Transcript
N.B.: [joined in progress]
MR. STEINBERG: Today we have once again a very distinguished group of scholars with us, and it reflects some of the developments that we have seen in the past weeks since we've held our last briefing. There's been a remarkable continued flurry about investigative and diplomatic activity over the past week. We have seen a number of arrests and detentions not only here in the United States, but I think importantly we are seeing important activity abroad as well, with arrests in Brussels, U.K., Spain and Germany, which I think are a reflection of the fact that there is both new levels of cooperation going on globally, but also a real recognition of the global reach of the network that we are trying to uncover here.
There's also been a continued stream of key foreign visitors to the United States. King Abdullah of Jordan is here. We've had the Saudi foreign minister here, the Turkish foreign minister was here, the Indian national security advisor, the Italian foreign minister. And so the efforts of the administration to continue to build this diplomatic coalition are moving forward. We have reports today in the papers that the administration has made progress with the Saudis on military cooperation.
But at the same time we have had some very important steps forward, most notably in the discussions with the Russians and others. We've also had some cracks in the level of cooperation, particularly in the voices we have heard out of Iran from the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, suggesting that Iran would not be a partner for the United States in the fight against terrorism; and also some anxieties coming out of Pakistan about the potential for U.S. policy to move towards a strategy of overthrow of the Taliban, and the Pakistani foreign minister indicating very strongly the concerns that Pakistan would have with that course.
As I said, there have been some remarkable developments on the Russian and Central Asian front as well, with a very strong statement from both President Putin and the defense minister in Russia about military cooperation involving Russian bases in Central Asia, and indications that other Central Asian states are prepared to cooperate with the United States militarily. And so it's fitting this morning that we have first Martin Indyk to talk about the developments in the Middle East and the various efforts to build a coalition, and the consequences for some of these countries; followed by Fiona Hill, who will talk about the Russian and Central Asian dimensions of this challenge.
Just a few more words by introduction. I think we are all watching with interest and anticipation to see how the military dimension of this effort will unfold. A very significant statement by Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz meeting with NATO allies in Brussels hinting that the military response may not be as near term as some may have thought. But I think we are all cautious in recognizing that it's unlikely that the administration would announce in advance exactly when they would begin, should they have decided to do so.
And we're also seeing some new signs of life on Capitol Hill as the—while the strong spirit of bipartisanship continues to prevail. Some of the substantive issues are beginning to counter real debate, most notably on Attorney General Ashcroft's proposals involving electronic surveillance and immigration, where for the first time we are seeing some questioning on the Hill and some reluctance simply to accept the administration's proposals at face value. And to discuss this and some of the other issues from the legislative and political perspective, we have former Congressman Bill Frenzel here this morning.
So let me turn it over to our panelists—first to Martin Indyk.
MR. INDYK: Thank you, Jim, I'll try to be quick. Naturally enough, most of the focus of diplomatic and military activity has been on Afghanistan, because that's where the head of the snake is located. But I think it would be obvious to anybody at the moment to look at the terror network itself and the individuals involved, we'd quickly come to the conclusion that the head of the snake may be in Afghanistan, but the source of the problem is in the Middle East. The hijackers were all from the Middle East. Their grievances are against the United States—not just because we are a West in a centuries old conflict between East and West, or the West and the Middle East, but because the manifestation of that Westernness comes through our backing for pro-Western, moderate Arab governments in the region. And if you look at some of the profiles that have been detailed of some of the hijackers, you see that in many cases, and of course in the case of Osama bin Laden himself, their original grievances against their own governments because of their opposition to them, and because of their opposition to the United States comes from the fact that we support them. So how these governments react in this situation is going to be very important. And Abdullah of Jordan is in town today. Ahmed Maher, the foreign minister of Egypt, was in yesterday. And of course, most important of all, given Saudi Arabia's leading role in the Islamic world and its proximity to the source of the problem, the visit of Prince Saud, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia last week.
In this context, while the press play has focused on whether they are prepared to give us military access, particularly the Saudis, and just see in the press this morning that issue is being dealt with in a kind of kabuki dance about what exactly the Saudis will do for us. But I would make the point here that military access to bases in the Gulf—and it's not just Saudi Arabia—we have access arrangements and basing provisions in all of the GCC countries. And one of the things that was done over the last eight years after the Gulf War was to ensure that we have such arrangements, so that we wouldn't need to spend six months building up forces in the region before we could deal with the kind of threat posed by Saddam Hussein. And so it's of lesser importance, because we have a lot of capabilities and a lot of options. But it's also of lesser importance, because as you can see, at least for the time being, the Pentagon has not focused on an armed invasion of any country, Afghanistan in particular—at least at this stage. And so the combination of the excess capacity that we have and the nature of the task that we are facing, I would say, makes that of lesser importance.
Where we need the help though—that is, the Arab governments who are themselves a target, the initial target of the Islamic terrorists—where we need their help is in the PR battle. And not a lot of attention has been paid to this PR battle. But I think that the lessons of the intifada, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is marking its first anniversary this week, is how so much of the battle is played out on the air waves in its public relations warfare. And the same will apply for the war on terrorism that we are engaged in.
You can already see how a word used by the president, "crusade," immediately causes ripple effects in the Islamic world, and is played up by those who oppose us. And the same thing with the words "Infinite Justice" for the name of the campaign.
As we become more sensitive to these kinds of things, we also are going to find that we cannot win this PR battle for the minds of the Arab and Islamic world on our own. In fact, anything that is done with an American accent is by definition suspect in this effort. We need the Arab governments to take a leadership role in this regard. And, in particular, they need to address a problem that has become—that is really out of control in the Iran press, which is the anti— Americanism. If you go back to the week before September the 11th, you will see in the Arab press just a quick show of anti-Americanism. It's the kind of thing that was convenient for all concerned—it united the left and the right in these countries. The United States was the enemy for all of them. And it also served the governments to deflect criticism from themselves onto the United States. And so a climate of anti-Americanism has been created over many years in the Arab world in particular. That needs to be addressed in this process.
