Friday, August 20, 2004
Welcome Back, Europe
Reentering history’s arena.
The scheduled partial U.S. troop withdrawals from Europe were long overdue; some of us had become shrill and hoarse in calling for them over the past few years. It was not just that there was no longer any conventional enemy on Old Europe's borders, or that the new hot points are further to the east, or even that in terms of a cost-benefit analysis it made no sense stationing traditional army divisions roughly where Patton and Hodges ended up 60 years ago.
The real significance, inasmuch as many airbases and depots will stay, is symbolic and psycho-sociological. Unwittingly, we had created an unhealthy passive-aggressiveness in Europe that clinicians might identify as a classic symptom of dependency. Europe — now larger and more populous than the United States — has reduced defense investment to subsidize a variety of social expenditures found nowhere in the world. So insular had its utopians become under the aegis of NATO's subsidized protection that it was increasingly convinced that the ubiquitous United States was the world's rogue nation, the last impediment to a 35-hour work week, cradle-to-grave subsidies, and wind power the world over.
A once-muscular and hallowed NATO has become a Potemkin alliance. The more jetting grandees praised the "historic role of the Trans-Atlantic partnership," the more its logic dictated that it would deploy only where there were no enemies of the West — parading and maneuvering where there were never dangers, bickering and recriminating about going where there always were.
Europe, as the perpetual adolescent, took potshots at its doting parent, always with the assumption that Dad would still hand over the keys, ignore the cheap sass, and "be there for me" if the car ended up in the ditch.
Expect more partisan hysteria here at home in response to President Bush's courageous announcement, which in fact had been under consideration for years, precisely because there is no legitimate criticism to be offered. The careful strategy of slow withdrawal fits in well with Mr. Kerry's notion of a new, restructured military. The notion of bringing troops home from anywhere is what the new Michael Moore Democrats always wish for when they label America as hegemonic, imperialistic, and meddlesome. Politicos appreciate that only Republicans would have enough foreign policy fides — in the manner that Nixon went to China, but Carter looked deranged when talking about pulling out all Americans from Korea — to pull off long-needed reform.
Thus because the move was both measured and sound, and yet could not be claimed by the neo-Democratic establishment, it will be seen as especially grating. Wesley Clark — who once had no problem with appearing on stage with Michael Moore for a cheap endorsement, even as the latter called Clark's commander-in-chief a "traitor" and is on record as praising the fascist killers of Americans as "Minutemen" — was wheeled out to utter a few banalities about "politics." But after a few deer-in-the-headlights appearances, he wisely withdrew, his heart really not in the script presented.
Thus in the manner we have seen about Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the isolation of Yasser Arafat, and Iraq, expect Kerry and company to triangulate, ankle-bite about "unilateral decision-making," "needlessly provocative measures" and "insensitivity to historical allies" — and, of course, in the end not dare to demand we put divisions back into Germany. Such is the new foreign policy of grumbling: "Cowboy Bush wrongly did it, but it's done, and in my infinite sobriety I'll let it be."
The real significance of Bush's decision will be felt inside Europe itself. Our gradual departure will bring slow reckoning to the nations of Europe, not just in places like Poland, worried about 10 percent of old Germany inside its borders, but also and especially in the west among nations like Denmark and Holland. Their no-nonsense leaders have ignored the mob's cheap antics and treasured the idea that real Americans in uniform were always nearby, whose sanctity meant their own security, and whose imperilment guaranteed that a $600 billion military would immediately rush to stand side-by-side on their ramparts. So their concerns — as bilateral partners — must be addressed.
Anyone old enough to have known the Wehrmacht in the past and the intra-European hounding that goes on in the present does not believe that we are at the end of history — at least not until the nature of man changes and national character is revealed as a mere construct. Germany is united again, but an economic colossus stalled, as its politicians silently gnash about "unfairness" in the EU, and as German Euros go east and south to subsidize "others." Germany, in fact, is in flux, a period of shake-out not seen since the late 1920s, in which the reaction to a failed socialist-pacifist agenda will one day either bring pro-American reform or unpredictable fury, in any direction.
In lieu of the Maginot Line and troops in the Ardennes, postmodern France will boast in multilateral tones more and more about its vaunted force de frappe — that is, how lucky the EU is to have the Gallic atomic deterrent at its disposal. Such is the braggadocio that will reveal secret apprehensions that next time America really will not come in for round three, that nuclear deterrence without conventional power has its practical and tactical limitations, and that in times of real crisis any EU country could match France's arsenal in weeks. For most Europeans the idea that the French nuclear deterrent will soon be all that stands between them and a rogue Iran is a frightening thought indeed.
To the south, in the Mediterranean, history's shoals are everywhere, submerged and unseen as long as American warships dutifully sailed to and fro and ignored the cheap slurs. Turkey and Greece will soon enough "discuss" everything from Cyprus to overflights in the Aegean without U.S. generals on both sides calling for calm, but perhaps lightly remonstrating southern Europe about "inordinate fear" of the old Ottoman Islam. Spanish socialists can work out, on their own, Gibraltar, ties with their Islamic friends across the water, and the angst when a few of their Mediterranean rocks are gratuitously occupied. And so on.
So Europe is gradually going to reenter history's arena. Yet this time, what is different from 1914 and 1939 is that the United States is not weak, isolationist, naive, and inexperienced in European affairs. No, it is enormously powerful, fully engaged elsewhere, and knows the European one-eyed Jack only too well. For better or for worse, don't count on American jets to take out another Milosevic in the near future.
Yet if there soon arises what the Germans call schadenfreude as we watch them implement continental utopia without retrograde American troops, there is a sense of sadness about it all as well. The Danish, the Dutch, the Italians, and the Eastern Europeans, each according to their station, are engaged in Iraq. They are good and reliable friends, and haven't forgotten the white crosses that dot the European continental landscape. And as smaller nations they sense incipient bullying within the EU, both over their loyal relationships with America and heavy-handed trade politics with France and Germany. Smaller nations may see themselves first as independent Europeans, but privately they realize that it is only so the last two centuries because of the Anglo-Americans in the shadows who, from Wellington to Patton, at the eleventh hour always proved to be about the only ones who fought well for someone else's freedom.
So it is also with some trepidation that we are seeing the inevitable end of the old, and the beginning of a new, transatlantic world, as troops on the ground at last reflect the reality of the past 20 years. And as we begin to leave Europe, as NATO mutters and shuffles in its embarrassing dotage, as cracks in an authoritarian and unworkable EU begin to widen, ever so slowly we here in the United States shall start to witness all over Europe both a new sensibleness — and a new furor.
Gut-check time is approaching. In places like Brussels, Berlin, and Oslo, in the next half-century citizens will slowly decide who wishes and does not wish to be an ally of the United States of America. Some will prefer opportunistic neutrality and thus go the Swedish and Swiss route. Others in their folly may ape French and Spanish bellicosity, and think isolating the U.S., selling weapons to the Middle East, or going on maneuvers with the Chinese might work. Still more may prefer to remain staunch friends like the Poles and Italians, realizing that, for all the leftist slurs about unilateralism, never in the history of civilization has such a powerful country as the United States sought advice and cooperation from weaker friends about the wisdom, efficacy, and consequences of using its vast military.
But this is no parlor game any more. Islamic fascism, scary former Soviet republics, rogue Middle Eastern nuclear states, an ever more proud and muscular China thirsty for oil — these and more specters are all out there and waiting, waiting, waiting...
Welcome back to the world, Europe.
Reentering history’s arena.
The scheduled partial U.S. troop withdrawals from Europe were long overdue; some of us had become shrill and hoarse in calling for them over the past few years. It was not just that there was no longer any conventional enemy on Old Europe's borders, or that the new hot points are further to the east, or even that in terms of a cost-benefit analysis it made no sense stationing traditional army divisions roughly where Patton and Hodges ended up 60 years ago.
The real significance, inasmuch as many airbases and depots will stay, is symbolic and psycho-sociological. Unwittingly, we had created an unhealthy passive-aggressiveness in Europe that clinicians might identify as a classic symptom of dependency. Europe — now larger and more populous than the United States — has reduced defense investment to subsidize a variety of social expenditures found nowhere in the world. So insular had its utopians become under the aegis of NATO's subsidized protection that it was increasingly convinced that the ubiquitous United States was the world's rogue nation, the last impediment to a 35-hour work week, cradle-to-grave subsidies, and wind power the world over.
A once-muscular and hallowed NATO has become a Potemkin alliance. The more jetting grandees praised the "historic role of the Trans-Atlantic partnership," the more its logic dictated that it would deploy only where there were no enemies of the West — parading and maneuvering where there were never dangers, bickering and recriminating about going where there always were.
Europe, as the perpetual adolescent, took potshots at its doting parent, always with the assumption that Dad would still hand over the keys, ignore the cheap sass, and "be there for me" if the car ended up in the ditch.
