble to the=20
words we have been hearing from President Bush - and, indeed, Mr Blair - in=
=20
the last 48 hours.
The Russians were to endure their 10 years of Calvary exactly a=20
century later, though in truth it was the Afghans who suffered a virtual=20
genocide under the Soviets. Osama bin Laden, who had himself escaped=20
several murder attempts by Russian agents, survived. Perhaps Vladimir Putin=
=20
who is being asked to subscribe to the West's new battle for "democracy and=
=20
liberty" against the forces of darkness might remind Mr Bush just how=20
painful Russia's military adventure in Afghanistan proved to be. Perhaps we=
=20
could all go back to the history books before suggesting - and the idea of=
=20
such an adventure is clearly being dreamed of in Washington - that the=20
Great Game should be taken up once more.
*************************************
"The Guardian" (London) Leading Article
15 September 2001
The penknife and the bomb
Brute force is not the way to defeat the terrorist threat
In one corner stands a man with a=20
penknife. In the opposing corner, a man with an enormous bomb. The man with=
=20
the knife, like this week's plane hijackers, knows that in the coming=20
fight, he may wound his opponent but he himself will certainly perish.
The man with the bomb also knows that=
=20
his superior weaponry, if used, will obliterate his adversary. But both=20
know, if they use their heads rather than their weapons, that this cannot=20
be the end of the matter. In the place of the vanquished knifeman will rise=
=20
two, three ... a hundred more just like him, just as committed, ever more=20
convinced that they are right, just as ready to die.
The United States, which is expected=20
in the coming days to launch a massive military campaign, some call it a=20
war, against terrorism, should consider this certain consequence before=20
embarking on such action. And there are many other likely, even more=20
perilous ramifications that demand the attention of wise, responsible=20
leadership.
The events of last Tuesday rendered=20
unto the American people a true glimpse of hell. It was an abomination the=
=20
likes of which most of us, thankfully, have never witnessed. This mass=20
murder of American civilians has sparked an international crisis of truly=20
global proportions. It will be prolonged and dangerous. Given the undefined=
=20
goal set by President George Bush and allies such as Tony Blair - the=20
rooting out and eradication of "evil" - it has no obvious limits and no=20
clear end-point. It could dwarf this week's bloodshed.
As we have said, the American people=20
(and non-American victims) deserve every sympathy at this traumatic moment.=
=20
The US government deserves our support, both moral and practical. It is=20
entitled to take all reasonable measures to find and punish the culprits.=20
But before Mr Bush sends his enormous bombs to obliterate the knifeman,=20
before he risks an uncontrollable, escalating conflagration involving both=
=20
nations that harbour his foes and allies who trust in his command, he must=
=20
stop and think. Congress has voted him an extraordinary $40bn in ready=20
cash. Double that and still the bottom-line question arises: what, in=20
pragmatic not symbolic terms, is the US really trying to achieve?
This is not an argument for inaction.=
=20
Far from it. But America's dilemma, once the verbiage about "democracy's=20
war" and "freedom's brightest beacon" is cut away, is that its military=20
options, to the extent that they are currently understood, are largely=20
unsuited to the task in hand. Indeed, much of what appears to be under=20
contemplation will just make matters worse.
For consider: any major air and/or=20
ground attack mounted against Afghanistan in pursuit of prime suspect Osama=
=20
bin Laden will certainly produce civilian casualties. It may not produce=20
Bin Laden (who may not even be there). Such an attack would inflame Muslim=
=20
opinion and hand the terrorists a second triumph: following Manhattan, here=
=20
would be the "holy war" they have long sought to provoke. If the attacks=20
were repeated, and spread, Pakistan's nuclear-armed military regime,=20
destabilised and compromised in the eyes of its own people, could fall to=20
its own Islamic fundamentalists.
The implications, given Pakistan's=20
ongoing proxy war with India over Kashmir, hardly need to be spelled out.=20
And yet the possibility, actively urged by some in Washington, that the US=
=20
may pursue its enemies further afield, into Iraq for example, or into=20
Lebanon, home to the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah, is even more explosive.=20
At this point, the "war on terrorism" would be fused and confused with the=
=20
whole, bitter Arab-Israeli conflict and the Gulf war's unfinished business.=
=20
Whatever they say now, Russia and China would certainly part company with=20
the US; likewise Egypt, Jordan, maybe Saudi Arabia, and some European=20
countries.