The same goes for the legitimization of terror as a weapon used by the weak and the oppressed. Hamas and Hezbollah suicide bombers have been revered in the popular Arab press. And that has helped, again, to create a climate in which terrorism against innocent people is seen as somehow acceptable. The fact of the matter is that it is anti-Islamic, that the Koran specifically enjoins against the taking of innocent lives. But this point needs to be made clearly, loudly and repeatedly by our governments to their people. They need to address this climate. I think the Saudis have taken a very strong and brave stand in their statement that in the breaking of diplomatic relations with the Taliban where they in particular refer to the acts of Osama bin Laden's terror network as causing harm to Islam and besmirching the name of Muslims everywhere. That is the kind of message that has to go out to the Arab world and the Islamic world in very clear terms, and we need the Arab government and the religious leaders in this country to be doing it. We can't do it ourselves.
On the other hand, I think it's important that we not fall into this trap about presenting the evidence, an argument that is being made by the Taliban and others that first of all we have to see the evidence before we can do anything. This is a phenomenon that we see often used. It's a kind of denial process in the first instance, and you hear it in the Arab world a lot in the last couple of weeks that this couldn't have been done by Middle Easterners. Some even in the Arab press go so far to suggest it was actually an Israeli plot—a familiar kind of approach. But I think that as it becomes clearer and clearer who was involved in this, and the connections to al Qaeda, the case will make itself.
Secondly, we already have enough evidence in the public record about Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and terrorist attacks on Americans. That particularly came out in the course cases in the cases of the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. And, of course, Osama bin Laden himself makes no bones about his intentions to destroy America. I might note that if we held some of these governments to the same—I mean the evidence to the same standard, when they fight against Islamic extremists, they would have a much harder time.
In passing, I would just point out that they have set an example in this regard in terms of how to deal with Islamic extremists. They stamp them out. We're talking about Syria, Egypt, Algeria. They did it. They did it brutally, they did it ruthlessly, and it actually worked. And they expected and in many cases got our support and understanding when they took these actions. I think that given what has happened to us we should expect no less from them.
Finally, let me make one other point, and that is about the Palestinian issue. In the PR battle, the Palestinian issue inevitably comes up in the Arab world. They will argue that this is the core of the conflict, that there is a distinction between Palestinian terrorism, which is used to liberate, designed to liberate the Palestinian territory, as opposed to what happened on September the 11th. It is not the core issue as far as the terrorists themselves are concerned. In fact, Israel and Palestine have succeeded practically not at all in the category of demands of Osama bin Laden. But he will now try to make it an issue. We see in two statements that he made in the last week the way in which he talks about Jews and crusaders as being the enemy. He wants to turn this into a war against Islam, and for him a war against the West—Israel, the United States, Jews and crusaders.
That's the reality of what we face. But behind that actually I believe an opportunity has been created to stop the violence, to end the intifada, and to put the Israeli-Palestinian process back on a negotiating track. I won't in these opening remarks go into the details of that, but suffice it to say that Arafat finds himself in a tight corner; there's a danger the Palestinian cause could face a disaster if he comes and the Palestinians come to be identified with the terrorists and those who harbor them, rather than with the United States and the international coalition against terror. On the other hand, he sees that maybe he has a new card to play, particularly with the United States, that we may want the Palestinians to be on our side in this effort. And he has a new explanation to his own people for why the violence should stop, because of what has happened here. Israel, on the other hand, understands that they need to try to keep the situation calm. They have their own intense interest in seeing the violence stop. So, as a result, finally Arafat and Peres met. The security people are meeting today in Gaza. They are developing a series of reciprocal steps that's already been outlined in the (Tenet ?) plan and the Mitchell recommendations for stopping the violence, arresting the terrorists; and on the Israeli side for easing the closures, allowing the Palestinians to return to some kind of normalcy, redeploying the IDF—all of these things have already been articulated. They are working out a time table for implementation now. I believe that there is a real opportunity here—a kind of silver lining in this dark cloud—to take advantage of the impact that these horrendous acts here have had on the calculations of Yasser Arafat and the Israelis.
But a last word here. I do not believe that left to their own devices—we have seen so many times before the Israelis and the Palestinians can in effect do it on their own. They need our own, and we have a tremendous amount of leverage now because of what has happened. And it is time —it is a good time to appoint a special envoy. It is simply not possible for our principals—the secretary of State, the president?to devote attention to this issue while they have so many more important things to deal with. But by appointing a special envoy, we will be able to say to those in the Arab world that you have to do something about the Palestinian problem. We are doing something about it. And in the process I believe we would be able to actually stop the violence there, and that will help in our overall campaign in terms of the war on terror.
Thanks very much.
MR. STEINBERG: Thank you, Martin. And for those of you who have not had your fill of Martin's insights about some of these problems, Martin has a very thoughtful op-ed in the New York Times today. You can either read it in the New York Times, or shortly on our Web site.
Fiona?
MS. HILL: Thanks, Jim. Well, as Martin said, the crisis has actually opened potentially some new opportunities in the Middle East. And if you look at the future of U.S.-Russian relations, clearly we can see some new opportunities there too. Obviously we are now moving beyond the fairly limited agenda that we had with Russia before September 11th, which as you all remember, if you can remember back that far now, given everything else that has happened, focused very much on missile defense, and then debates about the next rounds of NATO enlargement that might take in the Balkan states and other European security issues. Well, now obviously we are on a completely different footing.
In actual fact, it hasn't been that difficult to bring Russia on board, because the Russians have been trying to get the United States on board on a very similar campaign against terrorism for at least the last year and a half. Just earlier this year, President Putin, Ivanov, and many other Russian officials, were exhorting European leaders to join in a concerted campaign against what they were calling an arc of terrorism stretching from Afghanistan, through Chechnya to the Balkans. And Putin and the United States have already collaborated to some degree in supporting the United Nations sanctions against Afghanistan and the Taliban in December last year. So already there was a precedent for cooperation in the beginnings of what is now going to be obviously a major campaign of cooperation against terrorism emanating from Afghanistan.
