DATE=09/11/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01390

TITLE=Two Years in the War on Terrorism

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT= Transcript for OTL released Friday UTC

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: Two Years in the war on terrorism. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: This month marks the second anniversary of the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The crashing of commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington D-C, and a field in Pennsylvania killed over three-thousand people from more than eighty countries. Since then, the United States and its allies have been fighting a global war against the terrorists.

[George W. Bush SOT]:

Nearly two years ago, following deadly attacks on our country, we began a systematic campaign against terrorism. America and a broad coalition acted first in Afghanistan by destroying the training camps of terror and removing the regime that harbored al-Qaida. In a series of raids and actions around the world, nearly two-thirds of al-Qaida's known leaders have been captured or killed and we continue on al-Qaida's trail. We have exposed terrorist front groups, seized terrorist accounts, taken new measures to protect our homeland, and uncovered sleeper-cells inside the United States.

Host: Earlier this year as part of the war against terror, a U-S coalition liberated Iraq from the regime of Saddam Hussein. But terrorists and former regime elements are trying to undermine efforts to rebuild Iraq with attacks on Iraqis, coalition forces and the country's infrastructure. How goes the war on terrorism? I'll ask my guests: Peter Bergen, a journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden;" Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy; and joining us by phone from Pakistan, Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author of the books, "Taleban" and "Jihad." Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Peter Bergen, let's start by talking about what successes there have been in the last two years. What do you think has worked in the war on terrorism?

Bergen: Well, the most obvious one is there hasn't been anything like nine-eleven. I mean, this is rather perhaps cold-blooded, but if you add up the number of deaths as a result of terrorist attacks since nine-eleven, you're talking about three-hundred people in the course of two years. That's obviously very different from three thousand people in the space of an hour. So, you know, getting -- al-Qaida means "the base" in Arabic -- they lost their base in Afghanistan. They lost their training camps. They are severely disrupted. We've arrested in fact or captured or killed more than two-thirds -- the President said two-thirds. You're actually looking at only Osama bin Laden and [Ayman] Al-Zawahiri, the number one and number two in al-Qaida are now at large. Now that's a big only. These are not people you want at large, However, al-Qaida as an organization has been severely disrupted. But al-Qaida has morphed from an organization into an ideology and in an ideology, you can arrest as many people as you want. You can't arrest ideas. This is not the Gambino crime family where you arrest all the Gambinos and it goes out of business. So, you know, obviously there have been successes against al-Qaida as an organization. You know, declaring victory in the war on terrorism is not something I think you can do right now.

Host: Frank Gaffney, what do you think have been the successes so far?

Gaffney: I think it is correct that the body count as one indicator of having avoided certain further disasters is in itself something of a victory. I believe taking out not only the base of support that Osama bin Laden once enjoyed in Afghanistan, but also removing another state sponsor of terror in Iraq has been a singular accomplishment of real benefit in the war on terror as well as strategically more generally. I think a larger and somewhat more amorphous but no less real success has been to arouse the American people to the fact that the notion that had taken hold after the fall of the Berlin wall and, frankly, had been promoted by quite a number of people on, I'm sorry to say, both sides of the political aisle here in the United States, namely, that there were no more problems confronting us internationally: We could either ignore the world and tend to our knitting or simply go about our affairs and they would be no further security dangers to us. This was, of course, nonsense, and I think the American people came on September 11th two years ago to appreciate the dangerous nature of that nonsense and, I hope, retain that recognition today.

Host: Ahmed Rashid, are you there by phone?

Rashid: Yes, I agree with Peter. I think a lot of the leadership has been taken out. I think one of the big successes after nine-eleven was the galvanization of the international community and particularly Muslim countries to wake up to the reality that has been staring them in the face for quite some years; that is, the issue of Islamic extremism. The reluctance of regimes to do anything about it has really now changed quite dramatically. Now I think Iraq in that sense has been a bit of a setback because the international community has not backed the American invasion of Iraq, but nevertheless, I think, you know, with all the kind of mechanisms that have been put in place now -- [prohibiting] financing a terrorist group, banning terrorist groups, preventing sort of racist literature, etc. -- I think many, many countries in the world who were trying to avoid this issue have now come on board as it were, and there is a universal attempt to try and curb terrorism.