Expect more partisan hysteria here at home in response to President Bush's courageous announcement, which in fact had been under consideration for years, precisely because there is no legitimate criticism to be offered. The careful strategy of slow withdrawal fits in well with Mr. Kerry's notion of a new, restructured military. The notion of bringing troops home from anywhere is what the new Michael Moore Democrats always wish for when they label America as hegemonic, imperialistic, and meddlesome. Politicos appreciate that only Republicans would have enough foreign policy fides — in the manner that Nixon went to China, but Carter looked deranged when talking about pulling out all Americans from Korea — to pull off long-needed reform.
Thus because the move was both measured and sound, and yet could not be claimed by the neo-Democratic establishment, it will be seen as especially grating. Wesley Clark — who once had no problem with appearing on stage with Michael Moore for a cheap endorsement, even as the latter called Clark's commander-in-chief a "traitor" and is on record as praising the fascist killers of Americans as "Minutemen" — was wheeled out to utter a few banalities about "politics." But after a few deer-in-the-headlights appearances, he wisely withdrew, his heart really not in the script presented.
Thus in the manner we have seen about Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the isolation of Yasser Arafat, and Iraq, expect Kerry and company to triangulate, ankle-bite about "unilateral decision-making," "needlessly provocative measures" and "insensitivity to historical allies" — and, of course, in the end not dare to demand we put divisions back into Germany. Such is the new foreign policy of grumbling: "Cowboy Bush wrongly did it, but it's done, and in my infinite sobriety I'll let it be."
The real significance of Bush's decision will be felt inside Europe itself. Our gradual departure will bring slow reckoning to the nations of Europe, not just in places like Poland, worried about 10 percent of old Germany inside its borders, but also and especially in the west among nations like Denmark and Holland. Their no-nonsense leaders have ignored the mob's cheap antics and treasured the idea that real Americans in uniform were always nearby, whose sanctity meant their own security, and whose imperilment guaranteed that a $600 billion military would immediately rush to stand side-by-side on their ramparts. So their concerns — as bilateral partners — must be addressed.
Anyone old enough to have known the Wehrmacht in the past and the intra-European hounding that goes on in the present does not believe that we are at the end of history — at least not until the nature of man changes and national character is revealed as a mere construct. Germany is united again, but an economic colossus stalled, as its politicians silently gnash about "unfairness" in the EU, and as German Euros go east and south to subsidize "others." Germany, in fact, is in flux, a period of shake-out not seen since the late 1920s, in which the reaction to a failed socialist-pacifist agenda will one day either bring pro-American reform or unpredictable fury, in any direction.
In lieu of the Maginot Line and troops in the Ardennes, postmodern France will boast in multilateral tones more and more about its vaunted force de frappe — that is, how lucky the EU is to have the Gallic atomic deterrent at its disposal. Such is the braggadocio that will reveal secret apprehensions that next time America really will not come in for round three, that nuclear deterrence without conventional power has its practical and tactical limitations, and that in times of real crisis any EU country could match France's arsenal in weeks. For most Europeans the idea that the French nuclear deterrent will soon be all that stands between them and a rogue Iran is a frightening thought indeed.
To the south, in the Mediterranean, history's shoals are everywhere, submerged and unseen as long as American warships dutifully sailed to and fro and ignored the cheap slurs. Turkey and Greece will soon enough "discuss" everything from Cyprus to overflights in the Aegean without U.S. generals on both sides calling for calm, but perhaps lightly remonstrating southern Europe about "inordinate fear" of the old Ottoman Islam. Spanish socialists can work out, on their own, Gibraltar, ties with their Islamic friends across the water, and the angst when a few of their Mediterranean rocks are gratuitously occupied. And so on.
So Europe is gradually going to reenter history's arena. Yet this time, what is different from 1914 and 1939 is that the United States is not weak, isolationist, naive, and inexperienced in European affairs. No, it is enormously powerful, fully engaged elsewhere, and knows the European one-eyed Jack only too well. For better or for worse, don't count on American jets to take out another Milosevic in the near future.
Yet if there soon arises what the Germans call schadenfreude as we watch them implement continental utopia without retrograde American troops, there is a sense of sadness about it all as well. The Danish, the Dutch, the Italians, and the Eastern Europeans, each according to their station, are engaged in Iraq. They are good and reliable friends, and haven't forgotten the white crosses that dot the European continental landscape. And as smaller nations they sense incipient bullying within the EU, both over their loyal relationships with America and heavy-handed trade politics with France and Germany. Smaller nations may see themselves first as independent Europeans, but privately they realize that it is only so the last two centuries because of the Anglo-Americans in the shadows who, from Wellington to Patton, at the eleventh hour always proved to be about the only ones who fought well for someone else's freedom.
So it is also with some trepidation that we are seeing the inevitable end of the old, and the beginning of a new, transatlantic world, as troops on the ground at last reflect the reality of the past 20 years. And as we begin to leave Europe, as NATO mutters and shuffles in its embarrassing dotage, as cracks in an authoritarian and unworkable EU begin to widen, ever so slowly we here in the United States shall start to witness all over Europe both a new sensibleness — and a new furor.
Gut-check time is approaching. In places like Brussels, Berlin, and Oslo, in the next half-century citizens will slowly decide who wishes and does not wish to be an ally of the United States of America. Some will prefer opportunistic neutrality and thus go the Swedish and Swiss route. Others in their folly may ape French and Spanish bellicosity, and think isolating the U.S., selling weapons to the Middle East, or going on maneuvers with the Chinese might work. Still more may prefer to remain staunch friends like the Poles and Italians, realizing that, for all the leftist slurs about unilateralism, never in the history of civilization has such a powerful country as the United States sought advice and cooperation from weaker friends about the wisdom, efficacy, and consequences of using its vast military.
But this is no parlor game any more. Islamic fascism, scary former Soviet republics, rogue Middle Eastern nuclear states, an ever more proud and muscular China thirsty for oil — these and more specters are all out there and waiting, waiting, waiting...
Welcome back to the world, Europe.
Hear, Hear!
National Council is born
Watching the proceedings of the controversial National Conference for the last three days, most of it transmitted live on Al-Iraqiya channel, has been an enjoyable experience. I have to mention here that the majority of Iraqis are unfamiliar with the rules of parliamentary sessions. The closest thing we had to a parliament was abolished in 1958 with the introduction of 'Revolutionary' Republican rule. Whatever the level of political maturity Iraqis had accumulated at that stage, it slowly disintegrated year after year under the successive totalitarian ('Revolutionary') regimes. Today, 45 years later, we are back again at point zero.
Under Ba'athist rule, proceedings from the so-called National Council were televised from time to time. The Revolutionary Command Council was the sole source of legislation, so basically the National Council had no other function but to approve and stamp the endless amendments. Votes were always unanimous. It was a joke really. A farce.
The National Conference also looks like a farce on the surface, but of a totally different kind. Here you have 1000-1300 delegates from all over Iraq, from all ethnicities, religions, sects and social backgrounds. A curious mix of people all put together in one room to try and choose 81 individuals that are supposed to represent Iraqis.
Young and old clerics in black and white turbans, groomed men in suits and carefully pressed shirts, tribal Sheikhs traditionally dressed, women shrouded in black abayas, others in the latest hairdressing style and glamorous fashion trends and some in headscarfs of every imaginable colour. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, judges, engineers, professors, teachers, generals, businessmen, artists, actors, activists, priests, imams, even sportsmen and a musician.
Several parties and groups had already boycotted the conference in advance arguing that it was a mere cover for the interim government and the occupation. Sadr's movement, the Associaion of Muslim Scholars, Imam Al-Khalisi's group, the Kurdish Islamic Movement and a coalition of about ten Pan-Arab and Nasserite political parties adopted this viewpoint. Other groups were critical of the voting process in the governorates weeks ago accusing the preparatory committee and governmental officials of behind the scenes manipulation and favouritism in the (s)election of delegates. Nevertheless, some chose to participate in the conference despite these objections.
Independents constituted the majority of the delegates, which shouldn't be surprising given the fact that the majority of Iraqis are distrustful of political parties, especially when theycontinue to pop up every day by the dozen with each claiming to represent a 'wide section of Iraqis' when in fact they represent only themselves. Also, the behaviour of major political parties that were represented in the defunct GC has not been very impressive, and their attempts to dominate the National Conference as well as the interim government is indeed troubling.
The remaining 19 former GC members that were not represented in the interim government have been appointed already to the National Council amid widespread opposition from Iraqis. And if that was not enough they have made painstaking attempts to ensure that the majority of the remaining 81 members of the council were members of their respective parties or at least supporters.
