Kennan's Telegram (Excerpt) George F. Kennan to Secretary of State James Byrnes

Transcription

1 1 Kennan's Telegram (Excerpt) George F. Kennan to Secretary of State James Byrnes 22 February 1946 Part 1: Basic Features of Post War Soviet Outlook, as Put Forward by Official Propaganda Machine, Are as Follows: a.ussr still lives in antagonistic "capitalist encirclement" with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence.... Capitalist world is beset with internal conflicts, inherent in nature of capitalist society.... Internal conflicts in capitalism inevitably generate wars.... intra-capitalist wars between two capitalist states, and wars of intervention against socialist world.... Intervention against USSR, while it would be disastrous to those who undertook it, would cause renewed delay in progress of Soviet socialism and must therefore be forestalled at all costs.... Conflicts between capitalist states, though likewise fraught with danger for USSR, nevertheless hold out great possibilities for advancement of socialist cause... Part 2: Background of Outlook... First, it does not represent natural outlook of Russian people. Latter are, by and large, friendly to outside world, eager for experience of it, eager to measure against it talents they are conscious of possessing, eager above all to live in peace and joyful fruits of their own labor. Party line only represents thesis which official propaganda machine puts forward... to a public often remarkably resistant in... its innermost thoughts.... Second, please note that premises on which this party line is based are for most part simply not true. Experience has shown that peaceful and mutually profitable coexistence of capitalist and socialist states is entirely possible. Basic internal conflicts in advanced countries are no longer primarily those arising out of capitalist ownership of means of production, but are ones arising from advanced urbanism and industrialism as such, which Russia has thus far been spared not by socialism but only by her own backwardness. Internal rivalries of capitalism do not always generate wars; and not all wars are attributable to this cause.... At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on a vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added... fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in [the West]. But this latter type of insecurity was one, which afflicted rather Russian rulers that Russian people.... And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.... It was no coincidence that Marxism... caught hold and blazed for first time in Russia. Only in this land which had never known a friendly neighbor or indeed any tolerant equilibrium of separate powers, either internal or international, could a doctrine thrive which viewed economic conflicts of society as insoluble by peaceful means.... Part 3: Projection of Soviet Outlook in Practical Policy on Official Level On official plane we must look for following:

2 2 Internal policy devoted to increasing in every way strength and prestige of Soviet state:... great displays to impress outsiders; continued secretiveness about internal matters, designed to conceal weaknesses and to keep opponents in dark. Wherever it is considered timely and promising, efforts will be made to advance official limits of Soviet power. For the moment, these efforts are restricted to certain neighboring points conceived of here as being of immediate strategic necessity, such as Northern Iran, Turkey, possibly Bornholm. However, other points may at any time come into question...russians will participate officially in international organizations where they see opportunity of extending Soviet power or of inhibiting or diluting power of others. Moscow sees in UNO [United Nations Organization] not the mechanism for a permanent and stable world society founded on mutual interest and aims of all nations, but an arena in which aims just mentioned can be favorably pursued. As long as UNO is considered here to serve this purpose, Soviets will remain in it.... Its attitude to that organization will remain essentially pragmatic and tactical. Toward colonial areas and backward or dependent peoples, Soviet policy, even on official plane, will be directed toward weakening of power and influence and contacts of advanced Western nations, on theory that in so far as this policy is successful, there will be created a vacuum which will favor Communist- Soviet penetration.... Russians will strive energetically to develop Soviet representation in, and strong ties with, countries in which they sense strong possibilities of opposition to Western centers of power.... In international economic matters, Soviet policy will really be dominated by pursuit of autarchy for Soviet Union and Soviet-dominated adjacent areas taken together.... I think it possible Soviet foreign trade may be restricted largely to Soviet's own security sphere... Part 4: Following May Be Said as to What We May Expect by Way of Implementation of Basic Soviet Policies on Unofficial, or Subterranean Plane, i.e., on Plane for Which Soviet Government Accepts no Responsibility [i.e., action through communist parties in other nations, the Pan-Slavic movement, governments friendly to Soviet purposes]... To undermine general political and strategic potential of major western powers.... On unofficial plane particularly violent efforts will be made to weaken power and influence of Western Powers [on] colonial backward, or dependent peoples.... Where individual governments stand in path of Soviet purposes pressure will be brought for their removal from office.... In foreign countries Communists will, as a rule, work toward destruction of all forms of personal independence, economic, political, or moral. Their system can handle only individuals who have been brought into complete dependence on higher power.... Everything possible will be done to set major Western Powers against each other.... In general, all Soviet efforts on unofficial international plane will be negative and destructive in character, designed to tear down sources of strength beyond reach of Soviet control. This is only in line with basic Soviet instinct that there can be no compromise with rival power and that constructive work can start only when Communist power is dominant.... Part 5: In summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be

3 3 disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure... In addition, [Soviet power] has an elaborate and far flung apparatus for exertion of its influence in other countries, an apparatus of amazing flexibility and versatility, managed by people who experience and skill in underground methods are presumably without parallel in history.... I would like to record my conviction that problem is within our power to solve-and that without recourse to any general military conflict. And in support of this conviction there are certain observations of a more encouraging nature I should like to make: (1) Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventuristic. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force: For this reason it can easily withdraw-and usually does-when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige engaging showdowns. (2) Gauged against western world as a whole, Soviets are still by far the weaker force. Thus, their success will really depends on degree of cohesion, firmness and vigor which western world can muster.... For these reasons I think we may approach calmly and with good heart problem of how to deal with Russia.... Our first step must be to apprehend... the nature of the movement with which we are dealing. We must study it with same courage, detachment, objectivity, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which doctor studies unruly and unreasonable individual. We must see that our public is educated to realities of Russian situation.... I am convinced there would be far less hysterical anti-sovietism in our country today if realities of this situation were better understood by our people.... It may be also be argued that to reveal more information on our difficulties with Russia would reflect unfavorably on Russian American relations.... But I cannot see what we would be risking.... Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue.... We must formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of world we would like to see than we have put forward in past.... Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society.... Source: Foreign Relations, 1946, Vol. VI,

4 4 Excerpts from "NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security", a Top Secret report outlining U.S. national security concerns for the Cold War submitted to President Truman on 14 April (Paul Nitze) ANALYSIS I. Background of the Present Crisis Within the past thirty-five years the world has experienced two global wars of tremendous violence. It has witnessed two revolutions--the Russian and the Chinese--of extreme scope and intensity. It has also seen the collapse of five empires--the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Italian, and Japanese--and the drastic decline of two major imperial systems, the British and the French. During the span of one generation, the international distribution of power has been fundamentally altered. For several centuries it had proved impossible for any one nation to gain such preponderant strength that a coalition of other nations could not in time face it with greater strength. The international scene was marked by recurring periods of violence and war, but a system of sovereign and independent states was maintained, over which no state was able to achieve hegemony. Two complex sets of factors have now basically altered this historic distribution of power. First, the defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of the British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the Soviet Union in such a way that power increasingly gravitated to these two centers. Second, the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, anti-thetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war. On the one hand, the people of the world yearn for relief from the anxiety arising from the risk of atomic war. On the other hand, any substantial further extension of the area under the domination of the Kremlin would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin with greater strength could be assembled. It is in this context that this Republic and its citizens in the ascendancy of their strength stand in their deepest peril. The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself. They are issues which will not await our deliberations. With conscience and resolution this Government and the people it represents must now take new and fateful decisions. II. Fundamental Purpose of the United States The fundamental purpose of the United States is laid down in the Preamble to the Constitution: "... to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." In essence, the fundamental purpose is to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual. Three realities emerge as a consequence of this purpose: Our determination to maintain the essential elements of individual freedom, as set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights; our determination to create conditions under which our free and democratic system can live and prosper; and our determination to fight if necessary to defend our way of life, for which as in the Declaration of Independence, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

5 5 III. Fundamental Design of the Kremlin The fundamental design of those who control the Soviet Union and the international communist movement is to retain and solidify their absolute power, first in the Soviet Union and second in the areas now under their control. In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority. The design, therefore, calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin. To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass. The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design. IV. The Underlying Conflict in the Realm of ideas and Values between the U.S. Purpose and the Kremlin Design A. NATURE OF CONFLICT The Kremlin regards the United States as the only major threat to the conflict between idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin, which has come to a crisis with the polarization of power described in Section I, and the exclusive possession of atomic weapons by the two protagonists. The idea of freedom, moreover, is peculiarly and intolerably subversive of the idea of slavery. But the converse is not true. The implacable purpose of the slave state to eliminate the challenge of freedom has placed the two great powers at opposite poles. It is this fact which gives the present polarization of power the quality of crisis. The free society values the individual as an end in himself, requiring of him only that measure of selfdiscipline and self-restraint which make the rights of each individual compatible with the rights of every other individual. The freedom of the individual has as its counterpart, therefore, the negative responsibility of the individual not to exercise his freedom in ways inconsistent with the freedom of other individuals and the positive responsibility to make constructive use of his freedom in the building of a just society. From this idea of freedom with responsibility derives the marvelous diversity, the deep tolerance, the lawfulness of the free society. This is the explanation of the strength of free men. It constitutes the integrity and the vitality of a free and democratic system. The free society attempts to create and maintain an environment in which every individual has the opportunity to realize his creative powers. It also explains why the free society tolerates those within it who would use their freedom to destroy it. By the same token, in relations between nations, the prime reliance of the free society is on the strength and appeal of its idea, and it feels no compulsion sooner or later to bring all societies into conformity with it. For the free society does not fear, it welcomes, diversity. It derives its strength from its hospitality even to antipathetic ideas. It is a market for free trade in ideas, secure in its faith that free men will take the best wares, and grow to a fuller and better realization of their powers in exercising their choice. The idea of freedom is the most contagious idea in history, more contagious than the idea of submission to authority. For the breadth of freedom cannot be tolerated in a society which has come under the domination of an individual or group of individuals with a will to absolute power. Where the despot holds absolute power--the absolute power of the absolutely powerful will--all other wills must be subjugated in

6 6 an act of willing submission, a degradation willed by the individual upon himself under the compulsion of a perverted faith. It is the first article of this faith that he finds and can only find the meaning of his existence in serving the ends of the system. The system becomes God, and submission to the will of God becomes submission to the will of the system. It is not enough to yield outwardly to the system--even Gandhian non-violence is not acceptable--for the spirit of resistance and the devotion to a higher authority might then remain, and the individual would not be wholly submissive. The same compulsion which demands total power over all men within the Soviet state without a single exception, demands total power over all Communist Parties and all states under Soviet domination. Thus Stalin has said that the theory and tactics of Leninism as expounded by the Bolshevik party are mandatory for the proletarian parties of all countries. A true internationalist is defined as one who unhesitatingly upholds the position of the Soviet Union and in the satellite states true patriotism is love of the Soviet Union. By the same token the "peace policy" of the Soviet Union, described at a Party Congress as "a more advantageous form of fighting capitalism," is a device to divide and immobilize the non-communist world, and the peace the Soviet Union seeks is the peace of total conformity to Soviet policy. The antipathy of slavery to freedom explains the iron curtain, the isolation, the autarchy of the society whose end is absolute power. The existence and persistence of the idea of freedom is a permanent and continuous threat to the foundation of the slave society; and it therefore regards as intolerable the long continued existence of freedom in the world. What is new, what makes the continuing crisis, is the polarization of power which now inescapably confronts the slave society with the free. The assault on free institutions is world-wide now, and in the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere. The shock we sustained in the destruction of Czechoslovakia was not in the measure of Czechoslovakia's material importance to us. In a material sense, her capabilities were already at Soviet disposal. But when the integrity of Czechoslovak institutions was destroyed, it was in the intangible scale of values that we registered a loss more damaging than the material loss we had already suffered. Thus unwillingly our free society finds itself mortally challenged by the Soviet system. No other value system is so wholly irreconcilable with ours, so implacable in its purpose to destroy ours, so capable of turning to its own uses the most dangerous and divisive trends in our own society, no other so skillfully and powerfully evokes the elements of irrationality in human nature everywhere, and no other has the support of a great and growing center of military power. B. OBJECTIVES The objectives of a free society are determined by its fundamental values and by the necessity for maintaining the material environment in which they flourish. Logically and in fact, therefore, the Kremlin's challenge to the United States is directed not only to our values but to our physical capacity to protect their environment. It is a challenge which encompasses both peace and war and our objectives in peace and war must take account of it. 1. Thus we must make ourselves strong, both in the way in which we affirm our values in the conduct of our national life, and in the development of our military and economic strength. 2. We must lead in building a successfully functioning political and economic system in the free world. It is only by practical affirmation, abroad as well as at home, of our essential values, that we can preserve our own integrity, in which lies the real frustration of the Kremlin design. 3. But beyond thus affirming our values our policy and actions must be such as to foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system, a change toward which the frustration of the design is the first and perhaps the most important step. Clearly it will not only be less costly but more effective if this change occurs to a maximum extent as a result of internal forces in Soviet society.

7 7 In a shrinking world, which now faces the threat of atomic warfare, it is not an adequate objective merely to seek to check the Kremlin design, for the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable. This fact imposes on us, in our own interests, the responsibility of world leadership. It demands that we make the attempt, and accept the risks inherent in it, to bring about order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy. We should limit our requirement of the Soviet Union to its participation with other nations on the basis of equality and respect for the rights of others. Subject to this requirement, we must with our allies and the former subject peoples seek to create a world society based on the principle of consent. Its framework cannot be inflexible. It will consist of many national communities of great and varying abilities and resources, and hence of war potential. The seeds of conflicts will inevitably exist or will come into being. To acknowledge this is only to acknowledge the impossibility of a final solution. Not to acknowledge it can be fatally dangerous in a world in which there are no final solutions. All these objectives of a free society are equally valid and necessary in peace and war. But every consideration of devotion to our fundamental values and to our national security demands that we seek to achieve them by the strategy of the cold war. It is only by developing the moral and material strength of the free world that the Soviet regime will become convinced of the falsity of its assumptions and that the pre-conditions for workable agreements can be created. By practically demonstrating the integrity and vitality of our system the free world widens the area of possible agreement and thus can hope gradually to bring about a Soviet acknowledgement of realities which in sum will eventually constitute a frustration of the Soviet design. Short of this, however, it might be possible to create a situation which will induce the Soviet Union to accommodate itself, with or without the conscious abandonment of its design, to coexistence on tolerable terms with the non-soviet world. Such a development would be a triumph for the idea of freedom and democracy. It must be an immediate objective of United States policy. There is no reason, in the event of war, for us to alter our overall objectives. They do not include unconditional surrender, the subjugation of the Russian peoples or a Russia shorn of its economic potential. Such a course would irrevocably unite the Russian people behind the regime which enslaves them. Rather these objectives contemplate Soviet acceptance of the specific and limited conditions requisite to an international environment in which free institutions can flourish, and in which the Russian peoples will have a new chance to work out their own destiny. If we can make the Russian people our allies in the enterprise we will obviously have made our task easier and victory more certain. The objectives outlined in NSC 20/4 (November 23, 1948)... are fully consistent with the objectives stated in this paper, and they remain valid. The growing intensity of the conflict which has been imposed upon us, however, requires the changes of emphasis and the additions that are apparent. Coupled with the probable fission bomb capability and possible thermonuclear bomb capability of the Soviet Union, the intensifying struggle requires us to face the fact that we can expect no lasting abatement of the crisis unless and until a change occurs in the nature of the Soviet system.

8 8 Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Telegram, September 1946 The foreign policy of the United States, which reflects the imperialist tendencies of American monopolistic capital, is characterized in the postwar period by a striving for world supremacy. This is the real meaning of the many statements by President Truman and other representatives of American ruling circles; that the United States has the right to lead the world. All the forces of American diplomacy -- the army, the air force, the navy, industry, and science -- are enlisted in the service of this foreign policy. For this purpose broad plans for expansion have been developed and are being implemented through diplomacy and the establishment of a system of naval and air bases stretching far beyond the boundaries of the United States, through the arms race, and through the creation of ever newer types of weapons. 1a) The foreign policy of the United States is conducted now in a situation that differs greatly from the one that existed in the prewar period. This situation does not fully conform to the calculations of those reactionary circles which hoped that during the Second World War they would succeed in avoiding, at least for a long time, the main battles in Europe and Asia. They calculated that the United States of America, if it was unsuccessful in completely avoiding direct participation in the war, would enter it only at the last minute, when it could easily affect the outcome of the war, completely ensuring its interests. In this regard, it was thought that the main competitors of the United States would be crushed or greatly weakened in the war, and the United States by virtue of this circumstance would assume the role of the most powerful factor in resolving the fundamental questions of the postwar world. These calculations were also based on the assumption, which was very widespread in the United States in the initial stages of the war, that the Soviet Union, which had been subjected to the attack of German Fascism in June 1941, would also be exhausted or even completely destroyed as a result of the war. Reality did not bear out the calculations of the American imperialists. b) The two main aggressive powers, fascist Germany and militarist Japan, which were at the same time the main competitors of the United States in both the economic and foreign policy fields, were thoroughly defeated. The third great power, Great Britain, which had taken heavy blows during the war, now faces enormous economic and political difficulties. The political foundations of the British Empire were appreciably shaken, and crises arose, for example, in India, Palestine, and Egypt. Europe has come out of the war with a completely dislocated economy, and the economic devastation that occurred in the course of the war cannot be overcome in a short time. All of the countries of Europe and Asia are experiencing a colossal need for consumer goods, industrial and transportation equipment, etc. Such a situation provides American monopolistic capital with prospects for enormous shipments of goods and the importation of capital into these countries -- a circumstance that would permit it to infiltrate their national economies. Such a development would mean a serious strengthening of the economic position of the United States in the whole world and would be a stage on the road to world domination by the United States. c) On the other hand, we have seen a failure of calculations on the part of U.S. circles which assumed that the Soviet Union would be destroyed in the war or would come out of it so weakened that it would be forced to go begging to the United States for economic assistance. Had that happened, they would have

