|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This weeks Terrorism stories for Thursday, December 6, 2001.
U.S. Response I: Officials Mulling Intelligence HubBy Greg Seigle Global Security Newswire White House and congressional officials are considering creating an intelligence hub that culls classified information from 32 federal agencies so that top decision makers, including U.S. President George W. Bush, do not have to painstakingly piece together findings from the various organizations, high-level sources told Global Security Newswire. During a half-hour meeting yesterday between Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and congressmen Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the officials determined that the White House would consider backing a sweeping computerized system that would mine intelligence databases. Information collected by one agency would then be available to all other agencies and to key executives and policymakers. According to one staffer who attended the meeting, Ridge agreed that there is a need for such a comprehensive system and said he would look into it soon. “One of the biggest shortcomings today is that we don’t have the capability to do massive data mining,” Weldon told GSN before he met with Ridge to discuss the National Operations and Analysis Hub (NOAH), a data-sharing proposal that would supercede Counterintelligence 21, an information sharing system currently being used by the CIA, FBI and other agencies. “It’s a turf battle,” Weldon continued. “The bottom line is, without any doubt and hesitation on my part, the intelligence community doesn’t want to give up its jurisdiction. And in this case, with the kind of threats we see emerging, you may get tips in the drug interdiction base that you won’t get through our normal FBI base. Or you may get it through Customs. You have to have those systems merged together.” Officials from the CIA, FBI and other agencies could not respond to queries before press time, but according to Weldon these agencies are balking at sharing information with each other, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent anthrax incidents. Apparently, proposals to share raw data have encountered stiff resistance because the agencies are determined to protect their sources, influence and funding. Currently all 32 intelligence agencies within the federal government that have classified operations operate on their own, despite recent attempts to consolidate their knowledge bases. Even though each agency has had representatives working in a centralized office since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, they still are not connected to each other’s databases, Weldon said. When the agencies do share information, they do not offer raw data—they offer only their interpretations of such information, he said. The data-mining center proposed by Weldon would employ massive high-speed computers endowed with cutting edge software to monitor various threats to the United States. The hub would track and profile the capabilities and contacts of terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda and the movement of weapons of mass destruction from Russia, China and others to countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and North Korea. A comprehensive system such as NOAH—prototypes already exist within the U.S. Army and the U.S. Special Operations Command—would enable the United States to combine its vast intelligence resources to identify and root out terrorist groups or countries engaged in the transfer of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological materials, Weldon said. A system similar to NOAH at Ft. Belvoir in Virginia already has access to raw data from various intelligence agencies, although the access may not be official and the Army has little authority to distribute any of the information it obtains. A system such as NOAH would benefit everyone, including all the intelligence organizations, Weldon said. For example, in 1997 he was scheduled to fly to Vienna to meet with Russian and Yugoslav officials to discuss ending the war in the Balkans. He learned he would be meeting with a man with close ties to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. When Weldon asked CIA Director George Tenet for information on this individual he was told the agency did not know much about him. So the congressman went to the information center at Ft. Belvoir. “They were able to unofficially get access to those sets. I asked them to run a profile for me of [this individual]. Before I left they gave me eight pages,” he said. “They told me that the guy and his three brothers were the owners of the largest bank in Yugoslavia, that their wives were best of friends with Milosevic’s wife, that they had financed Milosevic’s election, that the house Milosevic lived in was owned by the [man’s] family, that they employ 60,000 people both in Russia and Yugoslavia, that their bank financed the sale of an SA-10 [surface-to-air missile battery], that their bank was involved in a $4 billion German bonds scam,” he continued. “They gave me tons of information,” Weldon said. “The point is that the CIA nor the FBI even knew that existed.”