The conference proceedings were interesting as I said. What became known as 'the list' was the main point of dispute between delegates and the preparatory committee as well as the voting procedure itself. Several delegates described it as unfair and accussed the committe of a conspiracy. There was a list of delegates from both points of view who were supposed to state their opinions in turn. It started out fine, then other delegates started interrupting others, walkouts, delegates swearing and shaking fists at each other amid applause or laughter from the conference, it almost came to blows at one point. Here is an example:
[Delegate speaking to the conference]: "The 'list' is an act of dictatorship, this is unacceptable. I am going to--" [Someone taps at a microphone to attract attention and starts his own speech reading from 2 or 3 pages in his hand]
[First delegate's eyes almost pop out of his face in disbelief]:"Excuse me sir, it was my turn.." [interrupting delegate ignores him and continues to give his speech]
[he gets applause from the crowd]
First delegate starts shouting: "This is unbelievable. Sir? SIR?? It's my turn. Can't you understand?" [starts tapping frantically at his microphone]
Second delegate: "Yes, but they ignored my turn as well. I have been waiting for a long time." [continues to read]
President of the committee: "This is outrageous. Sir, sir. You.. yes you. Get seated please. Allow others a chance." [bangs on the table] "What are you doing on the stage??" [he almost screams at someone behind him] "People please if you have a suggestion or something, write it down on a paper.. We can't continue like this."
[commotion in the hall]
First delegate: "I don't believe this. SIR? Don't you have any decency at all?"
[Laughter in the hall followed by applause]
This situation continued for hours. People kept interrupting each other. Everyone wanted a chance to give fiery speeches. Another interesting incident was the objection of several fundamental delegates to one of the posters in the hall. It had half the face of a pretty (unveiled) Iraqi women on it representing the role of Iraqi women. They demanded the poster to be removed because 'it was improper'. Some commotion followed and one woman stood up and harshly addressed the objectors, she said that if they removed the poster now they might as well remove the women from the conference. She was met with a standing ovation from the audience and the poster remained. Another funny occasion was when the committee president asked delegates to vote for or against 'the list' by raising their hands. Someone shouted that this was silly and very undemocratic. The supporters raised their hands and on realising that they were the majority started clapping their hands in mid air. It was one of the funniest scenes and was followed with more walkouts. Someone described 'the list' as 'the government's list'.
At the end of the third day the voting was postponed and there was an agreement that independents submit their own lists to the committee for an open vote. Today, after much coming and going and more walkouts, one list was submitted. Delegates were supposed to vote for one of the lists. Ballot boxes were placed but after a while the list was withdrawn suddenly by its submitters leaving 'the list' uncontested and it appeared that it was approved at last by the majority of delegates. Time constraint and the security situation forced this last moment decision, it was almost 10 pm and delegates were complaining. The submitted list did not meet the standards set by the judges in the preparatory committee, the number of women was less than 25 and some minorities were not represented in it. The submitters announced that they withdrew their list and voted for 'the list' (which was by now described as 'the list of national unity') in order for the conference to succeed.
National Council members were selected from three categories; representatives from 18 governorates, civil society organisations, and Iraqi tribes. Members should be no less than 35 years old and should at least hold a secondary school degree. The role of the National Council is advisory to the interim government and the preparation for elections in January 2005 of a legislative National Assembly consisting of 275 members. The National Assembly shall elect a presidential council of three members, this council in turn selects a prime minister and a cabinet.
National Council is born
Watching the proceedings of the controversial National Conference for the last three days, most of it transmitted live on Al-Iraqiya channel, has been an enjoyable experience. I have to mention here that the majority of Iraqis are unfamiliar with the rules of parliamentary sessions. The closest thing we had to a parliament was abolished in 1958 with the introduction of 'Revolutionary' Republican rule. Whatever the level of political maturity Iraqis had accumulated at that stage, it slowly disintegrated year after year under the successive totalitarian ('Revolutionary') regimes. Today, 45 years later, we are back again at point zero.
Under Ba'athist rule, proceedings from the so-called National Council were televised from time to time. The Revolutionary Command Council was the sole source of legislation, so basically the National Council had no other function but to approve and stamp the endless amendments. Votes were always unanimous. It was a joke really. A farce.
The National Conference also looks like a farce on the surface, but of a totally different kind. Here you have 1000-1300 delegates from all over Iraq, from all ethnicities, religions, sects and social backgrounds. A curious mix of people all put together in one room to try and choose 81 individuals that are supposed to represent Iraqis.
Young and old clerics in black and white turbans, groomed men in suits and carefully pressed shirts, tribal Sheikhs traditionally dressed, women shrouded in black abayas, others in the latest hairdressing style and glamorous fashion trends and some in headscarfs of every imaginable colour. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, judges, engineers, professors, teachers, generals, businessmen, artists, actors, activists, priests, imams, even sportsmen and a musician.
Several parties and groups had already boycotted the conference in advance arguing that it was a mere cover for the interim government and the occupation. Sadr's movement, the Associaion of Muslim Scholars, Imam Al-Khalisi's group, the Kurdish Islamic Movement and a coalition of about ten Pan-Arab and Nasserite political parties adopted this viewpoint. Other groups were critical of the voting process in the governorates weeks ago accusing the preparatory committee and governmental officials of behind the scenes manipulation and favouritism in the (s)election of delegates. Nevertheless, some chose to participate in the conference despite these objections.
Independents constituted the majority of the delegates, which shouldn't be surprising given the fact that the majority of Iraqis are distrustful of political parties, especially when theycontinue to pop up every day by the dozen with each claiming to represent a 'wide section of Iraqis' when in fact they represent only themselves. Also, the behaviour of major political parties that were represented in the defunct GC has not been very impressive, and their attempts to dominate the National Conference as well as the interim government is indeed troubling.
The remaining 19 former GC members that were not represented in the interim government have been appointed already to the National Council amid widespread opposition from Iraqis. And if that was not enough they have made painstaking attempts to ensure that the majority of the remaining 81 members of the council were members of their respective parties or at least supporters.
The conference proceedings were interesting as I said. What became known as 'the list' was the main point of dispute between delegates and the preparatory committee as well as the voting procedure itself. Several delegates described it as unfair and accussed the committe of a conspiracy. There was a list of delegates from both points of view who were supposed to state their opinions in turn. It started out fine, then other delegates started interrupting others, walkouts, delegates swearing and shaking fists at each other amid applause or laughter from the conference, it almost came to blows at one point. Here is an example:
[Delegate speaking to the conference]: "The 'list' is an act of dictatorship, this is unacceptable. I am going to--" [Someone taps at a microphone to attract attention and starts his own speech reading from 2 or 3 pages in his hand]
[First delegate's eyes almost pop out of his face in disbelief]:"Excuse me sir, it was my turn.." [interrupting delegate ignores him and continues to give his speech]
[he gets applause from the crowd]
First delegate starts shouting: "This is unbelievable. Sir? SIR?? It's my turn. Can't you understand?" [starts tapping frantically at his microphone]
Second delegate: "Yes, but they ignored my turn as well. I have been waiting for a long time." [continues to read]
President of the committee: "This is outrageous. Sir, sir. You.. yes you. Get seated please. Allow others a chance." [bangs on the table] "What are you doing on the stage??" [he almost screams at someone behind him] "People please if you have a suggestion or something, write it down on a paper.. We can't continue like this."
[commotion in the hall]
First delegate: "I don't believe this. SIR? Don't you have any decency at all?"
[Laughter in the hall followed by applause]
This situation continued for hours. People kept interrupting each other. Everyone wanted a chance to give fiery speeches. Another interesting incident was the objection of several fundamental delegates to one of the posters in the hall. It had half the face of a pretty (unveiled) Iraqi women on it representing the role of Iraqi women. They demanded the poster to be removed because 'it was improper'. Some commotion followed and one woman stood up and harshly addressed the objectors, she said that if they removed the poster now they might as well remove the women from the conference. She was met with a standing ovation from the audience and the poster remained. Another funny occasion was when the committee president asked delegates to vote for or against 'the list' by raising their hands. Someone shouted that this was silly and very undemocratic. The supporters raised their hands and on realising that they were the majority started clapping their hands in mid air. It was one of the funniest scenes and was followed with more walkouts. Someone described 'the list' as 'the government's list'.
At the end of the third day the voting was postponed and there was an agreement that independents submit their own lists to the committee for an open vote. Today, after much coming and going and more walkouts, one list was submitted. Delegates were supposed to vote for one of the lists. Ballot boxes were placed but after a while the list was withdrawn suddenly by its submitters leaving 'the list' uncontested and it appeared that it was approved at last by the majority of delegates. Time constraint and the security situation forced this last moment decision, it was almost 10 pm and delegates were complaining. The submitted list did not meet the standards set by the judges in the preparatory committee, the number of women was less than 25 and some minorities were not represented in it. The submitters announced that they withdrew their list and voted for 'the list' (which was by now described as 'the list of national unity') in order for the conference to succeed.
