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BurmaNet News: November 7, 2001
______________ THE BURMANET NEWS ______________
An on-line newspaper covering Burma
November 7, 2001 Issue # 1914
______________ www.burmanet.org _______________
INSIDE BURMA _______
*Reuters: U.N. team says SPDC still using forced labour
*Shan Herald Agency for News: Thousands of Wa resettlers perishing
*Irrawaddy: Junta to Issue ID Cards
*Irrawaddy: Large Muslim Gatherings Prohibited
*Bangkok Post: Burmese Application rejected, 63 sent home
*Shan Herald Agency for News: Two traders arrested on suspicion - and
disappear
DRUGS______
*AFP: Golden Triangle nations claim success in drug eradication
REGIONAL/INTERNATIONAL _______
*Irrawaddy: Workers' Protest in Mae Sot
*Washington Post: How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as Terrorist Sponsor
EDITORIALS/OPINION/PROPAGANDA________
*Arakan Independence Alliance: "As opposed to the SPDC, the AIA does not
support terrorism of any kind"
__________________ INSIDE BURMA ____________________
Reuters: U.N. team says SPDC still using forced labour
GENEVA, ( Reuters)Nov. 7 - Burma is still using forced labour, often
accompanied by acts of cruelty, despite pledges by the state's military
junta to stamp out the practice, a United Nations team of experts said
on Wednesday.
The team, sent by the U.N.'s International Labour Organisation (ILO),
issued its findings following a visit to Burma to verify whether an
official ban on forced labour imposed in October 2000 was being
implemented. ''Despite new legislation, forced labour still
exists in Burma,'' the ILO report said.
The four-member team, chaired by Sir Ninian Stephen, a former
judge of the U.N. International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and
Rwanda, found that the new rules were having little practical impact.
''Forced labour in most of the forms previously identified seemed
still to prevail, particularly in villages which were close to a
military camp,'' the report said.
''All too often, it was accompanied by acts of cruelty,'' it
added. However, the U.N. team said that in contrast to the
situation found by an ILO probe in 1998, it saw no evidence of the
''current use'' of forced labour in civil infrastructure projects in the
south-east Asian state. The mission by the so-called High Level
Team was the United Nations' latest bid to wipe out Burma's use of
people in slave-like working conditions.
In November 2000, the ILO formally urged its 174 member states to
review their relations with Burma -- as close as the Geneva-based body
can get to appealing for sanctions.
Burma agreed in June to receive the mission which visited the
country for three weeks until October 6.
According to the International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, more than a million people in Burma are subjected to forced
labour on construction sites for roads, railways, military installations
and tourism.
___________________________________________________
Shan Herald Agency for News: Thousands of Wa resettlers perishing
November 6, 3001
An informed source reported on 31 October that more than a thousand Wa
people who were forcibly moved to the border areas opposite Chiangmai
and Chiangrai provinces had died during the rainy season through
malaria and diarrhea.
According to him, 319 people had been reported dead in Mongton township
alone between 11 June - 20 September:
Village Malaria Diarrhea
1. Mongkhid 49 31
2. Hwe Aw 56 43
3. Namhukhun 16 43
4. Mong Jawd 33 40
5. Pangkang,
Poongpakhem 14 13
Total 168 170
"The figures are only according to the list that I have been able to
collect," he said. "I'm sure a lot more have died both in Mongton and
Monghsat."
Most of the dead were aged between 2-16 and 55-70.
The source told S.H.A.N. although the local people believed it was
"retribution by the gods" to punish the uninvited invaders from the
north, he was convinced it was unfamiliar weather, water and
environment that had actually brought the disaster. "Along the Chinese
border, the terrain is higher, cooler and has few mosquitoes," he said.
He blamed both the Burmese and Wa authorities for neglecting the welfare
of the people they had brought down.
50,000 households, approximately half of the population in the Wa
region, according to Wa officials, have been targeted to be resettled
along the Thai-Burma border during a three-year program that begun in
late 1999.
___________________________________________________
Irrawaddy: Junta to Issue ID Cards
By Maung Maung Oo
November 06, 2001?Burma's Ministry of Immigration and Population issued
a directive on October 20 stating that members of cease-fire groups
living in Rangoon and Mandalay are eligible for national identification
cards, according to a source in Rangoon. The order states that
individuals who have lived in Rangoon or Mandalay for the past five
years are eligible.
