November 9, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands, Security
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – In the private Beacon House School, second-grade teacher Zermina Khan, who conducts class in English, recently led studies of the Sept. 11 attacks with an emphasis on American suffering.
At a public school nearby, Ghuam Mohammad and other black-uniformed boys crowded 80 to a classroom where Urdu-speaking teachers focused more on Pakistan than world affairs.
And in one of Pakistan’s proliferating religious “madrassa” schools, Hameed Jan’s students memorize the Koran word for word along with concepts such as “jihad” struggles against enemies. “America is doing terrorism against us,” says Jan.
The three schools show different forces shaping Pakistan – and much of the Muslim world from Morocco to Malaysia.
For Americans, the schools offer a glimpse into divergent versions of the future their own children will enter.
Pakistani educators say the approach to schooling will, along with economic conditions, help determine whether a new generation sees the next Osama bin Laden as Robin Hood or menace.
Currently, the future looks shaky, said Nasreen Kasuri, founder of Pakistan’s 90-school Beacon House System and leading advocate for increased spending on public schools.
“I wish we were headed toward Turkey. I am afraid we are headed more toward Iran,” said Kasuri, who knows a bit about U.S. schools from visiting friends in Colorado. “It is important for the West, by whatever means, to support liberal education in this country.”
Less than 10 percent of Pakistani families can afford private schools, which are generally Western-oriented and often comparable with the best U.S. schools. Instead most Pakistani children attend crowded government-funded public schools.
Pakistan, with 144 million people, does not invest heavily in public education. The country is poor and heavily populated, with as much as a quarter of its government revenue coming from foreign loans and grants, and about half its expenditures going to pay off debts. The government spends heavily to support the military’s costly confrontation with India.
The lack of school spending creates a vacuum met in part by the madrassas, which over the past decade have increased in number to about 7,000, educators say.
Today, all three types of schools in Pakistan convey a critical perspective on the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan that isn’t widely heard in the United States.
Yet some schools are more pro-American than others.
Consider the $500-a-year Beacon House school in Peshawar. Students here aim to attend British and U.S. universities. Second-graders recently clipped out photos and stories from newspapers – images of Sept. 11 attack victims such as a woman caked with dust in World Trade Center wreckage – and pasted them into collages.
“Hell on earth, yes, this was New York,” Faiza Shams wrote on hers.
Students “should know right from wrong exactly. They have to know what is fanaticism,” teacher Khan contends in the hall outside her room.
Principal Humaira Mustafa agrees that students “must know what’s happening.”
“We haven’t been able to recover after the Sept. 11 attacks,” Mustafa said, adding that civil disturbances here closed their school for several days. Children “are scared, they feel insecure. Mothers will call in during street protests asking: “Are you going to close?”
For the majority of Pakistani children, a school with materials for collages and teachers who encourage children with notes saying “wonderful work” isn’t possible.
They attend the more than 150,000 public schools that are financially strained to the point that many teachers work without paper or books. Fifty-seven percent of the population over the age of 15 can’t read and write, and among women the illiteracy rate is about 71 percent. Adding to the problem: education statistics are iffy.
At the government high school in the northwestern town of Chitral recently, principal Amir Zada lamented that he receives only $6,660 a month to run his 15-classroom, 688-student school. Teachers receive $53 a month.
“Not nearly enough,” he said.
And while the practice of teaching in Urdu instead of English is no problem, the difference is “big as that between earth and sky” in how students think of the world, said Mahmood ul-Hasan, a gym teacher waving a short “Soti” switch recently as students enter by 8 a.m. for the morning assembly at the all-boys school.
“The students who study here can only aspire to be clerks,” ul-Hasan continued. Yet commitment is high. Some of the 28 staffers work without pay. Patriots, ul-Hasan calls them.
In the assembly, boys around a concrete courtyard listened to a reading from the Koran, sang the national anthem and recited a prayer “that my life will be a beacon for the rest of the world.”
Then class began. Sitting for his Arabic exam, seventh-grader Sajjad Ahmad pulled a pencil out of a metal case with pictures of fighter jets on the cover. “I want to be a pilot,” Ahmad said. “To spread the name of Pakistan.”
Public schools are free. Teachers say the uniforms help minimize social and economic distinctions.
Yet in many public schools, officials say, teachers don’t show up. Even in the efficient Chitral schools, books are scarce, and students cram three and four to a bench behind rickety desks.
Today more and more parents are inclined to send their children to madrassas funded by Mosque communities. These schools also are free and offer the benefit of meals and dorm rooms for students.
A security chief at one of Pakistan’s largest madrassas at Akora Khattak recently refused to allow a complete visit. This was the madrassa where many of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers studied, including Mullah Mohammed Omar.
Teacher Hameed Jan explained how most of the 4,000 students were gone, preparing for the Ramadan period of fasting. Beyond memorizing the Koran as he has done, Jan said, students learn a little math and English. No military training is conducted here.
Anyone who joins the “jihad against America” goes to holy war on his own, Jan said.
But as a teacher he feels “happy to know they have gone for jihad.”
Last week, Pakistani pro-Taliban forces amassed northwest of Peshawar, preparing to cross into Afghanistan. Jan said students who go there can receive weapons.
“Mohammad has said you must do jihad until doomsday,” he added. “When the land war starts, I will go, too.”
November 4, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands, Security
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Jamshed fiddled with a black plastic bag
that held his most treasured possession – a prosthetic eyeball.
“I had this artificial eye once, but now it does not work,”
he said.
Six years ago, half of Jamshed’s life, he saw something
sticking up alongside a dusty road in central Afghanistan.
“I thought it was a pen,” he recalled. “I pulled it out.”
It was a land mine. The explosion ripped off his right hand
and wrist. Shards shot into his forehead and left eye.
Now, Jamshed wanders with other Afghan invalids – all missing
limbs – scuffing through the orange dust in an adobe Afghan
settlement.
As the United States continues to bomb Afghanistan, with
prospects of a ground war ahead, the issue of civilian casualties
has become one of the most volatile in the debate over President
Bush’s war on terrorism. “Collateral damage” in the language of
the military means, in Afghanistan, lost lives and limbs to people
too poor to get adequate care.
In Afghanistan, civilians continue to be maimed by the legacy
of fighting long ended.
Afghans for a decade battled troops of the Soviet Union,
which invaded their country in 1979. The Soviets and their
supporters scattered between 5 million and 10 million land mines
throughout the country, few of which have been cleared out.
Areas bordering Pakistan, and the Kabul region where Jamshed
was injured, are among the most heavily mined, according to the
group Physicians Against Land Mines.
When the Soviets left, internal factions battled. The Taliban
took power in 1996 and still is fighting the Northern Alliance,
which the U.S. supports.
In 1998, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar
supported a world ban on land mines, condemning them as
“un-Islamic and anti-human.” Recently, however, organizations
working to get rid of mines criticized Omar’s ruling Taliban for
obstructing their work.
Internationally funded efforts cleared 2,791 anti-person and
anti-tank land mines from Afghanistan last year and, according to
several anti-land-mine groups, casualties dropped by about half
since 1999 to fewer than three a day earlier this year.
But Physicians Against Land Mines notes, “Recent unconfirmed
reports indicate that the flow of refugees through mine-affected
areas has substantially increased this number.”
Another result of the U.S. bombing campaign is that efforts
to remove mines are on hold. On Oct. 9, the second night of U.S.
bombing, four Afghan mine clearance workers were killed when a
bomb hit the building they were in east of Kabul.
Learning to improvise
All of which brings customers to Shamsul Haq, a leading
Afghan prosthetics dealer with clinics in the Afghan cities of
Kabul and Jalalabad, and in Peshawar. He said many can’t afford to
replace lost limbs with artificial ones.
“For one arm, the price is 15,000 rupees,” or about $250,
said Haq, 48. “This is too difficult for Afghan people. Most have
been living with no home or land for 23 years.”