And obviously the terrible events of September 11th have made the threat that Putin was invoking a year ago, which seemed very dim and distant at the time, now very real indeed.
Of course the big questions are: What does Russia want in return for this support? And Russian commentators have already been saying that if Putin has given this agreement without asking anything in return, then that's been a very big strategic error.
Now, we have already I think got some clear signs of what that will be, certainly from the latest press coverage. Obviously Chechnya is right at the top of the list of Russian desires. The Russians have been making linkages between the Chechens, Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network for some time, so Putin will expect that there will be muted criticisms in the future of Russia's conduct of the war in Chechnya. There may also be some demands or some hope that the United States will acquiesce in Russia's rights or Russia's desires to extend their campaign against terrorism into neighboring countries. There's already been some threats made to Georgia about the activities of Chechen forces who are based in the Pankisi Gorge, which is the area right on the border between Georgia and Chechnya. It's definitely the case that there are many Chechen refugees there. It's highly likely that there are some Chechen fighters. And Russia has made several diplomatic and other overtures to Georgia demanding the right to intervene in this area to root out the terrorism and the forces they see operating there. So far they have been held back in part by strong U.S. support for Georgia. So we'll have to see what happens there.
And we can already see a major shift in the Russian approach to Chechnya. Prior to September 11th there were already some preliminary talks underway—at least they had just started—under Boris Nemtsov to try to find a way of opening up negotiations with the Chechens. After September 11th, obviously with the power balance shifting entirely, this talk of beginning negotiations is now being turned into the form of an ultimatum to the Chechens to begin negotiations immediately. That ultimatum actually expired yesterday. There are reports that there have been some overtures from the Chechen government under Aslan Makharov, but those are yet to be confirmed. But the Russians have now given the Chechens an ultimatum to begin negotiations on their terms, and also basically to lay down their weapons. And there are rumblings in Moscow about punitive actions if this does not transpire. Of course, we have yet to see how that will play out.
Beyond Chechnya and the Caucasus, Russia will obviously want to have a right to say what happens next in Central Asia. And that doesn't just mean in the Central Asian states, where permission has been given for the U.S. to set up a staging area for any activity in Afghanistan. They also want to have some kind of say in what happens next in Afghanistan. Obviously the Russians and the Soviet Union have a long history, a long and painful history with Afghanistan, and in part Russia is joining this coalition with the United States so that it has a power in the future decision-making in this region. It's a very sensitive region for Russia.
And if we look beyond the immediate after-effects of September 11th in thinking about what else Russia might be interested in, in the future as relations with the United States progress and perhaps even improve, clearly they'll hope that missile defense and NATO enlargement get put on the back burner. There will probably be some expectations of economic concessions in the United States—such as an implicit support for a speedy Russian accession to the WTO; perhaps also the lifting of residual trade restrictions the United States has against Russia. And Russia may also push on the larger international front for more U.N. participation in activities that the U.S. will be carrying out as we move forward now with this campaign.
Now, moving very quickly to Central Asia, the focus there has been in particular on the two states of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, where we are already hearing that the United States may be moving some equipment and forces to. Now, it's actually also worth remembering as in the Persian Gulf the United States actually has a history of relations with the Central Asian states on a military level. That's something that has sometimes been overlooked. But the United States, particularly over the last five years, has engaged in a number of joint exercises with the Central Asian forces. It is given considerable military support already to Uzbekistan in terms of training and equipment provisions. And there have been a number of really quite spectacular joint exercises, including one in which the 82nd Airborne Division, which is one of the divisions that is reported now to be traveling out to the region, actually flew directly from Fort Bragg in North Carolina over the whole of the territories of Central Asia, and staged a dropping of 500 paratroopers in Uzbekistan. So you can already see kind of a preparatory stage for what may happen next. But obviously at the time (in 1997) this was not foreseen.
In terms of Russian military involvement in the region, a lot of play has been made on the fact that it was important to get Russia's acquiescence in using Central Asia as a staging ground because of the presence of Russian military in the region. In actual fact, the Russian military involvement in the region is confined to Tajikistan. There are no Russian troops in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. There are only a handful on Kazakh and Kyrgyz borders. But it is really in Tajikistan that there's the major base of Russian troops. There's a 201st Motorized Division based at different points within the country; and there are a contingent of Russian border guards on the border with Afghanistan. So obviously in Tajikistan the U.S. and Russia are going to have to be in close consultation.
Now, the real problems for any kind of campaign in Central Asia are not so much at the military level. What they are really focused on are the weaknesses of the states in the region and the interaction between the Central Asian states and Afghanistan. There's already been considerable spillover of the war in Afghanistan into Central Asia—especially into Tajikistan. There's a very large ethnic Tajik population in northern Afghanistan. In fact, they are thebase of the Northern Alliance and the assassinated leader of the Northern Alliance, Masoud, is an ethnic Tajik, and he himself played an important role in brokering a peace agreement for Tajikistan's civil war in 1997. So there have been a constant interaction of groups between Afghanistan and Tajikistan since then.
And since the end of Tajikistan's civil war, there has been the rise of Islamic militant groups operating from Tajikistan's territory and into the rest of Central Asia. President Bush singled out in his speech on September 20th to Congress the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or the IMU, which was a very significant step. The IMU has been on the U.S. international terrorist list since the end of last year, but it's not a global terrorist operation. It was set up specifically to overthrow the government of Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, although it most recently expanded itself to try to overthrow as many of the Central Asian governments as it can, and try to establish an Islamic state there.
