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Attacks on U.S. Soil:
Southeast Asia
With Steve Coll
Washington Post Managing Editor
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2001; Noon EDT
Last Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, in a horrific series of events, two hijacked planes hit and destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center, one plane crashed into the Pentagon and another in Somerset County, Pa. Thousands are presumed dead or injured as emergency services and relief workers continue to make sense of the chaotic scenes. The Bush administration and law enforcement officials are actively seeking those responsible and have declared war on terrorism.
The world is now focusing on Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be protected by the Taliban government. Pakistan, Iran, India and other nearby neighbors in South Asia are increasingly on alert for possible military action in the region.
Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll, who spent three years in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent, was online Tuesday, Sept. 18 to talk about the region.
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests
and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
washingtonpost.com :
Good morning, Steve, and welcome. Many Americans not only are unfamiliar with the religion and politics of South Asia, but cannot identify with or understand perceptions of the U.S. worldwide. Can you shed some light on how the U.S. and American foreign policy are viewed in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan? What is the biggest misconception you think Americans have about the region?
Steve Coll: The points of view about American in all three countries can be quite diverse, but within that group of three, there are important distinctions. India's government is currently exploring a historic rapproachment with Washington, seeking closer partnership than at any time since India became independent in 1947. So in that sense, this crisis comes at a good time for India, if it is able to step and extend and deepen the partnership in the ways it was already seeking. For Pakistan, too, the crisis is in a sense an opportunity. Pakistan had been a close partner of the United States during the Cold War but its nuclear ambitions and the anti-democratic coup launched by General Musharraf combined to create a colder relationship with Washington in the last two years than has been true for a while. Now that alienation is being rapidly reversed as Pakistan moves to cooperate with U.S. efforts to eliminate Binladen's organization in Pakistan. Behind the scenes, there will be a competitive and challenging effort to redefine U.S. relations simultaneously with India and Pakistan, two countries that are in a virtual state of war and who will see U.S. policy to some extent as a zero sum game. Afghanistan is a case apart. Its government is not recognized by the United States. Its population is struggling with famine and may be the poorest people in the world. The U.S. provides substantial humanitarian aid now but not nearly enough to relieve Afghanistan's broad civilian suffering.
Washington, D.C.:
Is it worth considering a successor to the Marshall Plan, directed in part to alleviating the conditions in the Mideast that drive young men into extreme religious sects? Or are the religious and cultural divisions, and the resentment of U.S. involvement, beyond mitigation by such an initiative? (Jessica Stern referred to "draining the swamp" that supports such groups)
Steve Coll: A good question and a complicated subject. What are the sources of radicalization among Binalden's followers? The record suggests a complex and multifaceted answer. First, the governments in the region--whether the secular regimes in countries such as Egypt or the royalist and Islamic regimes in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the gulf--have on the whole failed to develop the sorts of pluralist and inclusive societies that might help stem radicalization. Interestingly, many of Binladen's followers are educated and middle class, like other radicals throughout history--they are doctors, accountants, teachers, and in the case of the attackers in America, erstwhile university students and pilots. It is impossible to generalize about the sources of radicalization in such biographies, but in some cases raised expectations as families rise into the middle class are not accompanied by opportunity. Then, too, when these middle class young men migrate to the West, they seem in some cases to be alienated rather from rather than integrated into this new setting. And while they are struggling to define themselves, they are often exposed at universities, on cassette tapes and from colleagues and other sources to intense, charismatic, highly radical preaching and teaching that urges these young men to defy the West and even attack it.
So, having said all that, a Marshall Plan that poured money into existing regimes without achieving broader successes than those regimes have yet attained--whether in economics or in social pluralism and opportunity--would be unlikely to change the current equation.
New Haven, Conn.:
To what extent can the Talian be considered not only a religious but also an ethnic movement, and how might this affect the course of the coming conflict?
Steve Coll: This is an important issue. The Afghan Taliban are predominantly from the Pashtun ethnic group, which makes up somewhat more than half of Afghanistan's population and which is organized in tribal clusters in the east and south of the country. The Taliban have relatively few followers from the northern ethnic minorities--the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and the Hazara Shia. Thus the Northern Alliance, the armed oppostion group which opposes the Taliban and clings to a small chunk of ground in the northeast, is a coalition of the northern ethnic minorities. If the United States allies with the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban, it will have only solved half of the Afghan equation. It may also need, perhaps with Pakistani and Afghan exile assistance, to organize a credible Pashtun opposition to the Taliban--a Pashtun opposition that could perhaps be linked up eventually with the Northern Alliance. This is treacherous work. The elements of such a Pashtun oppostion are scattered around in exile, but the depths of rivalry and complexity within them would be hard to overstate.
