October 30, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Human Rights
Rights activist fears crackdown
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – As this former Soviet state prepares
for the arrival of American troops and the secretary of defense,
Nozima Kamalova is glad yet worried.
Glad because as head of the Legal Aid Society, which
encourages human rights, she applauds Uzbekistan’s growing role in
fighting terrorists.
But concerned too, because she says the war against terrorism
could threaten the frail new freedoms she seeks. Authorities here
have locked up more than 7,000 political prisoners, squelched
political opposition and beaten critics, human rights groups say.
“I am very concerned,” she said. “Maybe they will think that
they can do anything now.”
This is the Uzbek version of the dilemma that Americans face,
too. Retaining civil liberties while cracking down on terrorists
is emerging as a global challenge that different nations approach
from divergent positions.
Last week, before it was announced that Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld would be coming to Uzbekistan, U.S. human rights
groups urged U.S. officials to make sure new military alliances
with Uzbekistan and other authoritarian Central Asian nations
don’t become excuses for abusive internal crackdowns.
Central Asia is “home to brutal dictatorships that use tools
of repression they inherited from the Soviet Union against any
political or religious group they cannot control,” wrote Kenneth
Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, in a letter to U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Tighter airport security
Uzbek officials hope the United States also might learn from
the experience of Uzbekistan, where many still speak Russian and
the government has fought militant Islamic insurgents for the past
two years.
On Feb. 16, 1999, five bombs exploded simultaneously around
the capital city of Tashkent, killing 16 people. Security measures
were imposed – such as checkpoints on roads outside the capital.
Airport security is far more intense than in the United States.
Despite increased security, attacks on Uzbekistan continued.
Last year, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan insurgents attacked from
neighboring Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Over two months, Uzbek
forces repelled them.
“They are very strong Islamic extremist groups,” said
Jakhongir Mavlany, assistant to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s
foreign commercial service officer in Uzbekistan. “Their final
goal, according to their press releases, is to create a pure
Islamic empire in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asian
republics, including parts of western China.”
The situation calmed this past year. U.S. companies led by
Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp. – which invested $300 million in
a gold-processing joint venture – see business potential in
Uzbekistan.
Mavlany said leaders of the insurgency “are linked with Osama
bin Laden,” the suspected terrorist. In his speech after the Sept.
11 attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush referred to
the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and its link to bin Laden’s
al-Qaeda group.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, in an interview
during the presidential campaign, said Central Asia could become a
hotbed of anti-U.S. terrorism, funded by sales of heroin from
Afghanistan.
Most of the people across the region are Muslims – 88 percent
of Uzbekistan’s population of 25 million. Widespread poverty –
with salaries at about $25 a month – creates potential recruits
for radicals, even though literacy rates are high.
Rumsfeld’s visit, following stops in Saudi Arabia and Egypt,
is designed to build cooperation for attacks on Afghanistan, which
harbors bin Laden.
Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov is hosting Rumsfeld on
Friday.
Kamalova will watch closely.
A 39-year-old lawyer who first toured America as Hillary
Rodham Clinton’s guest, she witnessed the destruction of the Sept.
11 attacks in New York while attending a United Nations conference.
Now she awaits the results. Karimov offered access to air
bases – including those near Tuzul, Termez and Samarqand – for
U.S. warplanes and troops. Many have been idle since Soviet forces
withdrew about 11 years ago and require improved electronics, air
control systems and fueling stations. A contingent from the 10th
Mountain Division is expected soon.
One fear here is that Americans might strike Afghanistan and
then withdraw, leaving Uzbekistan to face enraged radical Muslims.
So far, despite concerns, Kamalova said her group,
Uzbekistan’s first officially registered human rights
organization, finds that officials “are listening” to civil rights
concerns.
“I think,” she said, “it’s good that they let the Americans
come here.”
October 21, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Globalization, Human Rights, Latin America
Millions of producers in Third World mired in poverty
UNILDE, Nicaragua – Standing in a cloud forest on the side of
a volcano, Santiago Rivera closes his calloused fingers over green
coffee fruits blushing ripe – future flavor for U.S. consumers.
He descends a twisting trail, past banana trees and the
donkey he fondly calls “the squirrel,” to his adobe house with an
earthen kitchen floor and no plumbing.
He gets by thanks to the “fair trade” deal that gives him 91
cents a pound – double what most growers here get. In fact, Rivera
is the model campesino pictured on brochures touting Starbucks
Coffee’s participation in fair trade, in which companies and
consumers team up to get more money to peasants.
But millions of other coffee producers, across Central
America and much of the Third World, are mired in some of the
planet’s worst poverty. A few hours from Rivera, women give birth
in fly-infested black-plastic shanties without medical help, and
barefoot children grow up on one meal a day.