U.S. Response II: Bush Threatens to Veto Defense BillU.S. President George W. Bush threatened yesterday to veto a defense appropriations bill scheduled for debate today in the Senate. The Senate Appropriations Committee exceeded Bush’s requested spending limits by $15 billion for counterterrorism efforts such as developing vaccines, strengthening airport security and providing more relief to areas directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks (see GSN, Dec. 5). Bush had asked legislators to wait until next year to allocate additional funding. Meanwhile, 39 Republican senators signed a letter promising to support the president if he vetoed the bill, which would make it impossible for the Senate to override the veto. Republicans lack enough votes in the Senate to erase the extra $15 billion from the legislation, but they could stall the entire bill, which would force Democrats and Republicans to formulate a compromise. “The president made it as plain as day that if the Senate were to send the president a bill that complicates our nation’s defense needs, he will veto it … So why on earth would the Senate go through this exercise when it clearly won’t go anywhere, other than to delay America’s national defense needs?” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. “Terrorists don’t run on a fiscal year basis. Terrorists are operating all year long,” said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) in defense of the Democrats’ request (Alan Fram, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 6). States Will Need $4 Billion Meanwhile, the National Governors’ Association said yesterday that states would need up to $4 billion this year in counterterrorism efforts. States needed $1 billion to protect airports, bridges, power plants and other infrastructure and $3 billion to boost public health and law enforcement. Governors asked Congress for at least $3 billion (Associated Press/Miami Herald, Dec. 6).
European Response: EU and U.S. Will Share DataU.S. and European Union officials are expected to sign an agreement today to share information on terrorism and other crimes, according to the New York Times. The new agreement comes as several European countries have proposed new laws to crack down on terrorism. U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to attend today’s signing ceremony in Paris to highlight its significance, the Times reported. The agreement allows the sharing of “technical information” on crime patterns, smuggling and serious crimes, such as threats, between U.S. investigators and the pan-European police agency Europol. The agreement, however, does not allow Europol to share “personal information” such as names, photographs and addresses of suspects, criminal records, and names of witnesses, among others, according to the Times. Talks on a second agreement to allow sharing of personal information are planned to begin right away, the Times reported. “That will be, not difficult, but a careful exercise because our data-protection standards are higher than those of individual countries,” said Europol Deputy Director Willy Bruggeman (Donald McNeil, New York Times, Dec. 6). New European Anti-Terrorism Laws In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, several European nations have proposed tougher anti-terrorism laws that have come under criticism. The new laws are often tougher than laws passed in response to domestic terrorism, according to the New York Times. “Collective security is not the enemy of individual freedom,” said French Interior Minister Daniel Valliant. “The scale of the attacks on the U.S. and the way they were carried out has made us aware that no one is safe from such terrorist attacks.” France has proposed new legislation that would improve security in public places and allow police to search cars without warrants (see GSN, Nov. 1). Under previous laws, cars were labeled as “private places” and the police did not have the right to search them without a warrant, according to the Times. “My reaction [to the new legislation] is very critical,” said French human rights lawyer Dominique Tricaud. “Sept. 11 has done nothing to change the French strategy for fighting terrorism,” Tricaud said. “It was already in place because of the terror bombs in the 1980s and 1990s. There was no need for fresh measures.” Spain Spain has moved against the Basque independence movement ETA, which has been responsible for the deaths of more than 800 people over 30 years, the Times reported. This has included a legislative campaign against the political wing of the ETA. New restrictions against the ETA have come under little public dissent in Spain, according to the Times. One of the few critics is Xabier Arzalluz, of the Basque Nationalist Party. “One should not outlaw a political party,” Arzalluz said. “That is like outlawing ideals.” Great Britain Great Britain is seen to have proposed some of the strictest new anti-terrorism legislation, the Times reported. Included in the proposal are measures that give authorities the right to detain foreigners suspected of terrorism indefinitely and without trial (see GSN, Nov. 20). The provision led the United Kingdom to invoke an article of the European Convention on Human Rights and opt out of its restrictions on detention. The remainder of the EU does not allow detentiont without being charged with a crime. British Home Secretary David Blunkett said that public opinion for the new legislation was on his side and he would only make limited concessions, such as requiring the detention provision to be renewed after five years. Blunkett said he hoped the Parliament would pass the legislation by Christmas (Warren Hodge, New York Times, Dec. 6).