London Ontario:
How stable is the Pakistani Government? I would think that the leaders are risking overthrow to support the USA at this time? What is in it for Pakistan, and could they be a DIShonest partner?
Steve Coll: The stability of the Pakistani government should be a concern to Western policymakers in several respects. First, and most important, is the question of stability and consensus within the Pakistan military. General Musharraf seems to have broad support from the officer corps and he has been in office long enough now to establish himself reasonably well. However, the Pakistani officer corps has for 15 years or more been infected, to use that pejorative term, by strains of Islamic radicalism right up to the top. Musharraf himself is not such a radical but there are generals around him who have strong pan-Islamic, anti-American views, and who may even be sympathetic to Binladen. One danger would be if such officers proved numerous and radical enough to mount a coup against Musharraf. This seems to me, from afar, somewhat unlikely, but the fact of these ideological divisions within the military is unarguable. As to the broader stability of the government vis a vis the population, that would seem to me a lesser risk in the short run. There is a significant radical Islamic political movement within Pakistan, manifested not only in political and radical groups but in social service organizations such as schools. The leaders of this movement will undoubtedly exploit any Pakistani alliance with the United States in the hope that it will bring them political gain. But I doubt that they could mount an effective and sustained violent opposition to the government at this stage. Acts of terrorism from this Pakistani Islamic right, however, are a real possibility.
Baltimore, Md.:
What are the chances that we could successfully support an anti-Taliban revolt within Afghanistan? Say, by assisting the Northern Alliance.
Steve Coll: The Northern Alliance is eager to help. Its representatives are running around Washington offering what they claim to be tens of thousands of soldiers. Certainly their participation could be important, but as discussed above, without a Pashtun element to the opposition, it could never be enough on its own--it would be an error, in an Afghan context, for the United States to solely align itself with the northern minorities against the Pashtuns. But the Northern Alliance probably feels like it has won the lottery here--after hanging on by their fingernails for so long, fighting alone against the Taliban with meager support from Russia, India and Iran, they finally have a chance for major military and financial support and to get themselves back to Kabul. I suspect that will unfold over the next few months in one form or another.
London, England:
Maybe this is simplifying things a bit in central Asia, but I can envision a Pakistan embroiled in civil war after General Musharaf helps the U.S. with its attack on Afghanistan. A possible consequence in Pakistan could be a fundamentalist-backed government (a la Afghanistan) in possession of nuclear weapons.
Could you see this happening?
Steve Coll: Partially addressed this above, but certainly it worth remembering that a destablized Pakistan could be a catastrophic problem because of its proven capacity to detonate nuclear weapons.
New Haven, Conn.:
Thanks very much for your response to my earlier question about the extent to which the Taliban can be viewed as representing an ethnic as much as a religious movement. In your reply, you spoke of northern minority groups within Afghanistan allied against the Taliban. Would a victory against the Taliban that could install these groups into power, along with Pashtun anti-Taliban opposition, end up creating a regime as anti-Western as the Taliban? I understand that bin Laden wanted in fact to mediate between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. In other words, how democratic or tolerant of the West is the internal Afghan opposition?
Steve Coll: The Northern Alliance is led by Islamic fighters who are in many cases conservative in a cultural and social sense, but who do not embrace the more puritanical aspects of Taliban and Saudi Wahhabi theology. Traditional Afghan Islam, while deeply conservative socially, also has pluralistic and tolerant aspects that are not recognizable in the beliefs and practices of the Taliban. Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader who was assassinated several days before the terrorist attacks in the United States, in what may well have been a coordinated assault, travelled frequently to Europe to raise support for his movement and had a sophisticated approach to bridging Afghan traditional culture with the outside world.
Washington, D.C.:
How do we anticipate China responding to the possible military presence in the region?