9 9 been able to dictate conditions permitting the United States to carry out its expansion in Europe and Asia without hindrance from the USSR. In actuality, despite all of the economic difficulties of the postwar period connected with the enormous losses inflicted by the war and the German fascist occupation, the Soviet Union continues to remain economically independent of the outside world and is rebuilding its national economy with its own forces. At the same time the USSR's international position is currently stronger than it was in the prewar period. Thanks to the historical victories of Soviet weapons, the Soviet armed forces are located on the territory of Germany and other formerly hostile countries, thus guaranteeing that these countries will not be used again for an attack on the USSR. In formerly hostile countries, such as Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, and Romania, democratic reconstruction has established regimes that have undertaken to strengthen and maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union. In the Slavic countries that were liberated by the Red Army or with its assistance -- Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia --democratic regimes have also been established that maintain relations with the Soviet Union on the basis of agreements on friendship and mutual assistance. The enormous relative weight of the USSR in international affairs in general and in the European countries in particular, the independence of its foreign policy, and the economic and political assistance that it provides to neighboring countries, both allies and former enemies, has led to the growth of the political influence of the Soviet Union in these countries and to the further strengthening of democratic tendencies in them. Such a situation in Eastern and Southeastern Europe cannot help but be regarded by the American imperialists as an obstacle in the path of the expansionist policy of the United States. 2a) The foreign policy of the United States is not determined at present by the circles in the Democratic Party that (as was the case during Roosevelt's lifetime) strive to strengthen the cooperation of the three great powers that constituted the basis of the anti-hitler coalition during the war. The ascendance to power of President Truman, a politically unstable person but with certain conservative tendencies, and the subsequent appointment of (James) Byrnes as Secretary of State meant a strengthening of the influence of U.S. foreign policy of the most reactionary circles of the Democratic party. The constantly increasing reactionary nature of the foreign policy course of the United States, which consequently approached the policy advocated by the Republican party, laid the groundwork for close cooperation in this field between the far right wing of the Democratic party and the Republican party. This cooperation of the two parties, which took shape in both houses of Congress in the form of an unofficial bloc of reactionary Southern Democrats and the old guard of the Republicans headed by (Senator Arthur) Vandenberg and (Senator Robert) Taft, was especially clearly manifested in the essentially identical foreign policy statements issued by figures of both parties. In Congress and at international conferences, where as a rule leading Republicans are represented in the delegations of the United States, the Republicans actively support the foreign policy of the government. This is the source of what is called, even in official statements, "bipartisan" foreign policy. b) At the same time, there has been a decline in the influence on foreign policy of those who follow Roosevelt's course for cooperation among peace-loving countries. Such persons in the government, in Congress, and in the leadership of the Democratic party are being pushed farther and farther into the background. The contradictions in the field of foreign policy and existing between the followers of (Henry) Wallace and (Claude) Pepper, on the one hand, and the adherents of the reactionary "bipartisan"

10 10 policy, on the other, were manifested with great clarity recently in the speech by Wallace that led to his resignation from the post as Secretary of Commerce. Wallace's resignation means the victory of the reactionary course that Byrnes is conducting in cooperation with Vandenberg and Taft. 3. Obvious indications of the U.S. effort to establish world dominance are also to be found in the increase in military potential in peacetime and in the establishment of a large number of naval and air bases both in the United States and beyond its borders. In the summer of 1946, for the first time in the history of the country, Congress passed a law on the establishment of a peacetime army, not on a volunteer basis but on the basis of universal military service. The size of the army, which is supposed to amount to about one million persons as of July 1, 1947, was also increased significantly. The size of the navy at the conclusion of the war decreased quite insignificantly in comparison with wartime. At the present time, the American navy occupies first place in the world, leaving England's navy far behind, to say nothing of those of other countries. Expenditures on the army and navy have risen colossally, amounting to $13 billion according to the budget for (about 40 percent of the total budget of $36 billion). This is more than 10 times greater than corresponding expenditures in the budget for 1938, which did not amount to even $1 billion. Along with maintaining a large army, navy, and air force, the budget provides that these enormous amounts also will be spent on establishing a very extensive system of naval and air bases in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. According to existing official plans, in the course of the next few years 228 bases, points of support, and radio stations are to be constructed in the Atlantic Ocean and 258 in the Pacific. A large number of these bases and points of support are located outside the boundaries of the United States. In the Atlantic Ocean bases exist or are under construction in the following foreign island territories: Newfoundland, Iceland, Cuba, Trinidad, Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Azores, and many others; in the Pacific Ocean: former Japanese mandated territories -- the Marianas, Caroline and Marshall Islands, Bonin, Ryukyu, Philippines, and the Galapagos Islands (they belong to Ecuador). The establishment of American bases on islands that are often 10,000 to 12,000 kilometers from the territory of the United States and are on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans clearly indicates the offensive nature of the strategic concepts of the commands of the U.S. army and navy. This interpretation is also confirmed by the fact that the American navy is intensively studying the naval approaches to the boundaries of Europe. For this purpose American naval vessels in the course of 1946 visited the ports of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey, and Greece. In addition, the American navy is constantly operating in the Mediterranean Sea. All of these facts show clearly that a decisive role in the realization of plans for world dominance by the United States is played by its armed forces. 4a) One of the stages in the achievement of dominance over the world by the United States is its understanding with England concerning the partial division of the world on the basis of mutual concessions. The basic lines of the secret agreement between the United States and England regarding the division of the world consist, as shown by facts, in their agreement on the inclusion of Japan and China in the sphere of influence of the United States in the Far East, while the United States, for its part, has agreed not to hinder England either in resolving the Indian problem or in strengthening its influence in Siam and Indonesia.

11 11 b) In connection with this division, the United States at the present time is in control of China and Japan without any interference from England. The American policy in China is striving for the complete economic and political submission of China to the control of American monopolistic capital. Following this policy, the American government does not shrink even from interference in the internal affairs of China. At the present time in China, there are more than 50,000 American soldiers. In a number of cases, American Marines participated directly in military operations against the people's liberation forces. The so-called "mediation" mission of General (George) Marshall is only a cover for interference in the internal affairs of China. How far the policy of the American government has gone with regard to China is indicated by the fact that at present it is striving to effect control over China's army. Recently, the U.S. administration submitted to Congress a bill on military assistance to China that provided for the complete reorganization of the Chinese army, its training with the aid of U.S. military instructors and its supply with American weapons and equipment. For the purpose of carrying out this program in China, an American consultative mission including army and naval officers would be sent to China. China is gradually being transformed into a bridgehead for the American armed forces. American air bases are located all over its territory. The main ones are found in Peking, Tsingtao, Tientsin, Nanking, Shanghai, Chendu, Chungking, and Kunming. The main American naval base in China is located in Tsingtao. The headquarters of the 7th Fleet is also there. In addition more than 30,000 U.S. Marines are concentrated in Tsingtao and its environs. The measures carried out in northern China by the American army show that it intends to stay there for a long time. In Japan, despite the presence there of only a small contingent of American troops, control is in the hands of the Americans. Although English capital has substantial interests in the Japanese economy, English foreign policy toward Japan is conducted in such a way as not to hinder the Americans from carrying out their penetration of the Japanese national economy and subordinating it to their influence. In the Far Eastern Commission in Washington and in the Allied Council in Tokyo, the English representatives as a rule make common cause with the U.S. representatives conducting this policy. Measures taken by the American occupational authorities in the area of domestic policy and intended to support reactionary classes and groups, which the United States plans to use in the struggle against the Soviet Union, also meet with a sympathetic attitude on the part of England. c) The United States follows a similar line with regard to the English sphere of influence in the Far East. Recently, the United States has ceased the attempts it has made over the past year to influence the resolution of Indian questions. Lately there have been frequent instances in which the reputable American press more or less faithfully reflecting the official policy of the U.S. government, has made positive statements with regard to the English policy in India. American foreign policy also did not hinder British troops in joint action with the Dutch army from suppressing the national liberation movement in Indonesia. Moreover, there have even been instances in which the United States facilitated this British imperialist policy, handing over American weapons and equipment to the English and Dutch troops in Indonesia, sending Dutch naval personnel from the United States to Indonesia, etc. 5a) If the division of the world in the Far East between the United States and England may be considered an accomplished fact, it cannot be said that an analogous situation exists in the basin of the Mediterranean Sea and in the countries adjacent to it. Rather, the facts indicate that an agreement of this sort has not yet

12 12 been reached in the region of the Near East and the Mediterranean Sea. The difficulty experienced by the United States and England in reaching an agreement over this region derives from the fact that concessions on the part of England to the United States in the Mediterranean basin would be fraught with serious consequences for the whole future of the British Empire, for which the basin has exceptional strategic and economic significance. England would have nothing against using American armed forces and influence in this region, directing them northward against the Soviet Union. The United States, however, is not interested in providing assistance and support to the British Empire in this vulnerable point, but rather in its own more thorough penetration of the Mediterranean basin and Near East, to which the United States is attracted by the area's natural resources, primarily oil. b) In recent years American capital has penetrated very intensively into the economy of the Near Eastern countries, in particular into the oil industry. At present there are American oil concessions in all of the Near Eastern countries that have oil deposits (Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia). American capital, which made its first appearance in the oil industry of the Near East, only in 1927, now controls 42 percent of all proven reserves in the Near East, excluding Iran. Of the total proven reserves of 26.8 billion barrels, over 11 billion barrels are owned by U.S. concessions. Striving to ensure further development of their concessions in different countries (which are often very large--saudi Arabia, for example), the American oil companies plan to build a trans-arabian pipeline to transport oil from the American concession in Saudi Arabia and in other countries on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea to ports in Palestine and Egypt. In expanding in the Near East, American capital has English capital as its greatest and most stubborn competitor. The fierce competition between them is the chief factor preventing England and the United States from reaching an understanding on the division of spheres of influence in the Near East, a division of that can occur only at the expense of direct British interests in this region. Palestine is an example of the very acute contradictions in the policy of the United States and England in the Near East. The United States has been displaying great initiative there of late, creating many difficulties for England, as in the case of the U.S. demand that 100,000 Jews from Europe be permitted to enter Palestine. The American interest in Palestine, outwardly expressed as sympathy for the Zionist cause, actually only signifies that American capital wishes to interfere in Palestinian affairs and thus penetrate the economy. The selection of a port in Palestine as one of the terminal points of the American oil pipeline explains a great deal regarding the foreign policy of the United States on the Palestine question. c) The irregular nature of relations between England and the United States in the Near East is manifested in part also in the great activity of the American naval fleet in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. Such activity cannot help but be in conflict with the basic interests of the British Empire. These actions on the part of the U.S. fleet undoubtedly are also linked with American oil and other economic interests in the Near East. It must be kept in mind, however, that incidents such as the visit by the American battleship Missouri to the Black Sea straits, the visit of the American fleet to Greece, and the great interest that U.S. diplomacy displays in the problem of the straits have a double meaning. On the one hand, they indicate that the United States has decided to consolidate its position in the Mediterranean basin to support its interests in the countries of the Near East and that it has selected the navy as the tool for this policy. On the other hand, these incidents constitute a political and military demonstration against the Soviet Union. The strengthening of U.S. positions in the Near East and the establishment of conditions for basing the American navy at one or more points on the Mediterranean Sea (Trieste, Palestine, Greece, Turkey) will

13 13 therefore signify the emergence of a new threat to the security of the southern regions of the Soviet Union. 6a) Relations between the United States and England are determined by two basic circumstances. On the one hand, the United States regards England as its greatest potential competitor; on the other hand, England constitutes a possible ally for the United States. Division of certain regions of the globe into spheres of influence of the United States and England would create the opportunity, if not for preventing competition between them, which is impossible, then at least of reducing it. At the same time, such a division facilitates the achievement of economic and political cooperation between them. b) England needs American credits for reorganizing its economy, which was disrupted by the war. To obtain such credits England is compelled to make significant concessions. This is the significance of the loan that the United States recently granted England. With the aid of the loan, England can strengthen its economy. At the same time this loan opens the door for American capital to penetrate the British Empire. The narrow bounds in which the trade of the so-called Sterling Bloc has found itself in the recent past have expanded at the present time and provide an opportunity for the Americans to trade with British dominions, India, and other countries of the Sterling Bloc (Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine). c) The political support that the United States provides for England is very often manifested in the international events of the postwar period. At recent international conferences the United States and England have closely coordinated their policies, especially in cases when they had to oppose the policy of the Soviet Union. The United States provided moral and political assistance to England in the latter's reactionary policy in Greece, India and Indonesia. American and English policy is fully coordinated with regard to the Slavic and other countries adjoining the Soviet Union. The most important demarches of the United States and England in these countries after the end of the war were quite similar and parallel in nature. The policy of the United States and England in the Security Council of the United Nations (particularly in questions concerning Iran, Spain, Greece, the withdrawal of foreign troops from Syria and Lebanon, etc.) has the same features of coordination. d) The ruling circles of the United States obviously have a sympathetic attitude toward the idea of a military alliance with England, but at the present time the matter has not yet culminated in an official alliance. Churchill's speech in Fulton calling for the conclusion of an Anglo-American military alliance for the purpose of establishing joint domination over the world was therefore not supported officially by Truman or Byrnes, although Truman by his presence (during the "Iron Curtain" speech) did indirectly sanction Churchill's appeal. Even if the United States does not go so far as to conclude a military alliance with England just now, in practice they still maintain very close contact on military questions. The combined Anglo-American headquarters in Washington continues to exist, despite the fact that over a year has passed since the end of the war. Frequent personal contact continues among leading military figures of England and the United States. The recent trip of Field Marshal Montgomery to America is evidence of this contact. It is characteristic that as a result of his meetings with leading military figures of the United States, Montgomery announced that the English army would be structured on the American model. Cooperation is also carried out between the navies of the two countries. In this connection it is sufficient to note the participation of the English navy in recent maneuvers by the American navy in the North Sea in autumn of this year. e) The current relations between England and the United States, despite the temporary attainment of

14 of agreements on very important questions, are plagued with great internal contradictions and cannot be lasting. The economic assistance from the United States conceals within itself a danger for England in many respects. First of all, in accepting the loan, England finds herself in a certain financial dependence on the United States from which it will not be easy to free herself. Second, it should be kept in mind that the conditions created by the loan for the penetration by American capital of the British Empire can entail serious political consequences. The countries included in the British Empire or dependent on it may - under economic pressure from powerful American capital - reorient themselves toward the United States, following in this respect the example of Canada, which more and more is moving away from the influence of England and orienting itself toward the United States. The strengthening of American position in the Far East could stimulate a similar process in Australia and New Zealand. In the Arabic countries of the Near East, which are striving to emancipate themselves from the British Empire, there are groups within the ruling circles that would not be averse to working out a deal with the United States. It is quite possible that the Near East will become a center of Anglo-American contradictions that will explode the agreements now reached between the United States and England. 7. a) The "hard-line" policy with regard to the USSR announced by Byrnes after the rapprochement of the reactionary Democrats with the Republicans is at present the main obstacle on the road to cooperation of the Great Powers. It consists mainly of the fact that in the postwar period the United States no longer follows a policy of strengthening cooperation among the Big Three (or Four) but rather has striven to undermine the unity of these countries. The objective has been to impose the will of other countries on the Soviet Union. This is precisely the tenor of the policy of certain countries, which is being carried out with the blessing of the United States, to undermine or completely abolish the principle of the veto in the Security Council of the United Nations. This would give the United States opportunities to form among the Great Powers narrow groupings and blocs directed primarily against the Soviet Union, and thus to split the United Nations. Rejection of the veto by the Great powers would transform the United Nations into an Anglo-Saxon domain in which the United States would play the leading role. b) The present policy of the American government with regard to the USSR is also direct at limiting or dislodging the influence of the Soviet Union from neighboring countries. In implementing this policy in former enemy or Allied countries adjacent to the USSR, the United States attempts, at various international conferences or directly in these countries themselves, to support reactionary forces with the purpose of creating obstacles to the process of democratization of these countries. In so doing, it also attempts to secure positions for the penetration of American capital into their economies. Such a policy is intended to weaken and overthrow the democratic governments in power there, which are friendly toward the USSR, and replace them in the future with new governments that would obediently carry out a policy dictated from the United States. In this policy, the United States receives full support from English diplomacy. c) One of the most important elements in the general policy of the United States, which is directed toward limiting the international role of the USSR in the post war world, is the policy with regard to Germany. In Germany, the United States is taking measures to strengthen reactionary forces for the purpose of opposing democratic reconstruction. Furthermore, it displays special insistence on accompanying this policy with completely inadequate measures for the demilitarization of Germany. The American occupation policy does not have the objective of eliminating the remnants of German Fascism and rebuilding German political life on a democratic basis, so that Germany might cease to exist as an aggressive force. The United States is not taking measures to eliminate the monopolistic

15 associations of German industrialists on which German Fascism depended in preparing aggression and waging war. Neither is any agrarian reform being conducted to eliminate large landholders, who were also a reliable support for the Hitlerites. Instead, the United States is considering the possibility of terminating the Allied occupation of German territory before the main tasks of the occupation-the demilitarization and democratization of Germany-have been an imperialist Germany, which the United States plans to use in a future war on its side. One cannot help seeing that such a policy has a clearly outlined anti-soviet edge and constitutes a serious danger to the cause of peace. d) The numerous and extremely hostile statements by American government, political, and military figures with regard to the Soviet Union and its foreign policy are very characteristic of the current relationship between the ruling circles of the United States and the USSR. These statements are echoed in an even more unrestrained tone by the overwhelming majority of the American press organs. Talk about a "third war," meaning a war against the Soviet Union, even a direct call for this war - with the threat of using the atomic bomb- such is the content of the statements on relations with the Soviet Union by reactionaries at public meetings and in the press. At the present time, preaching war against he Soviet Union is not a monopoly of the far-right, yellow American press represented by the newspaper associations of Hearst and McCormick. This anti-soviet campaign also has been joined by the "reputable" and "respectable" organs of the conservative press, such as the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune. Indicative in this respect are the numerous articles by Walter Lippmann in which he almost undisguisedly calls on the United States to launch a strike against the Soviet Union in the most vulnerable areas of the south and southeast of the USSR. The basic goal of this anti-soviet campaign of American "public opinion" is to exert political pressure on the Soviet Union and compel it to make concessions. Another, no less important goal of the campaign is the attempt to create an atmosphere of war psychosis among the masses, who are weary of war, thus making it easier for the U.S. government to carry out measure for the maintenance of high military potential. It was in this very atmosphere that the law on universal military service in peacetime was passed by congress, that the huge military budget was adopted, and that plans are being worked out for the construction of an extensive system of naval and air bases. e) Of course, all of these measures for maintaining a highly military potential are not goals in themselves. They are only intended to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in a new war, the date for which, to be sure, cannot be determined now by anyone, but which is contemplated by the most bellicose circles of American imperialism. Careful note should betaken of the fact that the preparation by the United State for a future is being conducted with the prospect of war against the Soviet Union, which in the eyes of the American imperialists is the main obstacle in the path of the United States to world domination. This is indicated by facts such as the tactical training of the American army for war with the Soviet Union as the future opponent, the siting of American strategic bases in regions from which it is possible to launch strikes on Soviet territory, intensified training and strengthening of Arctic regions as close approaches to the USSR, and attempts to prepare Germany and Japan to use those countries in a war against the USSR.