National Council members were selected from three categories; representatives from 18 governorates, civil society organisations, and Iraqi tribes. Members should be no less than 35 years old and should at least hold a secondary school degree. The role of the National Council is advisory to the interim government and the preparation for elections in January 2005 of a legislative National Assembly consisting of 275 members. The National Assembly shall elect a presidential council of three members, this council in turn selects a prime minister and a cabinet.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
A Smarter Way to Use Our Troops
By Douglas J. Feith
The new U.S. global force posture President Bush announced on Monday will strengthen our military, invigorate U.S. alliances and improve the lives of our military personnel.
Our new posture will allow us to deploy capable forces rapidly anywhere in the world on short notice. It will push more military capability forward, while shifting 60,000 to 70,000 service members from foreign to U.S. bases. It will create a lighter U.S. "footprint" abroad, consolidate scattered facilities, remedy irritants in our relations with host nations, and, in numerous ways, make it easier for the United States to work well with allies and friends on military operations -- to train and operate, to develop military doctrine and tactics, and to exploit new military technologies with them.
The new posture acknowledges (finally) that the Cold War has ended. It anticipates the emergence of new threats. It recognizes new strategic facts, including the entry of former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO. And it capitalizes on new technologies.
During the Cold War, it was assumed that our forces stationed abroad would fight where they were based. We no longer assume that. We cannot know precisely where our forces may have to operate, so they must be agile enough -- light and rapidly deployable -- to be "surged" anywhere on short notice. Flexible and fast forces can more easily succeed in combat, and they can help prevent problems from becoming crises and crises from becoming wars.
The current U.S. posture, a legacy of World War II and the Korean War, has many of the wrong types of forces in the wrong places and therefore acts as a costly drag on American and allied capability. It would be a victory for inertia over strategic rationality to keep two U.S. heavy divisions stationed in Germany, for example, to counter a Red Army attack that happily, more than a dozen years ago, ceased to be a threat.
The heavy forces being redeployed out of Europe will make way for lighter, more rapidly deployable, more technologically advanced forces. As our allies know, trimmer forces do not necessarily translate into less combat power. On the contrary, relatively small forces equipped, for example, with the latest precision-guided munitions can now pack an enhanced punch: Witness the major combat of Operation Iraqi Freedom last year.
The changes in U.S. deployments in East Asia also have a compelling rationale. South Korea, for example, has burgeoned over the past 50 years. Thanks in part to our alliance, it is a strong, democratic and wealthy power, a far more capable ally than it was during and just after the Korean War. To bolster deterrence and keep our alliance vital, we are updating the allocation of responsibilities. We are plucking a thorn out of South Korea's flesh by moving a U.S. headquarters out of downtown Seoul. We are shifting U.S. forces southward on the Korean Peninsula, beyond the range of North Korean artillery, and consolidating them efficiently into hubs. We are increasing our naval and air power in the region and moving high-tech ground capability to South Korea.
All of this means we will have greater capability to deal with threats in the region, from North Korea or anyone else, even as we shift some troops from Korea back home. Our Korean allies appreciate the wisdom of updating our arrangements. They know it is the key to sustaining the alliance for the next 50 years.
In this political season, it was inevitable that some critics would charge us with "unilateralism." But the charge gets the matter backward. The posture changes will make U.S. alliances capable and useable well into the future. The failure to make such changes could doom our defense partnerships to irrelevance. We want to preserve our alliances, but not in amber.
Though aware that the changes will cause some dislocations, our allies have voiced support, indeed enthusiasm, for the realignment. They know that the measure of U.S. commitment is not a matter of troop levels but of capabilities -- those of our forces in the region and those that can be "surged" in quickly.
A further benefit to this restructuring will be improving the quality of life of military personnel and their families. Accompanied tours abroad are no boon when the service member has to leave his or her family behind to deploy to another location. Right now, for example, the families of European-based soldiers who have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan face double separation: from their deployed loved ones and from their extended families back in the United States.
More than three years in the making, the posture realignment reflects the best military advice of U.S. combat commanders and the Joint Chiefs, and input from our allies and partners around the world -- received in extensive high-level consultations -- and from key members of Congress. The standard comment of those briefed on the realignment has been: The United States should have done this a long time ago.
The writer is the undersecretary of defense for policy.
By Douglas J. Feith
The new U.S. global force posture President Bush announced on Monday will strengthen our military, invigorate U.S. alliances and improve the lives of our military personnel.
Our new posture will allow us to deploy capable forces rapidly anywhere in the world on short notice. It will push more military capability forward, while shifting 60,000 to 70,000 service members from foreign to U.S. bases. It will create a lighter U.S. "footprint" abroad, consolidate scattered facilities, remedy irritants in our relations with host nations, and, in numerous ways, make it easier for the United States to work well with allies and friends on military operations -- to train and operate, to develop military doctrine and tactics, and to exploit new military technologies with them.
The new posture acknowledges (finally) that the Cold War has ended. It anticipates the emergence of new threats. It recognizes new strategic facts, including the entry of former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO. And it capitalizes on new technologies.
During the Cold War, it was assumed that our forces stationed abroad would fight where they were based. We no longer assume that. We cannot know precisely where our forces may have to operate, so they must be agile enough -- light and rapidly deployable -- to be "surged" anywhere on short notice. Flexible and fast forces can more easily succeed in combat, and they can help prevent problems from becoming crises and crises from becoming wars.
The current U.S. posture, a legacy of World War II and the Korean War, has many of the wrong types of forces in the wrong places and therefore acts as a costly drag on American and allied capability. It would be a victory for inertia over strategic rationality to keep two U.S. heavy divisions stationed in Germany, for example, to counter a Red Army attack that happily, more than a dozen years ago, ceased to be a threat.
The heavy forces being redeployed out of Europe will make way for lighter, more rapidly deployable, more technologically advanced forces. As our allies know, trimmer forces do not necessarily translate into less combat power. On the contrary, relatively small forces equipped, for example, with the latest precision-guided munitions can now pack an enhanced punch: Witness the major combat of Operation Iraqi Freedom last year.
The changes in U.S. deployments in East Asia also have a compelling rationale. South Korea, for example, has burgeoned over the past 50 years. Thanks in part to our alliance, it is a strong, democratic and wealthy power, a far more capable ally than it was during and just after the Korean War. To bolster deterrence and keep our alliance vital, we are updating the allocation of responsibilities. We are plucking a thorn out of South Korea's flesh by moving a U.S. headquarters out of downtown Seoul. We are shifting U.S. forces southward on the Korean Peninsula, beyond the range of North Korean artillery, and consolidating them efficiently into hubs. We are increasing our naval and air power in the region and moving high-tech ground capability to South Korea.
All of this means we will have greater capability to deal with threats in the region, from North Korea or anyone else, even as we shift some troops from Korea back home. Our Korean allies appreciate the wisdom of updating our arrangements. They know it is the key to sustaining the alliance for the next 50 years.
In this political season, it was inevitable that some critics would charge us with "unilateralism." But the charge gets the matter backward. The posture changes will make U.S. alliances capable and useable well into the future. The failure to make such changes could doom our defense partnerships to irrelevance. We want to preserve our alliances, but not in amber.
Though aware that the changes will cause some dislocations, our allies have voiced support, indeed enthusiasm, for the realignment. They know that the measure of U.S. commitment is not a matter of troop levels but of capabilities -- those of our forces in the region and those that can be "surged" in quickly.
A further benefit to this restructuring will be improving the quality of life of military personnel and their families. Accompanied tours abroad are no boon when the service member has to leave his or her family behind to deploy to another location. Right now, for example, the families of European-based soldiers who have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan face double separation: from their deployed loved ones and from their extended families back in the United States.
More than three years in the making, the posture realignment reflects the best military advice of U.S. combat commanders and the Joint Chiefs, and input from our allies and partners around the world -- received in extensive high-level consultations -- and from key members of Congress. The standard comment of those briefed on the realignment has been: The United States should have done this a long time ago.
The writer is the undersecretary of defense for policy.
U.S. Eyes Money Trails of Saudi-Backed Charities
By David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A01
SAN DIEGO -- Omar Abdi Mohamed, a lanky, soft-spoken political refugee from war-ruined Somalia in East Africa, had been preaching the word of Islam in the United States for the past nine years. Two things make him unusual.
In January, U.S. immigration authorities arrested him, saying they suspected him of being a conduit for terrorist funds, federal court records show. At the time, he was on the payroll of Saudi Arabia's government.
Mohamed was one of 30 Saudi-financed preachers in this country. Each month, the Saudis paid $1,700 to the 44-year-old, who taught the Koran at a run-down Somali social center here. He worked with little supervision from Saudi religious authorities 8,000 miles away. In the late 1990s, he set up a small charity to help famine victims in Somalia, and that is how his trouble began.
The charity received $326,000 over three years from the Global Relief Foundation, a private Islamic charity based in Illinois. In October 2002, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Global Relief a terrorist-financing entity linked to al Qaeda.