Interview: Former CIA Counterterrorist Leader Paul Pillar Discusses Fighting TerrorismGlobal Security Newswire’s Steve Hirsch last week interviewed terrorism expert Paul Pillar on a range of terrorism-related subjects. Pillar, formerly deputy chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, is the author of Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, published this year by the Brookings Institution Press. Global Security Newswire: A theme, maybe the major theme of your book is that you feel that terrorism should be, and that terrorism policy should be considered as, part of overall foreign policy. Is that what’s happening now in the United States or in the West? Paul Pillar: To a large degree it is. The forging of the coalition against terrorism has necessarily had the United States government doing the forging in the context of a whole host of conflicts and issues and concerns of our coalition partners, so by necessity, we’ve had to consider a lot of other foreign policy equities, not just terrorism per se. The question will be as time goes by, whether what tends to be a narrow public focus on the war on terrorism—as if it were World War II, or the Cold War or something else on which we are concentrating like a laser while trying to disregard other distractions—whether that might cause us to be too narrowly focused and lose sight of some of the other concerns and other equities that we’re going to have to be concerned about. GSN: Is that happening? Pillar: Time will tell. My main concerns have to do with the ability of the American public to think about more than one problem at a time. The degree of public support for what we call the war on terrorism has been remarkable and admirable, and it’s essential to do what we need to do with regard to counterterrorism. But there is inevitably a simplifying factor at work here, and it will take a lot of education by our leaders and creative leadership to ensure that the public is aware of all those other pitfalls and other concerns that must be taken into account as we prosecute this war. GSN: Is it a war? Pillar: There are some unfortunate aspects of the war terminology and analogy, the most unfortunate one being that this isn’t going to have a clear beginning and clear end, like World War II did, or the Cold War, for the most part, did. [Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld has said the right things in reminding us that this is not going to end with a surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri, but I’m not certain that we have all as Americans absorbed the implications of what the secretary said. I am disturbed by how often I hear references to “as long as the emergency lasts” or “as long as the war on terrorism is going on.” I think that’s the wrong frame of mind. What we are doing has an indefinite run. GSN: So you feel this will go on into the indeterminate future? Pillar: Necessarily, it will, although the intense public focus on it obviously will wane over time. GSN: Can it be won? Or lost? Pillar: We can win a war, or I prefer to say a campaign, against a particular terrorist group, or a particular terrorist leader. We may reach the point where we can declare a sort of victory over al-Qaeda. That does not mean we have won a war against terrorism as a whole. GSN: Is there a danger, when, right after Sept. 11, the talk was of ending the terrorist threat and later the talk was of military victory in Afghanistan—is there a danger of policymakers slipping into discussions of specific battles and losing sight of the original goal because of the more easily communicated and packaged goal of taking Kunduz, for example? Pillar: There always is that danger. I think our leaders, for the most part, have issued the appropriate reminders that the war on terrorism doesn’t end in Afghanistan. The president and Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary [of State Colin] Powell and others have said, in my view, all the right things to remind us of that. Nonetheless, as a matter of natural inclination, in the way that we as the public look at this, you’re quite right, it is far easier to follow progress in a war by looking at a campaign map in a newspaper and who has captured which town and who hasn’t than it is to follow the progress of this larger and more amorphous effort against international terrorism. So it’s a hazard, but so far, I think, the United States government has done what it can to reduce that hazard. The Evolution of Terrorism GSN: How has terrorism changed in recent years, in terms of who is conducting it, and if you will, talk a little bit, as you did in your book, about terrorism as part of the spectrum of international activity. Pillar: I think the main trend I would highlight is the trend away from state involvement and state sponsorship. If you compare international terrorism today versus what it was like, say 15 years ago, the role of states is much less, even though some of the states that are much less active today, such as Libya, are still listed as state sponsors. Another major dimension I would point out is the increasing lethality of terrorism, and the fact that more major terrorist incidents today than 15 or 20 years ago are designed to kill a lot of people, as opposed to being aimed at more specific political objectives, or practical objectives, like freeing comrades from prison. And the third trend I would highlight is the extension of the geographic reach of terrorist groups, and the fact that their infrastructures have grown literally worldwide, so you have Middle Eastern and South Asian groups that are quite capable of conducting major operations in the Western Hemisphere, like Sept. 11. GSN: Twenty years ago most of the terrorists were politically leftist. Are they now? Pillar: Before the end of the Cold War, through most of the 1980s, leftist terrorism was a very big part of the picture. One of the reasons the number of terrorist incidents declined substantially from the 1980s to the 1990s is that much of that leftist