16 22 Excerpts of Address by Mikhail Gorbachev 43rd U.N. General Assembly Session December 7, The history of the past centuries and millennia has been a history of almost ubiquitous wars, and sometimes desperate battles, leading to mutual destruction. They occurred in the clash of social and political interests and national hostility, be it from ideological or religious incompatibility. All that was the case, and even now many still claim that this past -- which has not been overcome -- is an immutable pattern. However, parallel with the process of wars, hostility, and alienation of peoples and countries, another process, just as objectively conditioned, was in motion and gaining force: The process of the emergence of a mutually connected and integral world. Further world progress is now possible only through the search for a consensus of all mankind, in movement toward a new world order. We have arrived at a frontier at which controlled spontaneity leads to a dead end. The world community must learn to shape and direct the process in such a way as to preserve civilization, to make it safe for all and more pleasant for normal life. It is a question of cooperation that could be more accurately called "co-creation" and "co-development." The formula of development "at another's expense" is becoming outdated. In light of present realities, genuine progress by infringing upon the rights and liberties of man and peoples, or at the expense of nature, is impossible. The very tackling of global problems requires a new "volume" and "quality" of cooperation by states and sociopolitical currents regardless of ideological and other differences. Of course, radical and revolutionary changes are taking place and will continue to take place within individual countries and social structures. This has been and will continue to be the case, but our times are making corrections here, too. Internal transformational processes cannot achieve their national objectives merely by taking "course parallel" with others without using the achievements of the surrounding world and the possibilities of equitable cooperation. In these conditions, interference in those internal processes with the aim of altering them according to someone else's prescription would be all the more destructive for the emergence of a peaceful order. In the past, differences often served as a factor in puling away from one another. Now they are being given the opportunity to be a factor in mutual enrichment and attraction. Behind differences in social structure, in the way of life, and in the preference for certain values, stand interests. There is no getting away from that, but neither is there any getting away from the need to find a balance of interests within an international framework, which has become a condition for survival and progress. As you ponder all this, you come to the conclusion that if we wish to take account of the lessons of the past and the realities of the present, if we must reckon with the objective logic of world development, it is necessary to seek -- and the seek jointly -- an approach toward improving the international situation and building a new world. If that is so, then it is also worth agreeing on the fundamental and truly universal prerequisites and principles for such activities. It is evident, for example, that force and the threat of force can no longer be, and should not be instruments of foreign policy. [...] The compelling necessity of the principle of freedom of choice is also clear to us. The failure to recognize this, to recognize it, is fraught with very dire consequences, consequences for world peace. Denying that right to the peoples, no matter what the pretext, no matter what the words are used to conceal it, means infringing upon even the unstable balance that is, has been possible to achieve. Freedom of choice is a universal principle to which there should be no exceptions. We have not come to the conclusion of the immutability of this principle simply through good motives. We have been led to it through impartial analysis of the objective processes of our time. The increasing varieties of social development in different countries are becoming in ever more perceptible feature of these processes. This relates to both the capitalist and socialist systems. The variety of sociopolitical structures which has

17 23 grown over the last decades from national liberation movements also demonstrates this. This objective fact presupposes respect for other people's vies and stands, tolerance, a preparedness to see phenomena that are different as not necessarily bad or hostile, and an ability to learn to live side by side while remaining different and not agreeing with one another on every issue. The de-ideologization of interstate relations has become a demand of the new stage. We are not giving up our convictions, philosophy, or traditions. Neither are we calling on anyone else to give up theirs. Yet we are not going to shut ourselves up within the range of our values. That would lead to spiritual impoverishment, for it would mean renouncing so powerful a source of development as sharing all the original things created independently by each nation. In the course of such sharing, each should prove the advantages of his own system, his own way of life and values, but not through words or propaganda alone, but through real deeds as well. That is, indeed, an honest struggle of ideology, but it must not be carried over into mutual relations between states. Otherwise we simply will not be able to solve a single world problem; arrange broad, mutually advantageous and equitable cooperation between peoples; manage rationally the achievements of the scientific and technical revolution; transform world economic relations; protect the environment; overcome underdevelopment; or put an end to hunger, disease, illiteracy, and other mass ills. Finally, in that case, we will not manage to eliminate the nuclear threat and militarism. Such are our reflections on the natural order of things in the world on the threshold of the 21st century. We are, of course, far from claiming to have infallible truth, but having subjected the previous realities -- realities that have arisen again -- to strict analysis, we have come to the conclusion that it is by precisely such approaches that we must search jointly for a way to achieve the supremacy of the common human idea over the countless multiplicity of centrifugal forces, to preserve the vitality of a civilization that is possible that only one in the universe. [...] Our country is undergoing a truly revolutionary upsurge. The process of restructuring is gaining pace; We started by elaborating the theoretical concepts of restructuring; we had to assess the nature and scope of the problems, to interpret the lessons of the past, and to express this in the form of political conclusions and programs. This was done. The theoretical work, the re-interpretation of what had happened, the final elaboration, enrichment, and correction of political stances have not ended. They continue. However, it was fundamentally important to start from an overall concept, which is already now being confirmed by the experience of past years, which has turned out to be generally correct and to which there is no alternative. In order to involve society in implementing the plans for restructuring it had to be made more truly democratic. Under the badge of democratization, restructuring has now encompassed politics, the economy, spiritual life, and ideology. We have unfolded a radical economic reform, we have accumulated experience, and from the new year we are transferring the entire national economy to new forms and work methods. Moreover, this means a profound reorganization of production relations and the realization of the immense potential of socialist property. In moving toward such bold revolutionary transformations, we understood that there would be errors, that there would be resistance, that the novelty would bring new problems. We foresaw the possibility of breaking in individual sections. However, the profound democratic reform of the entire system of power and government is the guarantee that the overall process of restructuring will move steadily forward and gather strength. [ ] We are more than fully confident. We have both the theory, the policy and the vanguard force of restructuring a party which is also restructuring itself in accordance with the new tasks and the radical changes throughout society. And the most important thing: all peoples and all generations of citizens in

18 24 our great country are in favor of restructuring. We have gone substantially and deeply into the business of constructing a socialist state based on the rule of law. A whole series of new laws has been prepared or is at a completion stage. Many of them come into force as early as 1989, and we trust that they will correspond to the highest standards from the point of view of ensuring the rights of the individual. Soviet democracy is to acquire a firm, normative base. This means such acts as the Law on Freedom of Conscience, on glasnost, on public associations and organizations, and on much else. There are now no people in places of imprisonment in the country who have been sentenced for their political or religious convictions. It is proposed to include in the drafts of the new laws additional guarantees ruling out any form or persecution on these bases. Of course, this does not apply to those who have committed real criminal or state offenses: espionage, sabotage, terrorism, and so on, whatever political or philosophical views they may hold. The draft amendments to the criminal code are ready and waiting their turn. In particular, those articles relating to the use of the supreme measure of punishment are being reviewed. The problem of exit and entry is also being resolved in a humane spirit, including the case of leaving the country in order to be reunited with relatives. As you know, one of the reasons for refusal of visas is citizens' possession of secrets. Strictly substantiated terms for the length of time for possessing secrets are being introduced in advance. On starting work at a relevant institution or enterprise, everyone will be made aware of this regulation. Disputes that arise can be appealed under the law. Thus the problem of the so-called "refuseniks" is being removed. We intend to expand the Soviet Union's participation in the monitoring mechanism on human rights in the United Nations and within the framework of the pan-european process. We consider that the jurisdiction of the International Court in The Hague with respect to interpreting and applying agreements in the field of human rights should be obligatory for all states. Within the Helsinki process, we are also examining an end to jamming of all the foreign radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union. On the whole, our credo is as follows: Political problems should be solved only by political means, and human problems only in a humane way. [...] Now about the most important topic, without which no problem of the coming century can be resolved: disarmament. [...] Today I can inform you of the following: The Soviet Union has made a decision on reducing its armed forces. In the next two years, their numerical strength will be reduced by 500,000 persons, and the volume of conventional arms will also be cut considerably. These reductions will be made on a unilateral basis, unconnected with negotiations on the mandate for the Vienna meeting. By agreement with our allies in the Warsaw Pact, we have made the decision to withdraw six tank divisions from the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and to disband them by Assault landing formations and units, and a number of others, including assault river-crossing forces, with their armaments and combat equipment, will also be withdrawn from the groups of Soviet forces situated in those countries. The Soviet forces situated in those countries will be cut by 50,000 persons, and their arms by 5,000 tanks. All remaining Soviet divisions on the territory of our allies will be reorganized. They will be given a different structure from today's which will become unambiguously defensive, after the removal of a large number of their tanks. [...] By this act, just as by all our actions aimed at the demilitarization of international relations, we would also like to draw the attention of the world community to another topical problem, the problem of changing over from an economy of armament to an economy of disarmament. Is the conversion of military production realistic? I have already had occasion to speak about this. We believe that it is, indeed, realistic. For its part, the Soviet Union is ready to do the following. Within the framework of the economic reform we are ready to draw up and submit our internal plan for conversion, to prepare in the

19 25 course of 1989, as an experiment, the plans for the conversion of two or three defense enterprises, to publish our experience of job relocation of specialists from the military industry, and also of using its equipment, buildings, and works in civilian industry, It is desirable that all states, primarily the major military powers, submit their national plans on this issue to the United Nations. It would be useful to form a group of scientists, entrusting it with a comprehensive analysis of problems of conversion as a whole and as applied to individual countries and regions, to be reported to the U.N. secretary-general, and later to examine this matter at a General Assembly session. Finally, being on U.S. soil, but also for other, understandable reasons, I cannot but turn to the subject of our relations with this great country.... Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States of America span 5 1/2 decades. The world has changed, and so have the nature, role, and place of these relations in world politics. For too long they were built under the banner of confrontation, and sometimes of hostility, either open or concealed. But in the last few years, throughout the world people were able to heave a sigh of relief, thanks to the changes for the better in the substance and atmosphere of the relations between Moscow and Washington. No one intends to underestimate the serious nature of the disagreements, and the difficulties of the problems which have not been settled. However, we have already graduated from the primary school of instruction in mutual understanding and in searching for solutions in our and in the common interests. The U.S.S.R. and the United States created the biggest nuclear missile arsenals, but after objectively recognizing their responsibility, they were able to be the first to conclude an agreement on the reduction and physical destruction of a proportion of these weapons, which threatened both themselves and everyone else. Both sides possess the biggest and the most refined military secrets. But it is they who have laid the basis for and are developing a system of mutual verification with regard to both the destruction and the limiting and banning of armaments production. It is they who are amassing experience for future bilateral and multilateral agreements. We value this. We acknowledge and value the contribution of President Ronald Reagan and the members of his administration, above all Mr. George Shultz. All this is capital that has been invested in a joint undertaking of historic importance. It must not be wasted or left out of circulation. The future U.S. administration headed by newly elected President George Bush will find in us a partner, ready -- without long pauses and backward movements -- to continue the dialogue in a spirit of realism, openness, and goodwill, and with a striving for concrete results, over an agenda encompassing the key issues of Soviet- U.S. relations and international politics. We are talking first and foremost about consistent progress toward concluding a treaty on a 50 percent reduction in strategic offensive weapons, while retaining the ABM Treaty; about elaborating a convention on the elimination of chemical weapons -- here, it seems to us, we have the preconditions for making 1989 the decisive year; and about talks on reducing conventional weapons and armed forces in Europe. We are also talking about economic, ecological and humanitarian problems in the widest possible sense. [...] We are not inclined to oversimplify the situation in the world. Yes, the tendency toward disarmament has received a strong impetus, and this process is gaining its own momentum, but it has not become irreversible. Yes, the striving to give up confrontation in favor of dialogue and cooperation has made itself strongly felt, but it has by no means secured its position forever in the practice of international relations. Yes, the movement toward a nuclear-free and nonviolent world is capable of fundamentally transforming the political and spiritual face of the planet, but only the very first steps have been taken. Moreover, in certain influential circles, they have been greeted with mistrust, and they are meeting resistance.

20 26 The inheritance of inertia of the past are continuing to operate. Profound contradictions and the roots of many conflicts have not disappeared. The fundamental fact remains that the formation of the peaceful period will take place in conditions of the existence and rivalry of various socioeconomic and political systems. However, the meaning of our international efforts, and one of the key tenets of the new thinking, is precisely to impart to this rivalry the quality of sensible competition in conditions of respect for freedom of choice and a balance of interests. In this case it will even become useful and productive from the viewpoint of general world development; otherwise; if the main component remains the arms race, as it has been till now, rivalry will be fatal. Indeed, an ever greater number of people throughout the world, from the man in the street to leaders, are beginning to understand this. Esteemed Mr. Chairman, esteemed delegates: I finish my first speech at the United Nations with the same feeling with which I began it: a feeling of responsibility to my own people and to the world community. We have met at the end of a year that has been so significant for the United Nations, and on the threshold of a year from which all of us expect so much. One would like to believe that our joint efforts to put an end to the era of wars, confrontation and regional conflicts, aggression against nature, the terror of hunger and poverty, as well as political terrorism, will be comparable with our hopes. This is our common goal, and it is only by acting together that we may attain it. Thank you.

21 33 Declaration of Independence, Democratic Republic of Vietnam* Ho Chi Minh (Hanoi, 2 September 1945). (SEPTEMBER 2, 1945) "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America m In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free. The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights." Those are undeniable truths. Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice. In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty. They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center and the South of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united. They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots- they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered public opinion; they have practised obscurantism against our people. To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol. In the fields of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our land. They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolised the issuing of bank-notes and the export trade. They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty. They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly exploited our workers. In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese Fascists violated Indochina's territory to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them. Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri province to the North of Vietnam, more than two rnillion of our fellow-citizens died from starvation. On March 9, the French troops were disarmed by the lapanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they incapable of "protecting" us, but that, in the span of five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese. On several occasions before March 9, the Vietminh League urged the French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese. Instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists so intensified their

22 34 terrorist activities against the Vietminh members that before fleeing they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at Yen Bay and Cao Bang. Not withstanding all this, our fellow-citizens have always manifested toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the Japanese putsch of March 1945, the Vietminh League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property. From the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession. After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic. For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Vietnam and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland. The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country. We are convinced that the Allied nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam. A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent. For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent countryñand in fact it is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilise all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty. Source: Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works (Hanoi, ), Vol. 3, pp * Note, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam has been renamed The Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

23 35 The Manifesto of The Laodong Party, February, 1951 The main task of the Viet Nam Laodong Party now is: To unite and lead the working class, the working masses and the entire people of Viet Nam in their struggle to wipe out the French colonialists and defeat the American interventionists; to bring the liberation war of the Viet Nam people to complete victory, thereby making Viet Nam a genuinely independent and united country. The Viet Nam Laodong Party fully supports the Government of the Viet Nam Democratic Republic, unites and co-operates closely with other parties and organisations in the Lien Viet Front in order to realise fully the peoples democratic regime-politically, economically, socially and culturally. The Viet Nam Laodong Party stands for guaranteeing the legitimate interests of all strata of the people. It recommends that special care should be taken to raise the material and moral standards of living of the army, which fights for the defence of the country against the enemy, and which had been enduring the greatest hardships. The workers, who are fighters in production, must have the opportunity continually to improve their living conditions and to take part in running their own enterprises. The peasants, who are production combatants in the rural areas, must benefit from the reduction of land rent and interest and from appropriate agrarian reforms. The intellectual workers must be encouraged and assisted in developing their abilities. Small trades-people and small employers must be assisted in developing trade and handicrafts. The national bourgeoisie must be encouraged, helped and guided in their undertakings to contribute to the development of the national economy. The right of the patriotic landlords to collect land rent in accordance with the law must be guaranteed. The national minorities must be given every assistance and must enjo~ absolute equality in rights and duties. Effective help must be rendered to the women so as to bring about equality between men and women. Believers in all religions must enjoy freedom of worship. Overseas Vietnamese in foreign countries must be protected. The lives and properties of foreign residents in Viet Nam must be protected. Chinese nationals in particular, if they so desire, will be allowed to enjoy the same rights and perform the same duties as Vietnamese citizens. In the field of external affairs, the Viet Nam Laodong Party recommends: 'The Viet Nam people must unite closely with and help the peoples of Cambodia and Laos in their struggle for independence and, with them, liberate jointly the whole of Indo-China; actively support the national liberation movements of oppressed peoples; unite closely with the Soviet Union, China and other people's democracies; form close alliances with the peoples of France and the French colonies so as to contribute to the anti-imperialist struggle to defend world peace and democracy! Confident in the efforts of all its members, in the support of working men and women and in the sympathy of the entire people, the Viet Nam Laodong is sure to fulfil its tasks of:

24 36 Bringing the liberation war to complete victory. Developing the people's democratic regime. Contributing to the defence of world peace and democracy. Leading the Viet Nam people toward Socialism. Source: New China News Agency, April 6, 1951.

25 37 Viet Cong Program, 1962 PROGRAM OF THE PEOPLE'S REVOLUTIONARY PARTY OF VIETNAM January, We will overthrow the Ngo Dinh Diem government and form a national democratic coalition government. 2. We will carry out a program involving extension of democratic liberties, general amnesty for political detainees, abolition of agrovilles and resettlement centers, abolition of the special military tribunal law and other undemocratic laws. 3. We will abolish the economic monopoly of the U.S. and its henchmen, protect domestically made products, promote development of the economy, and allow forced evacuees from North Vietnam to return to their place of birth. 4. We will reduce land rent and prepare for land reform. 5. We will eliminate U.S. cultural enslavement and depravity and build a nationalistic progressive culture and education. 6. We will abolish the system of American military advisers and close all foreign military bases in Vietnam. 7. We will establish equality between men and women and among different nationalities and recognize the autonomous rights of the national minorities in the country. 8. We will pursue a foreign policy of peace and will establish diplomatic relations with all countries that respect the independence and sovereignty of Vietnam. 9. We will re-establish normal relations between North and South as a first step toward peaceful reunification of the country. 10. We will oppose aggressive wars and actively defend world peace. Source: Reprinted from Viet Cong by Douglas Pike (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1966)

26 38 President Lyndon B. Johnson's Address at Johns Hopkins University: "Peace Without Conquest" April 7, 1965 Mr. Garland, Senator Brewster, Senator Tydings, Members of the congressional delegation, members of the faculty of Johns Hopkins, student body, my fellow Americans: Last week 17 nations sent their views to some two dozen countries having an interest in southeast Asia. We are joining those 17 countries and stating our American policy tonight which we believe will contribute toward peace in this area of the world. I have come here to review once again with my own people the views of the American Government. Tonight Americans and Asians are dying for a world where each people may choose its own path to change. This is the principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania. It is the principle for which our sons fight tonight in the jungles of Viet-Nam. Viet-Nam is far away from this quiet campus. We have no territory there, nor do we seek any. The war is dirty and brutal and difficult. And some 400 young men, born into an America that is bursting with opportunity and promise, have ended their lives on Viet-Nam's steaming soil. Why must we take this painful road? Why must this Nation hazard its ease, and its interest, and its power for the sake of a people so far away? We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure. This kind of world will never be built by bombs or bullets. Yet the infirmities of man are such that force must often precede reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace. We wish that this were not so. But we must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish. The world as it is in Asia is not a serene or peaceful place. The first reality is that North Viet-Nam has attacked the independent nation of South Viet-Nam. Its object is total conquest. Of course, some of the people of South Viet-Nam are participating in attack on their own government. But trained men and supplies, orders and arms, flow in a constant stream from north to south. This support is the heartbeat of the war. And it is a war of unparalleled brutality. Simple farmers are the targets of assassination and kidnapping. Women and children are strangled in the night because their men are loyal to their government. And helpless villages are ravaged by sneak attacks. Large-scale raids are conducted on towns, and terror strikes in the heart of cities. The confused nature of this conflict cannot mask the fact that it is the new face of an old enemy. Over this war--and all Asia--is another reality: the deepening shadow of Communist China. The rulers in Hanoi are urged on by Peking. This is a regime which has destroyed freedom in Tibet, which has attacked India, and has been condemned by the United Nations for aggression in Korea. It is a nation which is