What price Nato and EU solidarity if=20
the US crosses the line in the Middle East? And what price oil? In such a=20
scenario, a global economic crash would surely follow. Meanwhile, the man=20
with the knife, inspired by an even fiercer, righteous fury, will wait his=
=20
chance.
It does not have to be like this.=20
There is another way. It is less dramatic, less visceral, more=20
statesmanlike. It requires of Mr Bush a far greater courage than an order=20
to fire. It involves hard-nosed diplomatic coercion and painstaking=20
investigation; it requires international interdiction of terrorist funds;=20
it means the collective, cast-iron isolation and economic punishment of any=
=20
state sustaining the suspects and their associates; it means a longer-term=
=20
reassessment of US priorities and policies in central Asia and the Middle=20
East. And it means a focused, law-based approach requiring the Taliban (if=
=20
they have him) to hand over Bin Laden without delay.
Only if they refuse should the US=20
military go and get him. For only by exploring every legitimate avenue,=20
only by retaining the moral advantage, only by seeking justice through just=
=20
and proportionate means will Americans find the lasting solace and=20
vindication for which they cry out. In this spurious "clash of=20
civilisations", this is the civilised way. And only in this way will the=20
skulking knifemen of tomorrow be disarmed.
Guardian Unlimited =A9 Guardian Newspapers=
=20
Limited 2001
This article online at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4257759,00.html
****************************************
--=====================_7376811==_.ALT
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<html>
<font size=3D3>The Independent (London) <br>
September 12, 2001, Wednesday <br><br>
TERROR IN AMERICA: ATROCITIES MAY BE DESIGNED TO PROVOKE AMERICA INTO
<br>
COSTLY MILITARY ADVENTURE: THE CHIEF SUSPECT <br><br>
BYLINE: Robert Fisk <br><br>
HIGHLIGHT: The shadow of suspicion for the
attacks has fallen on Osama bin; Laden, a Saudi dissident in exile,
suspected of financing Muslim terrorism <br><br>
BODY: <br><br>
I CAN imagine how Osama bin Laden received the
news of the atrocities in the United States. In all, I must have spent
five hours listening to him in Sudan and then in the vastness of the
Afghan mountains, as he described the inevitable collapse of the United
States, just as he and his comrades in the Afghan war helped to destroy
the power of the Red Army. <br><br>
He will have watched satellite television, he
will have sat in the corner of his room, brushing his teeth as he always
did, with a mishwak stick, thinking for up to a minute before speaking;
he is one of the few Arabs who doesn't feel embarrassed to think before
he speaks. He once told me with pride how his own men had attacked the
Americans in Somalia. He acknowledged that he knew personally two of the
Saudis executed for bombing an American military base in Riyadh. Could he
have been behind yesterday's mass slaughter in America? Of course, we
need a health warning here. If Mr bin Laden was really guilty of all the
things he has been blamed for, he would need an army of 10,000. And there
is something deeply disturbing about the world's habit of turning to the
latest hate figure whenever blood is shed. But when events of this
momentous scale take place, there is a new legitimacy in casting one's
eyes at those who have constantly threatened America. <br><br>
Mr bin Laden had a kind of religious experience
during the Afghan war. A Russian shell had fallen at his feet and, in the
seconds as he waited for it to explode, he said he had a sudden,
religious feeling of calmness. The shell - and Americans may come to wish
the opposite happened - never exploded. The United States must leave the
Gulf, he would say every 10 minutes. America must stop all sanctions
against the Iraqi people. America must stop using Israel to oppress
Palestinians. It was his constant theme, untouched by doubt or the real
complexities of the Middle East. He was not fighting an anti-colonial
war, but a religious one. In the Arabia that he would govern, there would
be more, not less, head chopping, more severe punishments, no
Western-style democracy. <br><br>
His supporters - Algerians, Kuwaitis, Egyptians
and Gulf Arabs - would gather round him in his tent with the awe of men
listening to a messiah. I watched them one night in Afghanistan in a
mountain camp so cold that I woke to find ice in my hair. They were
obedient to him, not the kind of obedience of schoolchildren but the sort
of adherence you find among people whose minds are made up. And the words
they listened to were fearful in their implications. American civilians
would no more be spared than military targets. This was not a man who
would hesitate to carry out his promises if he could. He was a man who
would have appreciated the appalling irony of creating a missile defence
shield against "rogue states" but unable to prevent men
crashing domestic airliners into the centre of America's financial and
military power. <br><br>
Yet I also remember one night when Mr bin Laden
saw a pile of newspapers in my bag and seized upon them. By a sputtering
oil lamp, he read them page by page in the corner of his tent, clearly
unaware of the world around him, reading aloud of an Iranian Foreign
Minister's visit to Saudi Arabia. Was this really a man who could damage
America, who would have laughed when he heard that the United States had
placed a $ 5m (pounds 3.3m) reward on his head? Was it not America, I
wondered then, which was turning Mr bin Laden into the face of
"world terror?" Was he really so powerful and so deadly?