The ID card in Burma equates to full citizenship. The groups with the
most applicants thus far are from the Wa and Kokant, according to the
source.
"The Wa have been recommending that Chinese immigrants who illegally
migrated from main-land China to Rangoon and Mandalay take this
opportunity to also register," said a businessman from Rangoon's China
town. "Many of the recent Chinese immigrants have connections with the
Wa and Kokant through different business dealings," he added.
Ethnic Chinese and Indians born on Burmese soil, however, have never
been granted the aforementioned ID cards and despite the latest
directive they are still being prohibited from attaining full
citizenship. Their children are also disbarred from attending
institutions of higher education such as medical school and
technological universities.
The government also stated that individual families would also be
registered with the government. All Burmese citizens have state issued
ID cards and the members of each family are registered with the
government under what are called 'family registration lists'.
Burmese authorities often conduct surprise checks late at night to
examine these registration lists. If someone is found residing in the
particular home and is not on the list they are subjected to arrest and
detainment.
There are two types of cease-fire groups in Burma, groups who have
surrendered their arms and groups who still maintain their arms. The
registration will be open to members of both groups if they can meet the
eligibility requirements.
Burmese citizens are becoming increasingly displeased with the ruling
military government for its allowance of an increased population of
Chinese migrants in Mandalay, Burma's second largest city and the heart
of Burmese culture.
A few years ago, high-ranking officers located at Immigration
Departments along the Burma-China border were arrested for issuing ID
cards to illegal Chinese immigrants in return for bribes. The officers
are currently imprisoned for the violation. Over 100,000 illegal Chinese
immigrants are thought to have become Burmese citizens by bribing
immigration officers.
___________________________________________________
Irrawaddy: Large Muslim Gatherings Prohibited
By Maung Maung Oo
November 07, 2001?Muslims seeking to publicly worship in Burma have
found themselves in quite a bind after a government issued directive was
handed down on November 5. The directive calls for a ban on all mass
gatherings by Muslims, including those intended for worship, according
to a source in Rangoon.
The aim of the move is to protect national security and it was sent to
administrative offices throughout the country, the source added. The
government has also banned the sale of any item related to the
celebration of Osama bin Laden or US President George W Bush.
Another mandate sent to regional administrative offices said that anyone
found to be inciting religious riots in the country will be charged
under section 5 (j) of the Emergency Provision Act and will be given a
minimum of ten years in prison. 5(j) is usually reserved for
pro-democracy supporters. The act allows for summary judgements with no
legal defense.
Meanwhile in Kawthaung, Muslims were planning to hold a ceremony to
remember the innocent lives already lost in the Afghan-war. As news
spread of this alleged plan government authorities in the region stepped
up security measures to block any type of mass rally, according to an
Irrawaddy source in Ranong, a Thai border town opposite Kawthaung in
Burma.
There is a high concentration of Muslims in southern Burma due to its
close proximity to Malaysia and southern Thailand. Last month, numerous
religious clashes broke out between Buddhists and Muslims in central
Burma. Curfews were implemented in Prome, Pegu and Hinzada as well as
other smaller towns.
___________________________________________________
Bangkok Post: Burmese Application rejected, 63 sent home
Wednesday 07 November 2001
By, Anchalee Kongrut
Sixty-three Burmese immigrants seeking refugee status in Thailand were
forcibly sent home yesterday, Maj-Gen Mana Prajakjit, commander of the
9th Infantry Division, said.
Thailand could not afford to grant refugee status to these illegal
immigrants, Maj-Gen Mana said. Under standing policy they could only be
given in refugee camps if they were fleeing a war.
The Burmese, mostly women and children, had crossed into Thailand on Oct
25 to escape poverty in their home country. They had been allowed to
stay at Rai Pa Village in Thong Pha Phum district, Kanchanaburi, since
their arrival.
``We allowed them a short stay because there were children and sick
among them. We gave them medical treatment and sent them back to a safe
place,'' he said.
They were dropped off at Hteewadoh Village in Mon State, a war-free zone
where more than 1,000 Karen civilians are already staying.