The survival or suffering of people who produce your coffee
is one of many aspects of today’s world that U.S. consumers can
control. Today, poverty and despair are spreading, creating
breeding grounds for trouble in a world where the threshold for
violence rose Sept. 11.
Leading analysts, including former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado,
who recently led a sweeping appraisal of U.S. national security,
say we must confront global poverty – especially to combat
terrorism.
“There must be much more concerted international effort to do
what the Army calls drying up the swamp. The swamp is composed of
four things – money, weapons, shelter and the fourth thing –
recruits,” Hart said. “The only way you do the fourth is by ending
the despair and offering hope through concerted
economic-development programs.”
The emerging fair-trade movement tries to accomplish this
within the market system instead of relying on aid handouts or
moving farmers into low-wage factories. The way it works is U.S.
consumers pay 5 to 10 percent more for products with fair-trade
labels. Those additional cents, and savings from companies buying
the products more directly from producers and co-ops abroad, can
give producers in the field a minimum price. Inspectors verify
whether the money gets through.
This movement brought “fair trade” coffee to Starbucks a year
ago along with other coffee shops – Kaladi Brothers in Denver,
Coffee Jones in Boulder and Bongo Billy’s Coffees in Buena Vista,
among them. Now, movement leaders target giant corporations that
drive world prices – owners of Maxwell House, Folgers and the
like. More than 80 percent of the coffee Americans drink is this
relatively inexpensive canned coffee.
Fair-trade leaders also plan to broaden their strategy to
encompass producers of other commodities – bananas, sugar,
chocolate, clothing.
But consumer-led poverty reduction isn’t possible unless
corporations agree to offer fair-trade products. Many refuse. As
it stands now, few coffee growers benefit because less than 1
percent, or 2.19 million of the 219 million cups of coffee
Americans drink daily, is certified as fair trade.
Meanwhile, a global coffee crisis caused by overproduction
drives millions ever deeper into poverty.
“We eat only beans,” said Paula Mercado, 40, in a dark
hillside shack near Rivera. “We’re killing ourselves working, and
we can’t get a decent price.”
Highly traded commodity
Four in five U.S. adults drink coffee, helping to make coffee
the world’s second most-traded commodity after oil with $55
billion in annual sales. And industry experts say the very best
coffee generally comes from small-scale farmers like Santiago
Rivera laboring in tropical highlands from Ethiopia to Indonesia.
This fine coffee grows on shaded plots, under diverse
canopies considered ecologically healthy, where complex flavors
develop. Here in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, brilliant
blue butterflies bounce around Rivera’s carefully tended coffee
plants.
His classic method and wise, weathered face made him a
modern-day Juan Valdez for Starbucks, which distributes its
fair-trade brochures at 3,000 shops around North America. Soon
Starbucks will offer fair-trade coffee worldwide, chief executive
Orin Smith said. “We’re going to be a force within our industry
… working very hard to make this program work.”
It isn’t charity, he said. To keep selling top-quality
coffee, “we need these people to survive.”
For his role, Rivera gained a public-relations tour of
America last year. He saw “streets made of nothing but buildings –
beautiful.”
Now back home he struggles, perched on a wood chair teetering
on an uneven floor, weighing his finances. His wife, Ermelinda,
brings him a cup of his own coffee – one of the few luxuries in
his life. His earnings as a coffee grower aren’t enough even to
afford Nescafe instant from the village store, let alone an $11.45
bag of his beans in America.
He collects 91 cents a pound because he’s part of a
cooperative – Prodecoop based in Esteli – that sells 60 percent of
its coffee at fair-trade prices – $1.26 a pound for fair-trade
beans and $1.41 for beans also certified as organic. Directors
said farmers usually receive about $1 a pound depending on
deductions for transport, processing and community projects.
Rivera’s 91 cents means his six children can attend school
and, at this time of drought, eat store-bought rice and corn. He
still relied on aid handouts after Hurricane Mitch to repair his
roof and an outhouse.
Yet his struggles are minimal compared with those of
neighbors around him who must sell their beans for 45 cents a
pound. They beg regularly to let them join his co-op. Rivera must
say no until demand grows – which torments him.
“You should be able to work and have a better life,” he said.
Sales are still low, but the volume of fair-trade coffee
imported by the United States has more than doubled since 1999,
said Paul Rice, director of the TransFair USA organization that
coordinates monitoring and labeling.
“U.S. consumers are a sleeping giant,” Rice said. “As it
awakens, corporate America has to sit up and listen.”
But fair traders face an uphill battle.
Across coffee-dependent Central America – where good times
mean living on $2 a day – relief agencies estimate 1.5 million
peasants lack food as a coffee crisis worsens. World market prices
plunged to all-time lows last week – 19 cents a pound for
low-quality robusta and 45 cents for arabica beans. In Nicaragua
alone, a quarter-million people are suffering, and United Nations
officials said more than 12,000 coffee workers now receive
emergency food aid.