<br><br>
If - and we must keep repeating this word if -
the shadow of the Middle East falls over yesterday's destruction, then
who else in the region could produce such meticulously timed assaults on
the world's only superpower? The rag-tag and corrupt Palestinian
nationalist groups that used to favour hijacking are unlikely to be able
to produce a single suicide bomber. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have neither
the capability nor the money that this assault needed. Perhaps the old
satellite groups that moved close to the Lebanese Hezbollah in the 1980s,
before the organisation became a solely resistance movement, could plan
something like this. The bombing of the US Marines in 1983 needed
precision, timing and infinite planning. But Iran, which supported these
groups, has changed out of recognition since then, now more involved in
its internal struggles than in the long- dead aspiration to
"export" a religious revolution. Iraq lies broken, its agents
more intent on torturing their own people than striking at the country
that defeated it so suddenly in 1991. <br><br>
So the mountains of Afghanistan will be
photographed from satellite and high -altitude aircraft in the coming
days, Mr bin Laden's old training camps - and perhaps a few new ones -
highlighted on the overhead projectors in the Pentagon. But to what end?
When America last tried to strike at Mr bin Laden, it destroyed an
innocent pharmaceuticals plant in Sudan and a few of Mr bin Laden's
Muslim followers in Afghanistan. For if this is a war between the Saudi
millionaire and President Bush's America, it cannot be fought like other
wars. Indeed, can it be fought at all without some costly military
adventure overseas. <br><br>
Or is that what Mr bin Laden seeks above all
else? <br><br>
********************************<br><br>
The Independent (London) <br>
September 12, 2001, Wednesday <br><br>
TERROR IN AMERICA: THE AWESOME CRUELTY OF A DOOMED PEOPLE <br><br>
BYLINE: Robert Fisk <br><br>
HIGHLIGHT: The USS Cole: Almost sunk in Aiden
last year <br><br>
<br>
BODY: <br><br>
SO IT has come to this. The entire modern
history of the Middle East - the collapse of the Ottoman empire , the
Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the
foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34
years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab land - all erased within
hours as those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population
struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people.
Is it fair - is it moral - to write this so soon, without proof, without
a shred of evidence, when the last act of barbarism in Oklahoma turned
out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America is at
war and, unless I am grotesquely mistaken, many thousands more are now
scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too. Some of us
warned of "the explosion to come". But we never dreamed this
nightmare. And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his
theology, his frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have
sat in front of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy
the Russian army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their
boundless confidence allowed them to declare war on America. But this is
not the war of democracy vs terror that the world will be asked to
believe in the coming hours and days. It is also about American missiles
smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a
Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village
called Qana a few days later and about a Lebanese militia - paid and
uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering
their way through refugee camps. <br><br>
No, there is no doubting the utter,
indescribable evil of what has happened in the United States. That
Palestinians could celebrate the massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000
innocent people is not only a symbol of their despair but of their
political immaturity, of their failure to grasp what they had always been
accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting disproportionately. But
we were warned. All the years of rhetoric, all the promises to strike at
the heart of America, to cut off the head of "the American
snake" we took for empty threats. How could a backward,
conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small,
violent organisations fulfil such preposterous promises? Now we know.