Aid workers said there was no guarantee these immigrants would be safe
because Rangoon had signed a ceasefire treaty with Mon State and not the
Karen minority.
___________________________________________________
Shan Herald Agency for News: Two traders arrested on suspicion - and
disappear
6 November 2001
Two Shans from Mongton who had been keeping shops in Nakawngmu, roughly
halfway between the 51 mile long distance between Mongton and Border
Pass-1, were taken into custody on 21 October by Captain Kyaw Thein,
Commander, Company 4, LIB 360 (Mongpiang).
The two were Sai Thein Win, 27, and Sai Aung Win, 25. They were
brothers-in-law being married to girls who are sisters.
"They were beaten in public and taken away," said the source. "Since
then their families haven't heard anything about them. They don't even
know why they were arrested."
Forced purchase of paddy
Since mid-October Kengtung Peace and Development Council had been fully
occupied with the rice procurement task, reported LNDO, a
Chiangmai-based Lahu group.
Farmers were required to sell 12 baskets of unhulled rice for every acre
of their fields at K. 350 per basket rate. The market price is K.
1,300. "Those who fail to comply with are threatened with arrest and
confiscation of their land," he said.
Rangoon recently spoke of a need to increase rice exports.
________________________DRUGS______________________
AFP: Golden Triangle nations claim success in drug eradication
by M. Jegathesan
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Nov 6 (AFP) - Broad security cooperation among
China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand has inflicted a major blow on drug
producers in the Golden Triangle region, Thai Foreign Minister
Surakiart Sathirathai said Tuesday.
He was speaking after a meeting with his counterparts from the three
other countries on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) summmit here.
The meeting was initiated by Thailand which regards the regional drug
problem as "very serious," Surakiart said.
There was a need for greater political commitment to battle the drug
scourge with intervention from the top leadership, he said.
The four countries had basically agreed in principle to convene a summit
when necessary to discuss the problem, he told reporters.
The others at the one-hour talks were the Chinese, Myanmar and Laotian
foreign ministers Tang Jiaxuan, Maung Win and Somsavat Lengsavad
respectively. "I have to say cooperation have been really effective and
beyond doubt, the four countries have been sincere to one another on
the eradication of narcotic drugs," Surakiart said.
He said there has been intense cooperation particularly in intelligence
exchange and "we have been able to seize millions of amphetamine pills
in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and China."
Surakiart said information sharing had also led to the arrest of several
drug traffickers in the Andaman Sea.
"These are cooperation which I would say never took place in this
fashion in the past," he said.
ASEAN and China have been working together on the drug problem for many
years but success has been limited despite intelligence sharing and
cross-border investigations.
Surakiart said the meeting agreed the drugs issue was becoming greatly
related to the HIV/AIDS, illegal migration and terrorism problems.
He said however that intelligence reports suggested that drug production
in the Golden Triangle region was easing but did not elaborate.
Southeast Asian leaders Monday adopted an ambitious four-year program to
combat a regional HIV/AIDS epidemic, and warned intravenous drug use
threatened to overtake sexual transmission as the major cause of
infection. At the end of 1999, UNAIDS estimated there were 1.63 million
people with HIV/AIDS in Southeast Asia out of a population of 510
million.
Beijing is under growing pressure to step up cooperation with its
Southeast Asian neighbors as the Golden Triangle -- an area between
Myanmar, Thailand and Laos -- has become a major source of drugs ending
up in China, officials said.
A one-day conference held in Beijing in August and attended by ministers
in charge of fighting drugs from the four nations highlighted the
growing need for regional efforts.
Surakiart said the Myanmar junta was committed to the eradication of
drugs and was active in intelligence exchange.
Myanmar's ruling military junta has come under harsh international
criticism for its alleged involvement in the narcotics trade and its
failure to clamp down on illegal drug producers. The regime however
denies the charges. Surakiart said the four ministers agreed in
principle to hold a summit "in the future when the timing is right."