terrorism has essentially gone by the boards, particularly with those old-line European groups that we used to hear so much about in the ‘70s and ‘80s like the Red Brigades or the Red Army Faction. They bit the dust the same time that their patrons and supporters in Eastern Europe did. GSN: Does this have implications for U.S. policy? Pillar: I think one of the lessons I would draw from it for U.S. policy is that we should not assume that our foes of the present are going to be the foes of the future as far as international terrorism is concerned. We are, at present, mainly worried about the religiously motivated zealots, particularly those who claim to act in the name of Islam. I expect they will continue to be our main worry for the next few years, but we shouldn’t assume, looking much farther into the future, that there might not be some other, totally new brand of terrorism that will take its place as our main worry, just as the Islamists took the place of the leftists in the course of the last 15 or 20 years. GSN: Is there a way that you or somebody in the government could predict it at this point? Pillar: We do guesswork that is as educated as we can possibly make it and look at conflicts being played out, not necessarily military conflicts, but perhaps in the streets—for example, the anti-globalists causing a ruckus at major international meetings. One should look carefully at that as perhaps another set of causes that could breed more terrorism in the future. Those causing a ruckus in the streets today might take a more violent turn tomorrow. GSN: What about U.S. groups? Do they play a role in international terrorism and do they coordinate with overseas groups? Pillar: So far the links between the two have been very minor, such things as some exchanges of information and pamphlets between white supremacists and the like here in the United States and skinheads in Germany. But fortunately, so far, it’s been a very minor part of the picture. GSN: The United States, up until now, has pretty much been free of terrorism, but now we’re not. What has changed that has increased the danger to the United States now? Pillar: First of all, I’d put my finger on the earlier attack on the World Trade Center, the 1993 bombing, as a real wake-up call in that regard. That was the first major act of international terrorism on U.S. soil. What has changed? The main thing that has changed has been that extension of the geographic reach of terrorist groups, which means infrastructures that have grown, and cells that have been set up on multiple continents, as well as the increased movement of international terrorist operatives. That all has to do with globalization—the greater quantity and ease of movement of people and ideas and money and stuff, which legitimate businessmen have been the larger part of, but which terrorists have made use of this as well. It also has to do, once the World Trade Center attack in 1993 broke the ice, with demonstration effects. I think that attack, as well as the bombing in Oklahoma City two years later, even though that was the work of domestic perpetrators, showed foreign terrorists that it wasn’t really quite as hard to pull off a major operation in the United States as they probably thought before that. Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction GSN: One of the things that people talk about frequently with regard to terrorism is the potential for weapons of mass destruction, the connection between the two. Is there a likelihood of jumping to that level of danger? Pillar: There is a risk, and I would expect to see more attacks along the lines of the anthrax letters that we’ve seen in the past few months. That said, I believe that the specter of terrorists, especially international terrorists, using chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear means has been over-hyped in the sense that it has diverted our attention from what in my view will continue to be the main threat, which is the infliction of loss of life through conventional means. This, in fact, is what I would identify as one of the things that affected our thinking in this country that caused us—the collective us, Americans in general—to be so surprised by Sept. 11. There had been so much attention to chemical and biological mass casualty scenarios that we had tended to equate terrorism against the U.S. homeland with chemical or biological terrorism, and just about every domestic preparedness exercise you saw that took place always revolved around some chemical or biological scenario. We also tended to equate chemical or biological terrorism with mass casualty terrorism, which disregards the fact that, just like the anthrax letters and previous use by terrorists of chemical or biological agents, we are far more likely to see incidents with a few casualties rather than many casualties. So here we’ve had, this autumn, two attacks on the United States, the one that used box cutters and aircraft hijacking is the one that killed almost 4,000 people, the one that used the biological agent, anthrax spores, has so far killed five. We ought to reflect on that, I can assure you the terrorists will reflect on that. Airline Security GSN: Your book was finished last year, but you were fairly glowing about airline security and I wonder if you might have other thoughts about airline security. Pillar: Well, before Sept. 11, aviation security, and specifically the anti-hijacking part of it, had been a big success story. You can think back to the 1960s, when it seemed like every other month, somebody was hijacking a plane to Havana. So we put in a system with metal detectors and X-ray machines and so on, and, up until Sept. 11, it worked pretty darned well. That, along with the excessive focus on chemical and biological scenarios, I think, is another one of our thought patterns in this country that caused us to be surprised by Sept. 11. Not having had a hijacking for so long here in the United States, we did relax our guard, and we came to this system, which