Articles

TERRORISM  AND ROGUE STATES
by Lord David Owen

There have been many rogue states since the UN was founded and a fair number of them have been involved in terrorism.  What is different is that post September 11th 2001, there may be a readiness to devise a system compatible with the UN Charter that would involve stopping the terrorism and if need be to institute regime change through sanctions and ultimately  military
intervention. 

On September 11th 2001 there were 4 geographically linked rogue states supporting and exporting international terrorism, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

The country with the longest association with terrorism was Syria.  Because of its military failure to defeat Israel under the dictatorial rule of its former President Hafiz Al-Assad, it had progressively taken to terrorism as
the most effective way of undermining the state of Israel.  At one stage Syria had a strong army and air force and could rely on arms supplies and political support from the Soviet Union.  After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1991 Syria made a substantive change of policy and joined the
American led coalition to force Iraq out of Kuwait.  After that successful military action Syria agreed to participate in the Madrid Conference and thereafter played a role in the US led Arab Israeli Peace Initiatives under President Clinton from 1993 to 2001.

 Yet throughout this time Syria was the conduit for Iranian arms to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Militia.  It is also well established that the attack in 1996 which killed 19 US soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia was planned from Syria.  There were high hopes when the father of the present President of Syria died in June 2000 that his son Bashar, a British trained eye surgeon, would usher in the new era.  New negotiations between Syria and Israel started soon after he took office but they collapsed in November 2000 and after that Syria turned to Iraq and made a significant rapprochement. Positioning themselves to win favour amongst Arab militants Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group were openly allowed to have offices in Damascus.  There was also active encouragement to all terrorist groups to transfer money, weapons and people into the West Bank and Gaza.

Syria¹s trade with Iraq rose from $50 million in 1997 to $2 billion in 2001. The re-opened oil pipe line from Iraq to the Syrian port of Baniyas carried 150,000 to 200,000 barrels of oil a day.  These arrangements did not mean that Syrian ­Iraqi relations were based on friendship ­ rather it was one of mutual commercial advantage.

In Iraq on September 11th 2001 Saddam Hussein was in the strongest position he had been since his humiliating defeat in 1991.  He had got away with evicting the UN Weapons Inspectors in 1998, he had manipulated the UN Oil for Food Programme so that it was making a massive illicit contribution to his own personal finances.  Economic sanctions against Iraq were also being progressively evaded with the active encouragement on the Security Council of France, China and Russia.  Turkey and Jordan were financially profiting from smuggling Iraqi oil.  The ban on air travel was disintegrating since the Russians in August 2000 had flown a commercial flight into Baghdad and Jordan in May 2001 announced it was resuming commercial flights to Iraq.
The Clinton Administration had tried to get Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to help reduce the oil seepage from Iraq but had been rebuffed.  In Iran the revolutionary guard controlled the profits from smuggling oil from Iraq.

As a consequence the talk within the new Bush Administration in early 2001 was of introducing smart sanctions but the realists in Washington and London
knew that this would be mere window dressing and that political containment was failing by the month.  Military containment was working though at a heavy cost and some risk.  The southern no fly zone now imposed only by the US and UK since France had opted out was continuing and seen by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as vital to their self defence but neither country was keen for
the military pressure to be ratcheted up.  And neither was Turkey in relation to imposing the northern no fly zone.  It seemed that it was only a matter of time until there was a formal relaxation of UN Sanctions and Saddam Hussein was already being seen in the Arab world as having withstood US military power.

  As for sponsoring terrorism Saddam was canny enough to realise that any overt involvement would bring down more international odium than he could gain by being thought to be abstaining from terrorism. Also he saw Bin Laden as being too unpredictable for a serious partnership and Bin Laden thought Saddam too secular with no understanding or sympathy with his ideology.  I
had watched Saddam Hussein carefully since in 1978 he had authorised the assassination of a former Prime Minister of Iraq on the streets of London. I had  thrown out some 11 Iraqis who had been quite flagrantly involved and thereafter watched his Mukhabbarat intelligence agency act to destabilise the region and particularly his neighbouring countries.  There has never been any doubt in  my mind that Saddam used international terror to achieve some of his ends.

  A supposed meeting between Muhammad Atta, the Al Qaeda operative, involved in the September 11th  attacks in the US was  reported to have taken place in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official in April 2001. For awhile I believed this was a smoking gun connecting Iraq to September 11th but more and more doubts were expressed about whether the meeting took place and there was no evidence as to what had been said if it had taken place.
The CIA concluded that this could not be considered as sufficient evidence of any linkage between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

 Nevertheless to my mind it was perfectly justified for the US to use the changed public mood after September 11th to put their military back into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and for the British Government to support them
militarily.  The legal case for this in my mind rested on Iraq¹s flagrant breach of the UN¹s cease fire terms and of every other UN resolution from 1991 onwards.  Instead of putting so much weight on the intelligence information over WMD it would have been better to have taken the causa belli as being the vital need to uphold the authority of UN backed cease fire agreements. The only alternative if the UN is seen to be unable to deliver ceasefire agreements is for politicians to accept  the brutality  of
unconditional surrender.