Steve Coll: Important question and a bit of a mystery at the moment. General Musharraf depends heavily on Chinese support in his rivalry with India, for his missile and nuclear program, and for economic aid. He reportedly planned to travel to Beijing this week to consult--I don't know if that trip is going off or not. During the Cold War period, China secretly collaborated with the United States to aid anti-Soviet Afghan rebels. Now the geopolitical egg has been rescrambled, however, and China will want to assess its own interests carefully. It seems doubtful that they will oppose U.S. attacks on Afghanistan outright, but they will not want to lose leverage in the region or to encourage unchecked U.S. hegemony.
Bethesda, Md.:
Does anyone in the Middle East actually believe in democracy? It seems that all the regimes there are deeply repressive, whether they are friendly to us or not. The Saudi government is nasty and dictatorial; its opponents want to set up an even nastier dictatorship.
Steve Coll: The record of democratization in the Arab world is quite poor. There are fits and starts in a few smaller Gulf States such as Kuwait and Qatar, but those experiments have been limited to date. Morocco has tried to make its fundamentally royalist regime more consultative, as has Jordan. But even setting aside the familiar debates about the risks and benefits of a democratic system when governments confront radical, potentially revolutionary Islamic movements, the related and unarguable problem is that these societies have on the whole failed to develop cultures of pluralism and economic opportunity adequate to fill younger generations with enough of a sense of hope and possibility. Or so the record of their radicalization would seem to suggest.
Chevy Chase, Md.:
Why has Iran supported the opposition against the Taliban?
Steve Coll: As you know, among the strains of Islam are two distinct sects, the Sunnis and the Shias, with the former being by far the largest. Iran, however, predominantly follows the Shia canon of Islamic belief. In Afghanistan, the Hazara ethnic minority are Shia. They are a kind of double minority--ethnically and also religiously--and they have direct cultural and historical ties to Iran. Over the years, Iran has sought to protect the Hazara population and to exercise influence in Afghanistan through them. Since the Hazara are part of the anti-Taliban opposition, Iran is also part of that opposition. A number of Iranian diplomats have been murdered by Taliban forces in Afghanistan in recent years, making Iranian government resentment even sharper and more personal.
Gaithersburg, MD:
How in the world could one reasonably expect the United States to carry on a major military campaign in Afghanistan? Aside from distance, terrain, cultural differences and the fact that we really don't know where the Al Qaeda leaders are -- it just doesn't make sense to mass troops or form alliances with fringe groups. Does that make sense to you?
Steve Coll: It is extremely difficult terrain, as history has proven to the British and the Russians. It is difficult topographically, because of its utter lack of infrastructure and supply lines, and also in political and social terms. The question the American government must confront, however, is whether it is going to be so daunted by this terrain that it simply allows Al Qaeda's leaders to hole up there indefinitely. This would seem unlikely, given President Bush's forceful statements. Given an intent to go after Binladen, then, and acknowledging the huge problems of the terrain, the key to success would seem to be intelligence. The most difficult thing of all to do would be to go stomping around Afghanistan on a generalized search and destroy mission without having good information about where they bandits you seek are hiding.
Arlington, Va.:
Should we expect any alliance support from Kuwait?
Steve Coll: Yes, I would imagine all of the Gulf States will support any American military campaign against Binladen. If American objectives were to shift to include Iraq, that would be a different issue.
Washington, D.C.:
What is the strength of Islamic fundamentalism within the Pakistani military? Would Musharraf face a mutiny if he were to actively support U.S. military action against a fellow Muslim state, or would the danger stem more from the civil unrest that would follow such an action?
Steve Coll: I answered this above. I should add that, over the last ten or twenty years, the most prevalant strains of Islamic radicalism within the Pakistan military have tended to be concentrated in its powerful and semi-autonomous military intelligence service, which is known as Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI. The problem here is that ISI is the very organization that knows the most about the Taliban and Binladen, indeed helped to build the Taliban up was they rose to power in the late 1990s.
Boston, Mass.:
U.S. has in the past refrained from putting pressure on Pakistan to cease its support to the "Jihadis" in Kashmir. In your opinion, how will that play out in context of this new focus on ridding the world of culture of terrorism?
Steve Coll: Very tricky part of the equation. It is a crucial element of the subterranean competition between India and Pakistan that will unfold within U.S. policy efforts in South Asia as it seeks to attack Binladen's network. Pakistan will wish to isolate its support for Kashmiri militants from any anti-terrorism policy the U.S. pursues in Afghanistan. India will seek to do the opposite. In truth, there are seamless connections between Pakistani-based Islamic radical organizations that support the Taliban and those that support Kashmiri militants. ISI has its hands in both pots. And Binladen's Arab and North African followers have occasionally surfaced under arms in Kashmir as well. The U.S., I would guess, would not wish to step into the swamp of sorting out the Kashmir problem, preferring to concentrate on ridding the world of Binladen. But this issue will be bubbling at its feet.