__________________________________________________
___________________ REGIONAL/INTERNATIONAL___________________
Irrawaddy: Workers' Protest in Mae Sot
By Ko Thet
November 07, 2001-- Over 600 Burmese factory workers protested in Mae
Sot on Monday morning after their employer reneged on a pre-negotiated
wage. The protest occurred at the Hyadd Knitwear Co. Ltd. and local
police did not interfere with the demonstration, according to a source
in the Thai-Burma border town. The workers all possessed legal work
permits.
"Our employer originally agreed to pay 105 baht (US$ 2.30) for every
dozen sweaters we produced but later tried to only pay us 80 baht," said
a protester who works at the factory.
Around 3.00 PM a group of workers who were leading the protest were able
to meet with the factory's manager. The manager told the workers he
would talk to his boss regarding the workers' demands, according to a
worker who met with the manager.
The protest continued yesterday and twenty of the groups more active
demonstrators were fired by the plant manager for their participation in
the rally, according to Than Doke, a spokesman for the Mae Sot-based
Burmese Labor Solidarity Organization (BLSO).
The plant's owner arrived late Tuesday afternoon from Bangkok and
finally agreed to pay the workers 100 baht for every dozen sweaters
knitted, five-baht short of the original agreement.
"The main focus of the workers' protest is that they are being treated
unfairly by their employers," said the Chairman of the Organization of
Industrialists in Mae Sot.
The Organization of Industrialists in Mae Sot and regional authorities
will have a meeting later this month to focus on some of the problems
the workers are facing and to identify what factories failed to register
their workers under the new work-permit scheme.
___________________________________________________
Washington Post: How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as Terrorist Sponsor
November 5, 2001
[BurmaNet adds--This article does not mention Burma specifically but is
relevant because of its examination of Unocal's role in lobbying the
United States government to recognize the Taliban as the government of
Afghanistan. Unocal's support for the Taliban parallels in many ways
the lobbying campaign it launched on behalf of the SPDC during the mid
to late 90s. Unocal is a co-owner of the Yadana gas field and pipeline
in Burma and sought to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan.]
By Mary Pat Flaherty, David B. Ottaway and James V. Grimaldi
Each year, the U.S. State Department formally rebukes and imposes
penalties on governments that protect and promote terrorists. But since
1996, when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the nation harboring
Osama bin Laden has never made the department's list of
terrorist-sponsoring countries.
The omission reflects more than a decade of vexing relations between the
United States and Afghanistan, a period that found the State Department
more focused on U.S. oil interests and women's rights than on the
growing terrorist threat, according to experts and current and former
officials.
Even as its cables and reports showed growing anxiety, the department
vacillated between engaging and isolating the Taliban. It was not until
1998, when two U.S. embassy bombings were linked to bin Laden, that
officials knew they must directly address Afghanistan's protection of
the terrorist's organization.
U.S. diplomats held out hope that the threat of adding Afghanistan to
the terrorism list was "one card we had to play" in pressing the Taliban
to turn over bin Laden, according to a former Clinton administration
adviser.
The lack of a coherent policy toward Afghanistan was part of a broader
miscalculation by the U.S. government, experts now realize. By allowing
terrorism fueled by anti-American rage to take root in Afghanistan,
officials underestimated the potential for danger.
"This is hard to say and I haven't found a way to say it that doesn't
sound crass," said former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright. "But
it is the truth that those [attacks before Sept. 11] were happening
overseas and while there were Americans who died, there were not
thousands and it did not happen on U.S. soil."
Taliban Not 'Objectionable'
The day after the Taliban seized Kabul in September 1996, State
Department spokesman Glyn Davies encountered tough questions from U.S.
reporters.
Victorious in a brutal fight against rival factions, the Taliban claimed
power after castrating and killing former president Najibullah and
hanging the corpses of him and his brother from a post at the entrance
to the Presidential Palace.
Davies reported the events matter-of-factly and told reporters the
United States saw "nothing objectionable" about the Taliban imposing its
strict interpretation of Islamic law.
"So let me get this straight," a reporter asked. "This group, this
Islamic fundamentalist group that has taken Afghanistan by force and
summarily executed the former president, the United States is holding
out possibility of relations?"
"I'm not going to prejudge where we're going to go with Afghanistan,"
Davies said.