27 39 helping the forces of violence in almost every continent. The contest in Viet-Nam is part of a wider pattern of aggressive purposes. WHY ARE WE IN VIET-NAM? Why are these realities our concern? Why are we in South Viet-Nam? We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Viet-Nam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to he!p South Viet-Nam defend its independence. And I intend to keep that promise. To dishonor that pledge, to abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong. We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe, from Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well-being rests, in part, on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Viet-Nam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America's word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, and even wider war. We are also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Viet-Nam would bring an end to conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next. We must say in southeast Asia--as we did in Europe--in the words of the Bible: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further." There are those who say that all our effort there will be futile--that China's power is such that it is bound to dominate all southeast Asia. But there is no end to that argument until all of the nations of Asia are swallowed up. There are those who wonder why we have a responsibility there. Well, we have it there for the same reason that we have a responsibility for the defense of Europe. World War II was fought in both Europe and Asia, and when it ended we found ourselves with continued responsibility for the defense of freedom. OUR OBJECTIVE IN VIET-NAM Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves--only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way. We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary. In recent months attacks on South Viet-Nam were stepped up. Thus, it became necessary for us to increase our response and to make attacks by air. This is not a change of purpose. It is a change in what we believe that purpose requires. We do this in order to slow down aggression

28 40 We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Viet-Nam who have bravely borne this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Viet-Nam--and all who seek to share their conquest--of a very simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement. We know that air attacks alone will not accomplish all of these purposes. But it is our best and prayerful judgment that they are a necessary part of the surest road to peace. We hope that peace will come swiftly. But that is in the hands of others besides ourselves. And we must be prepared for a long continued conflict. It will require patience as well as bravery, the will to endure as well as the will to resist. I wish it were possible to convince others with words of what we now find it necessary to say with guns and planes: Armed hostility is futile. Our resources are equal to any challenge. Because we fight for values and we fight for principles, rather than territory or colonies, our patience and our determination are unending. Once this is clear, then it should also be clear that the only path for reasonable men is the path of peaceful settlement. Such peace demands an independent South Viet-Nam--securely guaranteed and able to shape its own relationships to all others--free from outside interference--tied to no alliance--a military base for no other country. These are the essentials of any final settlement. We will never be second in the search for such a peaceful settlement in Viet-Nam. There may be many ways to this kind of peace: in discussion or negotiation with the governments concerned; in large groups or in small ones; in the reaffirmation of old agreements or their strengthening with new ones. We have stated this position over and over again, fifty times and more, to friend and foe alike. And we remain ready, with this purpose, for unconditional discussions. And until that bright and necessary day of peace we will try to keep conflict from spreading. We have no desire to see thousands die in battle--asians or Americans. We have no desire to devastate that which the people of North Viet-Nam have built with toil and sacrifice. We will use our power with restraint and with all the wisdom that we can command. But we will use it. This war, like most wars, is filled with terrible irony. For what do the people of North Viet-Nam want? They want what their neighbors also desire: food for their hunger; health for their bodies; a chance to learn; progress for their country; and an end to the bondage of material misery. And they would find all these things far more readily in peaceful association with others than in the endless course of battle. A COOPERATIVE EFFORT FOR DEVELOPMENT These countries of southeast Asia are homes for millions of impoverished people. Each day these people rise at dawn and struggle through until the night to wrestle existence from the soil. They are often wracked by disease, plagued by hunger, and death comes at the early age of 40.

29 41 Stability and peace do not come easily in such a land. Neither independence nor human dignity will ever be won, though, by arms alone. It also requires the work of peace. The American people have helped generously in times past in these works. Now there must be a much more massive effort to improve the life of man in that conflict-torn corner of our world. The first step is for the countries of southeast Asia to associate themselves in a greatly expanded cooperative effort for development. We would hope that North Viet-Nam would take its place in the common effort just as soon as peaceful cooperation is possible. The United Nations is already actively engaged in development in this area. As far back as 1961 I conferred with our authorities in Viet-Nam in connection with their work there. And I would hope tonight that the Secretary General of the United Nations could use the prestige of his great office, and his deep knowledge of Asia, to initiate, as soon as possible, with the countries of that area, a plan for cooperation in increased development. For our part I will ask the Congress to join in a billion dollar American investment in this effort as soon as it is underway. And I would hope that all other industrialized countries, including the Soviet Union, will join in this effort to replace despair with hope, and terror with progress. The task is nothing less than to enrich the hopes and the existence of more than a hundred million people. And there is much to be done. The vast Mekong River can provide food and water and power on a scale to dwarf even our own TVA. The wonders of modern medicine can be spread through villages where thousands die every year from lack of care. Schools can be established to train people in the skills that are needed to manage the process of development. And these objectives, and more, are within the reach of a cooperative and determined effort. I also intend to expand and speed up a program to make available our farm surpluses to assist in feeding and clothing the needy in Asia. We should not allow people to go hungry and wear rags while our own warehouses overflow with an abundance of wheat and corn, rice and cotton. So I will very shortly name a special team of outstanding, patriotic, distinguished Americans to inaugurate our participation in these programs. This team will be headed by Mr. Eugene Black, the very able former President of the World Bank. In areas that are still ripped by conflict, of course development will not be easy. Peace will be necessary for final success. But we cannot and must not wait for peace to begin this job. THE DREAM OF WORLD ORDER This will be a disorderly planet for a long time. In Asia, as elsewhere, the forces of the modern world are shaking old ways and uprooting ancient civilizations. There will be turbulence and struggle and even violence. Great social change--as we see in our own country now--does not always come without conflict. We must also expect that nations will on occasion be in dispute with us. It may be because we are rich, or powerful; or because we have made some mistakes; or because they honestly fear our intentions. However, no nation need ever fear that we desire their land, or to impose our will, or to dictate their

30 42 institutions. But we will always oppose the effort of one nation to conquer another nation. We will do this because our own security is at stake. But there is more to it than that. For our generation has a dream. It is a very old dream. But we have the power and now we have the opportunity to make that dream come true. For centuries nations have struggled among each other. But we dream of a world where disputes are settled by law and reason. And we will try to make it so. For most of history men have hated and killed one another in battle. But we dream of an end to war. And we will try to make it so. For all existence most men have lived in poverty, threatened by hunger. But we dream of a world where all are fed and charged with hope. And we will help to make it so. The ordinary men and women of North Viet-Nam and South Viet-Nam--of China and India--of Russia and America--are brave people. They are filled with the same proportions of hate and fear, of love and hope. Most of them want the same things for themselves and their families. Most of them do not want their sons to ever die in battle, or to see their homes, or the homes of others, destroyed. Well, this can be their world yet. Man now has the knowledge--always before denied--to make this planet serve the real needs of the people who live on it. I know this will not be easy. I know how difficult it is for reason to guide passion, and love to master hate. The complexities of this world do not bow easily to pure and consistent answers. But the simple truths are there just the same. We must all try to follow them as best we can. CONCLUSION We often say how impressive power is. But I do not find it impressive at all. The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure. They are necessary symbols. They protect what we cherish. But they are witness to human folly. A dam built across a great river is impressive. In the countryside where I was born, and where I live, I have seen the night illuminated, and the kitchens warmed, and the homes heated, where once the cheerless night and the ceaseless cold held sway. And all this happened because electricity came to our area along the humming wires of the REA. Electrification of the countryside--yes, that, too, is impressive. A rich harvest in a hungry land is impressive. The sight of healthy children in a classroom is impressive. These--not mighty arms--are the achievements which the American Nation believes to be impressive. And, if we are steadfast, the time may come when all other nations will also find it so. Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can do to unite this country? Have I done everything I can to help unite the world, to try to bring peace and hope to all the peoples of the world? Have I done enough?

31 43 Ask yourselves that question in your homes--and in this hall tonight. Have we, each of us, all done all we could? Have we done enough? We may well be living in the time foretold many years ago when it was said: "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." This generation of the world must choose: destroy or build, kill or aid, hate or understand. We can do all these things on a scale never dreamed of before. Well, we will choose life. In so doing we will prevail over the enemies within man, and over the natural enemies of all mankind. To Dr. Eisenhower and Mr. Garland, and this great institution, Johns Hopkins, I thank you for this opportunity to convey my thoughts to you and to the American people. Good night. NOTE: The President spoke at 9 p.m. in Shriver Hall Auditorium at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. In his opening words, he referred to Charles S. Garland, Chairman of the University's Board of Trustees, and Senators Daniel B. Brewster and Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland. Later he referred to Dr. Milton Eisenhower, President of Johns Hopkins University, and Eugene Black, former President of the World Bank and adviser to the President on southeast Asia social and economic development. Earlier, on the same day, the White House released the text of the statements, made to the press in the Theater at the White House, by George W. Ball, Under Secretary of State, Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, and McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the President, which defined the context of the President's speech. Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, Volume I, entry 172, pp Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, Last Updated May 17, 2006

32 44 President Lyndon Johnson and Ho Chi Minh: Letter Exchange, 1967 PEACE NEGOTIATIONS IN VIETNAM Letter from President Johnson to Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, February 8, 1967 Dear Mr. President: I am writing to you in the hope that the conflict in Vietnam can be brought to an end. That conflict has already taken a heavy toll-in lives lost, in wounds inflicted, in property destroyed, and in simple human misery. If we fail to find a just and peaceful solution, history will judge us harshly. Therefore, I believe that we both have a heavy obligation to seek earnestly the path to peace. It is in response to that obligation that I am writing directly to you. We have tried over the past several years, in a variety of ways and through a number of channels, to convey to you and your colleagues our desire to achieve a peaceful settlement. For whatever reasons, these efforts have not achieved any results.... In the past two weeks, I have noted public statements by representatives of your government suggesting that you would be prepared to enter into direct bilateral talks with representatives of the U.S. Government, provided that we ceased "unconditionally" and permanently our bombing operations against your country and all military actions against it. In the last day, serious and responsible parties have assured us indirectly that this is in fact your proposal. Let me frankly state that I see two great difficulties with this proposal. In view of your public position, such action on our part would inevitably produce worldwide speculation that discussions were under way and would impair the privacy and secrecy of those discussions. Secondly, there would inevitably be grave concern on our part whether your government would make use of such action by us to improve its military position. With these problems in mind, I am prepared to move even further towards an ending of hostilities than your Government has proposed in either public statements or through private diplomatic channels. I am prepared to order a cessation of bombing against your country and the stopping of further augmentation of U.S. forces in South Viet-Nam as soon as I am assured that infiltration into South Viet-Nam by land and by sea has stopped. These acts of restraint on both sides would, I believe, make it possible for us to conduct serious and private discussions leading toward an early peace. I make this proposal to you now with a specific sense of urgency arising from the imminent New Year holidays in Viet-Nam. If you are able to accept this proposal I see no reason why it could not take effect at the end of the New Year, or Tet, holidays. The proposal I have made would be greatly strengthened if your military authorities and those of the Government of South Viet-Nam could promptly negotiate an extension of the Tet truce. As to the site of the bilateral discussions I propose, there are several possibilities. We could, for example, have our representatives meet in Moscow where contacts have already occurred. They could meet in some other country such as Burma. You may have other arrangements or sites in mind, and I would try to meet your suggestions. The important thing is to end a conflict that has brought burdens to both our peoples, and above all to the people of South Viet-Nam. If you have any thoughts about the actions I propose, it would be most important that I receive them as soon as possible.

33 45 Sincerelv, Lyndon B. Johnson PRESIDENT HO CHI MINH'S REPLY TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S LETTER February 15, 1967 Excellency, on February 10, 1967, I received your message. Here is my response. Viet-Nam is situated thousands of miles from the United States. The Vietnamese people have never done any harm to the United States. But, contrary to the commitments made by its representative at the Geneva Conference of 1954, the United States Government has constantly intervened in Viet-Nam, it has launched and intensified the war of aggression in South Viet-Nam for the purpose of prolonging the division of Viet-Nam and of transforming South Viet-Nam into an American neo-colony and an American military base. For more than two years now, the American Government, with its military aviation and its navy, has been waging war against the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, an independent and sovereign country. The United States Government has committed war crimes, crimes against peace and against humanity. In South Viet-Nam a half-million American soldiers and soldiers from the satellite countries have resorted to the most inhumane arms and the most barbarous methods of warfare, such as napalm, chemicals, and poison gases in order to massacre our fellow countrymen, destroy the crops, and wipe out the villages. In North Viet-Nam thousands of American planes have rained down hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs, destroying cities, villages, mills, roads, bridges, dikes, dams and even churches, pagodas, hospitals, and schools. In your message you appear to deplore the suffering and the destruction in Viet- Nam. Permit me to ask you: Who perpetrated these monstrous crimes? It was the American soldiers and the soldiers of the satellite countries. The United States Government is entirely responsible for the extremely grave situation in Viet-Nam.... The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, liberty, and peace. But in the face of the American aggression they have risen up as one man, without fearing the sacrifices and the privations. They are determined to continue their resistance until they have won real independence and liberty and true peace. Our just cause enjoys the approval and the powerful support of peoples throughout the world and of large segments of the American people. The United States Government provoked the war of aggression in Viet-Nam. It must cease that aggression, it is the only road leading to the re-establishment of peace. The United States Government must halt definitively and unconditionally the bombings and all other acts of war against the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, withdraw from South Viet-Nam all American troops and all troops from the satellite countries, recognize the National Front of the Liberation of South Viet-Nam and let the Vietnamese people settle their problems themselves. Such is the basic content of the four-point position of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, such is the statement of the essential principles and essential arrangements of the Geneva agreements of 1954 on Viet-Nam. It is the basis for a correct political solution of the Vietnamese problem. In your message you suggested direct talks between the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam and the United States. If the United States Government really wants talks, it must first halt unconditionally the bombings and all other acts of war against the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam. It is only after the unconditional halting of the American bombings and of all other American acts of war against the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam that the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam and the United States could begin talks and discuss questions affecting the two parties.

34 46 The Vietnamese people will never give way to force, it will never accept conversation under the clear threat of bombs. Our cause is absolutely just. It is desirable that the Government of the United States act in conformity to reason. Sincerely, Ho Chi Minh Source: from The Department of State Bulletin, LVI, No (April 10, 1967), pp

35 47 "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam" (April 1967) By the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. *From Ramparts (May 1967), pp This is the authorized form of the original address, slightly condensed for publication by Dr. King. In the two years after he received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964, the Reverend Martin Luther King made occasional public statements about his growing concern over the Vietnam War. But until early Dr. King maintained a moderate position on the issue, as he attempted to stay in the middle of the surging forces of the black movement. On one side, militant groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party, as well as various nationalist organizations, were denouncing the war as an imperialist attack on another non-white people. On the other, such conservative older groups as the NAACP and the Urban League were attempting to fence off what they still called the "civil rights movement" bot h from the spontaneous urban rebellions and from the politically conscious younger activists who saw the war as a principal cause of the increasing desperation that was fueling these rebellions. On April 4, 1967, Dr. King implemented a fateful decision when he went to the pulpit of Manhattan's Riverside Church to deliver the sermon here reprinted. The three thousand people who packed the church rose in a tumultuous ovation at the end of what they may have sensed to be one of the most profound statements of this historical period. The significance of this "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam" was obvious at once to all the contending forces. Dr. King was denounced by The New York Times, black syndicated columnist Carl Rowan,, many leaders of the bla ck establishment, and of course by voices from the right shouting such epithets as "traitor" and "treason." The antiwar movement enthusiastically welcomed this powerful new recruit to its ranks. On April 15, in New York, Dr. King made a similar address to the hundreds of thousands who marched against the war from Central Park to the United Nations. Martin Luther King's "Declaration" had a profound influence, strengthening antiwar consciousness and activity everywhere from churches and colleges to the streets of the ghettos and the ranks of GIs in Vietnam (see Reading 50 for its influence within the military).. Martin Luther King: OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church--the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage--leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to

36 48 Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor--both black and white--through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam con tinued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest G eorgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years-- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't us ing massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearl y to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today--my own government. For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a Civil Rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear. Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of

37 49 America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission--a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the "brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men-- for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my minstry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for them? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life? And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries. They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Inde pendence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so. After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watc hed again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators--our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunificatio n with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change--especially in terms of their need for land and peace. The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments

38 50 which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy--and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us--not their fellow Vietnamese--the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are ra rely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them-- mostly children. What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medic ine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Now there is little left to build on--save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts'? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF--that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize th at we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more ess ential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land? How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the m ilitary junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them_the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence--when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition. So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, a nd then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

39 51 When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Genev a Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and bu ilt up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores. At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor. Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans a re forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism." If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricatin g ourselves from this nightmare: 1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. 2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. 3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-

40 52 up in Thailand and our interference in Laos. 4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government. 5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary. Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within th e American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy--and laymen--concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken--by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triple ts of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs re-structuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in

41 53 Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: " This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling difference s is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlef ields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world--a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter--but beautiful--struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

42 123 A Black Mud From Africa Helps Power the New Economy By BLAINE HARDEN New York Times Magazine, August 12, Before you make another call on that cell phone, take a moment, close your eyes and reflect on all you've done for Mama Doudou, queen of the rain-forest whores. Thanks to dollars that you and millions like you have spent on cell phones and Sony PlayStations, Mama Doudou had a knockout spring season in a mining camp called Kuwait, deep in central Africa. Kuwait -- a name suggesting big money from below ground -- was one of 20 illegal mines hacked in the past year out of the Okapi Faunal Reserve, a protected area in the Ituri rain forest of eastern Congo. The reserve is named after a reclusive, big-eared relative of the giraffe that is found only in Congo. Along with about 4,000 okapi, the reserve is home to a rich assemblage of monkeys (13 species), an estimated 10,000 forest elephants and about the same number of Mbuti people, often called pygmies, who live by hunting, gathering and trading. Mama Doudou, though, didn't mess with wildlife or pygmies. She sold overpriced bread in the mining camp and negotiated terms of endearment among 300 miners and 37 prostitutes. For a miner to secure the affections of a prostitute, he had to bring Mama Doudou some of the precious ore he was digging up in the reserve: a gritty, superheavy mud called coltan. Coltan is abundant and relatively easy to find in eastern Congo. All a miner has to do is chop down great swaths of the forest, gouge S.U.V.-size holes in streambeds with pick and shovel and spend days up to his crotch in muck while sloshing water around in a plastic washtub until coltan settles to the bottom. (Coltan is three times heavier than iron, slightly lighter than gold.) If he is strong and relentless and the digging is good, a miner can produce a kilogram a day. Earlier this year, that was worth $80 -- a remarkable bounty in a region where most people live on 20 cents a day. Coltan is the muck-caked counterpoint to the brainier-than-thou, environmentally friendly image of the high-tech economy. The wireless world would grind to a halt without it. Coltan, once it is refined in American and European factories, becomes tantalum, a metallic element that is a superb conductor of electricity, highly resistant to heat. Tantalum powder is a vital ingredient in the manufacture of capacitors, the electronic components that control the flow of current inside miniature circuit boards. Capacitors made of tantalum can be found inside almost every laptop, pager, personal digital assistant and cell phone. Mama Doudou, who is 45, is formally known as Doudou Wangonda, but she is called Mama because in the rain forest she is widely respected. She told me she doesn't understand what ''rich white people'' do with coltan. But she's exceptionally well versed in how much they pay for it. Late last year, exploding demand for tantalum powder created a temporary worldwide shortage, which contributed to Sony's difficulties in getting its new PlayStation 2 into American stores, as well as to a tenfold price increase on the world tantalum market. Mama Doudou abandoned her position as a traditional chief and joined thousands of people who walked into the Ituri forest hoping to get rich quick. When the price of coltan was soaring, Mama Doudou made an absolute killing. First, she sold bread to miners at a scandalous price. She made as much as $800 worth of coltan for every $50 in cash that she spent on baking supplies. Then she used what she called her ''natural leadership abilities'' to win election as president of the camp prostitutes, most of whom were poorly educated, town-bred women in their late teens. As president, Mama Doudou collected -- and turned over to the owner of the mine -- a variety of fees and fines related to the mating habits of miners and their women. The normal arrangement in the camp was for a miner, after forking over a kilo of coltan to Mama