<br><br>
And in the hours that followed yesterday's
annihilation, I began to remember those other extraordinary, unbelievable
assaults upon the US and its allies, miniature now by comparison with
yesterdays' casualties. Did not the suicide bombers who killed 241
American servicemen and almost 100 french paratroops in Beirut on 23
October 1983, time their attacks with unthinkable precision? <br><br>
It was just 7 seconds between the Marine bombing
and the destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the
attacks on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt - almost
successful it now turns out - to sink the USS Cole in Aiden. And then how
easy was our failure to recognise the new weapon of the Middle East which
neither Americans or any other Westerners could equal: the despair
-driven, desperate suicide bomber. <br><br>
All America's power, wealth - and arrogance, the
Arabs will be saying - could not defend the greatest power the world has
ever known from this destruction. <br><br>
For journalists, even those who have literally
walked through the blood of the Middle East, words dry up here. Awesome,
terrible, unspeakable, unforgivable; in the coming days, these words will
become water in the desert. And there will be, naturally and inevitably,
and quite immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the
blood and the injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will
be told about "mindless terrorism", the "mindless"
bit being essential if we are not to realise how hated America has become
in the land of the birth of three great religions. <br><br>
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20 or 30 thousand
innocent deaths and he or she will respond as good and decent people
should, that it is an unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not
use such words about the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of
perhaps half a million children in Iraq, why we did not rage about the
17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, why we
allowed one nation in the Middle East to ignore UN Security Council
resolutions but bombed and sanctioned all others who did. And those basic
reasons why the Middle East caught fire last September - the Israeli
occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of Palestinians, the
bombardments and state sponsored executions, the Israeli tortures ... all
these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest fractional reason
for yesterday's mass savagery. <br><br>
No, Israel was not to blame - that we can be
sure that Saddam Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so
- but the malign influence of history and our share in its burden must
surely stand in the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises,
perhaps even our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to
this tragedy. America has bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years that
it believed this would be cost-free. No longer so. It would be an act of
extraordinary courage and wisdom if the United States was to pause for a
moment and reflect upon its role in the world, the indifference of its
government to the suffering of Arabs, the indolence of its current
president. <br><br>
But of course, the United States will want to
strike back against "world terror", who can blame them? Indeed,
who could ever point the finger at Americans now for using that
pejorative and sometimes racist word "terrorism"? There will be
those swift to condemn any suggestion that we should look for real
historical reasons for an act of violence on this world-war scale. But
unless we do so, then we are facing a conflict the like of which we have
not seen since Hitler's death and the surrender of Japan. Korea, Vietnam,
is beginning to fade away in comparison. <br><br>
Eight years ago, I helped to make a television
series that tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the
West. Last night, I remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their
families burnt by American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how
no one would help them but God. Theology vs technology, the suicide
bomber against the nuclear power. Now we have learnt what this means.
<br><br>
**********************************<br><br>
The Independent (London) <br>
September 13, 2001, Thursday <br><br>
TERROR IN AMERICA: THEY CAN RUN AND THEY CAN HIDE. <br>
SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE HERE TO STAY <br><br>
BYLINE: Robert Fisk <br><br>
1: With the north tower of the Trade Centre already hit, a second plane
approaches; 2: The plane hits the south tower, but the man is still
unaware of the collision; 3: The plane, a hijacked United Airlines 767,
enters the south tower; 4: The man hears the impact, and looks up as the
plane explodes in flames <br><br>
<br>
BODY: <br><br>
NOT LONG before the Second World War, Stanley
Baldwin, who was Britain's Prime Minister, warned that "the bomber
will always get through". Today, we can argue that the suicide
bomber will always get through. Maybe not all of them. We may never know
how many other hijackers failed to board domestic flights in the United
States on Tuesday morning, but enough to produce carnage on an awesome,
incomprehensive scale. Yet still we have not begun to address this
phenomenon. The suicide bomber is here to stay. It is an exclusive weapon
that belongs to "them" not us, and no military power appears
able to deal with this phenomenon. <br><br>
Partly because of the suicide bomber, the
Israelis fled Lebanon. Specifically because of a suicide bomber, the
Americans fled Lebanon 17 years earlier. I still remember Vice-President
George Bush, now George Bush Senior, visibly moved amid the ruins of the
US Marine base in Beirut, where 241 American servicemen had just been
slaughtered. "We are not going to let a bunch of insidious terrorist
cowards, shake the foreign policy of the United States," he told us.
"Foreign policy is not going to be dictated or changed by
terror." A few months later, the Marines upped sticks and ran away
from Lebanon, "redeployed" to their ships offshore. Not long
ago, I was chatting to an Indian soldier, a veteran of Delhi's
involvement in the Sri Lanka war now serving with the UN in southern
Lebanon. How did the Tamil suicide bombers compare those of the Lebanese
Hizbollah I asked him? The soldier raised his eyebrows. "The
Hizbollah has nothing on those guys," he said. "Just think,
they all carry a suicide capsule. I told my soldiers to drive at 100
miles an hour on the roads of Sri Lanka in case one of them hurled
himself into the jeep." The Hizbollah may take their inspiration
from the martyrdom of the prophet Hussain, and the Palestinian suicide
bombers may take theirs from the Hizbollah. <br><br>
But there is no military answer to this. As long
as "our" side will risk but not give its lives (cost-free war,
after all, was partly an American invention) the suicide bomber is the
other side's nuclear weapon. That desperate, pitiful phone call from the
passenger on her way to her doom in the Boeing 767 crash on the Pentagon
told her husband that the hijackers held knives and box-cutters. Knives
and box -cutters; that's all you need now to inflict a crashing physical
defeat on a superpower. That and a plane with a heavy fuel load.