The Iranian Revolution by September 11th 2001 had begun to run out of popular support –   though the rule of the fundamentalist clergy remained intact.  In 1997 the Iranians had elected President Mohammed Khatami to what they hoped would be a position of real power. Despite holding out the prospect of gradual reform by 2001 he was making little headway internally.
Externally he did nothing to stop the export of terrorism.  Indeed a supporter of his, Ali  Akbar Mohrashemi was a founder of Hezbollah and involved in the killing in 1983 of the US Marines in Beirut.

Iran had excellent grounds for hating Iraq.  They had lost over 400,000 people in the 8 year war with Iraq and around double this number were wounded and some badly maimed from bombing and the Iraqis using gas.  Yet
even so Iran was ready to smuggle Iraqi oil out of the country and in the process make some $700 to $800 million.  They also made several attempts to improve relations with Iraq only to be contemptuously rebuffed.

The US was still the great Satan for those still inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979 but there was by 2001 a measure of pragmatism coming into the relationship.  For example Iran had been ready to sit around the same table with the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when it came to meetings with the 6 neighbouring countries of Afghanistan and the US and Russia on dealing with the Taliban Government in Afghanistan.  Iran even came very close to invading Afghanistan at one stage to destroy the Taliban when there was trouble on their border.  While Iran continued their long record of exporting arms and giving other support to Shiite Jihad terrorism against Israel, they had begun to be very careful about doing the same in
central Asia.  They felt the need to work with former Soviet trained leaders in Central Asia in order to contain the Sunni Jihad ideology which was being fostered by Saudi money supporting Wahhabism and Deobandism through the Madrassahs in Pakistan.  This was an evil, second only to that they identified as coming from the US.  The killing of  Shiite people by the Taliban in Afghanistan or by Sunni extremists in Pakistan forced the Iranian Government to seek closer relations with the Russians and also the Chinese.
Both countries were ready to sell them arms and missiles. All three countries recognised they had a common interest in curbing Sunni militancy in Central Asia.   A summit meeting in 1996 called by China led to the formation of the Shanghai Five whereby China, Russian, Tajikistan, azakhstan and Kyrgystan all of whom shared common borders started formally to cooperate together.  In 2000 they became the Shanghai Forum with Uzbekistan being given observer status and then full membership in 2001 in
the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.  In the words of the President of Kazakhstan in June 2001 the cradle of terrorism, separatism and extremism was the instability of Afghanistan.

The Uighurs from Central Asia and from China were at this time being recruited and trained by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Beijing felt the threat of Jihad in its important province of Xinjiang.
Indeed the IMU is far more threatening to China than al Qaeda but there are very close links between the two organisations and so for China those who struggle against al Qaeda are helping them in their fight against the IMU.

Gradually in Iran some people with a record of revolutionary zeal are beginning to see that they have a vested interest in reviving the former friendship under the Shah with the United States.  In the Iranian oil towns
already the return of the oil technicians would be a popular outcome.  It is possible to believe that had the 52 American hostages not been taken and held for 444 days then the US might not have sat back and cynically allowed
the Iran-Iraq War to continue as a means of quenching Iranian fundamentalist fervour.  Certainly the consequences of that war have been extremely adverse.  Iran does not just fear Israeli nuclear weapons and the potential for Iraq to develop nuclear weapons but they are also well aware that Pakistan now a nuclear power was helped financially by Saudi Arabia.  It is hard to see any Iranian government that overthrows the clergy not continuing with their nuclear programme.

The Afghanistan that the world woke up to in September 2001 was a product of Pakistan backing the Taliban.  The Taliban had only emerged in 1994 but they offered the Pakistan military intelligence, itself a powerful faction within the Pakistan Army and containing many fundamentalist officers, the opportunity to establish in Afghanistan the strategic depth they had long
sought to help them in their struggle with India.  I visited Pakistan a number of times in the 1980¹s while President Zia was supporting the Afghan Mujahedeen.  It was obvious that Zia was being encouraged and financed to do
so by the CIA.  At that time I, too, believed that challenging the Soviet Union¹s occupation of Afghanistan by helping arm the Afghans was an acceptable policy.  Some of the Mujahedeen leaders were charismatic people and not fundamentalists, very similar to the Afghan tribal leaders I had camped out with in their mountain tents when I had visited Afghanistan as a student in 1959.  Yet in retrospect it is possible to argue that our actions were destabilising Afghanistan long after the Soviets withdrew, just as our support for continuing the Iran-Iraq War still leaves profoundly adverse consequences.  This is one of the dilemmas of international diplomacy.
Short term actions by big powers can have long term repercussions particularly when accompanied by only a transient preoccupation can lead to long standing regional instability.
When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan Islamabad was less interested in pursuing a peaceful settlement than in ensuring Pakistani control, not just of Kabul but in gaining influence in Central Asia and particularly
Turkmenistan.  It is easy to forget that the port of Karachi is only 1700 miles from Dushanbe in Tajikistan which is itself 2125 miles from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and 2625 miles to Rostov on Don in Western Russian.  By 1994 the Pakistani¹s favoured Afghan leader, Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, was in bad shape and looked as if he was not able to win control of Kabul.  So it was to the Taliban that Pakistan looked towards to deliver a safe oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan. 