The collision of Saudi missionary work and suspicions of terrorist financing in San Diego illustrates the perils and provocations of a multibillion-dollar effort by Saudi Arabia to spread its religion around the world. Mohamed worked on the front lines of that effort, a campaign to transform what outsiders call "Wahhabism," once a marginal and puritanical brand of Islam with few followers outside the Arabian Peninsula, into the dominant doctrine in the Islamic world. The campaign has created a vast infrastructure of both government-supported and private charities that at times has been exploited by violent jihadists -- among them Osama bin Laden.
Nearly three years after the devastating Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a number of Saudi-supported Islamic preachers, centers, charities and mosques remain under intense scrutiny. U.S. investigators continue to look into the tangled money trails leading from Saudi Arabia to its embassy in Washington and into dozens of American cities.
At the end of one trail is Mohamed. Another avenue of interest involves the global finances of the al Haramain Islamic Foundation, a large Saudi-government-supported charity set up to propagate Wahhabism and sometimes referred to as "the United Way of Saudi Arabia." Al Haramain, which has an office in Ashland, Ore., sent Mohamed $5,000.
The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks stated in its July report that al Qaeda had relied heavily on international charities to raise money, "particularly those with lax external oversight and ineffective internal controls such as the Saudi-based al Haramain Islamic Foundation." The report added that al Qaeda found "fertile fund-raising groups" in Saudi Arabia, "where extreme religious views are common and charitable giving was both essential to the culture and subject to very limited oversight."
The Saudis say they have taken more steps than any other country to crack down on terrorist financing. They say the problem is not with their religion but with a small minority of deviants.
The Saudi government has severed ties with Mohamed, who is charged only with immigration violations, but he insists he did nothing wrong. A hearing is set for Sept. 1 in San Diego. The terrorist suspicions against Mohamed appear to rest on financial transactions that raise questions but do not provide answers, court records show. Global Relief denies it funds terrorism.
The Saudis are also shutting al Haramain offices worldwide. In June, the Treasury Department put the charity's former head in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on its list of known supporters of terrorism for providing "financial, material and logistical support to the al Qaeda network."
Wahhabism arose in the mid-18th century in central Saudi Arabia. Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab sought to purify Islam and return it to its 7th-century roots. He preached doctrines based on a strict adherence to the literal word of the Koran. He opposed music and adornment, insisted that women be cloaked and disdained nonbelievers, even members of other Muslim sects.
Scholars of Islam find it difficult to precisely assess the impact of 40 years of Saudi missionary work on the United States' multi-ethnic Muslim community -- estimated at 6 million to 7 million. But survey data are suggestive.
The most comprehensive study, a survey of the 1,200 U.S. mosques undertaken in 2000 by four Muslim organizations, found that 2 million Muslims were "associated" with a mosque and that 70 percent of mosque leaders were generally favorable toward fundamentalist teachings, while 21 percent followed the stricter Wahhabi practices. The survey also found that the segregation of women for prayers was spreading, from half of the mosques in 1994 to two-thirds six years later.
John L. Esposito, a religion scholar at Georgetown University, said the Saudi theological efforts have resulted in "the export of a very exclusive brand of Islam into the Muslim community in the United States" that "tends to make them more isolationist in the society in which they live."
The Export of Islam
The worldwide export of Wahhabi Islam began in 1962, when Saudi Arabia's ruling Saud family founded the Muslim World League in Mecca to promote "Islamic solidarity." The Sauds were seeking to counter the fiery pan-Arab nationalism of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was calling for the Saudi monarchy to be overthrown.
The family also saw the export of Islam, which they call "Dawah," as a sacred duty. Their land was the birthplace of Islam and their kingdom host to the religion's two holiest mosques, in Mecca and Medina.
Western diplomats stationed in Riyadh liken the Sauds' fervor to the zeal of the United States' own fundamentalist sects. "For Saudi Arabia to stop Dawah would be a negation of itself," said Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to the kingdom. "It would be like Bush telling Evangelical Christians to stop missionary work abroad."
In the 1960s, the kingdom was sparsely populated and still relatively poor. It had no trained foot soldiers to run the Muslim league. So the royal family enlisted scores of Egyptian teachers, scholars and imams belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, a highly secretive movement of political activists dedicated to restoring Islamic rule over secular Arab societies.
By 1982, the Saud family was feeling threatened by the Islamic revolution begun by Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and the extremism of some of its own citizens, who had temporarily seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. Again, the family turned to Dawah.
King Fahd issued a directive that "no limits be put on expenditures for the propagation of Islam," according to Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi oil and security analyst. Saudi Arabia now had the money: Its oil revenue had skyrocketed after the 1973 oil embargo. King Fahd used the cash to build mosques, Islamic centers and schools by the thousands around the world. Over the next two decades, the kingdom established 200 Islamic colleges, 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques and 2,000 schools for Muslim children in non-Islamic countries, according to King Fahd's personal Web site. In 1984, the king built a $130 million printing plant in Medina devoted to producing Saudi-approved translations of the Koran. By 2000, the kingdom had distributed 138 million copies worldwide.
Exactly how much has been spent to spread Wahhabism is unclear. David D. Aufhauser, a former Treasury Department general counsel, told a Senate committee in June that estimates went "north of $75 billion." Edward L. Morse, an oil analyst at Hess Energy Trading Co. in New York, said King Fahd tapped a special oil account that set aside revenue from as much as 200,000 barrels a day -- $1.8 billion a year at 1980s oil prices. Saudi oil expert Obaid confirmed such an account existed in the 1980s and 1990s but said it was recently closed.
Ministry's Far Reach
After the Persian Gulf War in 1991, radical elements in the kingdom and in the Muslim Brotherhood excoriated the Sauds for calling in the Americans to defend them. In response, King Fahd tightened control over the missionary-and-charity campaign and tried to purge it of Brotherhood influence, setting up a new Saudi-supervised charity, al Haramain.
As part of this effort, the Saudis created an Islamic affairs ministry in 1993 that was intended to be the key institution for exporting Wahhabism. The ministry, officially known as the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Call and Guidance, is led by Saleh Sheik, a direct descendant of Ibn Abdul Wahab.
The goal of moderating Brotherhood-like militancy was only partly successful. Saudi scholars and sources say the ministry has become a stronghold of zealots.
The Islamic affairs ministry is located in a nondescript concrete-and-glass structure in the Malaz district of Riyadh, near the city's old airport. There, in an interview at his office in March, Sheik said the ministry meets weekly to "coordinate the Islamic policies of the different ministries outside the country."
The ministry's outreach is formidable. It pays the salaries of 3,884 Wahhabi missionaries and preachers, who are six times as numerous as the 650 diplomats in Saudi Arabia's 77 embassies. Ministry officials in Africa and Asia often have had more money to dispense than Saudi ambassadors, according to several Saudi sources. The Islamic affairs officials also act as religious commissars, keeping tabs on the moral behavior of the kingdom's diplomats. In the United States, a 40-person Islamic Affairs Department established in the Saudi Embassy in Washington became something of an independent body, with little supervision from the often absent ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Sheik estimated the Islamic affairs ministry's budget at $530 million annually and said it goes almost entirely to pay the salaries of the more than 50,000 people on the ministry payroll . That figure does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars in personal contributions made by King Fahd and other senior Saudi princes to the cause of propagating Islam at home and abroad, according to a Saudi analyst who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The real total spent annually spreading Islam is between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, he said.
Sheik said his ministry "supervises" charities abroad to "make sure their funds go to the right places" and also provides religious books and scholars for Saudi-supported Islamic centers, schools and universities. But it has "no direct responsibility" for them, he said.
Sheik is the direct supervisor of one charity supported by the Saudi government, al Haramain, which added an entirely separate army of 3,000 missionaries to the 3,884 on the ministry payroll.
Al Haramain's annual budget, $40 million to $60 million, paid for mosques, schools, Korans, wells, food and Saudi-approved veils, as well as scores of health clinics and orphanages in some of the poorest corners of the world. It operated in 50 countries.
In October 1997, the charity established its first U.S. presence when it incorporated in Ashland, Ore. It listed as its board president Aqeel Abdulaziz Aqil, who had been general manager for the charity since its founding. He operated from the Riyadh headquarters.
Everything changed for al Haramain with the worldwide crackdown on terrorist funding that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. By March 2002, U.S. and Saudi authorities had designated al Haramain offices in Bosnia and Somalia as terrorist-supporting organizations that had diverted charitable money to al Qaeda and a suspected Somali terrorist group, Al Ittihad Al Islamiya.
Two years later, on Feb. 13, 2004, IRS officials raided the Ashland office, saying there was "probable cause" that two top al Haramain officers had violated U.S. currency laws and filed false tax returns to cover the transfer of money to Muslim rebels fighting in Chechnya. (U.S. authorities so far have brought no formal charges against those officers, and the Oregon office remains open.) Aqil was fired in January. Six months later, U.S. officials designated him a terrorist supporter because of his alleged contacts with the Somali group Al Ittihad, the same organization that Omar Abdi Mohamed in San Diego is suspected of aiding.