Host: Peter Bergen, how significant has this turnaround been? Are there particular countries where that turnaround in attitudes towards extremism within their borders has been particularly significant?

Bergen: Well, exhibit one is Indonesia. It's own self image, of course, [with] some accuracy here, was as a moderate Muslim nation: "We don't have a problem." And then there was this group Jemaah Islamiyah which was really functioning very openly before the Bali attack that killed two-hundred people. And now the Indonesian government is making attempts, they're not perfect, but really to go after the terrorists. I think Ahmed Rashid is sitting there in Pakistan. [Pervez] Musharraf is doing everything in his power. Musharraf is doing everything in his power. You know, Musharraf has been on the receiving end of assassination attempts by al-Qaida. So, it's not a perfect situation, but if you look at the people that are being arrested, the senior members of al-Qaida, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the overall commander of nine-eleven, Ramsi bin Al-Sheib who also planned it, a guy called Attash who was behind the Cole attack. All of these arrests are happening in Pakistan. So, Pakistan is taking a pretty proactive role here. There are people who criticize and say it's not enough, but I can't imagine, short of getting Osama bin Laden, he's the last really important person that they haven't caught.

Gaffney: Let me just say that I worry a little bit about, coming back to something Peter said a moment ago, that we are not getting anything like the kind of cooperation from one of the countries that is arguably central to the problem that we're facing, namely Saudi Arabia. And while I believe there is reason to think the Saudis have themselves been somewhat shaken by al-Qaida's murderous operations in their own country a few months back, it's still abundantly clear that the Saudi ideology, if you will, sort of "Islamofascist" ideology dressed up as a theology born of the Wahabbist strain of Islam, is animating and with the benefit of government resources, funding much of the terrorism that we continue to face. And I believe that persists to this day despite the protests from their spokesmen and the evident concern that they have that some of these terrorists are now taking the opportunity to whack the Saudi government or its people themselves.

Host: Ahmed Rashid, you talk about countries turning around and Frank Gaffney says that Saudi Arabia has not perhaps turned around as significantly as he would like to see. What do you make of Saudi Arabia in that regard?

Rashid: Actually Saudi Arabia was one of the countries that refused to turn around after nine-eleven. If you remember the Saudis were claiming that this was all a plot by Israel and other such things and they refused to acknowledge even that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers who bombed the World Trade Center were actually Saudis. What has happened of course is that al-Qaida has reached the Saudi royal family and we've seen a spate of bombings and attacks in Saudi Arabia itself. And of course, one of the major aims of Osama bin Laden has been to topple the Saudi royal family. This has now come home and now the Saudis are waking up to this reality. I think, you know, in this issue of terrorism, what you've seen is some countries have gone on board very fast. I mean, Pakistan jumped on board on September the 12th, literally, because it was faced with an ultimatum. Pakistan was supporting the Taleban and de facto, if you like, acknowledging and allowing al-Qaida to carry on in Afghanistan, and the Americans gave them an ultimatum, and they took twenty-four hours to decide to get on board. The Saudis have taken nearly two years to get on board. That is, I think finally there has been an acknowledgment by Saudi leaders that they do face a major problem.

Host: Peter Bergen, looking at the attack in Saudi Arabia and before that, the attack in Bali and then recently at the J.W. Marriott in Indonesia, we see places that al-Qaida had had operations going, turning their attacks on those havens. Has that been a bad strategic move by al-Qaida, and why have they made that move?

Bergen: Well, I think that they don't really think rationally in a way that you or I might think. I don't think [so]. I mean for them, I think attacking in Riyadh was a great success, even though obviously it produced this huge crackdown. But it exposed weaknesses in the Saudi security system and that's one of their goals. So you would have thought that they wouldn't want to bring this upon themselves. Since I think, I mean, I agree with Ahmed Rashid that I think the Saudis have sort of woken up, albeit very late, following the May 12th attack. And in fact, you're seeing a lot of Saudis go into Iraq and you're seeing a lot of Saudi al-Qaida-types going into Iraq for two reasons: first, because there are Americans to kill there, which is part of their mission statement; but secondly, there's a very severe crackdown going on in Saudi Arabia right now. So there's both a push and a pull and the Jihadists that are going into Iraq are predominantly Saudi.