Throughout the Soviet occupation and the civil war, he
supplied hundreds of people with arms, legs, hands, feet, hips,
corsets that support broken backs – “87 different devices for the
human body,” he says.
International Red Cross workers helped train Haq, whose
customers have ranged from a 1-year-old boy whose leg was blown
off by a Russian bomb to a man from Kandahar, Afghanistan, who
lost both legs and an arm last year.
The man’s brother wheeled him in, Haq said, and presented a
note from Taliban leader Omar: “Please make him feet and a hand.”
“If American ground troops come, American people will need
amputations, and more Afghan people will need amputations,” Haq
figured. “They will lose their feet and hands.”
With so many impoverished people in need of his services, Haq
sometimes supplies arms and legs at reduced rates. Instead of
offering only imported products from Germany and Britain that cost
up to $1,000, he designed a hinged lower leg using cheap steel
piping that costs only $83.
Bombing sand, not people
Haq’s cousin Abdul Ghafoor, 36, a factory owner in Kabul who
had just entered Pakistan over a mountain pass last week with his
5-year-old son, Taher, said the U.S. bombing is not inflicting
widespread casualties. Many bombs dropped by Americans appear to
be hitting hilltops and deserts, he said, not people.
Ghafoor added that Taliban forces set lanterns and campfires
on some out-of-the-way ridges as decoys. U.S. warplanes “bomb and
bomb and bomb,” Ghafoor said, “but they only get one or two
people.”
If the war moves to the ground, many civilian casualties
likely would have to be treated within Afghanistan. Pakistan
continues to block official border crossings. The only way out is
over mountain passes that require climbing or riding on donkeys.
Haq plans to be ready for any influx. When a customer comes
in, first his men measure their limbs, then show various materials
and models. Then they go to work with saws, drills, files. Dust
and fiberglass shavings soften the shop’s cement floor. Boys hang
about and fetch drinks for people waiting.
Beyond limbs, Haq said, he tries to help heal souls. He
offers words from the Koran justifying struggles against those who
would hurt Muslim people.
“When we are victimized by aggression, then we are supposed
to fight,” he says. “You may have lost something. On your death,
God will make you a whole human being.”
That sort of consolation seldom reaches the Shamshatu
settlement southeast of Peshawar, where a dozen Afghan amputees
recently gathered outside a makeshift mosque that serves as a
refugee town center.
All lost at least one limb in the war with the Soviets. Most
had crutches. Few had functioning artificial limbs. One man’s leg
healed bent in half – never treated.
“I’d climbed up in the top of a tree,” said Mohammad Kasim, a
former commander who lost his right leg fighting Soviet forces on
a road between Kabul and Jalalabad. A helicopter approached. “I
was trying to shoot down the helicopter. Then it shot me.”
In this group, the 12-year-old Jamshed is the youngest victim.
“I need money,” he said.
Not so much for an arm or a leg, he said, but for medical
attention to stop a near-constant stinging in his empty eye
socket.
“I’m in pain,” Jamshed said, voice rising faintly in the
wind. “I just want my pain to end.”
For more information
In Afghanistan, where people have coped with warfare for two
decades prior to the U.S. bombing campaign, land mines are an
enormous threat. UNICEF estimates that Afghanistan ranks sixth in
the world for land mines per square mile. Here are some websites
where you can learn more.
Two UNICEF sites have statistics and overview information:
www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/hidekill.htm
www.unicef.org/graca/mines.htm
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines has information at
www.icbl.org/
Physicians Against Land Mines is at www.banmines.org/ and has
a fact page on Afghanistan: www.cirnetwork.org/news/lmfacts.htm
The Landmine Survivors Network, whose work in Bosnia was
publicized in August 1997 by Diana, princess of Wales:
www.landminesurvivors.org/
October 31, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands, Security
Thousands near border await call from Afghans
MATTA, Pakistan – Seated around an earthen-floor living room
in this mountain village on Tuesday, a group of armed men awaited
word from Afghanistan to start fighting for the ruling Taliban.
“Our blood is the same. Whenever the Taliban needs us, we are
here,” said Qari Abdullah, a teacher who is among thousands
gathering on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to help fight
Americans and defend Islam.
But Abdullah and his cohorts, who represent a challenge to
United States policy and, potentially, military efforts in the
region, haven’t crossed into Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials say they can’t.
And Taliban officials don’t want them – yet – saying the
battle only involves air assaults that would endanger the men.
Late Tuesday night, movement leader Mulana Soofi Mohamad
traveled to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to talk with Taliban officials
about a strategy for the volunteers, said Abdullah, spokesman for
the forces, which he said numbered 35,000. Pakistani officials
have put the number at 8,000.
Armed supporters around Abdullah in the room included a
nephew wielding an M-16 assault rifle that he said Americans
supplied to mujahadeen forces enlisted in the 1980s to fight the
Soviet Union.
“America’s President Bush said in one of his speeches that
this is the beginning of a crusade. He uttered that word,”
Abdullah said. “He challenged the faith of Muslims.
“Now we here are poor people. We work for our food, and
because of our work we survive. We don’t have time to leave our
beautiful children, our innocent children, and go away from our
homes.
“We had two options’
“But we had two options. Stay home. That would hurt our
faith. Or the other way, sacrifice our blood, head, body, heart.
This was the only gift we had to give the Afghan people. If they
don’t want this gift, we will still be ready all the time.”
This sort of resistance isn’t what U.S. officials had in mind
when they launched a military campaign in Afghanistan after the
Taliban refused to give up suspected terrorist leader Osama bin
Laden.
This week’s amassing of Pro-Taliban forces along the border,
south of Dir in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, is one of
several challenges facing the United States and Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf, who supports efforts to hunt down bin
Laden.
North of Islamabad, another group blocked the Karakoram
highway this week in the latest of many protests against
cooperation with the United States. They agreed Tuesday to reopen
that key route.
Bin Laden remains alive and uncaptured. The Taliban remains
in power. Rebels fighting Taliban troops say they want more help
and appear to have made little progress.
“Very few Taliban are dying,” said Abdul Ghafoor, 36, a
businessman who crossed from the Afghan capital Kabul five days
ago with his 5-year-old son.
“The Taliban were bad. I wanted to change the government. But
now my whole life has gone bad because of the Americans. Now
everyone is siding with the Taliban.”
Pakistan Frontier Police Sgt. Yousaf Khan said people are
suspicious of the United States because of past policies.
“They feel that Osama is not responsible for the Sept. 11
attacks as accused. They say: “First Americans used the Afghans to
fight the Soviets. Now the Americans want to fight the Afghans.'”
A network of recruiters organized the volunteer forces
drawing from valleys including this one, ringed by mountain peaks
with farms down below between busy little towns where strict
Islamic codes prevail and uncovered women are seldom seen.
It’s easy to enlist volunteers, with thousands of men
entering recruiting offices to join the jihad, or holy war, said
Tariq Mehmood, 28, a bearded teacher from Khawazkhela in the upper
Swat Valley.
For seven years, he said, he’s been recruiting in Mingora and
towns to the north. First he interviews candidates to test their
faith, he said. “We ask the question: “For what do you fight?'”
Before the air assault on Afghanistan, “we have to arrange
only one vehicle for taking them to training. Now, we have to
arrange seven or eight vehicles for training.”
The training camps, he said, are those that U.S. agents once
helped establish across this region when the Soviet Union was the
enemy. Training consists of 40-day to six-month sessions heavy on
physical drills and demonstrations of how to carry and load
weapons.
If Taliban leaders call for the forces along the border to
enter, and Pakistani guards still block them, Mehmood said, “then
we will make a plan what to do.”
“We are all Afghans’
Though they come from Pakistan, the men at the border speak
the same language, Pushtu, as a majority of Afghan people. Many
have relatives in Afghanistan.