What caused this crisis? Investors over the past decade
sensed profit opportunities in Vietnam, where peasants work as
cheaply as anywhere in the world. Financiers and Vietnam’s
government directed rapid development of coffee plantations.
Vietnam now is the second-largest coffee producer behind Brazil –
churning out cheap robusta coffee that corporate giants like
Procter & Gamble buy. A resulting glut of this coffee sucked down
world prices.
Vietnamese peasants win.
But in Nicaragua, Victor Manual Alvarez, 45, sat on the floor
of his two-room house measuring out the last of the corn that
feeds his family. His four barefoot children watched listlessly.
“When this runs out …” His voice trailed off. The family
has no money, he said. A dry cornfield behind the house isn’t
planted. He still counts on coffee, but unable to sell at
fair-trade prices he must settle for 50 cents a pound. After
tending to his coffee plants and harvesting, moving his coffee to
local middlemen requires five day-long donkey treks down the
volcano and then along a rocky 5-mile road to Somoto.
He devotes more time now to searching for construction work
that might bring some money for food. Sometimes he’s gone for
weeks.
“It’s not fair,” he said. “Fifty cents a pound is not enough
to provide coffee.”
There was a time when he envisioned a better life for his
children. “I’ve been working with a machete since I was a little
boy. I never studied.”
Now he just wants them to survive. “Give a good price to us,
the poor producers of your coffee,” he implored. “The coffee we
produce is good coffee.”
United Nations World Food Program supervisor Rosario Sanabria
laments that too many commodity producers are falling behind.
“The companies play an important role,” Sanabria said. “Their
values are not human. They are commercial. What is their
responsibility? In general, we’re not taking care of human values.
The world would be a little more fair if we thought more about
human values.”
Inside a Starbucks cafe on Denver’s 16th Street Mall,
bank-loan specialist Beth Bockenstedt, 44, ordered up a $3.80
Caramel Macchiato last week. She knew about fair-trade coffee.
She’d seen the brochure featuring Santiago Rivera. The cafe in
Denver offered no fair-trade coffee as a daily brew. Bockenstedt
said she might be inclined to try it or buy fair-trade beans for
home instead of French Roast – even if those beans aren’t quite as
good.
But she doubts fair-trade money really reaches peasants. She
views fair trade as “just a gimmick” to hook socially conscious
consumers.
At Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, chief executive Smith
worried about the quality of fair-trade coffee. He said he wants
fair-trade leaders to work with industry leaders to find
cooperatives that can produce the best coffee in large volumes.
Specialty-coffee lobbyists fear this is happening too slowly
and that an industrywide roughening of quality will result as
Vietnamese robusta drives out savory arabicas.
Fair-trade pitch rejected
“We can’t do what we need to do with fair trade,” said Ted
Lingle, director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
“We can’t get consumers to connect with the issue fast enough to
make a real difference for the farmer.” Lingle wants coffee-market
leaders in New York and London to remove “triage” waste products
that inflate global coffee volume, in an emergency effort to
resuscitate prices.
Meanwhile, Procter & Gamble directors at a shareholder
meeting Oct. 9 rejected a pitch to offer fair-trade coffee. P&G
prefers to help impoverished producers by giving aid, spokeswoman
Margaret Swallow said.
Executives are looking for groups that work with farmers to
help them switch from coffee into growing more profitable crops,
she added.
Pressure groups plan to attack P&G as suppliers of “sweatshop
coffee.”
And in the U.S. Congress, lawmakers are trying to make up
their own minds about what kind of coffee to drink. Last week
lawmakers tested fair-trade blends in a congressional cafeteria.
Yet so far nobody is making a real difference for coffee
workers.
In a fly-infested shanty camp near Matagalpa, Dimas Carrazo,
40, grips an ax, trolling for wood to cut and sell, the only way
he can afford food for his four starving kids. Frustrations mount.
Carrazo and others once fought as U.S.-backed contra fighters to
subvert Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Many still wear blue
contra caps emblazoned “Guardians of Democracy.”
Americans should help with the coffee crisis, said Marcos
Molina Velazquez, 40, an ex-fighter now raising five kids. “If
they helped us before to get arms, now they should help us get
tools.”
In another roadside camp, Samuel Tinoco, 53, suggested:
“Maybe I should go to Vietnam?”
Leading a group of 350 landless coffee workers, who marched
all the way to Managua pleading for aid to sick children and then
camped at the National Assembly, Maria Victoria Picado, 45,
announced: “If nobody does anything, this will get violent.”
This year, a U.S. State Department report warned that “endemic
poverty” in Nicaragua is driving entire communities into smuggling
drugs from Colombia north to the United States.
Even Santiago Rivera questions the free-market system right
now. He has friends in the United States, and excused himself
tearfully after watching the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center. “We’re all brothers.”