Now, clearly it's a menace in the region, the IMU, but it is not on the scale of the other global terrorist organizations that were associated with this campaign. And I think also there was some danger associated in singling out the IMU in President Bush's speech, because the IMU has been frequently used by Uzbekistan as a pretext for action against its neighbors, and particularly Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which have a number of disputes with Uzbekistan about territory and other issues. It is the case, as I said before that, the Tajik government doesn't control all of its territory as an after effect of its civil war. The IMU is using eastern Tajikistan as a staging area for its attacks. And two years ago when the IMU had a pretty substantial raid into Uzbek territory, the Uzbek government retaliated by bombing villages on the Tajik and Kyrgyz sides of the border. The Uzbekistan government is also mining its border with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which has had the effect of killing many Tajik civilians who have just been making routine border crossings. And Uzbekistan has repeatedly threatened Tajikistan in the same way Russia has threatened Georgia about retaliation and moving in to create a security zone if the activities of the IMU do not stop.
So since President Bush's speech, there have actually been a number of developments in Central Asia that point to a very difficult situation for the United States in the region in the coming weeks and months. Kyrgyzstan's parliament has refused to ratify a treaty it had with Uzbekistan on security, because they are frightened that the Uzbeks will actually use it as a pretext for moving against them if they are seen to be linked to the terrorist operations. There's reports that Uzbekistan has also taken some of the territory that it disputes with Kyrgyzstan, although those also have to be verified. And Uzbekistan has already imposed visa restrictions on Tajiks, and has started to expel Tajiks from the country. So you can see then a worsening of the tensions in Central Asia just at a time when the United States is preparing to use Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as one of the bases for its operations in Afghanistan.
Now, obviously Central Asia was picked by the U.S. because it was seen as slightly more stable ironically than Pakistan. There are great concerns about the effect, the spillover effects of anything in Afghanistan on the future stability of Pakistan. But we can see that in fact we have a very similar situation just to the north in Central Asia too. So certainly I think we are going to be watching some very unfortunate events unfold over the next several months that are really going to complicate the campaign that the Bush administration is trying to put in place.
MR. STEINBERG: Thank you, Fiona. It's obviously an enormously complicated geopolitical environment that we are having to discover I think on the wing here.
Bill?
MR. FRENZEL: Thank you, Jim. I'm glad I don't have to take a map quiz on where all the countries of Central Asia are.
I am going to talk about the current feeling of bipartisanship in the capital, and then drift into some of the political overtones here. But I'd start with saying that the unity Congress is demonstrating is real—not only is it going to be around for a while, but the inmates enjoy it. And there has been a lot of animosity and rancor rife on the Hill, and this is pleasant to a number of the members. But it has to be understood that the feeling is not universal to all issues, and it applies some places, and it doesn't apply in other places. I think also most political scientists would guess that while it is withstanding pressure pretty well at the moment, it is eventually going to be eroded by the pressures of the 2002 election. And so it is wise for the president and the Congress to do the important things they have to do re the emergency before we get too far into the year 2002.
With respect to how this affects the issues, the main consideration is the budget and fiscal issues. Recently the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said the budget is dead. He was absolutely correct. The lockbox is shattered. The vestigial discipline of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 has been swept aside. And also the surpluses are now gone, at least for 2002, and in my judgment, probably beyond.
I don't want to belabor this too long, but the relaxation of the restrictions on the budget and spending limits makes it much easier to compromise many of the difficult issues that are before Congress, and the Congress is taking advantage of that. It is a lot easier to pay off both sides than to stand there and have a large argument. And the relaxation gives the ability to pay off both sides.
The contentious issues remain contentious, and there remain important partisan differences. They tend to be mostly domestic issues. The compromises which now can be effected and are made easier often tend to include the security issues and the international issues. One might say that the emergency and the feeling of unity has liberated the Jordan free trade agreement from the Senate. It has moved the U.N. arrearages out of the House and certainly moved all of the defense and emergency bills forward quickly.
One other important international bill that is going to be affected, but in my judgment quite slightly, is the trade promotion authority requested by the president. There are still the traditional fault lines that have always existed. And if the emergency is going to affect the vote—and the key vote here is in the House—it will be on the margins. However, since the vote is always close, marginal change may be important. At the moment I would guess that that bill has slightly better than a 50 percent chance of moving forward.
Now to talk about politics in a little longer context. Prior to September 11th, the momentum was clearly with the Democrats. Mr. Jeffords had given them a big jump in the Senate. Some retirements surprised people and potential retirements that seemed to favor Democrats. And slight shifts in public opinion would have seemed to be favoring Democrat positions on domestic issues.
That momentum has been broken by the emergency. And Democrat leaders in the Senate have, I think, quite properly and patriotically rallied behind the president. They have put aside previous partisan squabbling, particularly bearing on issues that they think might help them in the election. However, they have also done it for their own benefit. Anyone who would seem to be out of step with the president in time of national emergency would falter. They can't appear to look contentious. Nevertheless, it is they that have lost the momentum.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are sort of linked inextricably to the president. And if he does okay, they will do okay. If he falters, they are likely to falter as well. As you look forward a little bit, the public perception has always been in this country that the Democrats are a little softer and nicer on domestic issues and Republicans are the right guys to have around if things are tough internationally. Whether those perceptions are right or wrong, at this moment they tend to be favoring the Republicans.
However, I must say that things change very swiftly in this country. Many of us remember Bush 41 falling from dizzying heights after the Gulf War, down to the miserable realities of the election of 1992. And the American public has never been, despite other wonderful traits, a model of persistency or continuing focus. And therefore, my important advice is, don't make any election bets today. (Laughter.)
Thank you.
MR. STEINBERG: Okay. I have an oral script for the questions here. So for those of you in the audience, if you have a question, please raise your hand and identify—wait till the microphone comes to you and then identify yourself. And for those of you who are watching and listening to the live broadcast, again, you can send your questions by e-mail to question@brookings.edu, and we'll try to include your questions as well.