“By culture, we are all Afghans,” said journalist Hameed
Ullah Kahn, 24, of Mingora, down the Swat valley from Matta.
“If Osama bin Laden is the bad guy, why are Americans
victimizing the Afghan people?” he said. “Think about those people
you are bombing. What might you see in their faces? If I bring a
Kalashnikov, put it on your head, that is the effect you have on
the Afghan people.”
October 2, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands
Days filled with prayer, preparation to leave Pakistan
AKORA KHATTAK, Pakistan – Afghan student Abdul Sammad sat
down on a rocky berm by the road, ready to explain his willingness
to fight for Islam.
He had just finished morning studies inside a walled,
multi-tower mosque compound here, one of Pakistan’s proliferating
“madrassa” fundamentalist schools.
“You should not attack us,” Sammad said, his sequin-studded
white skullcap sparkling as fellow students crowded around.
“Otherwise, we will sacrifice ourselves. All Afghans will
sacrifice themselves. Whatever America intends to do is bad and
wrong.”
Some Muslims across the Middle East and Asia share Sammad’s
determination to struggle against, not cooperate with, a
superpower they see as an enemy. At the same time, many countries
that are heavily Muslim are cooperating at one level or another
with President Bush’s campaign against terrorism.
Sammad, 25, studies the Koran and prepares to return home in
case his country is attacked for harboring Osama bin Laden,
accused by Bush of fomenting the terrorist attacks on New York and
Washington.
“We will go to Afghanistan for the jihad,” he said.
On Sunday, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam
Zaeef, said Taliban officials know where bin Laden is but won’t
tell.
“For his safety, his place remains unknown to others,” Zaeef
said in an interview at his residence in Islamabad.
The Taliban’s continued protection of bin Laden led
Pakistan’s president to say Monday that the U.S. military is
likely to strike against Afghanistan, which could end Taliban rule.
Back by the side of the road, Sammad told how he grew up as
the son of a farmer in northern Afghanistan. He was 3 when Soviet
forces invaded in 1979 to prop up a communist regime. The battle
to oust those troops, he said, caused destruction that still mires
Afghanistan in poverty.
“I love Afghanistan, not the destroyed Afghanistan.”
When Sammad was 15, his family moved to Pakistan, where he
enrolled at the Akora Khattak madrassa, where Taliban leader
Mullah Omar studied.
Back home, Taliban fundamentalist fighters gained ground in
factional battles for control. They marched on Kabul in 1996,
dragged the former president to death, imposed sharia rules and
restrictions on what women can do.
They have burned books and generally challenged global
norms with actions such as blowing up ancient Buddha statues they
rejected as idols of foreign gods.
Sammad shares the Taliban rejection of modernity.
“We don’t need anything from outside,” he said, days after
Taliban forces seized emergency food supplies provided in part by
U.S. contributors. “We don’t want America to come here. We don’t
need the help of America.”
But problems with America aren’t what he studies these
days, he said. Students focus on the Koran. “We talk the opposite
of terrorism. Peace. Islam calls for peace. We like peace.”
When he prays in the blue-and-white-tiled mosque, he said,
“the feeling is of peace, tranquillity and mercy.”
Class begins for 3,000 or so madrassa students at 7,
breaking at noon, resuming from 2 until 7. There’s no tuition.
Food, too, is free.
On weekends, most, including Sammad, return to their families
in settlements nearby on the arid plains below the Khyber Pass.
In a perfect world, Sammad said, he’d be a teacher in
Afghanistan.
Things being what they are, he went to Afghanistan a few
months ago and joined the fight against the Northern Alliance, a
confederation seeking to oust the Taliban, now with U.S. backing.
His role was “in the back lines” of fighting.
He and fellow Taliban supporters in Pakistan are wary of even
talking with Americans.
Yet, despite their outrage at the possibility of U.S.-backed
retribution against their homeland, they conveyed sympathy and
dismay regarding the Sept. 11 attacks. Sammad watched images of
explosions and suffering on television at a hostel where he drinks
tea.
“It was very heinous to see this happen,” he said. “It was
very cruel. I felt bad as well. Islam doesn’t allow this.”
September 30, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Refugees, U.S. Role in the World
Family says America’s government biased against Muslims
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – There’s a mountain bike in the hallway.
The oldest of Badar uz Zaman’s four children is contemplating
college. The parents try to fend off unsavory cultural influences.
This family 11 time zones ahead stayed with friends in Denver
last year, enjoying the same malls, aquarium and movies that
Coloradans enjoy.
The living room of the uz Zamans might feel familiar for
Americans who also are unsettled, anxious about the recent
terrorist attacks and the possibility that violence will beget
more violence.
They fear, as many fear, more trouble.
Their lives underscore the forces that connect families
everywhere.
But a visit with the uz Zaman family – in the quiet of a
living room rather than the tumult of a street demonstration –
also might help Americans understand how very differently some
people here view the world that now seems so conflicted.
The children, ages 11 to 16, just returned from
government-organized public rallies supporting Pakistan’s
pro-United States position in the war against terrorism. It’s a
stand that has divided the country in part because it aligns
Pakistan with a non-Muslim country that may attack Muslims in
Afghanistan.
Sitting on a red Afghan rug in their living room, where a
framed quote from the Koran – “The greatness of God has been
explained in a beautiful manner” – hangs over a Sony television,
the children blurt out what they really think: that U.S. leaders
have insufficient evidence against Osama bin Laden to justify
attacks on Afghanistan.
That America’s government is biased against Muslim people.
That pro-Israel lobbies guide the campaign against terrorism.
The television on this recent night replays images of
hijacked airliners crashing into World Trade Center towers. Badar,
47, confides he recently dreamed of F-16s flying above a horrible
conflagration.
“World War III?” he says. “Maybe.”
“These attacks may provide the American government another
cause, another excuse, for putting more military weapons in this
region,” 15-year-old Osama says. “These things scare us. We all
know the nuclear issue. I want a peaceful world.”
“Enmity in its heart’
Badar, giving voice to the divide political scientists see
between the West and the Islamic world, says he’s convinced that
“the West has enmity in its heart against Muslims.”
And like many on the other side of that divide, this family
wants the United States, beyond smoking out villains, to
re-evaluate policies.
You enter their two-story house through a white metal gate.
Hamida, 43, her head covered with a magenta veil, labors out of
sight in the kitchen.
Each day begins with hustle. Badar or Hamida drives the
children to school around 8. Hamida runs the household while Badar
buys and sells real estate, then breaks around 2 to take the
children home for a meal before returning to his office.
Thanks to Badar’s success, the family is preparing to move to
a bigger house in neighboring Rawalpindi. Everyone prays daily –
though not always five times. On weekends, they sometimes pile
into a black, four-door Toyota to visit the mountains up north.
As a boy, Badar memorized the Koran word for word. Now
Muslims around America – where Islam is the fastest-growing
religion – invite him to recite by memory during the Ramadan holy
month of fasting, a few hours each night.
Frequent trips to Denver
The family has been to Denver twice and Badar has come 13
times since 1985. He speaks fondly of Denver’s gold-domed mosque.
“There are opportunities,” Badar says of life in America.
Good universities. “Freedom.”
He considered moving his family to Denver but decided to stay
in Islamabad, the capital of this country of 141.6 million.
“In America, you are very busy,” Badar says. “Life is more
comfortable here.”
Americans sometimes felt out of balance, struggling to make
mortgage and car payments without cultivating family life. A
“cruel” interest-based banking system – the dominant global
banking system – may be part of the problem, he says.
“Islam says man’s life is more than just working and sleeping
– there must be space for the soul.”
Another issue was his discomfort with aspects of American
culture.
“Just watching television in the United States, you could see
it’s not good for the little ones – especially girls. Boyfriends
and girlfriends, those things. After 18, you have no control over
our children.”