43 124 Doudou, to pair off with one woman for the duration of their respective stays in the forest. The miner's ''temporary wife'' would cook his food, haul his water and share his bed in a shack made of sticks and leaves. In return, he would give her enough coltan to keep her in cosmetics, clothes and beer. If a miner decided that he wanted a prettier young woman to haul his water, he had to pay Mama Doudou another kilo of coltan. ''This is called the infringement fee,'' she explained. Likewise, if a woman decided, as many did, to dump one miner in favor of another who happened to be a better producer of coltan, then she, too, had to pay Mama Doudou a kilo of coltan. ''This also is called the infringement fee,'' she said. Frequent swapping of ''temporary wives'' in an equatorial forest where hygiene was problematic and condoms all but nonexistent led to an explosion of gonorrhea. ''There was too much sofisi,'' Mama Doudou said, using the Swahili word for the disease. Soon half the people in Kuwait had it. Antibiotics that could knock down gonorrhea were on sale in the camp for a tomato tin of coltan (worth about $27). They sold exceptionally well. Mama Doudou's business ventures were part of a squalid encounter between the global high-tech economy and one of the world's most thoroughly ruined countries. Congo -- always too well endowed with natural resources and too weakly governed for its own good -- is a nation in name only. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is in the late stages of a political malady that students of modern Africa call ''failed state syndrome.'' Roads, schools and medical clinics barely exist. Malnutrition and poverty have brought back diseases, like sleeping sickness, that had been under control. The World Health Organization recently estimated that the monthly toll of ''avoidable deaths'' in Congo was 72,800. The eastern half of the country, with about 20 million residents, has no real government and no laws except the ever-changing rules imposed by invading armies from Rwanda and Uganda and roving bands of well-armed predators. A scalding report that was presented this spring to the United Nations Security Council said that coltan perpetuates Congo's civil war. The report, based on a six-month investigation by an expert panel, said the war ''has become mainly about access, control and trade'' of minerals, the most important being coltan. The one thing that unites the warring parties, according to the report, is a keen interest in making money off coltan. ''Because of its lucrative nature,'' the report said, the war ''has created a 'win-win' situation for all belligerents. Adversaries and enemies are at times partners in business, get weapons from the same dealers and use the same intermediaries. Business has superseded security concerns.'' Environmental groups have added emotional fuel to the accusations in the U.N. report by cataloging the devastation that the coltan trade has brought to Congo's wildlife. About 10,000 miners and traders have overrun Kahuzi-Biega National Park, according to a report released in May by a coalition of environmental groups. Before the civil war, the park was home to about 8,000 eastern lowland gorillas. That number may have since been reduced to fewer than 1,000, the report estimated, because miners and others in the forest are far from food supplies and must rely on bush meat. Apes are killed for food or killed in traps set for other animals. If something is not done to stop mining and poaching, the report said that the eastern lowland gorilla ''will become the first great ape to be driven to extinction -- a victim of war, human greed and high technology.'' While coltan extraction has taken advantage of Congo's ruin, it did not cause it. That has taken more than

44 years of misrule, during which Congo has attracted a string of shady suitors. The most malign of the courtships began in the late 19th century, when agents of King Leopold II of the Belgians started stripping central Africa of ivory and rubber. To enforce production quotas on the locals, Leopold's agents chopped off their hands, noses and ears. Before the king was forced to trade away the hugely profitable colony in 1908, an estimated five million to eight million Congolese were killed. In the 1960's, the Americans waded in. To fight Communism and secure access to cobalt and copper, the Central Intelligence Agency helped bring about the assassination of Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. That was followed by three decades of White House coddling of his successor, Mobutu Sese Seku, Africa's most famous billionaire dictator, who set a poisoned table for the chaos that followed his eventual overthrow in Since then, Congo has been locked in a sprawling and numbingly complicated civil war that by some estimates has become the deadliest conflict in the history of independent Africa. The war has caused the deaths of 2.5 million people over the past two and a half years in eastern Congo alone, according to a recent report by the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based aid agency, which described the emergency in Congo as ''perhaps worse than any to unfold in Africa in recent decades.'' The Coltan story seemed clear when I flew to Congo early this summer. Globalization was causing havoc in a desperate country. For the sake of our electronic toys, guerrillas were getting rich, gorillas were getting slaughtered and the local people were getting paid next to nothing to ruin their country's environment. Traveling inside Congo, however, I found clarity on the question of coltan to be as scarce as paved roads, functioning schools or sober soldiers. What muddied up the story, first of all, was the curiously egalitarian quality of coltan mining. Just about anyone with a shovel and a strong back can dig it up. It's easier to find and more plentiful than diamonds, which have created their own blood frenzy in Africa. It has injected hundreds of millions of dollars into an economy that had virtually ceased to function. True, much of that money has been creamed off by warlords and profiteers, and very little of it has been redistributed in social services. Some, though, has filtered down to miners, middlemen and commerçants. To discover the importance of coltan's trickle-down effect (and to meet Mama Doudou), I first had to take a spine-mashing, 13-hour ride on the back of a Yamaha trail bike over a mud track that used to be the main east-west highway across northern Congo. The road I traveled is all but impassable to motorized vehicles, excepting a trail bike driven by someone who knows how to negotiate mammoth mudholes, many of which are deeper and longer than a New York City garbage truck, as well as when to bribe drunken rogue soldiers and when to run from them. Riding through the reserve, I was menaced by a Congolese soldier, a member of the Front for the Liberation of Congo, a poorly disciplined rebel group supported by the Ugandan Army. He demanded my boots, explaining that he didn't have boots. He demanded money, explaining that he had none. He pointed his AK-47 at my stomach. Gunning the Yamaha, my driver sped away before the soldier, who was stumble-down drunk, could react. This encounter, my driver later explained, was normal. In Epulu, a village that is the administrative center of the Okapi reserve, I spent an afternoon with a coltan miner named Munako Bangazuna, a quiet, wary man who stood only 4 feet 6 inches tall. Early this year, Bangazuna enjoyed what he called ''my richest period.'' In a mine inside the Okapi reserve, he dug about a kilo of coltan a day, he said. Working seven days a week, he made more than $2,000 a month for two months in a row -- a fortune in the forest. He is 26 and married with children. Mining allowed him to provide his family with food and consumer goods he never dreamed he'd be able to afford. Besides food, he bought a bicycle, a radio, a foam

45 126 mattress, cooking pots, dishes and clothes for himself, his wife and his kids. Bangazuna does not claim to have spent his money wisely. The mining camp where he lived was called Boma Libala, a phrase that means ''kill the marriage.'' It was the largest and, by reputation, nastiest mining camp in the reserve, with 3,000 miners and several hundred prostitutes. ''I lost a lot of my money on prostitution and also on Primus,'' said Bangazuna, referring to a brand of Congolese beer. His wife cooked for him in Boma Libala, he said, during the time he was drinking lots of beer and spending most of his money on prostitutes. ''I was lucky,'' he said. ''She did not divorce me.'' Bangazuna was hardly alone in his bad behavior. One coltan moment that particularly nauseates authorities occurred this spring in Epulu, when a drunken miner and a seminaked prostitute fornicated in broad daylight on the lawn of the primary school, in front of village children. Like several miners I interviewed in the reserve, a territory controlled by the Ugandan military and its rebel allies, Bangazuna was compelled to give up a slice of his coltan diggings to an extortion racket run by Ugandan soldiers. ''In the morning, when you get up, the Ugandans hand you a pack of cigarettes, and they give you two bottles of beer,'' said Bangazuna, explaining his daily routine. ''In the evening, when you finish digging, you have to pay them back with coltan. It was very expensive. One bottle of beer cost me two spoons of coltan'' -- about $8 -- and cigarettes were one spoon. If you refuse to pay or if you don't have coltan, they beat you and threaten to shoot you.'' When I talked to Bangazuna, he was broke. He had spent all the money he'd earned digging coltan. He also happened to be under arrest. Game wardens (whose expenses are paid partly by donations from several American zoos) had caught him digging coltan in the reserve after he'd been warned not to do so. When the wardens let him go, Bangazuna confided, he planned to dig more coltan. This spring, the price of coltan crashed, falling from $80 a kilo in March to $8 in June. As cell phone sales slumped and the Nasdaq shrank, demand for coltan from companies like Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola fell precipitously. Suddenly, a Congolese coltan miner had to dig coltan all day simply to afford to eat in a mining camp, and he had to dig for three or four days to find enough coltan to pay for the drugs that would clear up a case of sofisi. At the Kuwait mine, everything came unglued. The prostitutes, then the merchants, then the miners and, finally, Mama Doudou herself abandoned the mine and walked out of the rain forest. A few days before game wardens burned it to the ground, I visited another mine in the Okapi reserve. It was more accessible than Kuwait and, unlike the infamous but shut-down Boma Libala camp, where Bangazuna had squandered so much of his money, it still had a few working miners. To get to Tuko-Tu camp, I walked for about two hours on a well-trod trail beneath a high canopy of trees. They shrouded the rain forest in permanent shadow. It rained hard as I walked, and the dark, soggy forest was threaded with filigrees of mist. For all its gloom, the forest was about as primeval as a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. Every half hour or so, two or three giggly women, seemingly dressed for a party in glistening lipstick and gaudy dresses, smelling of strong perfume, would materialize out of the dank greenery. Their bare feet were caked with mud; they carried their shoes. They were prostitutes from Tuko-Tu, and they were walking out to buy bread and beer in a village on the main road. On both sides of the footpath, a towering mainstay of the forest was dying for the sake of coltan. The eko, one of three giant trees that form the rain forest's canopy, has a durable, waterproof bark. Miners strip off a long girdle of the bark to make a trough into which they shovel coltan-bearing mud, which is then

46 127 flushed with water. Stripping bark has killed thousands of eko trees in the reserve, which greatly upsets the local pygmies. They rely on the tree, whose flowers attract bees, as depots for gathering honey. The mining camp squatted in a clearing hacked out of the forest. It was a jumble of stick huts with roofs made from forest leaves. Most of the huts were empty. The camp was down to 57 residents, from a high of 320 when coltan was at $80 a kilo. Out in front of the huts, a few toddlers stood stoically in the mud as bored young mothers picked lice from their hair. Ugandan soldiers used to come here, I was told, to force miners to buy beer and cigarettes. But they had stopped coming in May, when the price of coltan began to fizzle. There were still miners, of course, but they were out digging, deeper in the forest. So I walked on, following a streambed. After about an hour and a half of walking, the streambed suddenly disappeared. A bombing range took its place -- or what looked like a bombing range. Craters, hundreds of them, many 10 feet deep, all of them partly filled with muck, marched on for miles through the forest -- until they ended in a cluster of about 25 miners. With shovels, picks and plastic wash tubs, they were creating more craters in the streambed. Jean Pierre Asikima, 43, was among them. He gave up digging gold two months earlier, he said, to come into the forest in search of coltan. But the digging was poor, the price was low and he said he was losing weight in the forest. ''I have come too late, and soon I will quit,'' he said, standing in a crater he had dug, waist-deep in muddy water that was the color of chicken gravy. Still, Asikima worked with a fury. With mud and gravel from his crater, he built a seven-foot-high mound. Then he shoveled and scraped the mud into an eko-bark trough, while another miner, a 16-yearold who said his name was Dragon went to work with a blue plastic washtub, pouring several hundred tubs full of water through the makeshift sluice. After about an hour, a glittering black stain had gathered at the foot of the trough. It was an ounce or so of coltan, the fruit of five hours of digging and washing. Asikima said it was not enough to buy a tin of rice for dinner. As he began to dig another crater, I asked him about his life in the forest. He said he despised it. ''If I had another job,'' he said, ''I would not come here. But there are no other jobs. When this mine closes, I will go and find another one.'' He is not alone. Although the price has crashed, many coltan-bearing regions of eastern Congo remain thick with miners, commerçants and prostitutes. In a country with a 20-cents-a-day living standard, the chance of earning a few dollars from coltan is still a powerful enough reason to live in the bush and shovel muck, sell bread and risk sofisi. To halt war profiteering and the destruction of wildlife, the report to the U.N. Security Council called for an embargo on the export of coltan and other natural resources from Uganda and Rwanda. Although the embargo has yet to be imposed by the Security Council, European and American companies that profit from the coltan trade have been scurrying to avoid bad publicity. Pictures of dead gorillas and of environmental ruin in Congo's national parks have been particularly effective in triggering alarm among companies that pride themselves on their environmental images. Sabena, the Belgian airline named in the report for hauling Congolese coltan to Europe, announced in June that it will no longer carry the ore. Nokia and Motorola are among several major mobile-phone makers that have publicly demanded that their suppliers stop using ore mined illegally in Congo. And so it has gone down the supply chain. The world's largest maker of tantalum capacitors, Kemet, in Greenville, S.C., has asked its suppliers to certify that ore does not come from Congo or bordering countries, including Uganda and Rwanda. Cabot Corporation, a Boston-based company that is the world's

47 128 second-largest processor of tantalum powder, announced this spring that it ''deplores all unlawful and immoral activities'' connected with coltan mined in Congo and declared that it will not buy any ore from that part of the world. The high moral ground that companies have been quick to stake out has the added attraction of being profit-neutral, at least for the moment. The tantalum market is glutted because of declining demand in the slumping technology sector. As important, there has been a sharp increase in production by a giant Australian mining company, called Sons of Gwalia, which now produces half the world's supply. In the immediate future, it looks as though less and less of the world's tantalum will come from Congo's coltan mines. And as the U.N. sees it, this will be a very good thing. Its report concluded, ''The only loser in this huge business venture is the Congolese people.'' But inside what's left of Congo, a wide array of influential people (who are not combatants in the war and are not getting rich from coltan) make a persuasive case that these demands are naive and could well produce disastrous consequences. They argue that in a collapsed state where the likelihood of constructive Western intervention is next to nil, there simply are no easy fixes. ''For local people who are trying to make a bit of money out of coltan, how can an embargo possibly help?'' asked Aloys Tegera, who directs the Pole Institute, a nongovernmental social-research institute in Goma, in eastern Congo. Tegera is well aware of coltan's destructive side: he is the lead author of a study on the severe social impact of coltan mining, which describes how teachers have been lured to the mines from the country's few functioning classrooms and explains why teenage girls have turned to prostitution. ''Coltan fuels the war; nobody can deny that,'' said Tegera. ''That is why we maybe will never get peace. But civilians, especially those who are organized, also are getting some money from this.'' He and many others find it more than slightly insulting that in a country where millions are hungry and coltan is helping to feed some of them, a de facto embargo is gathering steam among high-tech companies apparently worried less about human beings than about the public-relations downside of dead gorillas. And, like many other Congolese, he declines to become morally riled up about foreign domination. ''Of course, the Rwandans are pillaging us,'' he said. ''But they are not the first to do it and they are no worse than the others. King Leopold did it. The Belgians did it. Mobutu and the Americans did it. The most sorrowful thing I have to live with is that we are incapable of coming up with an elite that can run things with Congolese interests in mind.'' Terese Hart, an American botanist who helped create the Okapi Faunal Reserve and has worked there since the early 1980's, supports neither an embargo on coltan nor a quick pullout of Ugandan forces from northeast Congo. ''The world wants to intervene from a distance and pull the strings on the puppet,'' said Hart, who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society. ''The problem is that the strings are not connected to anything. When outsiders struggle to find solutions for Congo, they often assume there is some kind of government. There is no government. There is nothing.'' As for coltan mining, Hart said it is silly for the outside world to try to squeeze one of the few ways for poor people to make a bit of money. ''Outside the reserve, I think that coltan mining is the lesser evil of the types of exploitation that occur when there is no government,'' Hart said. ''I prefer mining to logging. Cutting timber in the rain forest is part of an irreversible ecological process. I don't think coltan mining does as much permanent damage. The miner will not get much, but at least he will continue to live.'' Among the Congolese I spoke to about coltan, the consensus was that they could not risk the simple

48 129 solutions that outsiders had prescribed. Struggling to survive in a failed state, they saw no straightforward answers, no moral high ground. For them, the only thing worse than mining coltan is not mining it. What progress there is in eastern Congo tends to be slow, small-scale and subject to sudden reversal. The World Health Organization has succeeded in working with rebel groups to vaccinate most children for polio, but it says 7 of 10 children have not received any other vaccines in the past decade. Western donors are distributing some medicines, seeds and tools, but three-quarters of the population still has no access to basic health care. When progress is being made, it often involves the mixed blessing of coltan. In eastern Congo, two mining entrepreneurs, Edouard Mwangachuchu, a Congolese Tutsi, and his American partner, Robert Sussman, a physician from Baltimore, are struggling to build a legitimate business in an illegitimate state. They run a company that even their competitors say treats miners fairly. It supplies shovels and picks to about a thousand men who operate as independent contractors in mines located far from national parks, protected forests and endangered gorillas. The land belongs to Mwangachuchu, whose herds were slaughtered in 1995, as the Mobutu era was sputtering to an end. Desperate to shore up popular support, Mobutu encouraged Congolese in the east to attack the ethnic Tutsi minority. A mob pulled Mwangachuchu, then a financial adviser to the provincial government in Goma, out of his Suzuki jeep on his way to work. They choked him with his necktie, ripped off his clothes and dumped him at the Rwandan border. Crowds later stoned and shot at his house. Mwangachuchu, his wife and their six children were granted political asylum in the United States in 1996, and they rented a house in Laurel, Md. Two years later, homesick and bored with his job at a Carvel icecream plant, Mwangachuchu returned home for a visit. Civil war was raging. His cattle farm had been destroyed, his herds gone, his buildings burned. But he still owned the land, which he had long known was rich in coltan. In 1999, a year after his first trip home, he heard that there was money to be made mining it. All he needed was a partner, someone with a bit of money. Robert Sussman, 55, sold his medical practice in Baltimore in the early 1990's. Comfortably well off, he began a second career as a mining-camp doctor in remote countries, including Myanmar and Congo. Intrigued by mining, he began thinking of going into the business himself. He met Mwangachuchu in a Goma hotel in 1998, and they became partners the following year, as the price of coltan began to go up. Sussman and Mwangachuchu say they are investing in Congo for the long term. They believe they can operate profitably despite the recent slump in coltan prices and despite the fact that their mines are still periodically fought over by roving bands of armed men. The partners say they have laid the foundation for a solid business. ''We are proud of what we are doing in Congo,'' Sussman told me. ''We want the world to understand that if it's done right, coltan can be good for this country.'' Sussman and Mwangachuchu, of course, are also in it for the money. High coltan prices last year gave them an unexpected windfall. Sussman said they sold 22 metric tons of coltan, which earned them about $7.5 million -- before they paid their many bills. Since then, they have bought about 25 more tons of coltan from miners in the field -- ore that they have not been able to sell. Last year, Sussman and Mwangachuchu shipped their ore to Europe on Sabena airlines. That airline now refuses their business, and they are scrambling to find another shipper. They fear that a corporate embargo could cripple their business and idle miners who have come to depend on them.