Yet in Nicaragua’s election next month, he’s backing
ex-Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, a man with questionable
connections to Libya and Iraq who once tried to lead Central
America toward socialism. He’s worth another try, in Rivera’s
view, as a leader responsive to real people.
October 7, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Human Rights
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – As the first U.S. ground troops in
Central Asia reach this former Soviet republic, leaders of the war
on terrorism are depicting a resolute march toward justice.
That march, underscored by further warnings from President
Bush, on Friday took Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld up the
curving, brass-railed marble stairs in Uzbekistan’s White Palace.
There, bolstering new alliances the United States is trying
to forge, the secretary of defense shook hands with President
Islam Karimov, a burly former Communist Party boss.
They sat at a long table facing each other, palavered for an
hour and then strolled across a gleaming wood floor.
Karimov said yes, the United States could use one military
base for search and rescue and humanitarian operations – which
would provide key access to an area just north of Afghanistan
where suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding.
But the Uzbek leader also said no, the U.S. cannot yet launch
strikes directly from his country. And no, U.S. special operations
soldiers, key to efforts in Afghanistan, won’t be allowed in the
country.
“We are not quite ready for this,” Karimov said.
Now some 1,000 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division –
created in Colorado during World War II, and now based in New York
– are charged with setting up operations at the Uzbek air base.
Rumsfeld’s five-country mission to build support paired with
a swing by British Prime Minister Tony Blair through Russia,
Pakistan and India. As they returned home, England and the U.S.
talked tough, but vaguely, to Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.
“Time is running out,” Bush warned.
“Things are coming into place,” vowed Blair.
But what? When?
“The timing of any action is a matter to be discussed with
our close allies,” Blair allowed. “What has been happening is that
there is a political and diplomatic coalition there that’s very
strong.”
But not as strong as the U.S. had hoped. None of the five
countries Rumsfeld sidled up to granted the unrestricted access
officials seek to conduct commando raids and bombing runs on
Afghanistan.
Pakistan, on Blair’s itinerary, is nervous about civil unrest
if it abets war against fellow Muslims in the Taliban – a regime
Pakistan has aided and, alone in the world, still officially
recognizes.
In Pakistan, some embassies are shedding nonessential staff
and closing offices in smaller cities. A metal detector suddenly
is the mark of a better hotel in Islamabad, the capital.
Only hours before Blair’s visit Friday, Maulana Fazlur
Rahman, leader of the extremist Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam party,
visited Rawalpindi and sent a crowd of about 5,000 storming
through the streets screaming anti-American and pro-Taliban slogans.
“The religious parties are united in their stand,” said
Muhammed Sharif Chowdry, 75. “If the government provides support
to America in an attack on Afghanistan, the government will fail.
“It will not be able to face the people. Not only the people of
Pakistan, but the Muslims of the whole world are behind
Afghanistan.”
There is also unease in Uzbekistan.
“If Americans attack Afghanistan, it’s OK,” said Natasha
Ignatkina, 40, inside a smoky tea and kabob den in rural Angren.
“But only if Uzbekistan will be safe.”
In his palace, the president said much the same thing.
“We do need guarantees that tomorrow we will not be left alone
to confront a terrorist menace,” Karimov told several reporters
after Rumsfeld left. “We need this guarantee. We don’t want to be
used or manipulated in any way.”
Did the meeting with Rumsfeld allay these concerns?
“No guarantees so far. No reassurances.”
Karimov agreed with Rumsfeld that there must be a concerted
effort to counter terrorism.
“We’ve got to unite,” Karimov said. “We’ve got to respect
each other. We have to stand up and defend the world, defend the
clear skies over our heads.”
But the details can be pesky. Many key members of the
coalition Bush is trying to form were holding something back this
weekend.
Significantly, Saudi Arabian officials refused to allow air
attacks launched from U.S. military bases in their country.
Charges of betrayal in coalition ranks also surfaced this
weekend. Afghan Northern Alliance backers in Tashkent accused
Pakistan of continuing its support for the Taliban regime.
Pakistani intelligence agents and the government “are
supporting the Taliban – sending military equipment to
Afghanistan, still,” Consul Ali Ahmad said at the former
government’s Embassy of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. “They
should seal that border completely.”
India and Pakistan continue a bloody dispute over Kashmir,
making them uneasy allies.
And while Bush on Saturday spoke of the post-Taliban era and
the aid Afghanistan would receive, questions loom about whether
the fractious tribal alliance – or anyone – can govern a country
that’s been at war for a generation and could see more conflict
soon.
“Maybe another Taliban will form,” said Tamara Prokopjeva,
whose Orbita TV station, housed in a converted eight-room
apartment, is one of the few nongovernment stations in a country
where more than 7,000 perceived opponents of the government are
jailed.
“So many people think the way they do, other groups could get
together.”
The events of the last few days in Uzbekistan and Pakistan
show that it’s a tricky new world for the U.S.