By then, 15 al Haramain branches had been shut down, including those in Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Albania and the Netherlands.
In his interview with a Washington Post reporter in March, Sheik defended the charity. His ministry's own investigation did not find "any major mistakes" by the charity's leadership, except by its director, Aqil.
"The mistakes of individuals should not be attributed to the whole institution," Sheik said.
In June, however, the Saudi government announced that al Haramain was being closed down and that the Islamic affairs ministry would be stripped of its role as the main overseer of missionary work. A government-run commission under the Foreign Ministry now has that responsibility.
But the commission does not oversee the three other major Saudi-based-and-financed charities -- the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization. Also independent of the commission is at least one private Saudi charity, al-Muntada al-Islami. The charity, based in London, works primarily in Africa and publishes an English-language Islamic monthly, Al-Jumuah, which is distributed in the United States.
These four Saudi charities recently formed a U.S.-based trade group, the Friends of Charities Association, and hired the Belew law firm in Washington to represent their interests.
In the United States, Saudi Arabia's infrastructure of preachers and money started as a bulwark against the spread into American mosques of radical Shiism, which surged after Khomeini deposed the shah of Iran.
"Many countries in the West asked Saudi Arabia to get involved in these [Islamic] centers because at that time Saudi Arabia was considered moderate," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Faisal said in an interview in March. The Americans "felt comfortable with the presence of the Saudis," he said.
Backed by Saudi money, this presence grew rapidly. King Fahd's Web site now lists 16 Islamic and cultural centers that the kingdom has helped finance in California, Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Virginia and Maryland. The largest is the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles. The mosque, built with $8 million in private donations from the king and his son, Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz, was officially inaugurated in 1998 for 2,000 worshipers. It includes a Koranic school, an Islamic research center and a bookstore.
The Islamic Affairs Department at the Saudi Embassy in Washington spearheaded the campaign. At its height, the department had 35 to 40 diplomats and an annual budget of $8 million, according to a Saudi official.
In 1989, the Saudis also set up a high-powered Islamic learning center, the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, in Fairfax. The institute is an outpost of the Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, the main citadel for Wahhabi instruction.
The Islamic affairs ministry sent imams and itinerant preachers to the United States as well: As late as last year, it had 31 on its payroll, including Omar Abdi Mohamed in San Diego.
The ministry also flooded the American Muslim community with Saudi-published Korans and publications. "The great majority of books and magazines were authored by Saudi agencies," said Maher Hathout, chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Hathout, an outspoken critic of Wahhabism, said the result was the increasing isolation of women in American mosques starting in the 1980s. "Mosques became gender-segregated, which didn't make any sense at all," he said.
The commentary accompanying the Saudi-published Koran, Hathout said, was "very alien to the spirit of tolerance" in U.S. society. "This may have sense over there [in Saudi Arabia] but doesn't make any sense here," he said.
In the 1990s, a "sharp debate" raged in U.S. mosques over Saudi fundamentalism, said Ihsan Bagby, chief author of the study "The Mosque in America." Radical "nongovernmental Saudi sheiks" became very active in pushing a far more militant brand of Wahhabism than the government-appointed imams, Bagby said. These radicals cultivated American Muslims, who used Saudi money to build their own mosques, he said.
In May 2003, the State Department refused reentry to the chief imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, Fahad al Thumairy, who also was a Saudi diplomat at the consulate in Los Angeles. The Sept. 11 commission report later said the State Department had determined "he might be connected with terrorist activity."
The report also said that two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, "spent time at the King Fahd mosque and made some acquaintances there." Al Thumairy, who reportedly led an "extremist faction" at the mosque, denied knowing the two hijackers. While his denial was "somewhat suspect," the report said there was no evidence connecting him to the hijackers.
Last December, the State Department ended the practice of allowing religious scholars and missionaries to work here on Saudi diplomatic passports, forcing at least 24 out. The best-known deportee was Jaafar Idris, a Sudanese scholar well known in the Islamic world and founder of the American Open University, based in Alexandria, which in 2002 had 540 registered students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in Islamic studies.
Also crippled by the crackdown was the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences. Eleven of its scholars on diplomatic passports were ordered to leave. In early July, dozens of FBI, customs and IRS agents raided the institute's premises and questioned its six remaining non-Saudi teachers.
Late last year, the Saudi Embassy in Washington dissolved its Islamic Affairs Department, reducing the number of diplomats dealing with religious issues to one. The embassy also stopped distributing the Koran in the United States. At the same time, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs began reviewing its 31 missionaries and preachers in the United States. As of March, six had been fired.
The only one to go to jail was Omar Abdi Mohamed, the Somali teacher in San Diego.
Suspected Ties to Terrorism
A trader in hides, livestock and incense, Mohamed regularly visited Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. During one of his trips, he said, he was recruited by the kingdom's religious authorities in Mecca after being questioned about his knowledge of the Koran. In Somalia, preaching became a sideline for him, he said.
In 1989, Mohamed was jailed and tortured by the Somali military, which suspected him of involvement with the political opposition, according to statements Mohamed later made on his immigration documents. The following year, as Somalia degenerated into civil war, he was freed and fled to Canada. Five years later, he made his way to San Diego.
He had been recruited by a San Diego mosque to teach the Koran and Arabic to Somali children, he said later. He entered the United States on a religious worker's visa and received legal permanent resident status. The U.S. government would later say he never worked at the mosque that sponsored his visa.
Instead, Mohamed founded a small Koranic "school," actually just one room inside a shabby two-story Somali civic center in a section of City Heights nicknamed "Little Mogadishu," after Somalia's capital. Mohamed also worked part time as a social counselor for Somali children at a public school, which paid him $1,000 a month.
In 1997, Mohamed set up his charity, the Western Somali Relief Agency, to send money to Somalis facing famine in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia. Over the next four years, the agency received $326,000 from the Global Relief Foundation, court documents show.
In April 2000, Mohamed applied for U.S. citizenship. He had an interview with U.S. immigration officials in May 2002. By then, the Sept. 11 attacks had made U.S. officials wary of any Muslims applying for citizenship. Mohamed's background was checked, and the immigration officers asked him pointed questions about his relief agency and the money that had circulated through it, court documents show.
He did not tell them initially that he was being paid by the Saudis or that he had received money from Global Relief and al Haramain, the records show.
In January, he was called in for a second interview. Afterward, he was arrested and charged with making multiple false statements.
"You've received funding well over $200,000 from Global Relief," said Steve Schultz, an immigration officer, according to a transcript of Mohamed's interview. "They were shut down because they were providing aid to terrorism. Okay, we think you're involved in that."
In October 2002, the Treasury Department designated Global Relief, based in Bridgeview, Ill., a terrorist-linked organization because it "has provided assistance to Osama Bin Laden, the al Qaeda Network and other known terrorist groups," a Treasury news release stated.
Rabih Haddad, the co-founder of Global Relief, had belonged to an organization that was a precursor to al Qaeda. Charity officials had also had multiple contacts with the Taliban government in Afghanistan and bin Laden's personal secretary, who was convicted of participating in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Treasury Department release stated that photographs found in a trash bin outside Global Relief's office in Illinois depicted armed fighters and a shipment of sophisticated communications equipment worth $120,000. Videotapes stocked by Global Relief glorified armed jihad. "God equated martyrdom through JIHAD with supplying funds for the JIHAD effort," a 1995 Global Relief Foundation pamphlet stated. "All contributions should be mailed to: GRF."
U.S. investigators have been unable to track all of the money Mohamed received from Global Relief. The bulk of it went in checks written to Dahab Shil, an informal money transmitter in Chicago known among Muslims as a hawala. The 65 checks to Dahab Shil range from $370 to $60,000, according to court documents.
Mohamed said the money went to various local charities and tribal chiefs in the Ethiopian Ogaden. Transcripts of his interviews show U.S. officials suspect that some of it went to Al Ittihad Al Islamiya, the Somali terrorist group that the head of al Haramain has also been accused of dealing with.
During an interview in May at the federal prison in Otay Mesa, 15 miles south of San Diego, Mohamed insisted he was not a Wahhabi extremist, just a Muslim. He denied ever having contacts with Al Ittihad. With the loss of his $1,700 monthly stipend, his wife and six children live on a monthly welfare check of $1,178.
Research editor Margot Williams and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
By David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A01
SAN DIEGO -- Omar Abdi Mohamed, a lanky, soft-spoken political refugee from war-ruined Somalia in East Africa, had been preaching the word of Islam in the United States for the past nine years. Two things make him unusual.
In January, U.S. immigration authorities arrested him, saying they suspected him of being a conduit for terrorist funds, federal court records show. At the time, he was on the payroll of Saudi Arabia's government.