Washington, D.C.:
Can you maybe discuss the role the U.S. has
had in assisting the Taliban, either directly
or indirectly. We know the U.S. funnelled
money through the Pakistan ISI during the
Afghan war, and we know the Pakistani's are
directly involved in the rising in power of
the Taliban in 1994.
Steve Coll: When the Taliban first rose to power out of the refugee camps, the U.S. initially saw them as a potential source of stability in Afghanistan, which had been brought to its knees by years of civil war, including continuous war since the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989. There was a tentative embrace of the Taliban by the Clinton Administration for a short while on the theory that perhaps the Taliban could be a "clean" government that would allow for peace and stable delivery of humanitarian aid. Also, the Taliban seemed willing to crack down on poppy and heroin production, another U.S. concern. But this flirtation ended fairly quickly as the Taliban's draconian social and police policies stirred the oppostion of U.s. womens' and human rights groups. The U.S. never recognized the Taliban government formally and after the Taliban refused to turn over Binladen following the embassy bombings in 1998, the estrangement was complete.
Washington, D.C.:
A lot has been mentioned in the past couple of days about how Pakistan was instrumental in installing the Taliban as leaders in Afghanistan. Besides a stable regime in a previously anarchic state, what did Pakistan have to gain with such an extremist and repressive goverment right next door? Wouldn't this only incite conservative, extremist elements in Pakistani society?
Steve Coll: Yes, I would certainly say so. But the ISI and other elements whoi helped build up the Taliban shared enough of their pan-Islamic outlook, and recognized their fighters as potential instruments of Pakistani covert military policy in Indian-occupied areas of Kashmir. And the first point you mention carried alot of weight--the Taliban became a stable and effective instrument of Pakistani regional ambitions, or so its supporters in Pakistan believed.
Washington, D.C.:
Has Iraq taken a position on Afghanistan's internal conflict?
Steve Coll: Saddam Hussein's secular government has relatively little influence in Afghanistan. There has been much discussion, but not alot of hard evidence, around the possibility of a Binladen-Iraq tactical alliance in terror attacks. If such an alliance has indeed formed from time to time, it would have been an anti-American marraige of convenience, with Binladen presumably thinking of the infidel Saddam: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Chevy Chase, Md.:
What led Sudan to expel bin Laden? Was that a politically difficult decision?
Steve Coll: The U.S. put an awful lot of pressure on the Khartoum government. Binladen's supporters within that government, while important and influential, were not so strong as to withstand that pressure. Sudan saw that it was in its interest to rid itself of Binladen. It has since attracted more international investment than it likely would have if Binladen was still living there.
Washington, D.C.:
Some Muslims deeply resent American involvement in the Gulf War as an interference in their dispute, and an invasion and occupation by infidels. Given the schisms within and between the several nations, can you imagine a useful, gradual disengagement by the US from some undemocratic regimes -- or is that too disruptive to our oil dependence to even contemplate?
Steve Coll: As long as oil plays the role in the world economy that it does now, and as long as the amounts of it under the gulf waters and deserts remain as proportionately large as they are now, it is hard to contemplate U.S. disengagement developing.
Washington, D.C.:
Prior to these tragic events, we already witnessed a "new" emphasis placed on India by the Bush administration. At this stage, one can already surmise that the past India/Pakistan equation is no more. Both find themselves on almost opposite sides of the administration. Do you see India emerging as THE focal point for the United States' Asia and South Asia policy, and Pakistan being categorized more as part of either a wider "terrorism" agenda or Central Asian policy?
Steve Coll: Well, that did seem to be where U.S. policy was headed before this crisis. Pakistan's aim now presumably is to use this crisis to put itself back on more equal footing re U.S. policy in South Asia. The U.S., for its part, has tried to say that its policy in South Asia need not be a zero sum game, i.e. that India's gain need not be Pakistan's loss. But both India and Pakistan know that this is only true up to a point. It will be interesting to watch now how this plays out. It seems likely, however, that in any scenario, U.S. ties to India will substantially strengthen during the next several years--both as a result of this crisis and for other reasons.
That's all I've got time for. Thanks for all the questions.
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