has now been much debated in Congress, in which low-bid contractors were responsible for security at airports and it was no big deal that somebody brought a knife on board. Obviously that has to change and it will be changed. GSN: Do you feel that the increased attention by the FBI to terrorism and other law enforcement steps are useful steps, the proper responses? Pillar: I think there are a lot of steps being taken by the FBI and by the Congress in legislation that are necessary and appropriate and will be useful. I think there are a lot of things about which there will be and should be public debate with regard to weighing the counterterrorist value of certain measures against issues of privacy, civil liberties and the other things that some members of Congress are raising. Those are legitimate issues, they should be debated in Congress and in public and I’m glad to see that they are. Where to Fight Terrorism GSN: Where is the main, proper venue for U.S. action? Pillar: The main venue for fighting international terrorism is behind countless closed doors in scores of foreign countries where individual terrorists and cells and branches of groups do their business of recruiting and raising money and making plans. The biggest form of support we need is the cooperation of foreign police and intelligence and internal security services, and what they can do in those scores of foreign countries by way of arresting, investigating, reporting, or rendering, confiscating and all those other steps that I would put under the heading of disruption of terrorist infrastructure. It is the main front on which this war on terrorism has to be waged. It will not be a front that you and I can read about in the newspapers as we look at maps of Afghanistan or similar measures of progress. GSN: And it won’t be something you can find out about by watching legislation? Pillar: Most of it you won’t find out about, because most if it, for reasons that should be pretty obvious, has to be kept secret. Occasionally a successful disruption will become public—for example the FBI’s success here in this country when they rolled up the plot in New York to bomb the sites in New York City following the World Trade Center bombing. But, for the most part, for reasons that have to do not just with intelligence sources and methods, but the sensitivities of our foreign partners, they have to be kept secret. GSN: Is there anything Congress can do? Pillar: Congress can continue to show the general support they have with regard to being generous with resources, as in fact they have, even before Sept. 11. They can show the wisdom of restraint, in leaving most of this fight to executive discretion and not trying to legislate matters having to do, for example, with what our particular relationship with a particular government ought to be because of its past role in terrorism. I think it’s a mistake to try to use measures such as the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act as a way of trying to bring governments like that into the right direction with regard to terrorism. More often than not it can be counterproductive. The Utility of Sanctions GSN: How useful are sanctions? Pillar: Sanctions have their place, as one tool among many, but we have tended to overuse them. There seems to be growing awareness in Washington over the last couple of years that we have overused them. When there is agreement with our allies and certain other conditions are present, sanctions can help to influence the targeted state's policy. But too often, as with U.S. sanctions against Iran or Cuba, they have succeeded not in changing another government's policies but only in making the United States appear out of step with everyone else. Consolidation of U.S. Anti-Terrorist Agencies? GSN: On the executive branch side, you are fairly critical in your book of centralization of counterterrorism functions, but you don’t go into it a lot. We are at a time right now when there’s a push in this administration to centralize counterterrorism functions, what are your doubts about it? Pillar: At a time of crisis like this there are a couple of natural tendencies that you hear all the time. One is that we’ve got to reorganize somehow—that the old organization failed us so we’ve got to make a change for the sake of making a change. That’s a natural reaction, but it’s not necessarily the most useful reaction. Two, there’s always this issue, whether it’s on terrorism or something else, about whether information’s being stovepiped, whether it’s being shared, whether there are conflicts between different agencies. This is the stuff of which dramatic congressional hearings are held. I don’t want to belittle the subject and imply that we don’t actually have some real problems along those lines, but most of what we hear on this subject are just natural reactions to the felt need to do something about a major problem. With regard to counterterrorism, the fact is, many things we have to do in counterterrorism get to the core missions of a number of different government departments and agencies—law enforcement, intelligence, regulatory bodies, the State Department, which conducts foreign policy, and so on. There is no perfect way to rearrange this particular bureaucratic map in a more centralized sort of way than what we have now that would not do certain forms of violence to the necessary intradepartmental coordination. If, for example, you were to somehow combine everything that the FBI does and the CIA does on counterterrorism, that would mean ripping one or the other or both out of its parent agency in a way that would work to the detriment of law enforcement or intelligence or both. GSN: In what way, can you give me an example? Pillar: For example, on the intelligence side, everything that the CIA does, and more generally that the [Director of Central Intelligence’s] Counterterrorist Center does, is heavily dependent on the operational elements of the CIA, which don’t belong to that center. They belong to regional divisions in CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Similarly, in the FBI, the real work on counterterrorism is done by FBI field offices, with which the FBI officers in Washington responsible for counterterrorism must coordinate very closely. So if you took the FBI headquarters part of the counterterrorism picture and took it out of the bureau so it was even farther removed from FBI field offices than it is now, that would work against the field-and-center coordination which is so vital—vital in law enforcement, in intelligence, in the military and everything else. GSN: In your book you talked about the different areas of action to fight terrorism: military, intelligence, law enforcement, financial, diplomacy. Although you don’t see the need for further centralization, do you see a specific role for each of these, a specific level of contribution from each of these? Pillar: They all make important contributions, and we have shortchanged any of them at our peril. The Pursuit of Convictions in U.S. Courts… GSN: Is the current creation of a homeland security office and the emphasis, at least in public, on military action right now, putting us at risk of going too far in either of those directions? Pillar: Well, there is that risk that you’ve mentioned earlier of a military campaign taking precedence over everything else once we are actually sending our troops out and guns are firing. So far I don’t think our government has fallen into that trap of ignoring the rest of it. I think in the past we’ve fallen into the corresponding trap of giving too much attention to criminal prosecutions, in that a prosecution in U.S. court was seen as a victory in the war, to be valued for its own sake, as opposed to valued for the effect it may or may not have on saving lives in the future by preventing or avoiding future terrorist attacks. I think we’ve gotten away from that now, and I have heard former senior law enforcement officials acknowledge that we should get away from it. Although the FBI and other investigative agencies have an absolutely critical role, quite obviously, to play, getting a prosecution in a U.S. court is not necessarily always, nor should it always be, the goal for which we’re striving. Those investigative resources can be applied, as they are to a great degree now, toward avoiding future terrorist attacks in ways that don’t necessarily result in a criminal prosecution, but result in disruption. I think it’s more important to save lives than it is to get a prosecution, to put it quite bluntly, and many of my law enforcement colleagues would agree with that. …And International Courts GSN: Proponents of the judicial process would and have claimed that this is the best way to go. What is it that they are missing, what is it that you lose by going to a court, and let’s not just say a U.S. court, what about an international court? Pillar: Well, I wouldn’t place much stock on an international court. The issue of the International Criminal Court, which hasn’t yet come into existence, has been raised. That would not be a very good body for trying terrorist crimes, one, because all of the old problems of distinguishing definitionally between terrorism and other sorts of crimes would still be in the purview of national courts, and secondly, because in prosecuting terrorist cases, you need a particularly close relationship between the prosecutors and courts on the one hand and the intelligence and security agencies on the other that commonly provide information, often very sensitive information. That’s a challenge enough as it is, to prosecute in one’s national courts, dealing with classified information. It would be even more of a challenge in an international criminal court. But even if the ICC can’t play a role—and, by the way, when the United States initially refused to sign the convention that created the ICC, it was partly over this problem having to do with whether terrorism was going to be under the jurisdiction—even if the ICC doesn’t play a role, we should be very open to other national courts being the place to prosecute international terrorists, even terrorists that are of concern to us in the United States. Many of them are also wanted for crimes elsewhere, and if they are put in the hands of a country which we can trust to persevere and make certain that these people see justice for the crimes they’ve committed, we shouldn’t be at all hesitant to let someone else’s judicial system do it and not necessarily our own. In fact, that can be to our advantage in some respects with regard to lessening the chance of terrorist reprisal against the United States and also in some cases, lessening the public relations platform for the terrorists, given a long and highly publicized trial, which would likely be the case here in the United States. GSN: On the one hand you play down the importance of courts in this country but seem to be more willing to use courts of other countries. Pillar: They both have important roles. My point was simply that we have tended to think only of our own courts to the exclusion of others and to think of only a successful prosecution in U.S. court as an end in itself, rather than the way it ought to be looked at, as a means for saving lives in the future. Freezing Terrorist Assets GSN: In your book you said that you felt that the claims of what can be accomplished by going after terrorists money have been oversold, what did you mean by that? Pillar: There is a contribution, to be sure, to be made in attempting to freeze or interdict terrorist funds. But sometimes, and this is what’s oversold, one hears somebody speak about the lifeblood of terrorism being money and if we can only dry that up we’ll dry up terrorism. That’s an overstatement of the contribution to be made. It’s an important front in the war on terrorism, but one where we have to realize the limitations, the main limitation being that terrorists are very adept at hiding the money trail, using multiple channels, using false names for accounts, and using informal