The Taliban ideology of Deobandi Islam was alien to Afghanistan; nevertheless, for two years their ability to bring back order and instil discipline was popular with most Afghanis.  Prior to 1996 in Kabul 50,000
Afghanis had lost their lives in 4 years of almost continuous fighting.  The Taliban had no links with international terrorism until they came to know
Osama bin Laden when they captured Kabul that same year.  Yet by September 2001 the whole world saw how the combination of ideological zeal, large sums
of money and a state giving sanctuary to terrorism could produce a whole series of provocative attacks, first on Americans abroad and then with a carefully planned and executed terrorist attack inside America provoke the
world¹s only superpower into a declaration of all out war.

In May 2004 we can attempt to make an interim assessment of what that war has achieved.  There has been regime change as a result of military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In Afghanistan the US masterminded a brilliantly successful and unconventional military attack which demoralised the Taliban who fled largely into the hills.  The Americans could not have
done this without the support of the Northern Alliance warlords yet this linkage holds the seeds of a flawed settlement in Afghanistan.  The Bonn Accord signed in December 2001 very clearly enjoined those war lords to stay out of Kabul but they ignored that demand and ensconced themselves very firmly in the capital.  The first Loya Jurga chose as an interim President Karzai, a Pashtun who had no militia of his own.  The second Loya Jurga
agreed an interim constitution.  Karzai is expected to be elected as President before the US elections in November 2004.  A new Afghan army has been established at around 5000 men it is neither large enough or strong enough to challenge the warlords from the pre Taliban days.  People like Abdul Dostum, Rabbani, the former President, Muhammed Fahim, and Abdul Sayyaf, who is himself a member of the Wahhabi sect and has close links to Saudi Arabia, form the Tajik and Uzbek dominated Northern Alliance.  They have been constantly doing deals with the US forces of around 11,000 overattempts to catch bin Laden and the Taliban leaders.  This is the highest US priority but it makes it impossible for Karzai  to impose his authority. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, having fled to Iran in 1996, continues to fight the authority of the Central Government.  All this time the Taliban is creeping
back into positions of local power.

  The illegal trade in opium, virtually stamped out by the Taliban, reached a value of over $2 _ billion in 2003.  Afghanistan is no longer a rogue state but it is a narco state with drug trading rampant.  Humanitarian aid
runs around $42 per head as distinct from the $75 a head Karzai was promised and runs at a level much less than Bosnia or Kosevo.  The Americans have built a brand new highway from Kandahar to Kabul and some good work is being done in the provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs).  The present NATO led ISAF with 6,000 men stationed in Kabul is no match, however, for the warlords countrywide. Unless a larger international force is provided and President Karzai fully supported economically  and politically, Afghanistan will slip back.  Some in America question whether that would matter
geopolitically if Osama bin Laden were found and brought to trial but we should be very careful not to underestimate the potential for Afghanistan to continue to provide a focus for terrorism from Al Qaeda and the IMU.

In Iraq despite another well executed and innovative US dominated military intervention including the capture of Saddam Hussein a deeply troubling insurgency is underway which appears to be gathering momentum.  This
insurgency is opportunistic and composed of many elements but its potency comes from the Sunnis and foreign Islamic fundamentalists.  They are stretching the US military led coalition to its limits and straining the
political base inside the coalition forces countries.  Public opinion in the coalition countries thought their forces would restore the Iraqi infrastructure quickly and win over the hearts and minds of a population glad to be rid of Saddam.  Tragically, due to a combination of  incompetence and ineptness from the coalition, things have not turned out that way despite the military protecting the oil infrastructure.  Even the military acknowledge that it was a mistake to be seen standing by while looting went
on in Baghdad and Bazra while ministry¹s records were trashed and hospitals equipment stolen.  The slow restoration of water supplies, the poor functioning of a totally inadequate sewage system and even the inability to deal with the petrol shortage have made the Bush boast of Mission Accomplished a sick joke.  The psychological boost that came from the initial liberation has been lost and the military is becoming ever more depicted as an occupying force.  The all important claim to be introducing democracy was then dealt a deadly blow by the revelations of sadistic torture and sexual abuse.

The difficulty of keeping the different religious groupings and ethnic identities working harmoniously towards an interim government in July and elections in January 2005 is proving to be very difficult.  The truth is grievous errors were made by the politicians that have besmirched the
military.  The decision of President Bush ­ euphoric after the military victory ­ to give Secretary of State Rumsfeld the lead role in post war Iraq instead of Secretary of State Powell led to the Department of Defence sweeping aside all the careful planning, meticulously prepared by the State
Department for post war reconstruction and democratisation.