Badar is the son of a soldier who became a farmer. He grew up
in a stone house – no electricity or running water – in Waulah, a
town about 100 miles south of here.
A strict local imam spotted him at 13 and, with support from
Badar’s mother, drove him to memorize the Koran’s words. He hated
the challenge at the time, reading over and over by the flickering
light of a lantern. But he persevered.
“We want peace’
Now his children are studying too, not by lantern light but
at an elite public school where seniors aim for Oxford and Yale.
Coursework includes British history in eighth grade and the U.S.
Constitution and legal system in high school.
They adopt their critical posture toward the United States,
Badar says, because they read the two newspapers that arrive daily
at the house.
They also take in television, conversations with teachers and
parents, and words in the Koran that call for defense of Islam.
“It’s not that we hate the American people,” Osama
emphasizes. “It’s not like that. It’s a matter of government. We
can’t support the stance of the U.S. government. We like the
American people. We want peace. We want peace all over the world.”
Sore spots he and his sisters cite: U.S. policies toward
Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia.
Students perceive a willingness to let Muslims suffer.
Breaking down barriers
As the smells of lamb, spicy fish and rice waft from the
kitchen, Sana, 16, says the United States revealed its bias when,
in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, many people quickly
suspected Muslims.
She and her sisters – Ifra, 13, and Sundus, 11 – take an
active role in family conversations. They don’t wear the
traditional veil. Badar “is pretty relaxed” about that, says Sana,
who wears traditional loose trousers and a flowing top.
The younger girls play cricket, baseball and badminton at
school. They’ve grown up at a time when a woman, Benazir Bhutto,
broke down barriers as Pakistan’s prime minister.
Osama, wearing khaki trousers and a blue T-shirt, talks of
studying at elite universities in Britain or the United States.
He’s inclined toward aeronautical engineering, and also is
passionate about politics, devouring this week’s issue of The
Economist.
Skeptical on terrorism
A question on this 15-year-old’s mind: “How is terrorism
defined?”
Without a clear, accepted definition, he says, a U.S.-led
crackdown might focus too much on Muslim groups. “Why not think
about Jews, or other people? They could be terrorists, too.”
The United States is trying to assure current and potential
allies in its anti-terrorism campaign that this is not a war on
Islam. Many here are skeptical and say they want the Bush
administration to show the proof it says it has that bin Laden is
behind the attacks of Sept. 11.
During the public “solidarity” rallies, for which class was
canceled and students were enlisted as marchers, some students
spoke in Urdu as foreign broadcast cameras beamed.
“Osama is a star. We condemn the United States,” they say
half-jokingly, Sana and Osama say.
The United States, those children say, should apply its own
principles. Osama opened a notebook and spoke about the Magna
Carta and U.S. Constitution and due process in the legal system.
Attacking a terrorist suspect in Afghanistan would be “violating
your own Constitution,” he says.
Sana says: “If America presents evidence, we are with you.”
September 25, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands
Pakistanis ready to walk fine line for U.S. effort
Chance for economic growth a strong draw for many
KHYBER TRIBAL AREA, Pakistan – Mohammad Arif can operate.
As his friend Ali Shah Kazmi guides a car among armed Afghan
smugglers openly selling hashish and heroin, carpet factory owner
Arif heads for a towering adobe warehouse crammed with Chinese
televisions trucked in through Afghanistan.
“No tax here,” Arif says with a smile as one of his
Kalashnikov-toting warehouse guards approaches. The laws of
Pakistan don’t reach into this tribal land near the border.
Arif figures he’ll operate even better under the emerging
alliance between his country and the United States. Now, says
Kazmi, a gem dealer who recently displayed emeralds at a Denver
exhibition, America “will give us more importance.”
It’s hard to envision a partnership that holds more promise
or peril than the one with Pakistan, a country filled with
economic ache and open drug markets guarded by machine guns.
The iffy alliance has advanced in recent days.
On Monday, U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin announced in
Islamabad, the capital, that terms would be eased for $379 million
of the $3 billion Pakistan owes the U.S. government. This followed
President Bush’s weekend lifting of sanctions imposed following
Pakistan’s test detonation of a nuclear bomb in 1998.
More inducements may be coming.
“At this critical time, we expect our already strong trade
relations to prosper,” Chamberlin said.
For a country of 141 million with a literacy rate of not
quite 38 percent, that’s tempting.
“Our ultimate objective is to get economic growth and reduce
poverty,” Pakistan government economist Nawid Ahsan said. Pakistan
“wants to be considered a reliable supplier of goods and services
to the U.S. market.”
Under the Bush administration’s push for international
support in its war on terrorism, Pakistan – until recently a
backer of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban – has joined in demanding
that the fundamentalist Muslim leaders give up Osama bin Laden,
the man the U.S. holds responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The quest for support is taking U.S. emissaries to places
such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgystan, which many Americans
know only as splotches on a map or as fabled lands of
saber-wielding khans.
Central to the U.S. strategy is Pakistan, which shares a
1,400-mile border with Afghanistan, where bin Laden is believed to
be hiding.
Pakistan offers airfields, roads and other facilities more
modern than in most countries in the region. A U.S. negotiating
team, described by Pakistani officials as a trio of military
officers, arrived Monday. U.S. officials simply said the group was
“small.”
Pakistan also beckons symbolically as a Muslim country that
in the past has helped – and received help from – the Taliban. The
country, like the United States, assisted the victory of bin Laden
and Afghan tribesmen against Soviet occupation in the 1970s and
’80s.
Today, not everyone here is as interested as Arif and Kazmi,
and the officials in Islamabad, in working with the United States.
On Monday in the Dhoke Najoo mud-brick shanty community near
Rawalpindi, computer science graduate Khurram Shazad, 21, warned
that America’s well-intentioned war on terrorism could degenerate
into “a nightmare for humanity” unless military efforts are precise.
And Americans shouldn’t worry whether they can trust
Pakistan, Shazad said. “Better to ask: How reliable is America as
a partner? Because America abandoned us after the Cold War.”
A teacher in the nearby Dhoke Najoo mosque, who identified
himself only as Gulistan, emphasized that “Islam doesn’t allow
terrorism.”
But he added with greater emphasis: “A Muslim government is
not allowed to stand with non-Muslims against Muslims.”
In his Islamabad ice cream parlor, Yummy’s, Malik Sohail
Hussain said that economic and religious issues are prompting
Pakistan to side with the United States.
“The Afghans are eating us up – all our energies are fixed on
them,” Hussain, an official of the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce,
told the Associated Press. Just as in the Persian Gulf War, he
said, nations must now take sides and fight because of extremists
who twist Islam to their own purposes.
“We want to live peacefully like America, like Europe, to be
a loving place,” Hussain said.
On the streets of America’s newfound ally, towering trucks
and buses teeter while traveling at breakneck speed down roadways
clogged with horse-drawn carts and wandering cows. Open-faced
shops blare drumbeats and songs in Urdu, the national language.
All is punctated by round discs of nan bread, tea and Muslim
prayers five times a day.
Giant rocks partially melted in Pakistan’s 1998 underground
nuclear test blast are displayed as monuments in cities.
The clan-driven political system regularly produces bloodshed.
Set up by former colonial power Great Britain as a home
for Muslims in 1947, Pakistan has gained and lost prime ministers
rapidly, with frequent military takeovers – including the one that
installed ruling Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 1999.
Opposition to the U.S.-Pakistan partnership has ignited
street protests, prompting a police crackdown.
Riding through an Afghan neighborhood in Peshawar recently
with his partner Kazmi at the wheel, Arif saw a rock ping off the
windshield. Then another. Something thudded against the rear
fender. A crowd of boys was swarming.
Kazmi stopped. Arif got out and faced down the barefoot boys.
“Are you crazy?” he yelled as some ran away.
They are angry, Arif said, “because of the war with Osama and
America.”