<br><br>
But the suicide bomber does not conform to a set
of identical characteristics. Many of the callow Palestinian youths
blowing themselves to bits, with, more often than not, the most innocent
of Israelis, have little or no formal education. They have poor knowledge
of the Koran but a powerful sense of fury, despair and self
-righteousness to propel them. The Hizbollah suicide bombers were more
deeply versed in the Koran, older, often with years of imprisonment to
steel them in the hours before their immolation. <br><br>
Tuesday's suicide bombers created a precedent.
If there were at least four on each aircraft, this means 16 men decided
to kill themselves at the same time. Did they all know each other?
Unlikely. Or did one of them know all the rest? For sure, they were
educated. If the Boeing which hit the Pentagon was being flown by men
with knives (presumably, the other three aircraft were too) then these
were suicide bombers with a good working knowledge of the fly-by-wire
instrument panel of one of the world's most sophisticated aircraft.
<br><br>
I found it oddly revealing when, a few hours
later, an American reporter quizzed me about my conviction that these men
must have made "dummy runs", must have travelled the same
American Airlines and United Airlines scheduled flights many times. They
would have to do that at least to check the X- ray security apparatus at
airports. How many crew, the average passenger manifest, the average
delays on departure times. They needed to see if the cabin crew locked
the flight deck door. In my experience on US domestic flights this is
rare. Savage, cruel these men were, but also, it seems, educated.
<br><br>
Like so many of our politicians who provide us
with the same tired old promises about hunting down the guilty and, Mr
Blair's contribution yesterday, "dismantle the machine of
terror". But this misses the point. If the machinery is composed of
knives and box-cutters, Mr Blair is after the wrong target. Just as
President Ronald Reagan was in the hours before he ordered the bombing of
Libya in 1986. "He can run, but he can't hide," he said of
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But Colonel Gaddafi could hide, and he is still
with us. <br><br>
Instead of searching for more rogue states,
President George W Bush's reference to those who stand behind the bombers
opens the way for more cruise missiles aimed at Iraq or Afghanistan, or
wherever he thinks the "godfathers of terrorism may be". The
Americans might do better to find out who taught these vicious men to fly
a Boeing 767. <br><br>
Which Middle East airlines train their pilots
for this aircraft? Indeed which nations are generous in their
pilot-training schemes for Third World countries? I recall one of Iran's
best post-revolutionary helicopter pilots telling me he was given a full
course on the Bell Augusta (the Vietnam-era gunship) by the Pakistan air
force, which itself paid retired American pilots to teach them.=20
<br><br>
And if Osama bin Laden is behind the New York
massacre, it's worth remembering one of his aims: not just to evict the
US from the Middle East but to overthrow the Arab regimes loyal to
Washington. <br><br>
Saudi Arabia was top of the list when I last
spoke to him, but President Hosni Mubarak's Egypt and Jordan, ruled by
King Abdullah II, were among his other enemies. He would keep talking
about how the Muslims of these nations would rise up against their
corrupt rulers. A slaughter by the US in retaliation for the New York and
Washington bloodbaths might just move the Arab masses from stubborn
docility to the point of detonation. <br><br>
Within the region, the suicide bomber is now
admired. Not because he is a mass killer but because something
invincible, something untouchable, something that has always dictated the
rules without taking responsibility for the results, has now proved
vulnerable. It was the same when the first suicide bombers struck in
Lebanon. <br><br>
The Lebanese could scarcely believe that Israeli
soldiers could die on this scale. The Israeli army of song and legend had
been brought low. So, too, the reaction when the symbols of America's
pride and power were struck. The vile, if small, Palestinian
"celebrations" were a symptom of this, albeit unrepresentative.