For seven years, the State Department had loosely monitored
Afghanistan's civil warfare after defeated Soviet troops pulled out of
the country in 1989. Prolonged fighting had left Afghanistan devastated,
with tides of refugees, a largely illiterate population and a ravaged
agricultural economy based heavily on opium production.
Promising to restore law and order, the Taliban said that refugees could
return "without fear." The United States hoped the regime would restore
stability.
Davies' comments reflected years of U.S. support for Afghan rebels
during the war with the Soviets. The U.S. government had covertly
supplied aid to religious fighters known as mujaheddin who wanted to
restore an Islamic state.
In those ranks was bin Laden, a scion of a wealthy Saudi Arabian family.
Bin Laden had arrived in Afghanistan in 1982 to fight the Soviets, and
stayed through 1990, forming alliances with fundamentalist leaders,
including Mohammad Omar, the Taliban supreme commander.
None of this seemed particularly threatening to most of the diplomatic
corps at the State Department, which was consumed with events in Iran
and Iraq and the brewing nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India.
In fact, when the Clinton administration took over in 1993, Warren
Christopher mentioned bringing peace to Afghanistan in his confirmation
hearings for secretary of state, then never made a significant speech
about the country again. Christopher declined requests for an interview.
But there were warnings. Peter Tomsen, a longtime State Department
official who was a special envoy to Afghanistan, and a few others
insisted that the United States should help rebuild the country to
protect it from extremists. By disengaging, the United States risked
"throwing away the assets we have built up in Afghanistan over the last
10 years, at great expense," he argued in a confidential 1993 memo to
top State Department officials.
"The U.S. mistake was to ignore Afghanistan," Tomsen says today. "We
walked away."
After the Cold War, the United States was "weary of Afghanistan," said
Robin L. Raphel, the assistant secretary for South Asian affairs at the
State Department from 1993 to 1997. "It was really a struggle to get
attention and resources."
Yet to a large extent, the United States deferred to Pakistan, its ally
against the Soviet Union, as Afghanistan's turbulence dragged on,
according to other former officials.
"The U.S. had what I call a derivative policy toward Afghanistan," said
Elie D. Krakowski, a former special assistant to the secretary of
defense, who has written extensively on Afghanistan. "That is, it had no
policy on Afghanistan on its own, and whatever Pakistan said, we
bought."
The United States was reluctant to criticize Pakistan as it further
aligned itself with the Taliban after Kabul's fall.
With U.S. officials paying more attention to Afghanistan's neighbors,
bin Laden returned to the country. The United States had pressed Sudan
to evict him for suspected terrorist activities but did not sustain the
pressure when Omar welcomed him in as a guest.
Activities at bin Laden's training camps increased. A State Department
report in August 1996 labeled him one of the "most significant sponsors
of terrorism today."
The Pipeline Connection
Throughout the mid-1990s, a U.S. oil company was tracking the outcome
of the Afghan conflict. Unocal, a California-based energy giant, was
seeking rights to build a massive pipeline system across Afghanistan,
connecting the vast oil and natural gas reserves of Turkmenistan to a
plant and ports in Pakistan.
State Department officials promoted Unocal's pipeline project in their
role of helping U.S. companies find investments in the region, Raphel
said.
Raphel, who shuttled to Kandahar to meet with Taliban leaders and met at
other points with different groups, said the agency also thought the
project might help rally them around a common goal. "We worked hard to
make all the Afghan factions understand the potential, because the
Unocal pipeline offered development opportunities that no aid program
nor any Afghan government could," she said.
But Unocal faced fierce competition. Because it was unclear which of
Afghanistan's factions would ultimately take control, international oil
companies jockeyed to build alliances.
Unocal appealed to the Taliban and received assurances that it would
support a $4.5 billion project rivaling the trans-Alaska pipeline. The
deal promised to be a boon for the Taliban, which could realize $100
million a year in transit fees.
But Unocal also needed U.S. backing. To secure critical financing from
agencies such as the World Bank, it needed the State Department to
formally recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's government.
Unocal hired former State Department insiders: former secretary of state
Henry A. Kissinger, former special U.S. ambassador John J. Maresca and
Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.
Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born former Reagan State Department adviser
on Afghanistan, entered the picture as a consultant for a Boston group
hired by Unocal. Khalilzad and Oakley had dual roles during this period
because the State Department also sought their advice. Khalilzad is now
one of President Bush's top advisers on Afghanistan.