U.S. officials insist they aren’t pressuring Pakistan to do
anything it doesn’t want to do. “We do not make demands of our
friends,” Ambassador Chamberlin said at a news conference.
But three hours’ drive away, near Peshawar, Arif and Ali
Kazmi had heard otherwise.
They recently took a drive – clicking in a Ricky Martin
cassette – north through Pushtun country to Charsadda, where they
met with Sangeen Wali Khan. He’s president of the district
People’s National Party and son of the ruling family of the
Pushtun people who live on both sides of the border.
On a veranda looking out at his garden while servants brought
food, Sangeen gave an account of how Pakistan came on board for
the U.S. effort. He said he heard it from his brother, a national
party chief, from whom Musharraf had sought advice on the matter.
Pakistan agreed to help the United States, he said, after
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Musharraf and told
him to choose quickly between Pakistan moving into the 21st
century or returning to the Stone Age.
“We have no choice,” Sangeen said. “This country can’t afford
any more conflicts. … If we don’t have too many innocent people
dying, then I don’t think we’re going to have too much trouble.”
Sangeen retired to the shade of wild roses and bougainvillea,
lit a cigarette and blew smoke.
Arif and Kazmi, with Ricky Martin singing again, headed back
down the road to Peshawar – through sugar cane fields, past
barefoot peasants selling stones, across the muddy Kabul River –
to marble-floored mansions.
September 23, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism
Defiance shows difficulty of America’s mission
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The twisting narrow street reeks of
sewage. A woman hidden beneath a black veil trudges through a
muddy backstreet bazaar in an Afghan neighborhood. An elderly man
wearing a bandolier of bullets across his chest stands with his
rifle.
And 42-year-old Mohammad Ishaq, tending to bags of rice and
beans in his general store, states the neighborhood position.
“We are ready to fight. We don’t want to fight. But if
somebody attacks Afghanistan, we are ready.”
U.S. military forces are mobilizing.
Fundamentalist forces along the Afghan border seem undaunted.
This past week, thousands rallied in the streets of Peshawar
(pesh-AH-war) warning that a U.S. attack on Afghanistan, where
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group are based and have been
welcomed, would amount to terrorism against Muslims.
It remains to be seen how many more across the Islamic world
share their sentiments in the face of a U.S.-led retaliation
campaign.
“America thinks, “I am the only one in the world, nobody
else, a superpower,'” a mullah told more than 1,000 followers who
closed down a market in Peshawar on Friday.
Henchmen raised sabers around the religious leader as he told
followers how, after the attacks on Washington and New York City
on Sept. 11, “the president … fled his house.”
After the hijackings, the destruction of the World Trade
Center towers and the maiming of the Pentagon, President Bush has
tried to enlist allies around the world to root out international
terrorism.
America’s most wanted suspect right now is bin Laden. The
president has said governments that harbor terrorists will be held
accountable.
The military ruler of Pakistan, an overwhelmingly Muslim
nation of 141 million, is supporting Bush.
But reaction within Pakistan to Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s
position shows how difficult and potentially divisive the United
States’ declared course may be.
There have been dozens of rallies nationwide, with
fundamentalists burning effigies of Bush and chanting “God is
great!” Musharraf sent soldiers to patrol Peshawar with machine
guns mounted on pickup trucks. In Karachi, two deaths were
reported as riot police suppressed demonstrations.
“We think America is doing wrong,” says Mohammed Qisam, owner
of a cloth shop in a marketplace where other merchants, displaying
vegetables and unrefrigerated meat, squat in the mud. “Osama is
nothing. He doesn’t have the power to attack America.”
Other men gather around him nodding, clamoring with demands
that U.S. officials produce proof of bin Laden’s guilt before
preparing military attacks.
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, too, has asked for such proof.
Bush has declared there will be no negotiation on his demand for
the Afghanistan government to surrender bin Laden. Still,
administration officials said they are preparing a report that
will link bin Laden to the New York and Washington attacks and
previous terrorist mayhem.
As U.S. combat forces ready for the war on terrorism that
Bush has declared, Muslims in this part of the world wrestle with
doubts and a starkly different view of history.
Afghan people have moved back and forth for centuries across
the border near Peshawar. United Nations officials estimated that
thousands entered Pakistan last week despite Pakistani efforts to
seal the border.
Surrounded by mountainous desert, Peshawar is a borderland
city where men and women line up, separated by a curtain, to send
messages for about $3 a minute at an Internet service. Just a
three-hour bus ride from Osama bin Laden’s terror training camps
near Jalalabad, it also is a hotbed of dissent to the central
government’s policy. “We don’t want any war,” said Abdul Jalil,
the Taliban government representative, standing outside his
consular office. “The Taliban is not against people who live in
America. Taliban is nice people.”
He wouldn’t discuss bin Laden. But he agreed to explain the
Taliban view of the world.
Followers are aiming at a pure “Islamic life” that rejects
much of modern life, Jalil said.
Modern technology such as cellphones and the Internet are
accepted as a “necessity,” he said. But Western technology also
brings problems. Television images of violence and nudity “are
totally against our religion.”
None of this means that Taliban followers hate Americans,
Jalil said.
But U.S. policies often oppress Muslims, he said, and the
Koran calls for a jihad struggle against those who oppress
Muslims.
“We think America must change its policy toward Palestine and
toward Iraq,” he said. “Don’t be cruel to Muslim people.”
Inside his Taliban office, telephones ring from people
wanting to escape Afghanistan. Jalil said he’d just returned to
Pakistan from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, where poverty is
intense. The government opened up schools as food centers where
“thousands” of children swarm. Yet everyone is ready to fight, he
said.
“All the people there are thinking, if there is an attack, we
must respond,” he said. “We are ready. We will respond to any
attack.”
Fundamentalist fighters enjoy folk hero status. A lack of
government investment in education means most children attend only
religious schools that spread ideology. It is a movement the
United States helped create.
In the 1980s, U.S. officials working with Pakistani
intelligence officers armed Afghan “freedom fighters” to oppose
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped finance the
resistance and reportedly participated in some of the fighting.
Training camps were established, many in Pakistan. After the
collapse of the Soviet Union, more freedom fighters trained in the
camps for another regional conflict: the battle between Pakistan
and India for turf in Kashmir.
Meanwhile, fundamentalist Taliban fighters took over most of
Afghanistan and have sheltered bin Laden, whose extremist views
include declaring a holy war to drive U.S. troops from the Arabian
peninsula. In one statement, he called on Muslims to kill
Americans anywhere in the world.
The degree to which that view is widespread will help
determine the fate of the president’s war on terrorism.
Islamic fundamentalists have clashed with – and, U.S.
officials say, have unleashed terror on – more centrist Muslims.
Bin Laden himself fled Saudi Arabia, where he was born and where
his family’s lucrative construction business was based.
Islamic leaders in the United States and elsewhere have
condemned the terrorist attacks. The president and other world
leaders have urged people to distinguish between most of the
Islamic world and what they define as the violent, extremist
fringe. On Saturday, the United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic
relations with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers for refusing to
surrender bin Laden, the state news agency reported.
That leaves just two countries that recognize the Taliban as
Afghanistan’s government – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis
three years ago downgraded their diplomatic ties with the Taliban,
and Pakistan now has sided with Bush and said the leaders in Kabul
should give up bin Laden.
Yet in Pakistan, a common view, not just among hard-core
fundamentalists but also mainstream businessmen, is that bin Laden
may be wrongly accused.
“Whoever did the attacks, they wanted to make a conflict
between America and Muslim people,” said shoe store manager Zashir
Shah, 21, one of a group of Pakistani businessmen who gathered to
talk things over.
Lead suspect in this conspiracy theory: Israel. The men in
the shoe shop emphasized that they condemned the attacks, which
they watched repeatedly on television like the rest of the world.