“No question,” Rumsfeld said after meeting with Karimov.
“Circumstances in the world have shifted.”
The United States seeks to enlist Muslim allies against
accused Muslim terrorists. At the same time, Bush states that he
will retain ties to familiar allies such as Israel, whose leader,
Ariel Sharon, voiced strong warnings to the U.S. not to appease
Arab countries.
“In a year, or two, or three, we’ll see considerably
different arrangements in the world than existed prior to Sept.
11,” according to Rumsfeld. “It’s not certain yet how that will
play out.”
Uzbekistan exemplifies that uncertainty.
A predominantly Muslim country of 25 million, Uzbekistan has
fended off its own Islamic fundamentalist assaults in recent
years.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, tied to bin Laden and
Afghanistan, wants to overthrow Karimov and establish a more
rigorous Islamic life. The movement is suspected of setting off
five simultaneous bomb blasts around Tashkent in February 1999
that killed 13 and injured 120 – leading to a crackdown that
limits worship to government-approved mosques.
People here live in blocks of uniform ap
October 4, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Human Rights
Some in Pakistan enjoy measure of freedom, education, basic rights
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Shabab Naqvi has a little problem with
her husband. Here she is, working at her government job all day,
raising five kids, doing all the cooking and cleaning, and taking
care of her 90-year-old mother-in-law, and does he help?
Get real.
“Whenever I need him, he is gone,” she said, raising her
hands and rolling her eyes heavenward as she voiced the classic
lament of the working woman.
Except that this is Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim
country where – according to stereotype – women don’t work. Nor do
they go to school, leave the home or have opinions that contradict
their husbands’; opinions that would be muffled, in any case, by
the enveloping burka beneath which they supposedly live.
Put that scenario to some Pakistani women, and then step
back – you’ll need to give them room for a belly laugh.
“It’s a real misconception,” said Aisha Nafees, 21, a
business student here in Pakistan’s capital city. She tossed her
hair in indignation as she spoke – hair that was not, by the way,
covered by a veil. Like many women here, Nafees wears a length of
chiffon draped across her throat, its ends trailing over her
shoulders and down her back. “I pray five times a day. I recite
the holy Koran. I do not need a veil.”
There’s the stereotype of the constrained Muslim woman. Then
there are women such as Naqvi and Nafees.
They coexist in this part of the world, which has become
central to the Bush administration’s campaign against terrorism.
The treatment of women in neighboring Afghanistan, which harbors
suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, has become part of
the debate.
Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban imposes many rules on women,
such as requiring them to be fully covered and forbidding
education for girls older than 8. Taliban opponents in the
Northern Alliance depict themselves as more progressive, for
example by allowing education for some women.
Pakistan, home to about 2 million Afghan refugees, is 97
percent Muslim. But within that populace, contrary to popular
belief, limitations on women vary from city to city and
neighborhood to neighborhood.
Recent reports by agencies as varied as the United Nations,
the U.S. State Department and the Progressive Women’s Organisation
paint a bleak picture of life for Pakistani women.
The U.N. and the State Department, in reports written in 1999
and 1998, respectively, found domestic-violence levels as high as
90 percent. The State Department said a third of the women in
jails in the Pakistani cities of Lahore, Peshawar and Mardan faced
adultery charges.
That report also found that only about 2 percent of the women
in rural areas such as Sindh and Baluchistan, in southwest
Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, can read. Nationally 50 percent of
men are literate, twice the rate for women.
“Yes, you find that in the villages,” said Younas Khalid,
director of the Baluchistan office of the women’s rights group
Audad. “Our religion gives them rights. Our constitution gives
them rights. Our job is to make sure they know about those rights.”
In a different way, that is Farida Nigar’s job, too.
Nigar is a vice president and branch manager for First
Women’s Bank Ltd., founded in 1989 to help women manage their own
financial affairs. At noon Wednesday, the bank, in a fashionable
area of Islamabad, was crowded with customers, all waiting to
speak with one of the women – all the bank employees are female –
sitting behind a dozen desks that formed a horseshoe in the
office. The clients included everyone from stylishly dressed women
like Nigar to women so heavily veiled that only their eyes were
visible. Several men also waited for service.
“This is a commercial bank, so we take accounts from gents
also,” Nigar said. “But we have special arrangements for women.”
Those include a credit program for women who want to start, or who
already own, businesses, and loans to businesses that have at
least 50 percent female partnership and whose chief executives are
women.
“The women are not treated with importance in other banks
where men are working,” Nigar said.
First Women’s Bank tries to help women learn their financial
rights and how to stand up for them. It holds seminars in money
management and gives computer training.
But instilling a belief in those rights is a struggle, she
said.
“Generally,” said Nigar, “even when a woman works, her
husband controls her money.”
Audad, also, tries to apprise women of their rights.