Officially, Unocal refused to take sides in the Afghan conflict. But its
favors to the Taliban sent a clear signal to rivals. Unocal gave the
Taliban a fax machine to speed its communications and funded a job
training program affiliated with the University of Nebraska that was set
up in Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southeast Afghanistan.
Before Unocal, the Taliban "were just a bunch of wild jihadists running
around. They came out of nowhere," said Richard Dekmejian, a University
of Southern California terrorism specialist, using the Islamic term for
holy warriors.
In a late 1997 public relations move, Unocal flew Taliban officials to
tour the company's U.S. offices. They took a side trip to the beach,
then flew to Washington for meetings in the Capitol and at the State
Department to press their case for U.S. recognition.
But the visit only fueled the outrage of women's rights groups who were
incensed by Unocal's coziness with the regime.
The State Department's human rights division had been chronicling the
Taliban's increasingly repressive treatment of women. Women were barred
from schools and jobs and required to wear head-to-toe shrouds known as
burqas. Secluded inside homes with darkened windows, they could be seen
in public only in the company of male relatives.
But reports of these and other human rights violations -- including
stonings, amputations and executions -- had little effect until
Secretary of State Albright took over in Clinton's second term. She
elevated the Afghanistan focus, naming her close colleague Karl F.
"Rick" Inderfurth to head the South Asia Bureau.
She also planned a November 1997 trip to meet with Afghan women huddled
in refugee camps.
Albright's trip was a sign that the Taliban treatment of women, more
than any other issue, "finally sparked their interest on the seventh
floor," the State Department's executive suite, said Lee O. Coldren, who
directed the little-noticed office on Afghanistan from 1994 to 1997.
Crucial Albright Visit
"Despicable."
Albright emerged from a mud-brick camp in Nasir Bagh sheltering 80,000
Afghans, and with that single word, she ratcheted up the U.S. rhetoric.
She had listened as women and girls described deplorable treatment,
including a 13-year-old who told of watching her older sister jump to
her death out a window rather than live under the regime.
The visit "was one of those watershed events for me," Albright said
recently.
Women's groups had been agitating at the State Department since the
Taliban's 1996 takeover but believed they were not taken seriously. In
meetings, Afghan American women described life before the Taliban, when
well-educated, professional women moved freely in some Afghan cities.
But among the State Department's old hands, "there was a lot of putting
down, like these women didn't know what they were talking about," said
Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
The women's effort had an important ally at the White House, first lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton. And at the United Nations, the two women who
headed the food and children's care programs linked their Afghanistan
aid to improved treatment of women.
The issue of international terrorism had no such constituency. A bin
Laden fatwa in early 1998 urged followers to target the United States
and its citizens, but the notice was largely ignored by U.S. groups and
businesses concentrating on Afghanistan.
That July, U.S. women's groups organized protests of Unocal's plans to
go ahead with its project despite what Smeal called the Taliban's
"horrific gender apartheid."
The pressure from women's groups began to have an impact domestically.
It became increasingly clear that U.S. recognition of the Taliban -- the
seal of approval needed so desperately by Unocal -- would be politically
implausible.
Why Not on List?
Shortly after Inderfurth took over the State Department office dealing
with Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1997, he posed a question: Why isn't
Afghanistan on the list of terrorist-sponsoring nations?
Inclusion would have meant a ban on arms sales, constraints on business
and a cutoff of economic aid. The same seven countries had been on the
list since 1993 -- Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and
Syria.
With Afghanistan, there was a catch. If the Taliban was branded a "state
sponsor" of terrorism, that meant the United States would inadvertently
be acknowledging the Taliban as the official government. And the State
Department had resisted doing so.
Instead, the United States was using other methods to press its case. It
leaned on Pakistan to persuade the Taliban to stop harboring bin Laden.
Pakistan had developed a close relationship with the Taliban, supplying
arms and using camps in Taliban-controlled territory to train its own
guerrillas.
Consequently, if Afghanistan made the list, the procedure for
designating terrorist sponsors would have argued for also sanctioning
Pakistan. "We weren't prepared to totally isolate Pakistan," an official
said.