methods like the so-called hawala system you’ve read about, which is an informal means of transferring funds that don’t go through the banking system at all. Also there is the fact that for most terrorism you don’t need a whole lot of money. The Sept. 11 hijackers evidently used, according to some estimates, as much as half a million [dollars], but the great majority of the terrorism we face costs far far less than that, and so even if you dry up most of the funds it won’t stop most of it from happening. Comprehending the Threat GSN: Do you think that there is a firm understanding in the United States and in the West of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and the roots of this problem? Pillar: I have some concern that we don’t have a firm understanding that the terrorist threat, even the radical Islamist part of the terrorist threat, goes beyond bin Laden and goes beyond al-Qaeda. That’s why I would say that even if we do reach the point where we can declare a form of victory against al-Qaeda, we still have a long way to go in the fight against terrorism. The radical Islamist portion of the international terrorist threat is an organizationally very complicated picture, one of networks of networks, of which what we know as al-Qaeda is only a part. It’s probably the most important part, bin Laden being the single most important figure, and taking them out of the picture would make a big difference. But there would be other groups, cells and individuals with varying degrees of involvement in these networks of networks that would still be a problem for us. GSN: Is it within the Islamists? Pillar: Yes. And then beyond that, you have, of course, other brands of terrorism that still ought to be a worry for us, even including some of the leftists, of which you still have groups in places like Greece and Turkey and various parts of Latin America, that have done us harm in the past and are still capable of doing harm to the United States. GSN: What other types of terrorism should we be worried about? Pillar: In the short term I’m still worried mainly about radical Islamists and others who claim to act in the name of religion, but I would be most worried over the longer term about those groups that haven’t even taken up terrorism yet. This gets back to the issue of trying to predict where the next emerging problem is going to be. Maybe the anti-globalists in league with some of the old leftists will take a violent turn and will cause us to be worrying much more about them three or four years from now than we are now. GSN: Newspapers have been talking about after Afghanistan—Yemen, Sudan, Colombia. You and others all say this is more than Afghanistan, this is more than bin Laden. Are these likely places where we are also going to have to be? Pillar: If you’re talking not necessarily about military action, all of those countries you mentioned and many more will be fronts in this war on terrorism, mainly the less visible kinds of front that we talked about before in which the people on the front line are policemen and security agents and not armed forces. Afghanistan, with particular reference to the use of armed force, really is sui generis. There isn’t any other place that has played, over the last several years, the role that Afghanistan has played as the premier safe haven for international terrorists, with the Taliban being the regime that has been more closely allied with terrorists than any other regime. Our use of military force there now is also unique. It is going beyond our previous uses of military force, such as against Libya in 1986 or Iraq in 1993, or even against the bin Laden targets in 1998, in which we were making retaliatory strikes with some hope of causing some damage. What’s going on with U.S. and British forces in Afghanistan today is no less than the overthrow of a regime and the wholesale cleaning out of the world’s premier safe haven for terrorists. So to the extent that we’re successful in Afghanistan, that will make a far greater difference than any other previous application of military force. But I don’t see any other place right now where military force could, or in my view should, be used in a comparable way. Overthrowing the Taliban GSN: Is the overthrow of the Taliban government necessary to eliminate the terrorist threat from Afghanistan? Pillar: Yes, certainly from today’s optic it is. We have crossed a Rubicon of sorts with the military action. One might have been able to debate before—and there was a lot of debate—as to whether the Taliban could be separated from al-Qaeda and brought around in a way that they would dispose of the bin Laden problem. But the relationship between bin Laden and the top Taliban leadership, Mullah [Mohamed] Omar specifically, was so close that it was difficult to make a case that separation ever could have occurred. So the short answer to your question is yes. The Need for Islamic Cooperation GSN: Can the West, either the United States specifically or the West as a whole, be successful in action against radical Islamists without cooperation or further cooperation from the Islamic world? Pillar: That cooperation will be critical in more than one way. There is the practical way of the police and intelligence work that we discussed earlier. But also, just as important, is the political climate that governments in the Muslim world will set through their own statements, through their encouragement or discouragement to their press or their clergy regarding what they say about bin Laden or the causes he has espoused, or the United States, or controversial issues like the Israeli-Palestinian issue, which can inflame people and drive them in some instances to terrorism. The political climate that these governments help set will be an important part of determining how much terrorism we have in the years ahead. GSN: Are you referring to their specific statements about bin Laden or the general overall political climate in these countries? Pillar: Both. In the first instance, it’s what is said