Gaffney: But again, it may be the case that there's a crackdown domestically, and I'm not quite as sanguine perhaps as Peter is that it's as broad as it needs to be. For example, to prevent Jihadists from going into Iraq, let alone organizing further activities against us from Saudi soil. But what continues, almost certainly apace are Saudi funding streams to these same organizations or their sister organizations or new ones that are being born as the effects of our counter-terrorism are taking down some of the older organized efforts and enabling them to mount further attacks in areas, yes perhaps, you know, like [bankrobber] Willie Sutton used to say about banks, it's where the money is -- you attack targets where you happen to be. And clearly Indonesia is one of the places where these al-Qaida or al-Qaida-like organizations continue to operate. But I think unless and until we can cut off the funding that these organizations benefit from -- from the Saudi royal family, from the government, from the Wahabbist elite, from the favored business sector, you're going to continue to see these guys operating with considerable malevolence in Pakistan, in East Asia, and probably here in the United States as well.

Host: Ahmed Rashid, I want to bring together a couple of things, something that Frank said and something that Peter said. In talking about, Frank was talking about the funding going into extremist ideology and Peter talked about the way in which al-Qaida has morphed into an ideology, become a movement, if you will, if at the same time becoming less of a structured organization. And I wonder how that's been playing out in Pakistan. Have the madrassas, the schools that have been teaching extremist ideology, have they cut back on that at all or not, and what's the basic state of bin Ladenism in the region?

Rashid: I think this point about ideology is very important that Peter's made. And the result of that, of course, is that al-Qaida-type parties were existing all around the Muslim world and in fact al-Qaida had built up an alliance with these extremist Islamic parties around the world. And really they've taken al-Qaida's agenda and are now doing their own thing. That's what we've been seeing in Indonesia, in Pakistan, in North Africa and Morocco for example. Many of these operations are not necessarily funded or run by al-Qaida directly, but by local groups. And that's very much the case in Pakistan where the military has banned a number of the local groups, but they have morphed up again if you like with a new name, with new sponsors, with new safe houses, etc., and they're operating and there have been numerous terrorist attacks in Pakistan. On the other side, I think the government is extremely slow in trying to turn around the madrassa culture, as it were, which is basically an educational system of, by and large, of militancy. And I think that, although a lot of money has come in from the Americans, from the World Bank, from other places, the fact is that the military has been very slow, and very little has changed in trying to get these madrassas to broaden their curriculum, to modernize themselves, to reform the teaching of Islamic studies itself, which in many of these madrassas bears no resemblance to what madrassas should be teaching.

Gaffney: May I just say that I think that's exactly right and this is what gives rise to concern, taking nothing away from Musharraf and what he has been trying to do and has in fact been doing, we really remain one heartbeat away from Pakistan reverting to a completely failed state with this culture of, if you will, Islamofascism very much at work in not only the generation coming up through the ranks but the I-S-I [Pakistan Intelligence Service] and other government ministries that have been sponsoring this kind of, I believe, Saudi-subsidized takeover of much of the religious practice of Pakistan and for that matter neighboring Afghanistan and a great many other places as well.

Host: Peter Bergen, we've talked a lot here recently just shortly about Saudi Arabia. Let's go to the next door neighbor of Saudi Arabia. Early in the show, Frank Gaffney talked about Iraq as being a success in the war on terrorism. What do you think about that?

Bergen: I'm going to have to disagree. I think to the extent that al-Qaida is going to have a new theater or base of operations, obviously it will be Iraq. One of the reasons we went to war was a putative connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. It didn't exist. It does exist now. And as Afghanistan was during the eighties, Jihadist Muslims from around the Middle East are being attracted to Iraq. Obviously there are many differences between, you know, in Afghanistan, the Soviets killed a million Afghans and made five-million of them refugees. And obviously we're not doing that in Iraq, but there are some similarities. It's an occupation in the Jihadist mind, as a result of an illegal invasion. It's in the middle of the Middle East. If you're a member of al-Qaida you stick out like a sore thumb in Afghanistan [but] you blend into the background very easily in Iraq. So, I think to characterize the Iraq war as a success in the war on terrorism is wrong. Certainly getting rid of Saddam was wonderful for the Iraqi people, but it didn't really have anything to do with the war on terrorism in terms of efficaciousness unfortunately. Quite the reverse.