Audad – Urdu for “women” – was founded 15 years ago. Last
year, President Pervez Musharraf founded the National Commission
on the Status of Women. Just this year, Musharraf’s government
ruled that 33 percent of all seats in local elections must go to
women. “This is a landmark in Pakistan,” said Khalid, who said the
group’s next goal is to have the same requirement for the national
elections next year.
Meanwhile, Audad – much like women’s organizations in the
United States – mostly helps women with legal matters.
Divorce is legal in Pakistan. Men don’t have to prove
cause; women, however, do. The husband usually gets custody of the
children. And few women know they can receive alimony, Khalid
said. Article 25 of Pakistan’s constitution states that no citizen
shall be discriminated against on the basis of gender, religion or
ethnic background. Audad’s job, said Khalid, is to make antiquated
laws comply with the constitution. There is a poster on his office
wall: “My wife does not work. But then – whose work provides the
time for the man to drink with his friends, smoke his hookah, gamble?”
Khalid’s wife studies for a master’s degree in education (she
already has a master’s in math) while raising their young son and
daughter. Far more unusual – especially in Baluchistan, where
women are rarely even seen on the street – she drives.
“I do believe that if male members of society understood the
rights of women,” Khalid said, “that the women would not be
deprived of their rights.”
Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, those rights are more
tenuous.
Sitting in a guest house in Peshawar, a 22-year-old Afghan
woman quietly recalled a lashing she witnessed. It happened when
she entered a shop near her home in the capital city of Kabul, she
said. She wore her burka as required.
“Hard to breathe or to see,” she said. “Sometimes it gets
caught under your legs so you can’t walk. And in summer? Very
hot.”
Inside the shop, she reached the jackets. She found one she
liked, but the shop was too dark to see. Not many people were
around. She pulled up the burka for a peek.
A Taliban man then entered the shop holding what she
described as a short, thick whip resembling a riding crop. He
raised it.
“The Taliban was hitting the shopkeeper” – punishing him for
the woman’s transgression. “I said: “It’s not his fault. It was my
fault. Stop hitting him.’ The Taliban said: “Shut up.’ Then he hit
me. I covered my face and went home.”
She left for Pakistan, seeking more freedom. Yet here, too,
Islamic fundamentalism is strong. Some Taliban leaders got their
start here in religious schools.
“We are afraid of the Taliban,” she said, asking that her
name not be used. “Even sometimes here, the Taliban will say:
“Cover your face.'”
But she usually doesn’t. “The law of Islam says men and
women have equal rights. We want to be free, as free as women in
other countries.”
Some of that freedom can be found in Quetta’s narrow,
high-walled side streets, not far from Audad’s office, at Allana
Iqbal Open University, which offers courses over the Internet.
Nuzhad Rajbud is a student counselor there, and she gets in
your face fast if you suggest that some people in the U.S. think
Muslim women are oppressed.
Half the students at Iqbal Open are women, she said, adding
that the distance-learning format appeals to mothers with young
children, and women in more conservative areas such as Quetta
where purdah, a tradition where women appear in public rarely and
only under heavy veils, is practiced.
“This way, if they are used to purdah they can complete their
education,” she said.
Rajbud is one of six sisters to obtain a university
education, on insistence of their mother, who was widowed when the
girls were young. Rajbud said her mother believed, “You have to
live, you have to work, you have to fight.”
Then Rajbud, who had spoken animatedly of her pride in her
work and love for her job, leaned across her desk to confide. At
age 29, it was time to marry. Soon, she was to meet a professor
from Virginia, back home in Pakistan for a six-week visit.
They would decide whether they were compatible. If so, they
would marry in three months, and she would return to Virginia with
him.
But what if she didn’t like him? Could she say no?
Rajbud frowned.
“But I like everyone,” she said. “I like all human beings.”
No, no – what if she didn’t think he would make a good
husband?
Again, the frown, and a shrug.
“I will like him, inshallah,” she said – God willing.
“I will not compromise. But I will make it work.”
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 27, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands, Refugees
Escaping war, facing despair
Thousands of refugees flood Pakistan to find only hunger, desperation
SHAMSHATU, Pakistan – Montana mountaineer Greg Mortenson
winced at the sight: Refugee boys as young as 4, whose families
just fled Afghanistan, labor here in an open-air brick factory to
survive.
“Sometimes no food,” 9-year-old Arnan Gul said, his bare feet
swollen and caked with clay.
The struggle between terrorists and the United States is
claiming victims here, and the situation is worsening by the day.
Fearing a U.S. assault on Afghanistan, men, women and
children crossed the border into Pakistan this week – illegally,
through mountains, because officially the border is closed.
Here, southeast of the city of Peshawar, they grip hoes and
hack out clay to earn enough money to eat.
“This world is just not fair,” said Mortenson, who has been
setting up schools around northern Pakistan in an effort funded
largely by Colorado members of the Golden-based American Alpine
Club. “These aren’t the terrorists. These aren’t bad people.”