specifically about what extremists like bin Laden do and whether their actions are excusable or not. But it’s broader than that. It’s a matter not just of the climate for extremism, but also such issues as the political openness and the economic openness in many of these countries. To the extent that disgruntled young men, especially young men who want to make a statement, do not have other, more peaceful avenues for making their statement, the chances will be higher that they will be recruited by terrorist groups. The more that, through political liberalization and the expansion of economic opportunity, they have other ways not just to have a good life, but to express their own grievances, the odds of recruitment by terrorists go down. GSN: It would be difficult, wouldn’t it, to ask simultaneously for increased law enforcement and intelligence and specific cooperation from Middle Eastern governments and at the same time be pushing for political liberalization? Pillar: There would certainly be various forms of resistance or disinclination on the part of governments to do that, but I don’t think it’s contradictory at all. To the extent that their own long-term best interests can be impressed on them, they will realize that—just as we in this country have to use a combination of police techniques, including the newer weapons that are being furnished by Congress to the FBI, as well as reliance on what is the real strength of this country, our political and economic openness and opportunities—both things are important to the fight on terrorism, not just here in the United States, but in the countries overseas. Support for Israel GSN: You said in your book that if the United States decreased its support for Israel, it not only probably would not lower the terrorist threat, but would probably raise the terrorist threat—why do you think that? Pillar: It’s a matter of confidence on the Israeli side. If Israelis—and I think this is probably true of Israelis of all political stripes—saw the support from the United States that has been an important part of the Israeli experience for the last half-century, suddenly withdrawn or markedly reduced, the fears and the concerns would be such that the instinctive reaction would be to clamp down with hard-line policies that, in turn, would be bad news for a peace process and, if anything, would probably stimulate more violent resistance on the Palestinian side. GSN: But why would that increase the terrorist threat to the United States, or am I misinterpreting what you’re saying? Pillar: It’s really more a matter of the sum total of terrorism emanating from that part of the world, whether it’s directed toward the Israelis or toward the United States. There’s still an expectation out there that the United States shouldn’t just refrain from supporting what Israel’s opponents may see as Israel’s worst tendencies, but to somehow solve the problem and achieve a peace settlement satisfactory to the Palestinian side. What that requires is not U.S. disengagement but U.S. engagement, including continuing the long-standing relationship with Israel. The Role of International Conferences and the United Nations GSN: You also don’t express a great deal of confidence in global conferences on terrorism. Pillar: There’s a long and frustrating history of large conferences haggling over definitions and not really producing any concrete results that help anyone. The history of international cooperation on terrorism has been quite clear that the smaller the forum, the greater the chance of effectiveness, while the larger the forum, the more likely it’s going to be a lot of talk and a lot of disagreement and no action. GSN: A lot of U.N. partisans hold out great hope for a newly invigorated United Nations with a newly integrated United States. Pillar: The U.N. has some very important roles to play in some of this, such as sanctioning and approving, be it through a Security Council resolution or something else, action that we in the United States have taken or that we and a few of our partners have taken. In connection with the Afghan situation, the U.N. is going to have a very important role to play, at least in blessing whatever political and security arrangements may be devised elsewhere, but also, one hopes, helping to forge under [U.N. envoy] Ambassador [Lakhdar] Brahimi’s leadership new arrangements that will bring at least a modicum of stability to Afghanistan. GSN: Do you see any broader implications of Sept. 11 for the United Nations and its role in the future? Pillar: Only the obvious one that it has put counterterrorism suddenly much higher up on the list of concerns that are truly global concerns and not just related to the United States.
U.S. Response:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Back to top |
Foreign ministers from 55 European, North American and Central Asian nations today unanimously adopted an anti-terrorism plan that includes measures to increase police cooperation and stop international funding of terrorist groups.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the plan, adopted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, would add “a new level of energy” to the war on terrorism.
“All OSCE participating states can and should work to sever terrorists’ financial lifelines,” Powell said during the OSCE meeting in Bucharest. “All OSCE participating states can and should take additional steps to improve cooperation among law enforcement and financial institutions.”
The new plan requests that OSCE members accede to all 12 U.N. anti-terrorism resolutions by the end of next year. Even though the plan has few other concrete measures, its unanimous adoption will add urgency for enacting the U.N. resolutions, diplomats said. The plan could also increase police cooperation between the European Union and Central Asian nations, they added (Alan Sipress, Washington Post, Dec. 5).
|
Back to top |
About Newswire | Contact National Journal | Re-Use Guidelines
HOME | CONTACT US | GET INVOLVED | SITE MAP