But rather than fight terrorism by trying to obliterate
global terrorist networks, the businessmen said, a more effective
strategy for the United States would be to re-evaluate policies
that put Americans at odds with much of the Islamic world.
“Toward Iraq, the policy is not good,” Shah said. “Palestine?
Not good. And the United States has troops in Saudi Arabia. In
America, there is democracy. The people of America must convey to
their leaders that these policies must be changed.”
Experts said bin Laden’s plan is to provoke U.S. aggression
against some Muslims to alienate many Muslims.
The prospect of a U.S. attack and the Pakistan government’s
pledge of support prompted Taliban officials to threaten an attack
on Pakistan. Taliban forces reportedly are massed near the
mountainous desert border. The Pakistani military is on high
alert, with F-16s purchased from the United States whooshing
overhead from Peshawar several times a day.
“If America attacks Afghanistan,” said snuff shop owner
Rehmat Gul, 50, “Peshawar will be in danger.” As for the weapons
that the U.S. gave the Afghans to fight against the Russians, he
said, “now they will use them against us.”
Pakistan’s Musharraf has estimated that 15 percent of
Pakistan’s people oppose his decision to help the United States.
He was trying to win over critics Saturday, meeting with student
protest leaders. But even some who support him hold the view that
the U.S. must rely on more than military action to prevent suicide
attacks.
The underlying cause of the attacks “is the biased U.S.
policy, tilted against Muslims,” said Javaid Iqbal, manager of the
United Nations office coordinating aid programs for Afghanistan.
His advice to U.S. officials: “Research before you strike.”
And to maintain support among Muslim governments, he said,
Americans should negotiate “on the basis that you value their
ideas, not that you will impose your will and drive them around
like sheep and cattle.”
Pentagon team to visit Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A Pentagon team will arrive in Peshawar
this week for discussions with government officials about specific
support it needs to continue the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
The group, drawn from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other
Pentagon offices, will meet with Pakistani military counterparts,
a senior Bush administration official said Saturday.
Pakistan has agreed to close its border with Afghanistan and
to permit U.S. military overflights in the event of an American
attack.
But the details of what appears to be a pending operation
need to be worked out.
President Pervez Musharraf has backed the U.S. in its drive
against bin Laden despite strong anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan.
Denver Post staff writer Bruce Finley and The Associated Press
contributed to this report.
At A Glance: Pakistan:
Country: Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Capital: Islamabad Total area: 310,402.97 square
miles (slightly less than twice the size of California)
Estimated Population (July 2000) 141,553,775
Government: Federal Republic
Climate: Mostly hot, dry desert; temperate in northwest;
arctic in north Terrain: Flat Indus plain in east,
mountains north and northwest; Balochistan plateau west
Religions: Muslim 97 percent (Sunni 77 percent Shi’a 20
percent) Christian, Hindu and other 3 percent.
Literacy: 37.8 percent; 50 percent male; 24.4 percent
female
Life Expectancy: 60 years for men, 62 years for women
Gross Domestic Product per capita: $2,000 (1999 estimate)
Labor Force: Agriculture 44 percent; industry 17 percent;
Services 39 percent
Sources: MapQuest; World Atlas; U.S. Government
July 7, 2000 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Security
Global security, politics collide in big defense test
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN OPERATIONS CENTER – You won’t see the
rockets’ red glare tonight in the U.S. military’s landmark test of
missile defense technology.
But expect plenty of political heat.
Other countries rail against U.S. plans to deploy a shield
against enemy missiles, warning this could start a new arms race.
And with presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore both
supporting missile defense in concept, critics contend short-term
election jockeying is intruding on global security.
The success or failure of the test tonight – an attempt to
obliterate a mock warhead high over the Pacific Ocean by aiming a
122-pound interceptor very carefully – is billed as the best
indication yet whether the proposed $60 billion shield against
enemy missiles is feasible. President Clinton is to decide this
year whether to move ahead on first-phase deployment.
The system would be run from a “battle management center”
here, a mile inside Cheyenne Mountain west of Colorado Springs
where early warning operations were set up during the Cold War.
The proposed defense system is designed to protect Americans from
what U.S. officials describe as serious potential threats from
North Korea, Iran, Iraq and other nations.
“More and more nations in the future are going to invest in
ballistic missiles,” said Vice Adm. Herbert Browne, deputy chief
of the U.S. Space Command, headquartered near Colorado Springs.
“Some of those will be able to reach North America. We’re
convinced that we need to defend our country from this growing
threat. Yes, we believe the threat is real.”
Today, military crews are poised for action in Colorado
Springs, at Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles and on
Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific. Sometime after 8 p.m. MDT,
they’ll launch a rocket from Vandenberg carrying the mock warhead
and a deflated Mylar balloon to serve as a decoy.
Satellites and ground-based radar stations are to detect the
warhead and decoy balloon in flight, then send the data to early
warning system operators in Colorado Springs.
Those computer operators then are to relay the location and
trajectory of the mock warhead to Kwajalein, 6,000 miles away.
That data will be programmed into the 55-inch interceptor, what
military officials call an exoatmospheric kill vehicle, atop
another rocket. Crews on Kwajalein will launch it. As it thunders
up, high-powered X-band radar on Kwajalein is to track the warhead
and send even more detailed data to the interceptor in flight.
About 20 minutes into the exercise, if all goes as planned,
the non-explosive interceptor, moving at about 15,000 mph, will
distinguish between the 6-foot-diameter decoy balloon and the mock
warhead. Pentagon planners are hoping to see a big flash as the
force of impact destroys the mock warhead.
“Everybody will be happy if we hit the target,” said Lt. Gen.
John Costello, commander of the U.S. Army Space and Missile
Defense, also based in Colorado Springs.
This is the third of 19 planned tests. Pentagon planners
claim one hit and one miss. Critics have questioned whether the
hit was for real.
“That’s baloney,” Costello said.
In January, an interceptor missed a mock warhead, Pentagon
officials said, because a cooling system clogged and shut down
heat-seeking sensors.
The first-phase missile defense deployment, should Clinton
approve it, would begin with construction of X-band radar on
Shemya Island above the Arctic circle off Alaska. Construction
would begin next spring to have a limited defense system
operational by 2005 when, according to a 1999 U.S. intelligence
estimate, North Korea could have the capability of attacking the
United States.
Other countries adamantly oppose U.S. plans.
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone of
arms control, limits the development of missile defense systems.
U.S. officials are negotiating to change the treaty. For nearly a
year, U.S. diplomats have been broaching the idea of missile
defense with Chinese, European and Russian leaders.
No one’s on board.
Russia views the perceived threat from North Korea
skeptically, said Mikhail Shurgalin, spokesman for the Russian
Embassy in Washington.
“We fear this could, at a certain point, start up a new arms
race, a new cold war,” Shurgalin said. “We think those threats in
general are probably exaggerated. We understand that other
countries are concerned, too, like China and European countries.
The world is a fragile thing. Before you make a move, it is better
to find out what other people think. It is better to work out a
compromise.”
As for China, negotiations are said to be equally difficult. A
senior Clinton administration official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said China plans to modernize its nuclear arsenal
whether or not the United States moves ahead with missile defense.
The question, critics say, is how many missiles China will build,
and whether that motivates India and perhaps Pakistan to build
more missiles.
France has led European opposition. French officials took no
position on today’s test. But more consultation is needed before
anything is deployed, said Francois Delattre, spokesman at the
French Embassy in Washington.
“We think there are many questions,” Delattre said, such as
“the nature of the threat, the evolution of the threat, and a
possible arms race.”
Nobel laureate scientists this week urged Clinton to reject
the proposed missile defense. And today, critics plan
demonstrations, including one outside Peterson Air Force Base east
of Colorado Springs, headquarters for U.S. Space Command. Critics
contend missile defense won’t work, costs too much and causes more
international conflict than it promises to resolve.