Host: Frank Gaffney.

Gaffney: We do have a disagreement on this. I think that in fact there's abundant evidence that Saddam was involved in state sponsorship of terrorism. Whether it was al-Qaida per se, is something….

Bergen: What is that evidence just out of curiosity? The State Department's own reports have consistently said Iraq has had no role in anti-American terrorism, the last example of which was the possible attack, assassination attempt on President Bush in 1993. So, that's the State Department in its authoritative yearly report. There's no evidence of any involvement in nine-eleven. So, in the last decade, according to the authority of government reports by this country, there's been no evidence of Iraq being involved in anti-American terrorism.

Gaffney: Yes. Well, I have on occasion disagreed with the U-S government and particularly the State Department and particularly what passes for authoritative reports. That doesn't make me right. That doesn't necessarily make them wrong. But permit me to answer your question before you ask another one. I believe that there is abundant evidence that Saddam Hussein has been implicated in and deeply committed to support for terrorist operations, particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian context, that have American blood on their hands as well as relationships….

Bergen: Give us an example.

Gaffney: I would say ten-thousand dollars per family of martyrs is an example of the kind of support. But in addition, the training camps in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the logistical support, the connections between his diplomats and the al-Qaida personnel that have been reputed to happen before nine-eleven, albeit debated, in the Czech Republic are, I believe, symptoms of a problem that we ignore and did ignore for a long time at our peril. And I would just add that there is evidence -- and we can debate how high quality it is - but there is evidence that Saddam in fact acted on his repeated statement that he sought revenge against the United States for Desert Storm in the context of the first World Trade Center bombing, in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, and again arguably in the case of the nine-eleven attacks. The point is, I believe state sponsorship of terrorism was one of the facets of Saddam Hussein's regime and thank God it's gone.

Host: Let me bring Ahmed Rashid in.

Rashid: I would just like to comment on that. Frank, even if I was to accept what you are saying, which I don't, if I can just add two things. I mean, you can weigh up what you're saying with two examples that I would like to give. The first is that the enormous international consensus that developed after nine-eleven has really completely broken down with the invasion of Iraq. And the Americans must be very much at blame for that. Not only don't you have the Europeans on board, I mean, the anti-American feeling in the Muslim world is absolutely striking. The most important thing, I think the change in the Muslim world, which is of course what people like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have been arguing, that, you know, bringing down Saddam will bring about a change in the Middle East and bring democracy -- I think there was a process set in motion after nine-eleven where many Muslims had woken up to the fact that what was happening in their countries, to which they were turning a blind eye, was a mistake. Many governments were waking up to the fact, were embarrassed by the fact of what happened in nine-eleven. And there was in some countries, what was starting was an attempt to change the way Muslims relate to their religion in terms of things like economic development, democracy, free media, etc., etc. Now that whole kind of movement has basically collapsed or been drowned out by this wave of anti-Americanism that has swept the Muslim world because of the invasion of Iraq. Now what you're saying, you have to weigh up these very serious, long-term adverse consequences with the, if you like, the short-term gain that you might have made in Iraq.

Gaffney: I would cast it entirely differently. With all due respect, I would say that the long-term gain in eliminating Saddam Hussein and trying to create a model of a very different kind of Muslim polity will far outweigh the putative benefits that you ascribe to some wake-up call that the Muslim world exhibited, frankly of which there's very little evidence.

Host: Well we only have a few seconds left, and I just wanted to ask Peter Bergen on this question of Iraq, there have been books attributed to al-Qaeda come out recently in Saudi Arabia that success of democracy in Iraq would be a grave threat to the agenda of al-Qaida, to the Islamist agenda. Is that claim true and does that then say that this on-going war is going to have to be focused on making a success of Iraq whatever one thinks of the lead-up to it?

Bergen: I guess the answer to that final thing is, of course, yes. And of course al-Qaida wants to install Taleban-style theocracies around the world. So, yes, any form of regime that doesn't correspond to that is a threat to them.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests: Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy; and joining us by phone from Pakistan, author and journalist Ahmed Rashid. If you'd like to give us your questions or comments, we welcome them here at On the Line. You can write to Ontheline@ibb.gov For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.