They matched the "bomb Baghdad into the Dark Ages" rhetoric we
heard from the American public a decade ago. <br><br>
In the Middle East, Arabs now fear America will
strike them without waiting for proof, or act on the most flimsy of
evidence. For it is as well to remember how the US responded to the 1983
Marine bombings. The battleship USS New Jersey fired its automobile-sized
shells into the Chouf Mountains, killing a couple of Syrian soldiers and
erasing half a village. The arrival of US naval craft off the American
East Coast yesterday was a ghostly replay of this impotent event.
<br><br>
But to this day, the Americans have never
discovered the identity of the man who drove a truck-load of explosives
into the Beirut Marine compound. That was in another country, in another
time. Today's suicide bombers are a different breed. Nurtured in whatever
despair or misery or perhaps even privilege, in 2001, the suicide bomber
came of age. <br><br>
*****************************<br><br>
The Independent (London) <br>
September 14, 2001, Friday <br><br>
TERROR IN AMERICA: THE LESSON OF HISTORY: AFGHANISTAN ALWAYS BEATS ITS
INVADERS <br><br>
BYLINE: Robert Fisk <br><br>
Clockwise from left: Russian troops in Afghanistan firing artillery
weapons; a historical engraving showing the British invasion of
Afghanistan in the 19th century; and a Taliban T55 tank makes its way
through a narrow street in Kabul Corbis Sygma <br><br>
<br>
BODY: <br><br>
ON THE heights of the Kabul Gorge, they still
find ancient belt buckles and corroded sword hilts. You can no longer
read the insignia of the British regiments of the old East India Company
but their bones -those of all 16,000 of them - still lie somewhere amid
the dark earth and scree of the most forbidding mountains in Afghanistan.
Like the British who came later, like the Russians who were to arrive
more than a century afterwards, General William Elphinstone's campaign
was surrounded with rhetoric and high principles and ended in disaster.
George Bush Junior and Nato, please note. Indeed, if there is one country
- calling it a nation would be a misnomer - that the West should avoid
militarily, it is the tribal land in which Osama Bin Laden maintains his
obscure sanctuary. Just over two decades ago, I found out what it was
like to be on an invasion army in that breathlessly beautiful, wild,
proud plateau. Arrested by the Russian Parachute Regiment near the Salang
Tunnel, I was sent with a Soviet convoy back to Kabul. We were ambushed,
and out of the snowdrifts came the Afghans, carrying knives. An air
strike and the arrival of Soviet Tadjik troops saved us. But the mighty
Red Army had been humbled before men who could not write their own names
and whose politics were so remote that a mujahid fighter would later
insist to me that London was occupied by Russian troops. <br><br>
Back in 1839 we British were also worried about
the Russians. General Elphinstone lead an East India Company army of
16,500 - along with 38,000 followers - into Afghanistan, anxious to put
an end to Dost Mohamed's flirtation with the Tsar, took Kandahar and
entered Kabul on 30 June with the first foreign force to occupy the city
in modern times. Dost Mohamed - the British Superpower of the time knew
how to deal with recalcitrant natives - was dispatched to exile in India,
but the Afghans were not prepared to be placed under British tutelage. To
garrison a foreign army in Kabul was folly, as Elphinstone must have
realised when, on 1 November, 1840, a British official, Alexander Burns,
was hacked to pieces by a mob in the souk and his head impaled on a
stake. A 300-strong British unit in the field fled for its life back to
Kabul. And when Dost Mohamed's son turned up, leading an Afghan army of
30,000, Elphinstone was doomed. <br><br>
He bartered his freedom in return for a safe
passage back to the British fort in Jalalabad, close to the Indian
frontier. It was one of the coldest winters on record and with few
supplies, virtually no food and false promises of safety, he led his army
- their columns 10 miles in length - out into the frozen desolation of
the Kabul Gorge. The camp followers were left by the wayside;
contemporary records describe Indian women attached to the British army's
colonial force, stripped naked, starving, raped and knifed by Afghan
tribesmen, their corpses left in the snow. Elphinstone had long since
given up trying to protect them. Yet each new foray down the chasm of the
Kabul Gorge - I was to see the remains of a Russian convoy littered
across the same track almost 140 years later - led to further ambushes
and massacres. <br><br>