49 111 Not Women Anymore The Congo s rape survivors face pain, shame and AIDS by Stephanie Nolen It took Thérèse Mwandeko a year to save the money. She knew she could walk the first 40 kilometers of her journey, but would need to pay for a lift for the last 20. So she traded bananas and peanuts until she d saved $1.50 in Congolese francs, then set out for Bukavu. She walked with balled-up fabric clenched between her thighs, to soak up blood that had been oozing from her vagina for two years, since she had been gang-raped by Rwandan militia soldiers who plundered her village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Finally, she arrived at Panzi Hospital. Here, Thérèse takes her place in line, along with 80 women, waiting for surgery to rebuild her vagina. Dr. Denis Mukwege, Panzi s sole gynecologist and one of two doctors in the eastern Congo who can perform such reconstructive surgeries, can repair only five women a week. The air is thick with flies. It reeks from women with fistula: rips in the vaginal wall where rape tore out chunks of flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina. Yet Thérèse, 47, is happier than she s been in years. Until I came here, I had no hope I could be helped, she says. Across the DRC are tens of thousands of women like this: physically ravaged, emotionally terrorized, financially impoverished. Except for Thérèse and a few fortunate others, these women have no help of any kind: Eight years of war have left the country in ruins, and Congolese women have been victims of rape on a scale never seen before. Every one of dozens of armed groups in this war has used rape as a weapon. Amnesty International (AI) researchers believe there has been more rape here than in any other conflict, but the actual scale is still unknown. They rape a woman, five or six of them at a time but that is not enough. Then they shoot a gun into her vagina, says Dr. Mukwege. In all my years here, I never saw anything like it. [T]o see so many raped, that shocks me, but what shocks me more is the way they are raped. Each armed group has a trademark manner of violating, he explains. The Burundians rape men as well as women. The Mai Mai local defense forces rape with branches or bayonets, and mutilate their victims. The Rwandans, like those who attacked Thérèse, set groups of soldiers to rape one woman.

50 112 At Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, two rape victims await vaginal surgery / photo by Stephanie Nolen The ward where Thérèse waits for surgery is run by a social worker, Louise Nzigire. The women tell her they are not women anymore. They are often too physically damaged to farm, or bear children, and there is such stigma associated with rape in Congo where female virginity is prized and the husband of a rape survivor is considered shamed that rape survivors are routinely shunned by husbands, parents and communities. Nzigire believes rape has been a cheap, simple weapon for all parties in the war, more easily obtainable than bullets or bombs: This violence was designed to exterminate the population, she says quietly. The Congo war has claimed more lives than any conflict since the end of World War II, yet receives almost no attention outside central Africa. An estimated 4 million people have died here since 1996 the vast majority not by firepower but starvation or preventable diseases, as people hid in the jungle to escape the fighting. It began when Rwanda s Tutsi government sent troops over the border to pursue Hutu militias responsible for the 1994 genocide, since many Hutu had escaped to the impenetrable Congolese bush. When the then- Zairian army offered little resistance, Rwanda s President Paul Kagame formed a hasty alliance with a Congolese rebel group attempting to overthrow dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Tutsi-run Burundi and neighboring Uganda saw a lucrative opportunity, and sent troops to help the putsch. The rebels took Kinshasa in 1997, installing Laurent Kabila as president. But the next year, Rwandan and Ugandan troops turned on Kabila, so he called in Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe to back his army. All of Congo s neighbors joined the war, which gave them a chance to indulge in a frenzy of looting diamonds and other minerals, in which Congo is abundant. After a 2002 peace deal, a fragile, transitional government holds power, in a uniquely Congolese powersharing: President Joseph Kabila (thrust into the job at age 29 after his father s 2001 assassination) shares power with four of the major warlords whose militias have wrought havoc for the past years. This is peace enough to placate international donors, who ve poured money in to prop up this flimsy government and to repair roads and phone lines in the capital and reassure international mining companies, who are reopening up shop all over the country. But beyond Kinshasa s city limits, there is little sign the war has ended. In the east, where the worst hostilities were fought, a half-dozen armed groups still control territory, holding civilians hostage. Here there is no rebuilding, no phone service, no electrical grid, no roads. Hospitals, when they still stand, have been looted of everything from beds to bandages. No government employee teachers, judges, nurses has been paid in 14 years. There is a United Nations peacekeeping mission charged with maintaining order, but it has 12,000 soldiers for an area the size of Western Europe (the U.N. mission to tiny Kosovo, by contrast, had 40,000 troops); furthermore, the troops lack the ability to move outside town centers, while the militias move freely in the forests. The people who live out here have been rendered feral by the war. Their homes have been burned, their possessions pillaged, men shot, women and girls raped, boys abducted to serve as soldiers. Any survivors took refuge in the forest, living naked, eating grubs and roots. This season, for the first time in six years, people in most of the eastern provinces have returned to their fields and planted crops. Shami Alubu, 21, came out of the jungle and back to the town of Kibombo last year, although she can t go home. In early 2002, while working in her fields, she was snatched by Mai Mai militants, who dragged

51 113 her into town, then kept her there for a full day, beating and raping her with guns and sticks. The whole time, she was within earshot of her 7-month-old son Florent, who was sobbing wildly. When it was over, she limped back to her house but at the sight of her, her husband ordered her away. It was like he thought I wanted to go with the Mai Mai, Shami says bitterly. Shami s town, Kibombo, changed hands a half-dozen times during the war: the Rwandan army, then the Mai Mai, then Rwandans again. Every time new troops seized Kibombo, they set out systematically to rape. When the soldiers lost the town to a new militia, they often dragged dozens of women with them as they fled, holding them as sexual slaves and cooks in their jungle retreats until the next time they raided the town. Today, Shami is thin and hunched; she breathes with difficulty. Maybe I have AIDS, she murmurs. An estimated 30 percent of the women raped in Congo s war are infected with HIV; as many as 60 percent of the combatants are believed to have the virus. Shami also suffers continual pain in her shredded vagina, but has had no medical help since the rape. There is a hospital in Kibombo, with six wards: Four are empty; two each contain three iron bed frames, stripped of any mats. The director, Jean-Yves Mukamba (the only doctor for this region of 25,000 square kilometers) knows he is surrounded by women suffering raging venereal infections, HIV, prolapsed uteruses, torn vaginas. I think it was a large majority of the women here who were raped, almost all of them. But I can t help them with just my bare hands, he says. When he decided, late last year, to consult with sexual-violence victims, more than 100 women turned up the first morning. I had nothing, not even antibiotics, to give them. Not that antibiotics would have helped much: Most cases were traumatization of the genitals: These women had been raped with a tree branch or the barrel of a gun, or a bayonet. When you see a woman who was forced by 10 men the trauma The doctor holds out his thin hands, as if to push the memory away. Nor is it just Kibombo. The women rely on a national health system that has been totally destroyed, says Andrew Philip, coauthor of an AI report on the Congo : They walk for days then are charged for health care because none of the doctors or nurses is paid [by the state], and it s beyond the means of most patients. A typical doctor s visit costs about 70 cents. Although the government now collects substantial revenues on exports, particularly diamonds, it insists it cannot afford to pay nurses or doctors, or abolish consultation fees. Dr. Mukamba has not received so much as a Band-Aid from Kinshasa in two years. Legal assistance is even rarer than medical help. There have been fewer than a dozen prosecutions of sexual assault in the eastern DRC. Many rape survivors know where their assailants are; in some cases, they see them every day. But large parts of the country lack judges, lawyers, police or detectives. Staff that are present often answer to the militias, which still control large chunks of territory. No senior officer of any military (as well as the national armies of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, which committed thousands of rapes) has ever been held accountable for sexual violence committed by his staff. There is yet another problem. Most women won t pursue this legally, because they are afraid it s not over. They figure that when the militia is back in power, they will be targeted, explains Emiliane Tuma Sibazuri, who heads a women s group supporting rape survivors in the eastern town of Kasongo. They think, If I give my name to try to get justice, then when they come back, I will be attacked, or my family. All we can do is try to help them forget.

52 114 The grossly underfunded U.N. mission is in little position to assist. Last October, when the mission went to the Security Council to ask for additional soldiers and money, it won a laughably small increase. Then, weeks later, came the revelation that U.N. peacekeepers themselves are contributing to Congo s frenzy of sexual assault. The U.N. said that 150 allegations of sexual abuse were reported committed by peacekeepers (from Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa, Tunisia and Uruguay) in Congo, and that there were likely hundreds more that would never be reported; commanders were allegedly resisting measures to curb such abuses. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced there was clear evidence that acts of gross misconduct have taken place. Furthermore, U.N. investigators found that peacekeepers and civilian workers were paying an average of US $2 for sex with women in populations they were assigned to protect, or bartering for sex with food, basic supplies or a fictitious promise of work in safe, well-guarded U.N. compounds. A recent International Rescue Committee survey, conducted in all regions of the Congo, found that 31,000 people a month are still dying, almost all for preventable reasons. But as the delicate peace inches out across the country, more people emerge from the jungle, and more women like Thérèse Mwandeko are able to make their way to a hospital. We treat one, and send her home to the village, says Dr. Mukwege, and she returns with five more. Stephanie Nolen is the Africa correspondent for Canada s Globe and Mail newspaper. She lives in Johannesburg.

53 Defending The Indefensible By TINA ROSENBERG (New York Times Magazine) Published: April 19, 1998 The last time the world got a glimpse of Milan Kovacevic, he was guarding the portals of hell. He was a swaggering, beefy, profane man in a secondhand U.S. Marines shirt, and he was explaining to the television cameras why Serbs could never be secure until non-serbs were removed from what he considered Serb territory. It was August 1992 in Prijedor, a city in northwest Bosnia and Herzegovina. A small group of reporters wanted permission to enter Omarska, a concentration camp not far from Prijedor. Omarska was the most notorious camp of the Bosnian war. Reports had already emerged that the guards there did not merely kill Muslim and Croat inmates but beat and tortured them to death with singular sadism and personal brutality. Kovacevic told the reporters they could visit Omarska but said that they would find ''not concentration camps but transit centers,'' and that what they were witnessing was ''a great moment in the history of the Serbian nation.'' Three years later, on a Radio Prijedor program commemorating that great moment, he boasted, ''I'm not afraid of any of those 21 cells in The Hague.'' There are actually 24 cells in the jail to hold the accused at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Since July of last year, one has been occupied by Milan Kovacevic. When he goes on trial on May 11, he will be the first man brought to justice at The Hague on charges of genocide, a crime considered the most heinous in human history, and one that is likely to carry the maximum penalty the tribunal can dispense, a life sentence. Kovacevic is depressed and suicidal according to a psychiatrist who interviewed him. He has developed heart problems and has had two, possibly three, strokes. When I saw him recently, in a courtroom at The Hague during a hearing on his case, it was hard to believe he was 56. He looked 70. At the time Kovacevic issued his challenge to the tribunal, he was the director of Prijedor's General Hospital. At the height of the Bosnian war, however, he had been an anesthesiologist and, more significantly, the vice chairman of Prijedor's Crisis Staff, a Serb council that took control of the city in April 1992, after the Serb Republic broke away from Bosnia. He had little reason to fear those jail cells at The Hague. There had been no international courts with the power to punish individuals since the tribunals that were established to try the war crimes of World War II. In some respects, the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that the United Nations Security Council voted into existence in May 1993 (a tribunal for Rwanda was added 19 months later) has more legitimacy than its predecessors in Nuremberg and the Far East. It is not a court judging the vanquished, but an effort to try all the parties in the former Yugoslavia accused of committing serious crimes. It was established not by powerful victor nations, as Nuremberg and the Far East tribunals were, but by a truly international body that represents virtually all of the world's countries. And it rests on a more advanced body of international law, one that has adopted the Geneva Conventions on warfare and formally outlawed genocide, which is now defined as acts committed with the intent to partly or wholly destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Yet it is understandable why Milan Kovacevic (pronounced ko-vatch-eh-vitch) did not take the tribunal seriously. The reason it won crucial backing from the Clinton Administration was that it could give the impression that Washington -- that the West -- was doing something about the war in Bosnia without putting Western lives in danger. Moreover, the absence of victors' justice carried with it a debilitating absence of victors' powers -- or of a vanquished. The most powerful men publicly indicted -- the Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic -- remain free, as do 44 other indicted Serbs and 2 Croats. Perhaps one illustration of the world's lack of commitment to the tribunal is that it was built with only a single courtroom. The tribunal has held just one full trial, of Dusko Tadic, a guard at Omarska, one of the

54 camps that Kovacevic is charged with helping to set up. On May 7, 1997, Tadic was acquitted on several counts, but found guilty on 11 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, and sentenced to 20 years. (He is appealing to the tribunal's five-judge appellate chamber.) In the last year, however, the tribunal has become a serious and even feared force for justice in Bosnia. The shift occurred last summer, when NATO and United Nations troops began arresting accused criminals, including, on July 10, Milan Kovacevic. British Special Forces soldiers entered Prijedor's hospital, arrested Kovacevic in his office and flew him to the Netherlands. The same morning the infamous former Police Chief of Prijedor, Simo Drljaca, was killed in a shootout with his would-be captors. NATO soldiers do seem willing to arrest suspects who are not likely to shoot back. Earlier this month, two men accused of having helped run Omarska were arrested in Prijedor. And pressure from NATO may be one reason Karadzic is said to be negotiating his own surrender. Kovacevic's capture also represented the public debut of a new practice, the sealed indictment: his name was on a secret list, the existence of which is now disturbing the sleep of many in the former Yugoslavia who do not deserve a good night's rest. A court designed to give the impression of doing something -- about Bosnia and about justice, ethnic hatred and human rights in the post-cold-war world -- is actually doing something. The Hague tribunal is building two new courtrooms and is scheduled to start 11 trials this year. But the tribunal will not provide justice, or help break the cycle of ethnic killings in the former Yugoslavia, or have any global impact on human rights if it is not perceived to be holding fair trials. What this means, above all, is that it must pay scrupulous attention to the rights of the accused. Defending those accused of war crimes at The Hague is complicated for many reasons that go beyond the usual quandaries faced by attorneys representing clients charged with heinous crimes. These cases must be investigated far from the courtroom, often without cooperation from pertinent local authorities who disdain the tribunal and may fear arrest themselves. Politics is a constant presence, as the tribunal is a world stage. Any judgments about criminal responsibility are of particular concern to those Serbs, Croats and Muslims who feel their ethnic group is in the dock alongside the defendants and want the world to endorse their understanding of what happened in the former Yugoslavia -- their notions of truth and history. Thus there is the temptation for an attorney to mount not just a detailed legal defense of an accused war criminal -- he wasn't there, or wasn't in charge -- but also a public information campaign to assert the victimhood of a whole people. None of the lawyers at Nuremberg defended their clients by recycling the Nazi propaganda that the Jews deserved extermination because they were a threat to the Germans. But Kovacevic's lead attorney, Dusan Vucicevic, a Serb emigre who practices law in a Chicago suburb, wants to use the Yugoslav equivalent of this myth. When I traveled with Vucicevic (pronounced vu-cheecheh-vitch) to Prijedor not long ago, he was preparing a defense that argues, among other things, that the Serbs of Prijedor were provoked by Muslim threats -- the same spurious message that, broadcast nightly on Serb television, incited people to kill their Muslim neighbors. ''What the Muslims tried to do in Bosnia is what happened in Armenia in 1915,'' he said, referring to the Turkish genocide of Armenians. ''The Serbs were preparing to defend themselves. There was no way to control things.'' Vucicevic's belief that stories of Serb victimization could help acquit his client is strongly opposed by Anthony D'Amato, an international-law expert at Northwestern University School of Law and Kovacevic's co-counsel. But the notion that the Serbs killed Muslims to defend themselves against a coming Muslim onslaught remains the reigning one among many Serbs in Bosnia and elsewhere. The racist myths of Nazi Germany were discredited after the war, but the Yugoslav wars have probably strengthened the sense of victimization and hatred among the involved ethnic groups. This, more than anything else, perhaps, points up the difference between the Nuremberg and The Hague tribunals, and raises the question of what Kovacevic's trial, and those of the others, can actually do to establish the truth,

55 prevent the rekindling of ethnic warfare in Bosnia or provide a legal framework to help the world take its pronouncements about punishing evil seriously. On July 30, 1997, Vucicevic happened to be visiting family in his hometown of Cacak, Serbia, about 60 miles from Belgrade. The TV news that night showed Kovacevic being arraigned at The Hague. The two men were distantly related. And Vucicevic, who is 50, had gone to high school in Cacak with Kovacevic's wife, Ljubica. Shortly after the broadcast, she called Vucicevic and asked him to defend her husband. Vucicevic was hesitant. He told Ljubica that he was not an international-law specialist but that he would try to find her one. Vucicevic practiced law -- mostly personal injury, some criminal defense -- in Oakbrook Terrace, a Chicago suburb. The Chicago area is home to America's largest Balkan population, with a quarter million Serbs alone, and his clients were mainly other Yugoslav emigres. He left Yugoslavia in 1974, while on a ski trip, and settled in Chicago, where he worked at first as an anesthesiologist. (He and Kovacevic had actually attended the same medical school in Belgrade.) When he got bored with that, he went to law school, and opened his own practice in Upon returning from Serbia last summer, Vucicevic called the offices of some well-known criminal lawyers, including Gerry Spence and Alan Dershowitz. ''But he was too small a fish,'' Vucicevic said of Kovacevic. (Dershowitz had several conversations with the biggest fish, Radovan Karadzic, but has not yet agreed to represent him, citing a policy of not working for fugitives.) Then someone suggested that maybe Vucicevic could work with Anthony D'Amato, a widely respected law professor and advocate of an international criminal court. D'Amato, 61, is the opposite of Vucicevic: short and trim where Vucicevic is big; precise, controlled and soothing while Vucicevic is voluble and excitable. (D'Amato has likewise had other lives. He was the co-producer of the original Broadway production of ''Grease'' and wrote three musicals with his wife that were staged in Chicago.) ''My initial reaction was that he's got a right to a lawyer, but not to me,'' D'Amato said recently over dinner at an Italian restaurant near the tribunal building. But he went with Vucicevic to The Hague last September and met with Kovacevic. This is D'Amato's account of the meeting: ''Doctor, are you telling me you didn't know about this?'' D'Amato asked Kovacevic about the concentration camps established in and around Prijedor while he was an official there. Kovacevic said he knew nothing until media reports filtered back into Prijedor. When he found out, Kovacevic said, it sickened him. ''Why didn't you resign?'' D'Amato asked him. I tried, Kovacevic told him. Kovacevic said he went to Simo Drljaca, the Police Chief. ''He said he would personally put a bullet through my head if I quit,'' Kovacevic told D'Amato. D'Amato agreed to help Vucicevic defend Kovacevic. D'Amato's motives are similar to those of many of the tribunal's lawyers who are not ethnically affiliated with the former Yugoslavia: for international legal scholars like D'Amato, it is tempting to play a role in shaping an international court. ''If I were to win this case, it may help the tribunal,'' he said. ''It seemed to me from the beginning very important that they acquit some people. What divides me from the Serb lawyers is that they want to slam the tribunal.'' Early on at least, Vucicevic seemed to be such a lawyer. ''It's a kangaroo court,'' he said of the tribunal during our first phone conversation. And what are Vucicevic's motives? I asked D'Amato. ''He's a patriot,'' D'Amato said, not seeming to mean it as a compliment. I asked D'Amato if he and Vucicevic got along. He smiled. ''His heart is in the right place, and he brought me onto this case,'' he said.