Q: John Parker of The Economist. I'd like to ask Mr. Indyk to talk a little bit more about the reaction in the region since the events; I mean, what had actually happened, you know, in the mosques afterwards. Has there been any change since the first week till now? Can you speak a bit more about how the governments actually have addressed the terrorist actions?
MR. INDYK: I think that the abiding reality out of the last two weeks, at least in the public discourse, is much more about why this terrorism is different to Palestinian terrorism and focus on concern that Israel is somehow getting an advantage out of this rather than a focus on how did this happen and do we have any kind of responsibility for it. As I tried to allude quickly in my opening remarks, there's a kind of denial process going on. Of course, it's hard to deny when the hijackers are clearly identified as coming from these Arab countries. And so there's, I think, a process of adjustment.
The religious leadership has come out and condemned the terrorist attacks, but you don't see it as this kind of sustained campaign, the kind of thing that I'm talking about. So I think that it's unreasonable to expect that you're going to see a turnaround from the kind of world view that was being propagated before September 11th. It's going to take some time.
But I must say, I'm disappointed that the voices that are saying, "Let's do some soul-searching ourselves about this" are few and far between. They're there. There are some in the Arab press who are saying, "Look what a disaster this has been for the Islamic-Arab- Palestinian cause, and we need to look at why that is." But, as I say, those voice are few. There's much more of this denial or blame somebody else that goes on.
And I think that the enormity of the event and the enormity of the impact on the Islamic world, the negative impact, needs to be assessed in an open way, and people need to do some soul-searching. Instead, what we see is a lot of calls for us to do the soul-searching about our policies as if, you know, we're responsible; the kind of blame-the-victim approach.
But that's why I again focus on the Saudis. The Saudi government is not usually willing to take such a strong, bold, public stand on an issue as sensitive as this. And I take it as very significant that they were so strong in breaking relations, in making the case. And that's something that needs to be taken up, particularly by the Egyptian government, because the Egyptians have such influence in the debate that goes on in the Arab world; and, of course, as I said before, the religious leadership. They condemned the actions but have stayed fairly silent since then.
Q: My name is Murad Askarov. I am with the Embassy of Uzbekistan. If I may, I would like to make some comments on remarks by Ms. Fiona Hill, first regarding the visa issues. As any sovereign state, my country has the right to introduce visa. But regarding the tough measures, there is no tough measures. Everybody living within the border area should not have visa. They just show passport and may stay for five days without visa, including citizens of Tajikistan.
Regarding the mining of the border, if you don't have the normal border, normal understanding, it is only way. And it shows that my government intended not to expand its territory but rather to protect the current one. If we were aiming at expanding our territory, we would not be initiating signing of border agreements limiting our borders with our neighbors. So this is the case.
The third and most important is Mr. Indyk noted that all around Islamic world, Arab countries—Pakistan—there are very strong anti-American sentiments. But the five Central Asian countries are also Islamic. There is no anti-American sentiment there. That's all. So now there is a window of opportunity, first, to capitalize on the cooperation between United States and Central Asian states.
The second is to help Central Asian countries, especially my country, Uzbekistan, the heartland of that region, which has two major very holy places for Islamic world, Bukhara and Samarkand which is probably third after Mecca and Medina, and Qudus in Jerusalem and then comes Bukhara.
So Uzbekistan has really chance to become beacon for Islamic countries in terms of cooperating, in terms of coexisting between the Christian countries and Muslim world. So Uzbekistan has no such a problem Mr. Indyk noted. If you look at our media, it is very cooperative. And in terms of bombing some villages, it was only one accident, which was carried out by the request of Kyrgyz government, because Kyrgyzstan has no air power. So our air force was not intruding and we were not acting unilaterally.
So what's as important is these events give a chance to prove the—accelerate—to pose a step of cooperation between five Central Asian countries, because these countries were part of one single united organism, single economic entity. So now there is a chance to promote this further. And I assure everyone that my country is very cooperative with every country around Uzbekistan, and we are very peaceful. So don't make impression that we are threatening anyone.
MR. STEINBERG: Thank you. Fiona, do you want to—
MS. HILL: Yes, I think the two last points that my colleague from the Uzbek embassy made are actually worth dwelling upon, because he did —he stated very much the case of the Central Asian states all together of—well, four states in particular. Turkmenistan is a special case in itself to some degree. But the other four Central Asian states are being very supportive of the United States. They've been very eager to engage with the United States over the last several years.
The sad thing has been that they have been, up until now, peripheral to United States' interests in the whole border region. I mean, they've really taken kind of the bottom rung in policy toward the former Soviet Union. Just the fact that we lump them together as the "stans," which is really kind of a disrespectful way of referring to five very complicated countries, just shows, you know, how little we've given thought to them over this last period.
It seems that we now have an opportunity, as the representative of the Uzbek embassy has said, to actually put a spotlight onto this region and to indeed encourage cooperation among the countries, because sadly, over the last several years, and the remarks that I made and then the points that he made underscore that relations among states have, in fact, broken down. There have become very fierce tensions in the region.
We have to be very careful to make sure that we do not exacerbate these in anything that we do, moving forward. And so some attention will have to be paid in the action that the United States is taking, to what impact this will have in that broader region, especially if the United States wants to capitalize upon this opportunity that it has to create very strong relations in this region. This may prove, over the longer term, much more important for U.S. activity in South Asia and in the Middle East, and not just narrowly focused on this one set of actions.
MR. STEINBERG: Just to add a further word on that, I think what's quite remarkable about what we may be beginning to see as some real geopolitical realignments is it wasn't that long ago that the Russians were deeply concerned about U.S. relations with the Central Asian countries. The fact that we had these exercises in Central Asia, that we were supporting Partnership for Peace activities there and the creation of the Central Asian battalion and the like, was seen, I think, as an attempt by the United States to interfere in what was clearly a Russian sphere of influence and a sense of real competition there.