Yet Democratic political concerns – not leaving Gore
vulnerable to Bush on whether Americans are adequately protected –
are likely to force Clinton to approve a deployment he otherwise
might reject, said John Pike, weapons analyst for the Federation
of American Scientists.
“For the political tacticians who are not worried about
Chinese nuclear missiles, who are only worried about getting their
candidate elected, this decision is very simple,” Pike said. “I
think these people are playing politics with national security. I
am an American, and I am unhappy about it.”
Gore and Bush were awaiting word on the outcome of tonight’s
test, their campaign spokesmen said. White House officials
rejected the charge that Clinton’s decision will be influenced by
presidential politics.
Clinton hasn’t decided yet and will base his decision on
objective criteria, national Security Council spokesman P.J.
Crowley said.
“We’re in a situation where whatever decision the president
makes is not going to please some groups,” Crowley said. “So he’s
just going to do what’s right for the country.”
April 23, 2000 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Human Rights, Security
“God help us if we go back”
Denver lawyer’s mission is a peace-by-peace effort
CROSSMAGLEN, Northern Ireland – Head south from Belfast to the
embattled green pastures and villages of County Armagh, and see
what Denver lawyer Jim Lyons is up against as he tries to secure
peace.
Five British soldiers crouching in full combat camouflage,
lugging machine guns, creep through the Crossmaglen market square.
Townspeople look away, shopping for fish, flowers, newspapers,
pushing small children in strollers.
Military helicopters clack overhead. A fortified brown tower,
surveillance camera swiveling on top, looms over the square.
One soldier listens through an earpiece. “It’s a normal
patrol,” he says on this recent spring morning, “like what police
would do in any town, any city in the world.”
Angry farmers in Paddy Short’s pub complain about helicopters
landing in their pastures. “The war won’t end,” 81-year-old
pubkeeper Short declares, “until the British soldiers leave.”
But from Britain’s perspective, military towers and regular
patrols, conducted by 15,000 British troops in Northern Ireland,
provide necessary protection. Crossmaglen lies in what the British
call “bandit country,” an Irish Republican Army-controlled region
where weapons are oiled, wrapped and stored in plastic containers
buried on farms.
British authorities say the bomb that killed 29 people in the
northwestern market town Omagh in August 1998 entered Northern
Ireland through this county. Earlier this month, 20 miles or so
west of here, an IRA splinter group tried to fire a mortar rocket
from a car into a Royal Ulster Constabulary police base.
Peace is faltering this Easter morning in Ireland, the
ancestral homeland of 44 million Americans.
The U.S.-brokered Good Friday Agreement, which two years ago
established a framework for the first lasting peace after
centuries of sectarian strife, is no longer a done deal. The
agreement set up a shared Catholic-Protestant government in
Northern Ireland, ending 78 years of British rule. The government
got started. But both sides balked at surrendering weapons.
Britain reimposed direct rule on Feb. 11. Tensions between
Protestants, who want to remain part of Britain, and Catholics,
who want to join the Republic of Ireland to the south, have risen
ever since.
Enter Lyons, a special adviser to President Clinton on
Ireland, who went to Belfast this month to try to help turn things
around.
It was the 35th trip to Ireland for Lyons, 53, who’s been a
close confidant of Clinton since the 1970s. More than seven years
of unpaid work here, his closeness to Clinton, his influence
bringing in $1.5 billion of investment through an international
foundation, and his dispute-resolution skills have won Lyons
access to all sides in the conflict, which since 1970 has claimed
3,500 lives. On this trip, Lyons met with deadlocked politicians,
urging them to stay the course toward compromise. He also worked
with community leaders on economic projects he believes are
crucial to ending Ireland’s “Troubles.”
Hard-line paramilitaries, Lyons said, are threatening an
uneasy equilibrium in Northern Ireland. Police report nearly one
political shooting a night, and four attempted attacks on security
forces over the past two months.
Yet Lyons believes most Irish people are motivated, beyond
politics by a desire to move ahead economically. He argues that
peace will lead to prosperity.
Lyons works behind the scenes in a personal, blunt-spoken way
that can clash with bureaucratic sensibilities. He refuses
security, and usually travels alone.
The hope is that sustained attention from a friend of
President Clinton can add heft to U.S. foreign policy. And in the
waning days of Clinton’s presidency this may be his best chance
for an uncontested foreign policy success. Clinton calls Ireland
to check on peace negotiations no less than once a week, said
Dermot Gallagher, a senior Irish government official and former
Irish ambassador to the United States, and sometimes twice a day.
Lyons’ task is “to remind people that there is an economic
stake in the peace process,” said Dick Norland, a National
Security Council supervisor in the White House. After former
U.S. Sen. George Mitchell stepped out of his negotiating role this
year, Lyons emerged as a key inside figure, said Gallagher.
“Jim Lyons is a player here, and is listened to very
attentively indeed,” Gallagher said. “The guy is fair.”
And he likes his fish and chips.
During a break between official meetings, Lyons bolted for
the bitterly torn Ardoyne neighborhood in West Belfast. There,
razor wire curls atop brick walls, metal barricades separate
homes, and paramilitary murals on sides of buildings are carefully
maintained.
Lyons walked into the crowded Annie’s Home Bakery and Cafe on
the Crumlin Road dividing Catholic and Protestant sections.
The building was a burnt-out shell when Betty and Annie
McGuigan moved in a couple years ago. A $1,500 loan from a
micro-credit organization Lyons started gave them a boost. Banks
had rejected their project as too risky.
Lyons ordered. He began eating.
The McGuigan sisters approached, timidly, suspecting this
American in the blue business suit might be important. Lyons
handed them his card with its golden eagle seal. Betty McGuigan
informed Lyons proudly that, thanks in part to the loan, business
doubled over the past five months.
But to stay open, “we need to draw trade from both sides,”
Betty said, meaning Catholic and Protestant customers. That’s been
the secret to their success so far. A political stalemate that
drags on much longer could ruin everything. On Feb. 11,
British Prime Minister Tony Blair suspended Northern Ireland’s
10-week-old shared government – set up under the Good Friday deal
George Mitchell brokered – because the Irish Republican Army
refused to disarm by a May 22 deadline. Surrender of IRA weapons,
and the continuing British military presence, are primary
obstacles stalling peace.
Unionists who favor continued British rule contend Northern
Ireland shouldn’t begin to govern itself until the IRA gives up
its guns. Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, argues that
unionists should be satisfied with IRA assurances that weapons are
in storage and won’t be used.
After more than two months, this impasse and the government
shutdown leave political leaders such as Nobel Peace Prize winner
David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party, and Sinn Fein
leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, increasingly powerless.
While they occupy tomb-like offices in Stormont Castle, the
seat of Northern Ireland’s short-lived government, paramilitary
groups are active in neighborhoods. Royal Ulster Constabulary
police statistics show increased shooting incidents during the
first three months this year. Lyons’ main job on this trip was
to encourage the marginalized politicians, whom he worried might
be frustrated enough to lose heart.
His message: The United States will do anything it can to
facilitate compromise, and President Clinton cares passionately.
But time’s running out. The presidential election looms in the
United States. Restarting Northern Ireland’s government after the
May 22 deadline for getting rid of IRA weapons will be even harder
than it seems now.
Making his rounds to political leaders, Lyons met first with
Trimble at Stormont. Trimble acknowledged that, without
self-government, Northern Ireland “is going to miss out on
opportunities.”
Lyons was convinced that Trimble is “very much committed to
going forward” in the coming weeks.
But Trimble faces dissent from hard-liners within his
unionist party. Those who demand IRA “guns before government”
constrain his ability to compromise.
And with a Protestant majority in Northern Ireland, there’s
plenty of support for not giving ground.
Consider the experience in Coleraine along Northern Ireland’s
north coast. In 1992, a phone call to police announced that the
town center complex would be blown apart in two hours. Police
cleared the area. A 50-pound IRA bomb exploded.