56 A few miles outside Prijedor, the highway passes Kozarac, once a largely Muslim village, now a ghost town. A month after the Serbs took over Prijedor in April 1992, Kozarac was shelled, and its inhabitants were removed to the Prijedor concentration camps. Their homes have since been looted and blown up. Today the carcasses of houses stretch for miles. In Prijedor, there are no visible signs of the war. The city, with a population of 30,000, looks like many others in the former Communist world, with neighborhoods of pretty cottages and a downtown with identical five-story apartment buildings and hideously massive architecture. However, since the war, and the imposition of economic sanctions, its industry and jobs have evaporated. In the cafes, men sit over tiny cups of coffee all day; the stores have few customers. Until the spring of 1992, Prijedor's population was fairly balanced between Muslims and Serbs, with a small number of Croats. Thirty percent of the townspeople married outside their ethnic group. Yet Prijedor was home to some of the most brutal men of Bosnia's war. Of the 74 men publicly indicted by The Hague tribunal, 32, all of them Serbs, are charged with crimes alleged to have been committed in Prijedor. What happened to transform Prijedor is something that will be seriously contested in Kovacevic's trial. Prosecutors are not revealing their strategy, but they will presumably draw on a 300-page opinion the tribunal issued in the case of Dusko Tadic, the camp guard. It sets out a history of the war in Prijedor, one that largely confirms the judgment of most Western journalists and other independent observers, including a U.N. commission of experts. The judges concluded that Prijedor's camps were part of a wellplanned Serb takeover of northern Bosnia. Alarmed that the breakup of Yugoslavia would create countries where Serbs would be a minority, Serb leaders aimed to unite all the territory where Serbs lived and the land they felt was historically theirs. The Serb strategy was to slice off bits of Bosnia in order to create a contiguous territory with a preponderance of Serbs and join them to Serbia proper. This entailed driving out or killing Muslims and Croats. In 1991, Serbs in northern Bosnia, under the leadership of the Serbian Democratic Party, or S.D.S., of Radovan Karadzic, began to create parallel governing structures. The Yugoslav Army -- by then a Serb Army -- and various paramilitary groups started to surround the region's cities and set up checkpoints. Kovacevic was a founder of the S.D.S. in Prijedor, where Serbs established a shadow city government in January 1992, along with their own police force and security unit. A propaganda campaign intensified, warning Serbs that ''fundamentalist'' Muslims and ''Ustashe'' Croats -- the term refers to Croatia's Nazi puppet state during World War II, which slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs -- were planning another genocide. In the spring of 1992, as Bosnia declared its independence and the Serb Republic broke away, Serb paramilitary units took over the television transmitter in the Kozara Mountains, which overlook Prijedor, blocking the town's access to broadcasts from Sarajevo and Zagreb. Residents could get only Serb TV, whose news essentially consisted of anti-croat and anti-muslim propaganda. In each town the S.D.S. established a Crisis Staff made up of local party leaders, army commanders and police officials. In Prijedor, where the elected government had been led by Muslims, the Crisis Staff staged a coup on April 30, Beginning in late May, Muslims and Croats were herded into concentration camps. The worst were in an iron-ore mining complex in Omarska, a village a few miles from Prijedor, and at Keraterm, a ceramics factory on the edge of Prijedor. At least 2,000 men, perhaps many more, were killed in the Omarska and Keraterm camps in the 10 weeks before they were discovered by reporters and closed late that summer. The inmates suffered the worst conditions imaginable: they were starved; forced to live in their own filth; jammed by the hundreds into rooms, so tightly packed that they could not lie down. The city's richest and most powerful Muslims were

57 singled out for special torture. The few women at Omarska were regularly raped and some were killed. Survivors have reported that some prisoners were decapitated with chain saws. Others were burned alive. Milan Kovacevic, who had been the city manager before the Crisis Staff was formed, was now the second in command in Prijedor, after the Mayor, Milomir Stakic. He was also everyone's drinking buddy. According to the indictment, the prosecutors will make the case that as vice chairman of the Crisis Staff, Kovacevic helped to plan and organize the camps. They will also argue that he knew, or should have known, that Croats and Muslims were being murdered and abused inside them, the aim being, according to the indictment, ''to destroy them, in part, as a national, ethnic or religious group.'' In a word, genocide. In late February, I traveled to Prijedor with Vucicevic. It was his second trip to Bosnia to search for evidence and interview potential witnesses. Part of his case, he said, would be to prove that while Kovacevic was responsible on paper, in practice he was not. Vucicevic spent much of his time in Prijedor talking to former Crisis Staff members and S.D.S. officials who he hoped would testify that within the Crisis Staff, the military and especially Police Chief Drljaca had been dominant and that they were the ones who organized the camps. Vucicevic maintains that Kovacevic had no interest in his political duties and spent all of his time at the hospital. ''He never attended a single Crisis Staff meeting,'' Vucicevic repeatedly told me. ''He did not visit any of the camps.'' What did he know? I asked. ''He heard hush-hush things in taverns,'' Vucicevic said. I asked when Kovacevic found out about the killings in the camps. Vucicevic declined to answer. In Prijedor, I met Serbs who had heard about the killings while they were going on. I did not meet anyone who claimed to have seen Kovacevic visit a camp, and the prosecutors declined to talk to me about their evidence before the trial. In evidence disclosed by prosecutors to the defense there is a witness who claimed to have seen Kovacevic in the Omarska camp several times, but the account contains inconsistencies. Still, Keraterm is right on the main highway, and anyone driving into Prijedor would have been able to see the prisoners in the barred doorways of their cells. I spoke with a credible source, a man afraid to be named or identified in any way, who had attended a Crisis Staff meeting at the military police headquarters directly across the highway from Keraterm in the final weeks of the camp's existence. He said that although Kovacevic didn't speak much, he was among a handful of people present at the meeting. Minka Cehajic is a Muslim from Prijedor now living in Sanski Most, a town that is today home to many of Prijedor's surviving Muslims, and her story suggests that Kovacevic had more power during the war than he contends. Minka's husband, Muhamed Cehajic, was Prijedor's Mayor until the Crisis Staff's coup. Minka was told after the coup that her husband was being detained in a police jail but that she could not get in to see him. She ran into Kovacevic on the street and asked him for help. She said that he called the police and got her in to see her husband. She visited him twice; when she went back a third time, he was no longer there. Minka called Kovacevic again, but was told he was in a Crisis Staff meeting. Her husband was taken to Keraterm, and then to Omarska, where he was killed. On Aug. 2, 1992, Roy Gutman of Newsday broke the story of Omarska and Keraterm, based on interviews with survivors. Radovan Karadzic, in London for a meeting, went on television to deny reports of atrocities in the camps and invited those interested to go see for themselves. The television network ITN and a reporter for The Guardian, Ed Vulliamy, took him up on it and flew to Belgrade the next day. They arrived in Prijedor on Aug. 5 and went to the Crisis Staff offices, where they first spoke to Col.

58 Vladimir Arsic, the local military commander. ''I do not have the authority to allow you to go to Omarska,'' he said. ''Talk to the civilians.'' He gestured at Mayor Stakic and Kovacevic. Kovacevic gave the journalists a lecture on Greater Serbia. ''The first and main duty imposed on Serbs today is to create and organize a homogenous Serbia to encompass the whole ethnic region in which the Serbs live,'' he said. Then he told them they could go to the camps. A few days later he let another group of journalists into Omarska, after a similar lecture. ''He was saying that extremists should be separated,'' Vucicevic told me, by way of explaining ''Greater Serbia.'' ''And he was singled out to do briefings for reporters not because he was in charge, but because he was educated in Europe.'' There is no how-to manual for defending a man accused of genocide, because it has virtually never been done. Last month the Rwanda tribunal completed the first international trial for genocide, but it has not yet issued a verdict in the case of Jean-Paul Akayesu, a Hutu Mayor accused of ordering the deaths of 2,000 Tutsis. So how certain precedents are applied, what the prosecutor needs to prove, what can be argued -- the three judges who will hear Kovacevic's case and reach a verdict will sort these things out as the trial proceeds. A trial at the tribunal is the legal equivalent of gathering people from all over the world to put on a play in an Esperanto that no one has really learned. Attorneys question witnesses from a far-off country in a foreign language. Almost everyone who works there has come from someplace else and must travel elsewhere to investigate cases. It is startling to see the United Nations flag next to the judges' bench, to realize that if the tribunal labeled its cases the way American courts do, the case would be called The World v. Kovacevic. (It is actually Prosecutor v. Kovacevic.) The tribunal is dealing with a body of law that has, for the most part, never been applied, and international law has no ''supreme court'' to indicate which interpretations and decisions are ''right.'' Bootstrapping is inevitable. The tribunal draws its precedents mainly from a limited group of international legal forums -- Nuremberg and Tokyo; the International Court of Justice, which adjudicates civil cases between nations, and regional courts like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. But the judges also raid national court decisions when they feel like it. Such improvisation taxes a defendant's ability to mount a proper defense. Even well-trained and aggressive defense lawyers can have trouble. Michail Wladimiroff and Alphons Orie, the Dutch criminal lawyers who represented Dusko Tadic, the camp guard, were not accustomed to cross-examining witnesses, which in the Continental system is handled mainly by a judge, and had to take a training course and study a video to learn how to do it. They ended up recruiting one of their trainers to handle crossexaminations. A larger problem for defendants is their very choice of lawyers. The quality of counsel has improved since pay was raised two years ago to $110 an hour, up from $200 per day. But problems remain. Defendants before the tribunal at The Hague generally choose lawyers of their own ethnicity from the former Yugoslavia, not trusting others to fight on their behalf. The courts in Belgrade and Zagreb are highly politicized, and lawyers used to practicing before these courts are not trained to be assertive and know little about international law. Such lawyering creates delay and embarrassment. For instance, the tribunal's appeals chamber dismissed Drazan Erdemovic's plea of guilty to crimes against humanity because it felt his attorney had not sufficiently informed him of the consequences of his plea. Erdemovic later pled guilty to a lesser charge.

59 While it is clear that the tribunal needs to raise its standards for defense counsel and give attorneys training and legal advice, the judges themselves, who hail from 11 different countries, and their efforts to compensate for some of the attorneys' deficiencies are frequently praised. Even Vucicevic appears to have come around. ''All those things I said about the unfairness of the tribunal -- I take them all back,'' he said, elated, after winning a recent motion. Vucicevic's major complaint is that the tribunal is not paying enough attention to Kovacevic's physical well-being. Vucicevic spent the fall fruitlessly trying to have Kovacevic released because of poor health to await trial back in Bosnia, and argues that Kovacevic has not received the medical attention he needs in jail. Vucicevic is also in a state of war with the registrar, the administrative office of the tribunal. Preparing a case of the scope and magnitude of Kovacevic's demands a team of attorneys and plenty of money for investigations and experts. But one month before the trial is scheduled to begin, Vucicevic has not been able to hire much help besides D'Amato. He says that the registrar is three or four months in arrears paying his bills. But money is a problem for everyone at the tribunal, even with its 1998 budget of $64 million. Prosecutors have had to curtail investigations, and now, with 25 men in custody, their staff is stretched thin. This January, 10 months after Kovacevic was indicted for complicity in genocide, prosecutors asked to add 14 counts, including murder, torture, crimes against humanity, war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Most counts stemmed from the same crimes as the charge of genocide. If the judges permitted prosecutors to expand the indictment, it would greatly increase their chance of convicting Kovacevic, because any genocide conviction probably requires proof of some degree of intent on the part of the defendant. The lawyers at the Feb. 27 hearing on expanding the indictment wore black robes and ascots; the judges were resplendent in red robes. But the majestic effect was lost in a building that greatly resembles an insurance office, which in fact it used to be. Kovacevic, flanked by two guards, sat behind his attorneys; above him were the glass booths built for the simultaneous translators. The lawyers and judges used French or English, but the defendants all spoke what the court lists as ''Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian'' -- a language once known as Serbo-Croatian. A glass wall separated the public. During a break, Vucicevic pointed me out, and Kovacevic nodded at me. The prosecution was represented by Michael Keegan, a former U.S. Marine Corps Judge Advocate General, who was on crutches after having broken his leg skiing. Keegan argued that he had informed the defense at the time of Kovacevic's arrest that the prosecution intended to broaden the indictment, mainly with what in the United States would be called ''lesser included'' offenses -- lesser charges for the same acts. Then D'Amato began the defense reply. Working from yellow Post-Its he had plastered on his lectern, D'Amato argued that amending the indictment six months after arrest was too late and that the delay violated Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which covers the right to a speedy trial, among other things. Vucicevic followed with a vintage performance, racing from point to point. He questioned the credibility of the witness who said he saw Kovacevic in the Omarska camp, argued that civilians on the Crisis Staff had no authority and started in on the history of Yugoslav Communism. The presiding judge, Richard May, gently interrupted him. ''It seems we are entering the realm of argument about the merits that is more appropriate at trial,'' he said. But the defense won. While the prosecutor is currently appealing, it is very likely that Kovacevic will be tried solely for complicity in genocide. He is indicted under three different parts of the tribunal's statute, which allow the tribunal to punish those who aided in the planning and execution of genocide, those who committed acts that made them accomplices to genocide and those with command responsibility.

60 D'Amato remains worried, especially because of a case known as ''Yamashita.'' Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita commanded the Japanese Army in the Philippines during World War II. An American military tribunal sentenced him to hang because his men had committed atrocities that he did not prevent. There was no evidence that he knew of the atrocities, but the court ruled that he should have known about them and had failed to prevent them. Over dinner in The Hague, D'Amato had said that he takes ''Yamashita'' to mean that if at some point Kovacevic knew of the killings and could have stopped or limited them and did not, he would be culpable. ''There is an opening for the prosecutor,'' he said. ''If there weren't, this wouldn't be a case.'' Vucicevic maintains, by contrast, that it would suffice to prove that Kovacevic was out of the loop. As for the other aspects of the crime, Vucicevic argues that the prosecutor must show that Kovacevic intended to commit genocide. Vucicevic contends that Kovacevic had no such intent, in part because he treated Muslims at Prijedor's hospital during the war. International-law experts say it isn't clear whether such intent is necessary to convict, because Kovacevic is accused not of genocide itself but of complicity in genocide. It might be enough to show that he deliberately contributed to the crime even though he may not have had genocidal intent, said Diane Orentlicher, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law and director of its War Crimes Research Office. ''Suppose someone built gas ovens knowing how they'd be used in the Holocaust, but didn't carry out the gassings himself,'' Orentlicher hypothesized. ''He might not have shared Hitler's genocidal intent, but might well be liable to punishment as an accomplice to genocide.'' It is easier to convict Omarska's guards, the men who personally tortured and killed, whose crimes were witnessed by dozens of people. The role of the higher-ups is more elusive. According to D'Amato, Karadzic wrote orders telling his men not to commit war crimes and warning that anyone who did would be prosecuted -- an utterly cynical exercise, if in fact he did do it, but one that could keep him out of prison: the commanders weren't really commanding, couldn't have done anything, had no control, didn't plan it, couldn't have stopped it, didn't know. Showing that Kovacevic had no responsibility for the events in Prijedor was one aspect of the strategy Vucicevic outlined during the trip. The other was to argue that what happened in Prijedor was not a Serborganized genocide at all. In fact, he was looking for evidence that the Muslims in and around Prijedor were planning a genocide of their own -- that the Serbs, in rounding up Muslims, acted in self-defense. D'Amato strongly disagreed with this strategy, in part for tactical reasons: he thought that contesting the prosecutor's assertion that what happenened to the Muslims was genocide would bring a parade of unhelpful witnesses testifying about the atrocities they suffered in the camps. ''This court was set up to investigate genocide,'' he said. ''I'm not sure they would be prepared to say it didn't occur.'' His view that the no-genocide defense was doomed was echoed by every non-serb lawyer I asked about it. ''Any claim to justify genocide on the grounds that it is designed to prevent genocide by an adversary, a sort of anticipatory genocide, is simply beyond the pale,'' said Theodor Meron, Denison Professor of International Law at New York University Law School. ''In international law's hierarchy of prohibitions, those of genocide and crimes against humanity are absolute. There are no exceptions.'' Vucicevic, for his part, said he has no intention of acknowledging that there was a Serb-led genocide. ''Let's be good old-fashioned defense attorneys and make them prove every point,'' he told me at first. But as I spent more time with Vucicevic in Prijedor, it became evident that his real reason for denying that genocide had been carried out was that he believed his people had been maligned in the press and wanted to correct the record. ''D'Amato's been prejudiced by media stories and pictures,'' he said.