Now, all of a sudden, you have this warm welcome coming from not only Putin, from the defense minister of all people, suggesting that there was an appropriate role for U.S. military forces in the region is just a dramatic change. How long this will last, and as Fiona indicated, what price may be expected of us in terms of that role is yet to be clear. But it is really quite unprecedented in the change over just the period since September 11th.
Q: My name is Janine Zacharia. I'm with the Jerusalem Post. My question is for Ambassador Indyk. Martin, could you comment on the president's decision to include only al-Qaeda-related organizations in his executive order? Why do you think that he left off organizations like Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah? Is the administration not drawing the distinction between the kind of terrorism that afflicted the U.S. and other terrorism in the Middle East by doing so?
MR. INDYK: I don't know what the explanation is. I think it's a good question to ask them. I think Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas all fit the definition of terrorist organizations that have global reach or global connections. And they certainly have global funding networks. They were on a previous executive order that stopped the funding—made the funding illegal from American organizations and through American banks. And I think that if the war on terrorists has meaning, they should be included.
Q: Miles Benson with Newhouse Newspapers. I wonder if you could help us—this is a multidimensional war, we're told. Could you help us understand one of those dimensions, the extent and the use of softer forms of warfare, particularly information warfare, propaganda, public relations, as well as diplomacy, in this context? What is it we can do?
MR. STEINBERG: Let me say a word about that and then turn to my colleagues. I think, as Martin suggested, one of the critical factors about the long-term success of this enterprise is how the world sees what this struggle is about. If this is able to be portrayed as a near-universal coalition against a thoroughly unacceptable form of violence, then the United States is going to be far more able to achieve its objectives; one, because it will get more cooperation from other countries, but two, it will thwart what is the objective of bin Laden and al-Qaeda here, which is to turn this into a struggle between Islam and the West or Islam and the United States.
And so how this is framed and how this is seen internationally will, I think, be decisive in terms of what the long-term success of both our intent to get rid of terrorism and our long-term interest in maintaining good relations with countries throughout the world, particularly in the Islamic world. And so, so much of what is going on here is trying to use diplomacy, public affairs, and the whole sort of presentational dimension of the strategy to help frame it in that way.
And that's why there's concern when there are rhetorical slips from the administration that somehow play into this, or when you get sort of this remarkably horrific statement of Berlusconi the other day, which was truly, in the history of diplomacy, one of the most disturbing and remarkable that it hasn't been retracted yet, so far as I can tell.
But that's really quite important, because there's nothing that bin Laden and al-Qaeda want more than to allow this to be transformed into that kind of conflict. And the best way that the United States can prevent that is by having other voices which are seen to be credible to important audiences to say no.
And so what you heard from the representative from Uzbekistan here is really quite important. When you have somebody who is clearly not the United States, whose from a country with a strong Islamic tradition saying, "No, we disagree with that. We think there's justice on the U.S. side," that's quite important. And that's why things like the question of how much the administration will use the U.N., use it very effectively during the first couple of days, getting Security Council resolutions and a General Assembly resolution. I believe they're now working on a U.N. resolution with respect to the funding of terrorists.
There are a number of U.N. conventions that are relevant to this, which have universal applicability. And so that piece of it is quite important. It will become increasingly important as the administration implements its strategy, particularly on the military side, but also on the diplomatic side, to sustain this, because we know, and we can see from areas where our public diplomacy has been unsuccessful—for example, in dealing with Iraq—that the consequences, even though most of us who have been involved in Iraq policy are absolutely confident that the suffering of the Iraqi people is not due to sanctions—indeed, what we've seen is a massive increase in the wealth of Saddam, the palaces that are built, at the same time that the Iraqi people are suffering—but nobody, I think, would happily claim that we've won that war of hearts and minds.
And so I think this is crucial, as Martin has suggested, to our success, not only in getting cooperation against terrorism, but over the long term, making sure that our relationships with key countries, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, where there are significant Islamic countries, can be sustained.
My colleagues might want to—
MR. INDYK: I agree with all that. I would just say that it's important to understand, in this information war, that perception is reality. Jim's point about the information war vis-a-vis Iraq is well-taken, since he and I both worked on this. And it simply could not have been won by American spokesmen or American material that we put out.
I remember white papers that we put out. It simply had no impact, because the perception in the Arab world was that, you know, Iraqi babies were dying because of the sanctions, and no matter how many reports or how much evidence or how much we changed the sanction regime to enable the oil-for-food arrangement so it would be clear that there was no prohibition—there never was any prohibition on food or medicines going into Iraq, but there was now money to pay for it and so on—it made no difference. The perception was that the sanctions were killing Iraqi babies. And as long as that was out there, we couldn't change it by our own actions.
We need to be careful here, as I said before, not to make it worse. We need—and I think the president has done a good job of making clear, in his statements, that this is not a war on Islam, that Islam is not our enemy. We need to keep on repeating that until we're blue in the face.
But we can't win this information war on our own. We have to have people, leaders, government leaders and religious leaders in the Islamic world who are going to stand up and make the case for themselves out of their own interests, out of the damage that this is doing to the interests of the Islamic world, in order to win this information war. And that's where the focus has to be. That's where we need their help, and we need it now.
MR. INDYK: You mean, talking about the clash of civilizations makes it more difficult?
Q: Yes.
MR. INDYK: Yeah, sure. That's precisely why President Bush is saying it's not a clash against Islam. It's not a war on Islam. And that has been the case, not just in this crisis, but ever since Huntington came out with the thesis, I think you've seen administration statements saying, "No, this is not a clash of civilizations. We don't believe it is."
But there is a civilizational aspect to it in terms of our allies in this, who have declared war on us. They've declared war on our civilization. But I think that the point that's being made, this is a war on the civilized world, which comprises Jews, Christians, Muslims, and (states?) that host all these different religions is really the point. It's the war of the few terrorist extremists cloaked in Islamic garb against the civilized world, of which the Islamic world is very much a part.