Elphinstone secured the safety of himself, a few
officers and a party of English ladies. The last British guardsmen were
cut down on the heights, surrounded by thousands of Afghans, firing to
the last round, the company commander dying with the Union flag wrapped
around his waist. Days later, the last survivor of the massacres,
galloping his exhausted horse Jalalabad was attacked by two Afghan
cavalry. Hacking them away from him, he broke his sword, Hollywood-style,
on one of the men. But with his horse dying beneath him, he reached the
British fort. It was to date the greatest defeat of British arms in
history. <br><br>
The British clung to Afghanistan as if it was a
jewel in the crown. Under the Treaty of Gandamak, the Amir Yakub Khan
could rule Kabul and a British embassy would be opened in the city. But
within months, in 1879, the residency was under siege, its few occupants
fighting - once more - to the last man. With the embassy on fire, the
handful of Britons inside made repeated forays into the ranks of the
Afghans. "When charged," a later British account would claim,
"the Afghan soldiers ran like sheep before a wolf". But within
hours, the British were fighting from the burning roof of the residency,
slashed to bits with swords, stripped and their bodies burned. The
Consul, born to a French father and an Irish mother, was Major Sir Pierre
Louis Napoleon Cavagnari, KCB, CSI. A British journalist with the Kabul
Field Force found a few scorched bones in the residency yard; they
included, no doubt, Sir Pierre's remains. <br><br>
Ironically, one of Elphinstone's successors was
visiting the site of the 1842 massacre in 1880 when he heard that his
army - this was the Second Afghan War - had been attacked in a remote
semi-desert called Maiwand where the 30th Bombay Infantry was fighting
off thousands of ghazi warriors who were charging suicidally at British
cannon and Egyptian colonial troops. Savage in their assaults, waving
green Islamic banners and utterly heedless of their own lives - and the
word "suicidal" is not used loosely here - they threw
themselves among the British. <br><br>
We were to conduct a military inquiry into the
disaster that followed and now, in the fragile, yellowing pages of the
Indian British Army's Intelligence Branch report we can find chilling
evidence of what this meant. Captain Wainwaring was to recall how
"the whole of the ground to the left of the 30th Native Infantry,
and between it and the Grenadiers, was covered with swarms of ghazis and
banner-men. The ghazis were actually in the ranks of the Grenadiers,
pulling the men out and hacking them down with their swords ...". A
young Afghan woman - all we know is that her name was Malaleh - feared
that the tribesmen might withdraw and so tore off her veil, holding it
above her head as a flag and charging at the Grenadiers herself. She was
shot down by British rifle fire. But the British fled. In all, they lost
1,320 men including 21 officers, along with 1,000 rifles and at least 600
swords. <br><br>
The Great Game was supposed to be about
frontiers - about keeping a British- controlled Afghanistan between the
Indian Empire and the Russian border - but it was a history of betrayals.
Those we thought were on our side turned out to be against us. Until
1878, we had thought the Amir Sher Ali Khan of Kabul was our friend,
ready to fight for the British Empire - just as a man called Osama bin
Laden would later fight the Russians on "our" behalf - but he
forbade passage to British troops and encouraged the robbery of British
merchants. <br><br>
He had "openly and assiduously endeavoured
... to stir up religious hatred against the English," our
declaration of war had announced on 21 November, 1878. The Amir's aiding
and abetting of the murder of the British Embassy staff was "a
treacherous and cowardly crime, which has brought indelible disgrace upon
the Afghan people," Sir Frederick Roberts announced in 1879 when,
yet again, the British had occupied Kabul. The Amir's followers
"should not escape ... penalty and ... the punishment inflicted
should be such as will be felt and remembered ... All persons convicted
of bearing a part (in the murders) will be dealt with according to their
deserts." It was an ancient, Victorian warning, a ghostly preamble
to the words we have been hearing from President Bush - and, indeed, Mr
Blair - in the last 48 hours. <br><br>
The Russians were to endure their 10 years of
Calvary exactly a century later, though in truth it was the Afghans who
suffered a virtual genocide under the Soviets. Osama bin Laden, who had
himself escaped several murder attempts by Russian agents, survived.