"The whole approach was so absurd," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for
Afghanistan's Northern Alliance faction, a Taliban rival. "It ignored
the reality that it was the Pakistani military that had helped to create
and maintain the Taliban regime."
The 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed
224 people, including 12 Americans, altered the landscape. The attacks
were quickly linked to bin Laden, and President Bill Clinton froze bin
Laden's assets and prohibited U.S. firms from doing business with him.
Thirteen days after the attacks, the United States directed missile
strikes on terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan.
Doing more, Albright said, would have been a challenge "since we did not
have the kind of support we have now for our actions on terrorism. Back
then, we were being criticized both for doing too much and for not doing
enough."
The bombings abruptly ended Unocal's hopes of a pipeline project. The
company backed out on Dec. 4, 1998, citing business reasons. News
reports at the time speculated that Unocal feared it could face
sanctions for doing business with the Taliban.
At the White House, debate resurfaced about adding Afghanistan to the
terrorist list. Officials reasoned that they could use the threat of
listing to bargain with the Taliban, according to one former adviser.
By 1999, the United Nations imposed the first of two sets of sanctions
that cut off Taliban funds and arms.
In that same year, the State Department formally named bin Laden's al
Qaeda group as a "foreign terrorist organization," which froze its U.S.
assets, barred visas for its members and made it a crime to support the
group. Still it did not formally single out Afghanistan or the Taliban
as terrorist sponsors.
Inderfurth and others believed that step was unnecessary because
Clinton's order and the United Nations sanctions were the "functional
equivalent" of declaring the Taliban as a state sponsor.
To some analysts, the actions were too little, too late.
"Right up until the embassy bombings, we were willing to believe their
assurances," said Julie Sirrs, a former analyst on Iran for the Defense
Intelligence Agency who also monitored the Taliban.
"We were not serious about this whole thing, not only this
administration, but the previous one," and that holds true until the
Sept. 11 attacks, said Middle East specialist Dekmejian.
Albright disagrees. She said terrorism "was not a back burner issue at
all. We kept pushing it and pushing intelligence agencies -- the FBI,
CIA -- to work on it."
The State Department, she said, "consumed all the intelligence. . . .
Given the intelligence we had, we followed through as best we could.
"So the question comes up of how do you fight terrorism," Albright said.
"The tragedy of this, and it's horrible, is that it took this kind of
event to generate the support we need to do more."
Staff writers Joe Stephens and Gilbert M. Gaul and researcher Alice
Crites contributed to this report.
___________EDITORIALS/OPINION/PROPAGANDA__________
Arakan Independence Alliance: "As opposed to the SPDC, the AIA does not
support terrorism of any kind"
ARAKAN
Dated: November 2, 2001
In the recent weeks following the terrorist attacks of September11, 2001
in the United States, there have been several news reports which have
suggested possible links between terrorist organizations and Arakan
Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) and National United Party of
Arakan (NUPA), leading groups for Arakan Independent movement.
On September 2000, recognizing the need for unity between Arakan?s two
majority communities of Rakhine and Rohingya, the NUPA and the ARNO
formed the Arakan Independence Alliance (AIA). The AIA seeks an
indivisible independent Arakan where all its people enjoy freedom,
equality and peace without regard to race, religion or culture and an
Arakan which has peaceful and mutual beneficial relation with its
neighbors.
Based on this aims, the AIA reiterates its condemnation of the September
11 terrorist attacks. The AIA calls on the international community to
root out terrorism in all its forms, including terrorism practiced by a
state as well as by individuals and groups.
In Arakan, the Burmese military regime known as SPDC (State Peace and
Development Council), has practiced state terrorism on all its people,
including ethnic cleansing by way of Burmanization, forced marriage and
religious persecution. In addition, SPDC and other like minded
organizations have attempted to exploit the September 11 tragedy by
further fanning the flame of anti-Muslim sentiment through attempting to
link Muslims active in the Arakan independence movement to terrorists.
As opposed to the SPDC, the AIA does not support terrorism of any kind.
All activities of the AIA are focused on our Arakan and the liberation
of our homeland.
Joint Committee
Arakan Independence Alliance
Arakan
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