MS. HILL: I'd make just an additional point on this. We all have to be careful within this that it also doesn't look like a war with the Arabs specifically, because apparently in many cases most of the terrorists have been called "Afghan Arabs," and that's certainly the Russian term for the terrorists they see operating within the Chechen forces in Chechnya. It's being used quite widely in other circles, too.
And we have to remember that the Islam is not a monolith, and that there are actually a number of national groups within the Islamic framework, many with very serious tensions with other groups. For example, we use Turkey as one of our bridge heads to the Arab world, but we also forget that the Turks have considerable tensions of their own with the Arabs. They have conflicts with their neighbors in Syria and elsewhere. And so proceeding forward, we also have to make this very clear, too. This is not a war with the Arab people, just as it is not a war with Islam.
Q: Stan Epstein from the San Francisco Chronicle for Congressman Frenzel. Now that it seems we're headed for this sort of a low-level military conflict— the administration now is not talking so much about getting rid of the Taliban—how does the president go about maintaining public support here at home for this? This looks like it could take several years now. As Secretary Rumsfeld said, there won't be any great D-day or any great victory parade on Pennsylvania Avenue.
MR. FRENZEL: I think it's enormously different for him. The American people are usually impatient, and it will depend on his appeal to them. It will also depend on the Congress's willingness to help the president and take that message to the people and to keep it with the people.
I myself think they have to get most policies in place by the end of the year, and whatever detail they need to add within certainly not farther than the first quarter of next year, because after that, I think it is going to be very difficult to keep America concentrating on a long-term war where they cannot see a great deal of progress being made, and particularly if there are no overt terrorist events during that period.
Q: I'd be interested in whether you have any sense of this. I've been talking to a lot of members of Congress over the last two weeks, and I don't get the sense that they feel an enormous pressure to have a massive early military strike. I get the impression they're hearing from their constituents that there is a fair amount of patience and that people are getting a sense of the nuance here and wanting us to be smart, not just to be dramatic.
MR. FRENZEL: I agree with that. I don't think there is pressure to do something for effect. Nevertheless, the American people are not known for long-term thinking. And I believe it poses a real problem for the president and the Congress to keep them focused on what they have painfully explained will be a long-term war.
Q: Neil Starr (sp) with the Congressional Quarterly. A question on foreign aid. Congress can't touched the foreign aid bill since September 11th, and most of it was drafted well before September 11th. Work is starting on it again. And I'm curious—and I'm interested in all of your opinions—if there's any point right now to looking at our foreign aid and shifting more money to places like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and away from more traditional focus like Colombia, if that's something that would be feasible and workable, or would it have any effect good or bad?
MR. FRENZEL: I'd be interested in hearing what my colleagues on the panel think about this. Certainly if the Bush administration asks for changes either in the amounts or direction or style in which—or the channels through which it moves—I think it has a very good chance of receiving them from the Congress. But I'm not aware that the subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee are moving their bills forward contemplating any great changes. It looks to me like it's looser, but at least I can't detect those changes yet. Maybe my colleagues know of an administration suggestion.
MR. STEINBERG: I think it's still too early to say, because the administration is so focused on the two primary preoccupations of preventing the next attack and going against the networks. But I would not at all be surprised to see a very substantial change in direction in American foreign assistance, and particularly a return to the kind of security assistance that we saw a lot of during the Cold War, in which there was political and military aid to countries which are seen as our friends in the struggle against terrorism.
It's a much more popular form of foreign aid than some of the more loose type objectives that have characterized foreign aid in recent years. In recent years there's been a lot of focus on support for democratization, support for developing market economies and the like. And that's had relatively not great enthusiasm in Congress for it. It doesn't have the right passion behind it.
But if you think about the pieces of our foreign assistance that have had strong support, obviously the Israeli-Egyptian assistance into Turkey was always a very popular measure. It had a very strong Cold War context. One of the few things that have held up in the post-Cold War environment is assistance to Ukraine, which was seen very much in that kind of geopolitical sense. And so I would guess that once we get out of the immediate crisis that there will be some hard thinking, particularly at the Pentagon, about security systems becoming a more significant component of our overall aid effort.
MS. HILL: And that's just what, just this year, for this fiscal year, there was more emphasis put on Central Asia. But precisely, as Jim has just mentioned, on the security front. I think something around $3 million may have been pledged, for example, to Uzbekistan, but specifically for border security, and other related initiatives. They're obviously addressing the concerns of reinforcing that border, especially with Afghanistan. But, in fact—and this has also been applied towards Uzbekistan's border within Central Asia, which again raises some of the problems which I was emphasizing in my presentation—another problem is, too, that while this security type of assistance is very important in the short term for dealing with just the kinds of issues that we've been talking about today, it doesn't address the fundamental problems facing regions like Central Asia and many of the other countries around, and that is that their weakness is not so much the product of the security environment but their own internal problems, which is where U.S. aid has been applied previously.
I mean, this debate is going to be contentious as we move forward, especially if we do slip and slide into, you know, obviously something that the Bush administration wants to avoid right now. But if we do slip and slide into nation-building in Afghanistan, we're going to have to have that whole debate about what kind of assistance and how long-term and how, the U.S. Congress and the public are going to deal with this in the coming years, because it has been a very unpopular issue because of the fact that it takes a good decade to see any results from that kind of commitment of assistance.
MR. FRENZEL: If I might add a postscript, any of these kinds of programs that are cloaked in the guise of military assistance are going to be easily passed as supplemental appropriations. And so the administration has time to work them out, knowing that, when presented, they're going to be handled on an emergency basis.
MR. INDYK: Let me just make a couple of points. First of all, if you look back to the Gulf War, it was a well-established principle that those countries that help us get rewarded, and particularly as Bill has pointed out, because the lock box is shattered, foreign assistance, which has been under heavy, heavy pressure by the Congress for the last few years, is one of the constraints that presumably will be shattered, as he suggested.