The potential for a huge refugee crisis is growing as tens of
thousands of Afghans ignore their own leaders’ reassurances and
try to escape into Pakistan.
Some are stopped. Some make it through.
Bearded men wearing turbans and brown shalwar kameez lead the
way, followed by women in burka gowns that cover their faces, the
custom here.
Some support Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which rejects
the U.S. demand to give up Osama bin Laden, blamed by President
Bush for the suicide terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Some don’t.
Mostly they’re just poor, suffering already from a drought,
clinging to their Muslim faith.
Sajjad Ali Shah, a Peshawar arms importer, said Afghan
friends told him some refugees who had brought their families to
Pakistan now were returning to Afghanistan with a desperate
money-making plan.
They will wait for U.S. aircraft to attack and then sell
metal from the bombs as scrap.
The situation, already brutal for many, could worsen. U.N.
officials say 1 million refugees could seek shelter in Pakistan if
the United States attacks.
The Taliban’s supreme ruler, Mullah Mohammed Omar, on
Wednesday tried to calm his country, where aid agencies say at
least half of the population of Kabul, the capital, has left.
“America has no reason, justification or evidence for
attacking,” his statement said, as reported by Cox News Service.
“Therefore, all those (Afghans) who have been displaced internally
or externally are instructed to return to their original place of
residence.”
But refugees keep coming by the thousands.
That adds to tension in border lands where almost everybody
carries weapons and many resent the Pakistan government’s support
of a U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.
Pakistan’s border is closed partly because of security
concerns raised by U.S. officials after the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Pakistani officials on Wednesday refused to open up, saying
the country can’t handle more Afghan refugees than the 2 million
already here. But refugees who slip through anyway, such as those
who trekked over mountains south of the Khyber Pass, can stay.
Some, such as the Ullaha family, end up at this roadside
brick factory on a parched plain.
The Ullahas left their barren farm near Jalalabad because
of the “war situation,” said Shooker Ullaha, 40, the father. He
had heard radio reports about attacks on America, he said, and
then about the U.S. threat of military action against Afghanistan.
He hadn’t heard recent assurances from U.S. officials that
“there won’t be any kind of D-Day” and innocents won’t be hurt.
His voice rose in the heat.
“Afghanistan and America friends after Russia war,” he said.
“Please. I appeal to America: no attack.”
For 24 hours he led 10 family members through the mountains,
he said.
And Wednesday, their second day in Pakistan, he and his four
sons already were working – 4-year-old Uzammat pushed a scraper to
clear mud from the work area. Naqeeb, Nusherat and Amdad – all
under 8 – helped hack out clay from a berm. Men molding bricks set
them in rows on the ground to dry before hauling the bricks to a
kiln at the base of a smokestack.
They say the Pakistani owner pays them the equivalent of
$1.50 per 1,000 bricks – a day’s work for an adult.
“If the situation clears, I go back,” he said. “I can’t go
back to Afghanistan now because the situation is not clear.”
Mortenson listened silently.
He was thinking of his own two children back in Montana, he
said later, imagining them molding bricks to survive. Nearby in
the sprawling, mud-brick Shamshatu refugee camp, he has set up a
school for children – an open-air classroom with 12 teachers and
space for 420 students.
But nobody studied there Wednesday.
Pakistani police told Mortenson the Shamshatu camp was unsafe.
Traveling back and forth to northern Pakistan over the past
five years, Mortenson, 43, has set up 22 schools for children in
communities that supply porters for U.S. climbers in the Karakoram
Mountains.
“The need is everywhere,” he said. “The only way we can defeat
terrorism is if people in this country where terrorists exist
learn to respect and love Americans, and if we can respect and
love these people here.”
The border is jittery.
There are conflicts between those supporting Pakistan’s
government, which backs Bush’s demand for bin Laden, and Muslims
appalled at potential military action against other Muslims.
“Maybe civil war,” factory owner and trader Mohammad Arif said.
A towering painted portrait of bin Laden clutching machine
guns decorated the back of one truck. Some Pakistanis point out
bin Laden built roads and clinics in Afghanistan.
Tuesday in the Khyber Tribal Area, five men were pulled from
a car and shot in a feud.
Inside a mud-brick compound after the killings, 16 men sat
drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. They joked that they all are
cousins of Osama bin Laden.
Five more shots from a machine gun reverberated just over
the wall. In one way, people on the border, accustomed to
conflict, are not jittery: Nobody flinched.
Black-clad Pakistani police and soldiers patrol along roads
and at edges of Afghan neighborhoods in Peshawar.
Inside a fortified United Nations compound, bureaucrats
coordinate construction of new tent cities and water supplies for
up to 1 million refugees.
“Afghanistan is a human-rights and humanitarian catastrophe.