Mohamed was one of 30 Saudi-financed preachers in this country. Each month, the Saudis paid $1,700 to the 44-year-old, who taught the Koran at a run-down Somali social center here. He worked with little supervision from Saudi religious authorities 8,000 miles away. In the late 1990s, he set up a small charity to help famine victims in Somalia, and that is how his trouble began.
The charity received $326,000 over three years from the Global Relief Foundation, a private Islamic charity based in Illinois. In October 2002, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Global Relief a terrorist-financing entity linked to al Qaeda.
The collision of Saudi missionary work and suspicions of terrorist financing in San Diego illustrates the perils and provocations of a multibillion-dollar effort by Saudi Arabia to spread its religion around the world. Mohamed worked on the front lines of that effort, a campaign to transform what outsiders call "Wahhabism," once a marginal and puritanical brand of Islam with few followers outside the Arabian Peninsula, into the dominant doctrine in the Islamic world. The campaign has created a vast infrastructure of both government-supported and private charities that at times has been exploited by violent jihadists -- among them Osama bin Laden.
Nearly three years after the devastating Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a number of Saudi-supported Islamic preachers, centers, charities and mosques remain under intense scrutiny. U.S. investigators continue to look into the tangled money trails leading from Saudi Arabia to its embassy in Washington and into dozens of American cities.
At the end of one trail is Mohamed. Another avenue of interest involves the global finances of the al Haramain Islamic Foundation, a large Saudi-government-supported charity set up to propagate Wahhabism and sometimes referred to as "the United Way of Saudi Arabia." Al Haramain, which has an office in Ashland, Ore., sent Mohamed $5,000.
The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks stated in its July report that al Qaeda had relied heavily on international charities to raise money, "particularly those with lax external oversight and ineffective internal controls such as the Saudi-based al Haramain Islamic Foundation." The report added that al Qaeda found "fertile fund-raising groups" in Saudi Arabia, "where extreme religious views are common and charitable giving was both essential to the culture and subject to very limited oversight."
The Saudis say they have taken more steps than any other country to crack down on terrorist financing. They say the problem is not with their religion but with a small minority of deviants.
The Saudi government has severed ties with Mohamed, who is charged only with immigration violations, but he insists he did nothing wrong. A hearing is set for Sept. 1 in San Diego. The terrorist suspicions against Mohamed appear to rest on financial transactions that raise questions but do not provide answers, court records show. Global Relief denies it funds terrorism.
The Saudis are also shutting al Haramain offices worldwide. In June, the Treasury Department put the charity's former head in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on its list of known supporters of terrorism for providing "financial, material and logistical support to the al Qaeda network."
Wahhabism arose in the mid-18th century in central Saudi Arabia. Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahab sought to purify Islam and return it to its 7th-century roots. He preached doctrines based on a strict adherence to the literal word of the Koran. He opposed music and adornment, insisted that women be cloaked and disdained nonbelievers, even members of other Muslim sects.
Scholars of Islam find it difficult to precisely assess the impact of 40 years of Saudi missionary work on the United States' multi-ethnic Muslim community -- estimated at 6 million to 7 million. But survey data are suggestive.
The most comprehensive study, a survey of the 1,200 U.S. mosques undertaken in 2000 by four Muslim organizations, found that 2 million Muslims were "associated" with a mosque and that 70 percent of mosque leaders were generally favorable toward fundamentalist teachings, while 21 percent followed the stricter Wahhabi practices. The survey also found that the segregation of women for prayers was spreading, from half of the mosques in 1994 to two-thirds six years later.
John L. Esposito, a religion scholar at Georgetown University, said the Saudi theological efforts have resulted in "the export of a very exclusive brand of Islam into the Muslim community in the United States" that "tends to make them more isolationist in the society in which they live."
The Export of Islam
The worldwide export of Wahhabi Islam began in 1962, when Saudi Arabia's ruling Saud family founded the Muslim World League in Mecca to promote "Islamic solidarity." The Sauds were seeking to counter the fiery pan-Arab nationalism of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was calling for the Saudi monarchy to be overthrown.
The family also saw the export of Islam, which they call "Dawah," as a sacred duty. Their land was the birthplace of Islam and their kingdom host to the religion's two holiest mosques, in Mecca and Medina.
Western diplomats stationed in Riyadh liken the Sauds' fervor to the zeal of the United States' own fundamentalist sects. "For Saudi Arabia to stop Dawah would be a negation of itself," said Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to the kingdom. "It would be like Bush telling Evangelical Christians to stop missionary work abroad."
In the 1960s, the kingdom was sparsely populated and still relatively poor. It had no trained foot soldiers to run the Muslim league. So the royal family enlisted scores of Egyptian teachers, scholars and imams belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, a highly secretive movement of political activists dedicated to restoring Islamic rule over secular Arab societies.
By 1982, the Saud family was feeling threatened by the Islamic revolution begun by Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and the extremism of some of its own citizens, who had temporarily seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. Again, the family turned to Dawah.
King Fahd issued a directive that "no limits be put on expenditures for the propagation of Islam," according to Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi oil and security analyst. Saudi Arabia now had the money: Its oil revenue had skyrocketed after the 1973 oil embargo. King Fahd used the cash to build mosques, Islamic centers and schools by the thousands around the world. Over the next two decades, the kingdom established 200 Islamic colleges, 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques and 2,000 schools for Muslim children in non-Islamic countries, according to King Fahd's personal Web site. In 1984, the king built a $130 million printing plant in Medina devoted to producing Saudi-approved translations of the Koran. By 2000, the kingdom had distributed 138 million copies worldwide.
Exactly how much has been spent to spread Wahhabism is unclear. David D. Aufhauser, a former Treasury Department general counsel, told a Senate committee in June that estimates went "north of $75 billion." Edward L. Morse, an oil analyst at Hess Energy Trading Co. in New York, said King Fahd tapped a special oil account that set aside revenue from as much as 200,000 barrels a day -- $1.8 billion a year at 1980s oil prices. Saudi oil expert Obaid confirmed such an account existed in the 1980s and 1990s but said it was recently closed.
Ministry's Far Reach
After the Persian Gulf War in 1991, radical elements in the kingdom and in the Muslim Brotherhood excoriated the Sauds for calling in the Americans to defend them. In response, King Fahd tightened control over the missionary-and-charity campaign and tried to purge it of Brotherhood influence, setting up a new Saudi-supervised charity, al Haramain.
As part of this effort, the Saudis created an Islamic affairs ministry in 1993 that was intended to be the key institution for exporting Wahhabism. The ministry, officially known as the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Call and Guidance, is led by Saleh Sheik, a direct descendant of Ibn Abdul Wahab.
The goal of moderating Brotherhood-like militancy was only partly successful. Saudi scholars and sources say the ministry has become a stronghold of zealots.
The Islamic affairs ministry is located in a nondescript concrete-and-glass structure in the Malaz district of Riyadh, near the city's old airport. There, in an interview at his office in March, Sheik said the ministry meets weekly to "coordinate the Islamic policies of the different ministries outside the country."
The ministry's outreach is formidable. It pays the salaries of 3,884 Wahhabi missionaries and preachers, who are six times as numerous as the 650 diplomats in Saudi Arabia's 77 embassies. Ministry officials in Africa and Asia often have had more money to dispense than Saudi ambassadors, according to several Saudi sources. The Islamic affairs officials also act as religious commissars, keeping tabs on the moral behavior of the kingdom's diplomats. In the United States, a 40-person Islamic Affairs Department established in the Saudi Embassy in Washington became something of an independent body, with little supervision from the often absent ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Sheik estimated the Islamic affairs ministry's budget at $530 million annually and said it goes almost entirely to pay the salaries of the more than 50,000 people on the ministry payroll . That figure does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars in personal contributions made by King Fahd and other senior Saudi princes to the cause of propagating Islam at home and abroad, according to a Saudi analyst who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The real total spent annually spreading Islam is between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, he said.
Sheik said his ministry "supervises" charities abroad to "make sure their funds go to the right places" and also provides religious books and scholars for Saudi-supported Islamic centers, schools and universities. But it has "no direct responsibility" for them, he said.
Sheik is the direct supervisor of one charity supported by the Saudi government, al Haramain, which added an entirely separate army of 3,000 missionaries to the 3,884 on the ministry payroll.
Al Haramain's annual budget, $40 million to $60 million, paid for mosques, schools, Korans, wells, food and Saudi-approved veils, as well as scores of health clinics and orphanages in some of the poorest corners of the world. It operated in 50 countries.
In October 1997, the charity established its first U.S. presence when it incorporated in Ashland, Ore. It listed as its board president Aqeel Abdulaziz Aqil, who had been general manager for the charity since its founding. He operated from the Riyadh headquarters.
Everything changed for al Haramain with the worldwide crackdown on terrorist funding that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. By March 2002, U.S. and Saudi authorities had designated al Haramain offices in Bosnia and Somalia as terrorist-supporting organizations that had diverted charitable money to al Qaeda and a suspected Somali terrorist group, Al Ittihad Al Islamiya.