When it comes to the Middle Eastern countries themselves, those that we depend on most for support don't need foreign assistance. They've got oil. Those that might, like Egypt already gets a great deal of assistance; Israel. Jordan has just got this free trade agreement, but it has an issue of debt forgiveness which I think will come up. The Jordanians are in a very exposed position. They've been very helpful to us in terms of the war on terrorism. I think, despite their vulnerabilities, they've really been stand-up guys. And I think that that debt forgiveness issue will be very important for them.
As far as others, it's really those who have been on the kind of rogue list. You saw today in the press, I think, that the Congress is looking at lifting sanctions on Sudan. The question is whether the Syrians and the Lebanese will take action against terrorists that they harbor, either in Damascus or in the Bekaa Valley. But if they were prepared to do so in an effective way that took them off the terrorism list, then I think that the administration is likely to be looking to Congress to see if we can't do more for the Syrians. The Lebanese aren't on the list, but the Lebanese are not exactly in control of these areas. It's under Syrian control. But the Lebanese also would be looking for more assistance in that regard.
MR. STEINBERG: And, just finishing out the list, the most obvious case is Pakistan, where you've already seen some lifting of sanctions. The United States is already being more forthcoming in the IMF context. There's a lot of discussion about Paris Club rescheduling for Pakistan, too, which will be high on Pakistan's priority list, and the question of whether we are prepared to resume military assistance to Pakistan, which has been cut off, as you know, for a considerable amount of time.
Q: [Inaudible.]
MR. STEINBERG: Just wait for the mike so others who are out in TV land can hear.
Q: Miles Popper (sp) from CQ Weekly. Following up a little bit on that question, Senator Brownback is now talking about trying to lift the 907 sanctions on Azerbaijan, something that was tried a few years ago but failed narrowly in the Senate. Do you think that—and trying to obviously tie it to the September 11th attacks. How much can he make that argument, given that they're not bordering Afghanistan?
MS. HILL: I think that's going to be a tough argument to make to link that directly with September 11th. And I think, taking aside the events in September, there are some very good reasons for lifting these sanctions. I mean, they're an anachronism as they now stand. In fact, in many respects they have become mostly symbolic, because the U.S. actually has a lot of assistance to Azerbaijan now. They've found many loopholes in the sanctions legislation that enables the U.S. to give assistance to Azerbaijan.
It's also kind of clear now that the power balance between Armenia and Azerbaijan has shifted since the sanctions were imposed. They were imposed right at the very beginning of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, before the Armenians took sizable chunks of Azeri territory under their control.
And it's clear they have also been an obstacle in moving forward to forging cooperation in the Caucasus, which is something we would want to be fostering because of the instability in that area. But I think it's a bit of a stretch to try to link it directly to September 11th, although I hope he is successful in trying to push for a lifting of that legislation.
MR. STEINBERG: I would just echo that. I think there's a lot of anxiety about bootstrapping issues that are arguably unrelated and try to attach everything onto the emergency. We're certainly hearing that in the debate about the energy package, for example. But this is so long overdue. I think it would be very welcome.
One more question? Right here.
Q: I'm Mark Meredith with Itochu International, and my question is somewhat of a follow-up to the comments made about Sudan and Syria and the possibility of cooperation on anti-terrorist efforts. My question regards Iran. And the president has made it clear that the coming anti-terror campaign will include countries that harbor terrorists. And, of course, Iran is the number one country on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. And so my question regards what the administration may do regarding Iran, how third countries will view Iran in the future and how the U.S. might pressure third countries to adjust their policies towards Iran.
MR. INDYK: You're right. Iran is the preeminent state sponsor of terrorism. In the last year in particular, it's been extremely active in urging terrorist attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups, particularly the Palestine Islamic Jihad, which has launched a series of suicide bombings against Israel. They're also very strong supporters—they provide the backing for Hezbollah. Hezbollah is operating in southern Lebanon in a more kind of conventional way, but Hezbollah has a terror network of global reach which is tied into the Iranian intelligence service and the Iranian revolutionary guards. So they are a big problem.
I think that the administration has made clear that it's first things first; that the first target is the al-Qaeda network. And I think that makes sense. If we decided to confront Iran now, we'd have difficulties with others in our coalition, particularly its Arab neighbors, who have made their peace with Iran after years of being subjected to terrorist subversion themselves from the Iranians, and also the Europeans, who have taken a different approach to us on this issue.
I think that in the short term, because the Iranians have a problem with the Taliban—the Iranians are Shi'a fundamentals; the Taliban are Sunni fundamentalists—it's an antagonistic relationship across their border—that they do not mind the pressure that we're bringing to bear on the Taliban. That's their interest. And that's why you see Ayatollah Khameini kind of positioning Iran, that they were not with the coalition but were not with the Taliban either. They're neutral.
And neutrality is something that we should encourage in two respects. That is to say that they should not create objections to what we need to do in Afghanistan, and secondly, that they, at a time when we are working with the Israelis and Palestinians to calm the situation there, they should not stoke it up by pushing Hezbollah or Palestine Islamic Jihad—or Hamas, for that matter—to take actions that would undermine those efforts to establish calm. And that, in the short term, seems to me, was an achievable objective and the way to go.
But it also needs to be made very clear that, as the president has said, those who harbor terrorists and those who sponsor them are part of the problem and that we will be getting around to dealing with that problem when it comes to Iran. And I would expect that the Europeans would be more supportive and more helpful using their relations with Iran to press hard the point to them that they now have to get out of the terrorism business.
In that context, you have clear indications over the years that President Khatami has been interested in trying to move Iran away from this, but he's failed. Each time he's tried, he's been trumped by the Ayatollah Khameini and the hardline clerics, who control these institutions, the national security institutions that are involved in terrorism.
And so, to the extent that we make it absolutely clear that Iran has to get out of the terrorism business, we may—when I say we, I'm not talking about just the United States, the Great Satan—the whole international community—we make that clear that that may — Khatami to make the case domestically that it's time to give up these methods.
MR. STEINBERG: Thank you all very much.