Perhaps Vladimir Putin who is being asked to subscribe to the West's new
battle for "democracy and liberty" against the forces of
darkness might remind Mr Bush just how painful Russia's military
adventure in Afghanistan proved to be. Perhaps we could all go back to
the history books before suggesting - and the idea of such an adventure
is clearly being dreamed of in Washington - that the Great Game should be
taken up once more. <br><br>
*************************************<br><br>
"The Guardian" (London) Leading Article<br>
15 September 2001 <br><br>
The penknife and the bomb <br><br>
Brute force is not the way to defeat the terrorist threat<br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
In one corner stands a man with a penknife. In the opposing corner, a man
with an enormous bomb. The man with the knife, like this week's plane
hijackers, knows that in the coming fight, he may wound his opponent but
he himself will certainly perish. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
The man with the bomb also knows that his superior weaponry, if used,
will obliterate his adversary. But both know, if they use their heads
rather than their weapons, that this cannot be the end of the matter. In
the place of the vanquished knifeman will rise two, three ... a hundred
more just like him, just as committed, ever more convinced that they are
right, just as ready to die. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
The United States, which is expected in the coming days to launch a
massive military campaign, some call it a war, against terrorism, should
consider this certain consequence before embarking on such action. And
there are many other likely, even more perilous ramifications that demand
the attention of wise, responsible leadership. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
The events of last Tuesday rendered unto the American people a true
glimpse of hell. It was an abomination the likes of which most of us,
thankfully, have never witnessed. This mass murder of American civilians
has sparked an international crisis of truly global proportions. It will
be prolonged and dangerous. Given the undefined goal set by President
George Bush and allies such as Tony Blair - the rooting out and
eradication of "evil" - it has no obvious limits and no clear
end-point. It could dwarf this week's bloodshed. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
As we have said, the American people (and non-American victims) deserve
every sympathy at this traumatic moment. The US government deserves our
support, both moral and practical. It is entitled to take all reasonable
measures to find and punish the culprits. But before Mr Bush sends his
enormous bombs to obliterate the knifeman, before he risks an
uncontrollable, escalating conflagration involving both nations that
harbour his foes and allies who trust in his command, he must stop and
think. Congress has voted him an extraordinary $40bn in ready cash.
Double that and still the bottom-line question arises: what, in pragmatic
not symbolic terms, is the US really trying to achieve? <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
This is not an argument for inaction. Far from it. But America's dilemma,
once the verbiage about "democracy's war" and "freedom's
brightest beacon" is cut away, is that its military options, to the
extent that they are currently understood, are largely unsuited to the
task in hand. Indeed, much of what appears to be under contemplation will
just make matters worse.<br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
For consider: any major air and/or ground attack mounted against
Afghanistan in pursuit of prime suspect Osama bin Laden will certainly
produce civilian casualties. It may not produce Bin Laden (who may not
even be there). Such an attack would inflame Muslim opinion and hand the
terrorists a second triumph: following Manhattan, here would be the
"holy war" they have long sought to provoke. If the attacks
were repeated, and spread, Pakistan's nuclear-armed military regime,
destabilised and compromised in the eyes of its own people, could fall to
its own Islamic fundamentalists. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
The implications, given Pakistan's ongoing proxy war with India over
Kashmir, hardly need to be spelled out. And yet the possibility, actively
urged by some in Washington, that the US may pursue its enemies further
afield, into Iraq for example, or into Lebanon, home to the
Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah, is even more explosive. At this point, the
"war on terrorism" would be fused and confused with the whole,
bitter Arab-Israeli conflict and the Gulf war's unfinished business.
Whatever they say now, Russia and China would certainly part company with
the US; likewise Egypt, Jordan, maybe Saudi Arabia, and some European
countries. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
What price Nato and EU solidarity if the US crosses the line in the
Middle East? And what price oil? In such a scenario, a global economic
crash would surely follow. Meanwhile, the man with the knife, inspired by
an even fiercer, righteous fury, will wait his chance. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
It does not have to be like this. There is another way. It is less
dramatic, less visceral, more statesmanlike. It requires of Mr Bush a far
greater courage than an order to fire. It involves hard-nosed diplomatic
coercion and painstaking investigation; it requires international
interdiction of terrorist funds; it means the collective, cast-iron
isolation and economic punishment of any state sustaining the suspects
and their associates; it means a longer-term reassessment of US
priorities and policies in central Asia and the Middle East. And it means
a focused, law-based approach requiring the Taliban (if they have him) to
hand over Bin Laden without delay. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
Only if they refuse should the US military go and get him. For only by
exploring every legitimate avenue, only by retaining the moral advantage,
only by seeking justice through just and proportionate means will
Americans find the lasting solace and vindication for which they cry out.
In this spurious "clash of civilisations", this is the
civilised way. And only in this way will the skulking knifemen of
tomorrow be disarmed. <br><br>
&nbs=
p; &n=
bsp;
Guardian Unlimited =A9 Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001<br><br>
This article online at:<br>
<a href=3D"http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4257759,00.html"=
eudora=3D"autourl">http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4257759=
,00.html</a>
<br><br>
****************************************<br><br>
</font></html>
--=====================_7376811==_.ALT--