Two years later, on Feb. 13, 2004, IRS officials raided the Ashland office, saying there was "probable cause" that two top al Haramain officers had violated U.S. currency laws and filed false tax returns to cover the transfer of money to Muslim rebels fighting in Chechnya. (U.S. authorities so far have brought no formal charges against those officers, and the Oregon office remains open.) Aqil was fired in January. Six months later, U.S. officials designated him a terrorist supporter because of his alleged contacts with the Somali group Al Ittihad, the same organization that Omar Abdi Mohamed in San Diego is suspected of aiding.
By then, 15 al Haramain branches had been shut down, including those in Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Albania and the Netherlands.
In his interview with a Washington Post reporter in March, Sheik defended the charity. His ministry's own investigation did not find "any major mistakes" by the charity's leadership, except by its director, Aqil.
"The mistakes of individuals should not be attributed to the whole institution," Sheik said.
In June, however, the Saudi government announced that al Haramain was being closed down and that the Islamic affairs ministry would be stripped of its role as the main overseer of missionary work. A government-run commission under the Foreign Ministry now has that responsibility.
But the commission does not oversee the three other major Saudi-based-and-financed charities -- the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization. Also independent of the commission is at least one private Saudi charity, al-Muntada al-Islami. The charity, based in London, works primarily in Africa and publishes an English-language Islamic monthly, Al-Jumuah, which is distributed in the United States.
These four Saudi charities recently formed a U.S.-based trade group, the Friends of Charities Association, and hired the Belew law firm in Washington to represent their interests.
In the United States, Saudi Arabia's infrastructure of preachers and money started as a bulwark against the spread into American mosques of radical Shiism, which surged after Khomeini deposed the shah of Iran.
"Many countries in the West asked Saudi Arabia to get involved in these [Islamic] centers because at that time Saudi Arabia was considered moderate," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Faisal said in an interview in March. The Americans "felt comfortable with the presence of the Saudis," he said.
Backed by Saudi money, this presence grew rapidly. King Fahd's Web site now lists 16 Islamic and cultural centers that the kingdom has helped finance in California, Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Virginia and Maryland. The largest is the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles. The mosque, built with $8 million in private donations from the king and his son, Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz, was officially inaugurated in 1998 for 2,000 worshipers. It includes a Koranic school, an Islamic research center and a bookstore.
The Islamic Affairs Department at the Saudi Embassy in Washington spearheaded the campaign. At its height, the department had 35 to 40 diplomats and an annual budget of $8 million, according to a Saudi official.
In 1989, the Saudis also set up a high-powered Islamic learning center, the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, in Fairfax. The institute is an outpost of the Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, the main citadel for Wahhabi instruction.
The Islamic affairs ministry sent imams and itinerant preachers to the United States as well: As late as last year, it had 31 on its payroll, including Omar Abdi Mohamed in San Diego.
The ministry also flooded the American Muslim community with Saudi-published Korans and publications. "The great majority of books and magazines were authored by Saudi agencies," said Maher Hathout, chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Hathout, an outspoken critic of Wahhabism, said the result was the increasing isolation of women in American mosques starting in the 1980s. "Mosques became gender-segregated, which didn't make any sense at all," he said.
The commentary accompanying the Saudi-published Koran, Hathout said, was "very alien to the spirit of tolerance" in U.S. society. "This may have sense over there [in Saudi Arabia] but doesn't make any sense here," he said.
In the 1990s, a "sharp debate" raged in U.S. mosques over Saudi fundamentalism, said Ihsan Bagby, chief author of the study "The Mosque in America." Radical "nongovernmental Saudi sheiks" became very active in pushing a far more militant brand of Wahhabism than the government-appointed imams, Bagby said. These radicals cultivated American Muslims, who used Saudi money to build their own mosques, he said.
In May 2003, the State Department refused reentry to the chief imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, Fahad al Thumairy, who also was a Saudi diplomat at the consulate in Los Angeles. The Sept. 11 commission report later said the State Department had determined "he might be connected with terrorist activity."
The report also said that two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, "spent time at the King Fahd mosque and made some acquaintances there." Al Thumairy, who reportedly led an "extremist faction" at the mosque, denied knowing the two hijackers. While his denial was "somewhat suspect," the report said there was no evidence connecting him to the hijackers.
Last December, the State Department ended the practice of allowing religious scholars and missionaries to work here on Saudi diplomatic passports, forcing at least 24 out. The best-known deportee was Jaafar Idris, a Sudanese scholar well known in the Islamic world and founder of the American Open University, based in Alexandria, which in 2002 had 540 registered students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in Islamic studies.
Also crippled by the crackdown was the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences. Eleven of its scholars on diplomatic passports were ordered to leave. In early July, dozens of FBI, customs and IRS agents raided the institute's premises and questioned its six remaining non-Saudi teachers.
Late last year, the Saudi Embassy in Washington dissolved its Islamic Affairs Department, reducing the number of diplomats dealing with religious issues to one. The embassy also stopped distributing the Koran in the United States. At the same time, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs began reviewing its 31 missionaries and preachers in the United States. As of March, six had been fired.
The only one to go to jail was Omar Abdi Mohamed, the Somali teacher in San Diego.
Suspected Ties to Terrorism
A trader in hides, livestock and incense, Mohamed regularly visited Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. During one of his trips, he said, he was recruited by the kingdom's religious authorities in Mecca after being questioned about his knowledge of the Koran. In Somalia, preaching became a sideline for him, he said.
In 1989, Mohamed was jailed and tortured by the Somali military, which suspected him of involvement with the political opposition, according to statements Mohamed later made on his immigration documents. The following year, as Somalia degenerated into civil war, he was freed and fled to Canada. Five years later, he made his way to San Diego.
He had been recruited by a San Diego mosque to teach the Koran and Arabic to Somali children, he said later. He entered the United States on a religious worker's visa and received legal permanent resident status. The U.S. government would later say he never worked at the mosque that sponsored his visa.
Instead, Mohamed founded a small Koranic "school," actually just one room inside a shabby two-story Somali civic center in a section of City Heights nicknamed "Little Mogadishu," after Somalia's capital. Mohamed also worked part time as a social counselor for Somali children at a public school, which paid him $1,000 a month.
In 1997, Mohamed set up his charity, the Western Somali Relief Agency, to send money to Somalis facing famine in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia. Over the next four years, the agency received $326,000 from the Global Relief Foundation, court documents show.
In April 2000, Mohamed applied for U.S. citizenship. He had an interview with U.S. immigration officials in May 2002. By then, the Sept. 11 attacks had made U.S. officials wary of any Muslims applying for citizenship. Mohamed's background was checked, and the immigration officers asked him pointed questions about his relief agency and the money that had circulated through it, court documents show.
He did not tell them initially that he was being paid by the Saudis or that he had received money from Global Relief and al Haramain, the records show.
In January, he was called in for a second interview. Afterward, he was arrested and charged with making multiple false statements.
"You've received funding well over $200,000 from Global Relief," said Steve Schultz, an immigration officer, according to a transcript of Mohamed's interview. "They were shut down because they were providing aid to terrorism. Okay, we think you're involved in that."
In October 2002, the Treasury Department designated Global Relief, based in Bridgeview, Ill., a terrorist-linked organization because it "has provided assistance to Osama Bin Laden, the al Qaeda Network and other known terrorist groups," a Treasury news release stated.
Rabih Haddad, the co-founder of Global Relief, had belonged to an organization that was a precursor to al Qaeda. Charity officials had also had multiple contacts with the Taliban government in Afghanistan and bin Laden's personal secretary, who was convicted of participating in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Treasury Department release stated that photographs found in a trash bin outside Global Relief's office in Illinois depicted armed fighters and a shipment of sophisticated communications equipment worth $120,000. Videotapes stocked by Global Relief glorified armed jihad. "God equated martyrdom through JIHAD with supplying funds for the JIHAD effort," a 1995 Global Relief Foundation pamphlet stated. "All contributions should be mailed to: GRF."
U.S. investigators have been unable to track all of the money Mohamed received from Global Relief. The bulk of it went in checks written to Dahab Shil, an informal money transmitter in Chicago known among Muslims as a hawala. The 65 checks to Dahab Shil range from $370 to $60,000, according to court documents.
Mohamed said the money went to various local charities and tribal chiefs in the Ethiopian Ogaden. Transcripts of his interviews show U.S. officials suspect that some of it went to Al Ittihad Al Islamiya, the Somali terrorist group that the head of al Haramain has also been accused of dealing with.
During an interview in May at the federal prison in Otay Mesa, 15 miles south of San Diego, Mohamed insisted he was not a Wahhabi extremist, just a Muslim. He denied ever having contacts with Al Ittihad. With the loss of his $1,700 monthly stipend, his wife and six children live on a monthly welfare check of $1,178.
Research editor Margot Williams and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