These are probably the hungriest and poorest people of the world,”
said Yusuf Hassan, spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner for
refugees. “They are trapped.”
U.N. officials want the border opened. U.S. officials say
they haven’t taken a position.
“We’re concerned about the humanitarian crisis,” spokesman
Mark Wentworth said from the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan’s capital,
Islamabad. “We continue to provide assistance to refugees in
Pakistan. We continue to try to provide assistance to vulnerable
Afghans across the border.”
Out on the hot plain, Mortenson watched boys molding bricks
and wondered whether America’s campaign will succeed. Leaving
Afghanistan under threat of military attack for weeks “is causing
innocent people to panic,” he said.
Children languishing in refugee camps could become prey for
terrorist recruiters in the future, he said. “What’s the
difference between them becoming a productive local citizen or a
terrorist? I think the key is an education.”
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
June 24, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Uncategorized
Double life discovered after Denverite vanishes
PALEOCHORA, Greece – He led a double life – as a library
telephone operator residing in Denver with his mother, and as a
well-to-do, globe-trotting archaeologist.
Then Paul Michals, 48, disappeared.
He was last seen a year ago on the rocky south coast of Crete,
the Mediterranean island where he explored ruins of early western
civilization.
Greek police found his passport and $114 in his room at the
modest seaside Hotel On the Rocks. A ground and air search failed
to find him. Today, authorities on two continents are stumped.
Perhaps Michals perished on the bone-dry trail that traverses
cliffs and cuts into gorges laden with unexcavated tombs and
temples. It’s “quite possible” that a person could fall here and
never be found, U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns told Denver Mayor
Wellington Webb in a letter from Athens.
Perhaps he was kidnapped or murdered. A Denver Police
Department report reads: “may be victim of foul play.” Greek
police don’t rule that out.
Perhaps he deliberately disappeared to remake his life – or
to end it.
You could find other equally vexing missing-person cases.
U.S. police agencies reported 876,213 people missing last year. A
near-record 98,431 cases, like this one, are unsolved.
The Paul Michals mystery illustrates how – at a time when
digital communications, global-positioning satellites and
electronic records seemingly make anyone easy to find – someone
still can vanish.
Michals e-mailed friends almost daily. From those messages,
from interviews with police and friends, and from receipts he
mailed to his mother in Denver, pieces of a puzzle emerge.
The value of his brokerage account dropped from nearly
$600,000 in 1998 to about $80,000 in November 1999.
A passport that Michals reported stolen two months before he
disappeared never was recovered.
In 1998, he opened a bank account in Sydney, Australia, and
spoke with a friend about buying property in Australia.
Archaeology companions said Michals was deeply discouraged
after a failed romance.
Only now are acquaintances unraveling his double life.
Those who knew Michals the archaeologist had no idea he grew
up in Denver housing projects, lived with his mother and worked
part-time as the late-shift switchboard operator at the Denver
Public Library’s central branch. “He told us he was an independent
computer programmer,” said Steve Arbury, a college professor and
archaeology volunteer who worked with Michals on Crete.
Those who knew Michals the switchboard operator had no idea
he had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in the stock
market, and that as a self-made archaeologist he was among fewer
than 100 scholars to crack an ancient Mycenean language that
enabled him to decipher inscriptions on ruins excavated around the
Mediterranean Sea.
“DO YOU THINK HE’S OUT there somewhere?” asks Michals’ mother,
Constance Rolon, 78, a retired city government secretary. She
keeps a candle burning next to the Bible in their tiny north
Denver home, still listening for the 10 p.m. clink of the
chain-link back gate that signaled her son’s return.
Rolon moved from New York to Denver with an infant daughter
after her husband was killed in World War II. Paul was born Feb.
6, 1953. He never knew his father, George Michals, a Greek
immigrant who abandoned the family.
He graduated from West High School, then the University of
Northern Colorado on a scholarship. He couldn’t afford to pursue
graduate studies in physics as he wanted. He returned to live with
his mother. He took a job in 1976 shelving books at the library.
“Very intelligent, he had high moral standards, was honest,
worked hard,” said Marilyn Chang, who interviewed him then and
kept in touch. Michals worked at the library for nearly 25 years –
mostly handling telephone calls patiently, usually alone in a
switchboard room.
He worked 25 hours a week from midafternoon to 9 p.m., never
taking dinner breaks. He rode the bus home, first to the public
housing where he and his mother lived for years, then to the
bungalow he bought for $73,946 in 1995.
Once, co-worker Jim Martin talked him into accepting a ride.
Michals insisted on being dropped off a few blocks from his house,
and pointedly declined future rides. He told Martin “he preferred
to take the bus because the bus driver always counted on him being
on the bus. It’s like he didn’t want us to know where he lived.”
Michals loved movies, especially the Jimmy Stewart classic
“It’s a Wonderful Life,” and ran a popular Jimmy Stewart Web site.
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
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.