Memories of that attack still are fresh for residents such as
Michael Ferguson, owner of the Happy Haddock fish-and-chips shop.
No government’s possible, in his view, until the IRA disarms. And
he doesn’t expect that to happen.
“Back to square one,” said Ferguson, whose son plans to visit
Colorado Springs on a church exchange this summer to “just get
away” for awhile.
“There is no chance of keeping the government going,”
Ferguson said. “Optimism is going away.”
The next official stop for Lyons was moderate leader John
Hume, who shared the 1998 Nobel Peace prize with Trimble. A
63-year-old Catholic who heads the Social Democratic and Labor
Party, Hume has tried for three decades to bridge political
extremes.
But Lyons found him physically weakened, recuperating from
two major surgeries.
Where Hume lives in Derry, people once struggling
economically are benefiting from peace. Since the Good Friday
agreement, companies such as Fruit of the Loom, DuPont and Sega
have opened plants, giving young people a chance to earn a living
without moving away.
The government must be up and running “as soon as possible,”
Hume said. In an interview, he called for compromise now.
The problem, he said, is continuing “distrust between two of
the parties, Sinn Fein and the unionists, which arises out of the
past.” Hume assured Lyons “we’re still working to break the
barriers down.”
Lyons turned last to Sinn Fein. Party leader Martin
McGuinness greeted him, and nobody minced words.
Some sort of “constructive movement” is crucial, Lyons said.
McGuinness acknowledged that he knows what’s at stake.
“Unless we provide a stable political situation,” business
investment that Irish people need “isn’t going to be available.”
Yet McGuinness contended in an interview that it’s up to
unionist leaders “to face down their own rejectionists.” He blamed
the British government for “a terrible mistake” in suspending
Northern Ireland’s shared government.
Sinn Fein officials said that approaching IRA “hard men” and
asking for disarmament to revive the government would draw
laughter.
But Lyons noted later that McGuinness in private talks
“didn’t rule out” some gesture. Lyons dined with economic leaders
including Sir George Quigley, chairman of the Ulster Bank and
former chief of Northern Ireland’s civil servants.
Business leaders are pressing political leaders to
compromise, Quigley said.
They point to the economic takeoff and improving standard of
living in southern Ireland, dubbed the “Celtic Tiger” in Europe.
“Provincialism and isolationism,” Quigley said, are holding
Northern Ireland back.
On the streets beneath Quigley’s Ulster Bank office that day,
a green tank rolled toward Belfast City Hall – not to attack but
to film a popular television sitcom called “Give My Head Peace.”
The show airs stereotypical sectarian views, much as “All In The
Family” exposed Archie Bunker’s racism, in hopes that humor might
ease tensions. In this episode, an actor portraying an elderly IRA
diehard drove the tank to Protestant diehards and offered it as a
gesture of peace.
Producer Colin Lewis said he’s counting on more than a
commercial success.
“God help us if we go back,” Lewis said.
Northern Ireland today actually “is a safe and reliable place
to do business,” said Mark Stevenson, chief executive of
Colorado-based EM Solutions, which invested about $28 million in a
factory in Lisburn, west of Belfast, that employs 479 workers.
Michael Best, managing director at the factory, said sectarian
tensions haven’t hindered production of computer and telecom
equipment. A strict no-politics policy forbids workers from
wearing soccer jerseys, because soccer rivalries reflect sectarian
divisions.
“Everyone still has an opinion,” said Clifford Nettleship,
37, a Protestant foreman. “But because of the nature of our
politics, it’s not talked about on the shop floor. … If the most
powerful man on Earth (he means Clinton) takes an interest in your
local politics, you gotta think maybe something’s gotta be done.”
Lyons worked neighborhoods, too, trying to encourage
compromisers, hoping that high-level U.S. support of street-level
detente will avert violence.
He relies on his relatively neutral background, as an
Irish-American Catholic whose mother was descended from Northern
Ireland Protestants. He goes running regularly with an ex-prisoner
with ties to Protestant paramilitary groups. Most importantly, he
has a record of finding financial support for groups committed to
cross-community cooperation.
As the official U.S. liaison to the International Fund for
Ireland, which receives $20 million a year from the United States
and about $20 million more from Europe and Australia, Lyons
influences spending on major projects such as business-incubator
centers. The $1.5 billion in direct investment that the foundation
has leveraged since 1993 created some 30,000 jobs.
One of the latest projects Lyons set up is the Aspire
micro-credit loan program that gives loans to small businesses
that banks won’t help, such as Annie’s bakery in the Ardoyne.
Lyons checked in at Aspire’s central office.
“How many loans?” he asked Niamh Goggin, the local director.
“Ten.” All recipients were making their payments.
“Anything I can do to help?”
The challenge is converting people in the poorest
neighborhoods, Goggin said. “They don’t believe anyone will help
them.”
Lyons later dropped in on a hairdresser of African descent.
She recently received a small loan, used it to pay off debts for
her “Samara’ salon, and now is repaying the loan. She told Lyons
his micro-credit lenders “are the first ones who believed in me.”
Small businesses struggling now, she said, “are the ones that will
build up the community.”
Later, in a converted linen mill, Lyons shared a pint of
Guinness with Father Myles Kavanagh and Sister Mary Turley, who
run an array of social-services projects he helped fund. They
urged him to consider inviting Clinton to introduce Ireland’s
President Mary McAleese at a fund-raising event next month in
Washington, D.C.
At a business-incubator facility that provides phones, faxes
and work space in east Belfast, he met fellow Denver Broncos fan
Gerry O’Reilly, 36, who graduated from high school in Denver.
O’Reilly moved home to Belfast for college, then launched a coffee
business. Now his Black Mountain Coffee sales are increasing
through the Internet. Young entrepreneurs in Belfast favor
political compromise and self-government, O’Reilly said. “I’m
depressed,” he said. “You can see a cloud coming over this place
again. … If it goes back to the way it was, I’d pack my bags and go.”
Lyons even worked Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams’
neighborhood, where veteran community worker Geraldine McAteer
handed him an 80-page draft proposal to create a business park and
asked for his opinion.
Because that’s a Catholic neighborhood, Lyons made a point of
following up with a visit to Shankill, a Protestant neighborhood
devastated economically when textile factories closed. It’s a
stronghold for paramilitary groups now.
Lyons checked in with unionist community leader Jackie Redpath.
“People are mixed up, very mixed … I think people are fed-up
… It’s very difficult to see a way back from where we are at the
moment, Jim,” Redpath said. “Sorry to be so depressing.”
Lyons nodded. “That’s probably a very realistic assessment,”
he said. “We’re doing what we can.”
He dropped in at the home of Margaret McKinney. Her
youngest son, Brian, mentally disabled, was murdered more than two
decades ago. Goaded by neighborhood boys, he’d used a toy pistol
to hold up a store. When he showed the stolen money to his
parents, they returned it to the store and apologized.
But the IRA group that policed the neighborhood decided to
discipline Brian. Hooded men showed up at the McKinney home one
night. They told Margaret they would only scare her son. Instead,
they apparently killed him. Two decades later, she finally found
out what happened after visiting the White House with an Irish
women’s group. She met Lyons there, and when he asked what had
happened, she told him about Brian.
Lyons told Clinton, then began pressuring Adams to do “the
right thing.” Last year, IRA leaders arranged for excavation of a
field across the border in the Republic of Ireland. Police
unearthed Brian’s body and brought it home for burial in Belfast.
McKinney told Lyons she feels much better now. A picture of
her with Clinton sits on the mantle with pictures of Brian. But
she still clings to the white tennis shoes found on his body –
“with the wee blue stripes up the sides,” she tearfully told Lyons
in her tidy sitting room.
Lyons hugged her.
And he handed her a packet of flower seeds. People in
Colorado know the pain of losing children, he said.
McKinney planned to plant the seeds the next day. She was
hoping one might sprout by Easter.
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
