Trying to
understand Afghanistan
Forum offers
insights
into war on terrorism
By PETER
BOLTZ
Express Staff Writer
At first,
it seemed a recent forum held at the Community School was misnamed.
People were
interested in hearing about Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, but the forum
was called "A World in Conflict, An Evening of Understanding."
By the time
it was over, however, it was clear that the U.S. military campaign in
Afghanistan is not something confined to national borders.
As for
understanding, only the future will tell.
The forum,
presented on Oct. 29 by the Community School Parents’ Association, was
hosted by the school’s social studies chair, Bob Doyle.
The
authorities asked to speak and answer questions were Tony Mabbatt, Ted
Bilkey and Ted Curran.
Mabbatt is
a retired U.S. Foreign Service public affairs officer who lived in Jordan
during Israel’s Six-Day War in 1967. He also served in several Muslim
countries, including Indonesia.
Bilkey is a
retired shipping executive who has lived in Iran, Bahrain and other Muslim
countries.
Curran is a
former assistant U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, who has served in other
Muslim countries such as Yemen.
Bilkey, who
said he was in Dubai during the Persian Gulf War of 1991, said that at
that time "Americans were heroes. We were thought of as saviors, but
we’ve totally lost it. What happened?"
He didn’t
answer this question, but he did have an answer to what he would tell
President Bush.
"I
think the first recommendation I would make is to take away a serious
irritant by telling the Israelis to remove all the West Bank
settlements," Bilkey said.
"I
feel our government and media are tiptoeing around the conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians," he said.
"Our
government is not addressing the problem in an vigorous way. If we don’t
change our unqualified support of Israel, there is no way we can win the
war on terrorism," Bilkey said.
Mabbatt
stated a similar viewpoint in an Idaho Mountain Express guest editorial on
Sept. 19.
"Until
there is a just and equitable peace settlement between Israel and the
Palestinians, the extremist on both sides will hold sway," he wrote.
"As an
essential element in our attempts to root out terrorism, the United States
must become directly involved in the peace process," Mabbatt
concluded.
Curran told
the audience that there are six areas Americans can watch to see if our
policy is working in Afghanistan. He put these into question form.
n Who will
end up running Afghanistan?
n Will
Pakistan hold together?
n Will the
Arab coalition go the course while America maintains Israel?
n What will
China and Russia do?
n Will
there be a development program in Afghanistan?
n Will the
United States stay the course?
As part of
the last question, Curran asked, "How will people feel when the body
bags start coming back?"
Mabbatt
told the audience that Osama bin Laden’s message was to overthrow the
Saudi regime and to throw U.S. forces out of Saudi Arabia. Muslims.
This
message is part of a larger "Declaration of the World Islamic Front
for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders," written by bin Laden
and published in an Arabic newspaper on Feb. 23, 1998.
"By
God’s leave, we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for
reward to obey God’s command to kill the Americans and plunder their
possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can," bin Laden
wrote.
Mabbatt
said he thought the majority of Muslims probably think bin Laden is a
megalomaniac, but, he warned, bin Laden’s message "resonates"
throughout the Arab world.
"The
Arabs have amazing memories," Mabbatt said. "They have a long
list of grievances that go back to the Christian attempts to conquer them
in the 11th, 12th and 13th
centuries."
But the
Arab and Muslim world is not the enemy, Mabbatt told readers in his guest
editorial, just a week after the attack on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.
"Our
enemy is a small band of well-trained and financed fanatics," he
wrote.
Terrorists.
David
Fromkin, in a 1975 article on "The Strategy of Terrorism" in
Foreign Affairs, wrote that "terrorism wins only if you respond to it
in the way that the terrorists want you to; which means that its fate is
in your hands and not theirs."
Perhaps
Americans should try to understand bin Laden by understanding what it is
he and his fellow terrorists want.