61 D'Amato had told me that many Serbs believe something ''a little schizo: it's not genocide, but if it is, it's totally justified.'' Most of the Serbs I met in Prijedor hold this view. More disconcerting, at times so did Vucicevic. He seemed fully aware of the tensions between the American and Serb inside him. ''I get so mad at everyone here for the war,'' he said. ''But I guess I have some of these genes myself.'' Though there are undoubtedly Serbs in Prijedor who would say out loud that Muslims were victims of Serb atrocities, what I found was a list of excuses and justifications, often contradictory. Typical was the view of Zoran Baros, then as now the director of the propaganda-spewing Radio Prijedor, who said that the Serbs had to act to prevent a takeover of Prijedor by Muslim extremists. And this from a high-ranking Prijedor police official who spoke only on condition of anonymity: ''Write about the 11,000 Serb children killed in the Kozara Mountains in World War II. Perhaps you will have a deeper understanding of why this happened in 1992.'' Since most of these men began our conversations with a denunciation of the anti-serb foreign media, I was not expecting any of them to unburden their consciences to me. They were also aware of the tribunal's secret list. But the justifications were not invented for my benefit. The imminent Muslim genocide and the victimization of Serbs were themes of the war. The Serbs have been victims many times this century. The Ustashe Nazi puppet state in wartime Croatia had promised to kill, deport or convert to Catholicism the Serbs in Croatian territory. Because Serb partisans were particularly active in the Prijedor area, which borders Croatia, it was the scene of some of the worst killings of Serbs, including Serb children. The German Army also participated. Among those in the German Army in the Kozara Mountains at that time was Kurt Waldheim, which does not inspire Serb confidence in the United Nations. The Ustashe concentration camp of Jasenovac is an hour's drive from Prijedor. Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Serbs, depending on who does the counting, were murdered there. Many were killed with a brutality later to be echoed in Omarska. This is not a coincidence. Kovacevic says he himself was interned as a baby in a Croatian concentration camp, although he is not sure which one. Almost every person I met in Prijedor replied to my questions about 1992 with references to This history made the propaganda believable to ordinary Serbs. A psychopath with a television station seems to be a necessary ingredient of modern genocide, but so does a historical resonance. (In Rwanda, genocide was sparked by a radio station that stirred up Hutu memories of victimization.) Television did not have to tell the Serbs, Go kill your neighbor. It was enough to tell them, Your neighbor is coming to kill you. The Kovacevic family lives in a comfortable but not luxurious apartment on the fourth floor of a building at the edge of downtown, with firewood piled up in the yard and chickens scratching in the dirt. When I first visited the apartment, Kovacevic's 24-year-old son, Ljubo, was sitting on a leather couch in the living room, watching music videos on Sarajevo TV. When the news came on, showing Bosnia's President, Alija Izetbegovic, Ljubo jumped up in mock respect. He had once studied to be a veterinary technician, but now he mostly hung out, unemployed, like almost everyone in Prijedor. Kovacevic's wife, Ljubica, a teacher of retarded children, brought out a cheese pie, salad, cake and a bottle of her husband's excellent homemade plum brandy, even though we were about to go out to eat. People have treated her well, she said, though she does get phone threats from one Muslim man -- whose voice she thinks she recognizes. We all went to dinner at the Balkan Express, a restaurant on the highway outside town that Kovacevic had considered his second office. Over very loud Serb folk songs sung by a woman with frosted hair and white high heels, Vucicevic and Zoran Baros, the Prijedor Radio boss, talked about supposed Muslim arms caches in Kozarac. Ljubica Kovacevic mused: ''It's the journalists who started the war. They showed us pictures of dead Serb

62 children.'' ''That wasn't journalism,'' I said. ''That was propaganda.'' ''I don't know what it was,'' she said. ''It's what I saw.'' Mostly, though, Ljubica sat silently, her thoughts obviously far away, saying at one point, ''It's so despicable that a victim has to prove he's innocent.'' It is not clear whether the people I talked to in Prijedor do not believe the reports of atrocities in Omarska and Keraterm or are simply lying. On my last day in town I went to lunch with Vucicevic and the Kovacevic family at a restaurant near the hospital. At another table was Gojko Klickovic, the Prime Minister of the Serb Republic from May 1996 until three months ago and now head of the S.D.S. I went over with Vucicevic, and when the conversation turned to the war I asked how many people had died in the concentration camps. ''People couldn't have died in concentration camps, because we didn't have them,'' Klickovic said. ''We had detention camps, where people came beginning on the first day because it was the safest. The Red Cross then allowed them to relocate.'' Back at our table, Vucicevic and I got into an argument. ''He's not credible,'' I said. ''Maybe he didn't know,'' Vucicevic replied. Of all the views I heard, Vucicevic's were the most disquieting. At times he was willing to acknowledge the horrors of the camps, at times he played them down and at times he excused them. ''In tribal societies you have revenge and retaliation as justice,'' he said. ''For 500 years, Serbs haven't known anything else.'' Whatever bad happened was ordered from Belgrade, Vucicevic said, but he also often spoke of the Muslim threat. He gave me articles on genocide against the Serbs and recommended that I read a book on the Turkish genocide of Armenians, to show me what Muslims were capable of. When we were driving around Prijedor, he sometimes gave people we passed the three-fingered Serb salute, a sign used today by only the most nationalist Serbs. He also said: ''When I heard Serbs were accused of raping Muslim women I had to laugh. When I was young we always joked that no one would want a Muslim because their personal hygiene is not too good.'' Omarska, the former iron-ore mine, is today a military base for the Serb Republic's Army. Keraterm is starting to make ceramic tile again. Practically no Muslims have returned to live in Prijedor itself. In early March a few were beginning to commute daily from Sanski Most. One commuter was Muharem Murselovic, Prijedor's new Deputy Mayor -- elected because the surviving Muslims came back in large numbers to vote in municipal elections in September. He had been imprisoned in Omarska in the summer of 1992 and beaten repeatedly. Some of his Serb colleagues in the municipal building today had helped send him to the camp, he told me. ''If they are uncomfortable to see me, that's their problem,'' he said. ''I can look everyone in the eye.'' The tribunal has improved the quality of leadership in Prijedor -- mainly by ridding the city of Drljaca, the former Police Chief, who continued to blow up Muslim houses and sponsor attacks on Muslims long after the war ended. And The Hague tribunal is scaring other wartime leaders. I heard a high-ranking police official ask Vucicevic if he knew which other names were on the sealed indictments list, and Vucicevic said that others had asked as well. He said that there are three or four former Crisis Staff members still in Prijedor but that they are keeping their heads down. Milomir Stakic, the former Mayor

63 and Crisis Staff chief, who is probably on the list, is nowhere to be found. The tribunal is so present in the minds of Prijedor Serbs that the local prosecutor has been nicknamed Goldstone, after Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who was the tribunal's first prosecutor. After the hearing that quashed the expanded indictment, Vucicevic did phone interviews with radio stations all over the Serb Republic, telling them that for the first time a Serb defendant had won a victory at the tribunal. Such statements are important to counter the near-universal belief among Serbs that the tribunal is an anti-serb instrument. The local media, of course, depict it that way. This will have to change if the tribunal is to meet the ambitious goals of its founders. The tribunal's only legitimate purpose -- the only purpose a court can have -- is to mete out justice. But a successful tribunal will do other important things. On a practical level, it appears that fear of the tribunal may be preventing Serbian leaders from intensifying their violence in Kosovo, where tribunal prosecutors are beginning investigations. Beyond this, the tribunal makes a moral statement, showing that some crimes are so heinous that the whole world condemns and punishes them. Like Nuremberg's, its decisions will trickle into international treaties and national legal codes: thanks to Nuremberg, for example, most nations hold that soldiers cannot evade responsibility for illegal acts by pleading that they were following orders. A successful tribunal may encourage the world to establish a permanent international criminal tribunal, which the United Nations is now discussing. It might also encourage the world's powers to examine their own roles in the tragedy of Yugoslavia and strengthen their resolve to prevent genocide the next time rather than settling for judging its perpetrators. The tribunal's most fervid supporters have made more extravagant claims for the court as well. They believe the tribunal can discourage blind ethnic hatred by showing that responsibility rests with individuals, not whole groups. They see the tribunal as a means to promote tolerance by smashing the cherished myths of victimhood, demonstrating to people that individuals in their own ethnic group can also do evil. Justice has helped to demolish nationalist myths. It did so in Japan and Germany. In these countries, however, justice was accompanied by Allied occupation. NATO's mission in Bosnia is no such occupation. Just as crucial, the myths of Nazism and Japanese imperialism did not truly die until they were discredited by the Germans and Japanese themselves, and this took time. Time will not produce the same reckoning in the former Yugoslavia without efforts by the Serbs and Croats themselves, efforts like trials of their own war criminals or a South Africa-style truth commission that encourages the perpetrators to confess. Communism's state-enforced unity kept the Yugoslavs from dealing with World War II atrocities, and now nationalist governments, especially those in Serbia and Croatia, perpetuate the story of national victimhood. Fear is powerful, rationalization easy and remorse painful; truth will win out only if the message comes from one of your own. There is one Prijedor leader who seems to be remorseful about the events of That is Milan Kovacevic. Not that he has abandoned the gospel of Greater Serbia. In 1996, Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian, who had listened to Kovacevic's speech on the subject four years earlier, sought him out again. Kovacevic reiterated the importance of making the area free of Muslims. But as the bottle of slivovitz came out, a different man emerged according to Vulliamy. ''Omarska was planned as a reception center,'' Kovacevic said after four glasses. ''But then it turned into something else. I cannot explain this loss of control. I don't think even the historians will explain it in the next 50 years. You could call it collective madness.'' He resigned from the Crisis Staff in December He left political life ''because I saw many evil things,'' he told Vulliamy. ''That is my personal secret. If you have to do things by killing people, well...now my hair is white, now I don't sleep too well.''

64 Don't take that as an admission, D'Amato said; Kovacevic's anguish and remorse came after the war, when he learned what others did, and are not legally relevant. That is for the tribunal to decide. But the agonies of a drunk are relevant in other ways, if only Serbs could hear them. The tribunal may help prevent the next Balkan war by imprisoning some of the criminals of the last one and discouraging those who would follow. But its decisions will always be those of outsiders, powerless against the overwhelming emotional weight of Jasenovac, of 11,000 children murdered in the Kozara Mountains; against that malignantly selective memory that embraces ethnic hatred. Only anguish and remorse from those who once preached it can persuade people that they are human beings as well as victims, that those who remember history are also condemned to repeat it.

65 2 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 2.1 A DECLARATION OF WAR In February 1998, the 40-year-old Saudi exile Usama Bin Ladin and a fugitive Egyptian physician,ayman al Zawahiri, arranged from their Afghan headquarters for an Arabic newspaper in London to publish what they termed a fatwa issued in the name of a World Islamic Front. A fatwa is normally an interpretation of Islamic law by a respected Islamic authority,but neither Bin Ladin, Zawahiri, nor the three others who signed this statement were scholars of Islamic law. Claiming that America had declared war against God and his messenger, they called for the murder of any American, anywhere on earth, as the individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it. 1 Three months later, when interviewed in Afghanistan by ABC-TV, Bin Ladin enlarged on these themes. 2 He claimed it was more important for Muslims to kill Americans than to kill other infidels. It is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to squander his efforts on other activities, he said.asked whether he approved of terrorism and of attacks on civilians, he replied: We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop you except perhaps retaliation in kind.we do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets. Note: Islamic names often do not follow the Western practice of the consistent use of surnames. Given the variety of names we mention, we chose to refer to individuals by the last word in the names by which they are known: Nawaf al Hazmi as Hazmi, for instance, omitting the article al that would be part of their name in their own societies.we generally make an exception for the more familiar English usage of Bin as part of a last name, as in Bin Ladin. Further, there is no universally accepted way to transliterate Arabic words and names into English.We have relied on a mix of common sense, the sound of the name in Arabic, and common usage in source materials, the press, or government documents.when we quote from a source document, we use its transliteration, e.g., al Qida instead of al Qaeda. 47

66 48 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Though novel for its open endorsement of indiscriminate killing, Bin Ladin s 1998 declaration was only the latest in the long series of his public and private calls since 1992 that singled out the United States for attack. In August 1996, Bin Ladin had issued his own self-styled fatwa calling on Muslims to drive American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia.The long, disjointed document condemned the Saudi monarchy for allowing the presence of an army of infidels in a land with the sites most sacred to Islam, and celebrated recent suicide bombings of American military facilities in the Kingdom. It praised the 1983 suicide bombing in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines, the 1992 bombing in Aden,and especially the 1993 firefight in Somalia after which the United States left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. 3 Bin Ladin said in his ABC interview that he and his followers had been preparing in Somalia for another long struggle, like that against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but the United States rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace. Citing the Soviet army s withdrawal from Afghanistan as proof that a ragged army of dedicated Muslims could overcome a superpower, he told the interviewer: We are certain that we shall with the grace of Allah prevail over the Americans. He went on to warn that If the present injustice continues..., it will inevitably move the battle to American soil. 4 Plans to attack the United States were developed with unwavering singlemindedness throughout the 1990s. Bin Ladin saw himself as called to follow in the footsteps of the Messenger and to communicate his message to all nations, 5 and to serve as the rallying point and organizer of a new kind of war to destroy America and bring the world to Islam. 2.2 BIN LADIN S APPEAL IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD It is the story of eccentric and violent ideas sprouting in the fertile ground of political and social turmoil. It is the story of an organization poised to seize its historical moment. How did Bin Ladin with his call for the indiscriminate killing of Americans win thousands of followers and some degree of approval from millions more? The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam s past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources Islam, history, and the region s political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He

67 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 49 Usama Bin Ladin at a news conference in Afghanistan in 1998 Reuters 2004 inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam s holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel. Islam Islam (a word that literally means surrender to the will of God ) arose in Arabia with what Muslims believe are a series of revelations to the Prophet Mohammed from the one and only God, the God of Abraham and of Jesus. These revelations, conveyed by the angel Gabriel, are recorded in the Qur an. Muslims believe that these revelations, given to the greatest and last of a chain of prophets stretching from Abraham through Jesus, complete God s message to humanity.the Hadith, which recount Mohammed s sayings and deeds as recorded by his contemporaries, are another fundamental source. A third key element is the Sharia,the code of law derived from the Qur an and the Hadith. Islam is divided into two main branches, Sunni and Shia. Soon after the

68 50 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Prophet s death, the question of choosing a new leader, or caliph, for the Muslim community, or Ummah, arose. Initially, his successors could be drawn from the Prophet s contemporaries,but with time,this was no longer possible.those who became the Shia held that any leader of the Ummah must be a direct descendant of the Prophet; those who became the Sunni argued that lineal descent was not required if the candidate met other standards of faith and knowledge.after bloody struggles, the Sunni became (and remain) the majority sect. (The Shia are dominant in Iran.) The Caliphate the institutionalized leadership of the Ummah thus was a Sunni institution that continued until 1924, first under Arab and eventually under Ottoman Turkish control. Many Muslims look back at the century after the revelations to the Prophet Mohammed as a golden age. Its memory is strongest among the Arabs.What happened then the spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and even into Europe within less than a century seemed,and seems,miraculous. 6 Nostalgia for Islam s past glory remains a powerful force. Islam is both a faith and a code of conduct for all aspects of life. For many Muslims, a good government would be one guided by the moral principles of their faith.this does not necessarily translate into a desire for clerical rule and the abolition of a secular state. It does mean that some Muslims tend to be uncomfortable with distinctions between religion and state, though Muslim rulers throughout history have readily separated the two. To extremists,however,such divisions,as well as the existence of parliaments and legislation, only prove these rulers to be false Muslims usurping God s authority over all aspects of life. Periodically, the Islamic world has seen surges of what, for want of a better term, is often labeled fundamentalism. 7 Denouncing waywardness among the faithful, some clerics have appealed for a return to observance of the literal teachings of the Qur an and Hadith. One scholar from the fourteenth century from whom Bin Ladin selectively quotes, Ibn Taimiyyah, condemned both corrupt rulers and the clerics who failed to criticize them.he urged Muslims to read the Qur an and the Hadith for themselves,not to depend solely on learned interpreters like himself but to hold one another to account for the quality of their observance. 8 The extreme Islamist version of history blames the decline from Islam s golden age on the rulers and people who turned away from the true path of their religion, thereby leaving Islam vulnerable to encroaching foreign powers eager to steal their land, wealth, and even their souls. Bin Ladin s Worldview Despite his claims to universal leadership, Bin Ladin offers an extreme view of Islamic history designed to appeal mainly to Arabs and Sunnis. He draws on fundamentalists who blame the eventual destruction of the Caliphate on leaders who abandoned the pure path of religious devotion. 9 He repeatedly calls on his followers to embrace martyrdom since the walls of oppression and

69 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 51 humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets. 10 For those yearning for a lost sense of order in an older, more tranquil world, he offers his Caliphate as an imagined alternative to today s uncertainty. For others, he offers simplistic conspiracies to explain their world. Bin Ladin also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb.A member of the Muslim Brotherhood 11 executed in 1966 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic scholarship with a very superficial acquaintance with Western history and thought. Sent by the Egyptian government to study in the United States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an enormous loathing of Western society and history. He dismissedwestern achievements as entirely material, arguing that Western society possesses nothing that will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence. 12 Three basic themes emerge from Qutb s writings. First, he claimed that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya, the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam.Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan.All Muslims as he defined them therefore must take up arms in this fight.any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction. 13 Bin Ladin shares Qutb s stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith.many Americans have wondered, Why do they hate us? Some also ask, What can we do to stop these attacks? Bin Ladin and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions.to the first, they say that America had attacked Islam; America is responsible for all conflicts involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight with Palestinians,when Russians fight with Chechens,when Indians fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims in its southern islands.america is also held responsible for the governments of Muslim countries,derided by al Qaeda as your agents. Bin Ladin has stated flatly, Our fight against these governments is not separate from our fight against you. 14 These charges found a ready audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at the United States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to America s support for their countries repressive rulers. Bin Ladin s grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper.to the second question, what America could do, al Qaeda s answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture: It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind. If the United States did not

70 52 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT comply, it would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda s leaders said desires death more than you desire life. 15 History and Political Context Few fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world gained lasting political power. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fundamentalists helped articulate anticolonial grievances but played little role in the overwhelmingly secular struggles for independence after World War I.Western-educated lawyers, soldiers,and officials led most independence movements,and clerical influence and traditional culture were seen as obstacles to national progress. After gaining independence from Western powers following World War II, the Arab Middle East followed an arc from initial pride and optimism to today s mix of indifference, cynicism, and despair. In several countries, a dynastic state already existed or was quickly established under a paramount tribal family. Monarchies in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Jordan still survive today.those in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, andyemen were eventually overthrown by secular nationalist revolutionaries. The secular regimes promised a glowing future, often tied to sweeping ideologies (such as those promoted by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser s Arab Socialism or the Ba ath Party of Syria and Iraq) that called for a single, secular Arab state. However, what emerged were almost invariably autocratic regimes that were usually unwilling to tolerate any opposition even in countries, such as Egypt, that had a parliamentary tradition. Over time, their policies repression, rewards, emigration, and the displacement of popular anger onto scapegoats (generally foreign) were shaped by the desire to cling to power. The bankruptcy of secular, autocratic nationalism was evident across the Muslim world by the late 1970s.At the same time, these regimes had closed off nearly all paths for peaceful opposition, forcing their critics to choose silence, exile, or violent opposition. Iran s 1979 revolution swept a Shia theocracy into power. Its success encouraged Sunni fundamentalists elsewhere. In the 1980s, awash in sudden oil wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shia Iran to promote its Sunni fundamentalist interpretation of Islam,Wahhabism. The Saudi government,always conscious of its duties as the custodian of Islam s holiest places, joined with wealthy Arabs from the Kingdom and other states bordering the Persian Gulf in donating money to build mosques and religious schools that could preach and teach their interpretation of Islamic doctrine. In this competition for legitimacy, secular regimes had no alternative to offer. Instead, in a number of cases their rulers sought to buy off local Islamist movements by ceding control of many social and educational issues. Emboldened rather than satisfied, the Islamists continued to push for power a trend especially clear in Egypt. Confronted with a violent Islamist movement that killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981, the Egyptian government combined

71 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 53 harsh repression of Islamic militants with harassment of moderate Islamic scholars and authors, driving many into exile. In Pakistan, a military regime sought to justify its seizure of power by a pious public stance and an embrace of unprecedented Islamist influence on education and society. These experiments in political Islam faltered during the 1990s: the Iranian revolution lost momentum, prestige, and public support, and Pakistan s rulers found that most of its population had little enthusiasm for fundamentalist Islam. Islamist revival movements gained followers across the Muslim world, but failed to secure political power except in Iran and Sudan. In Algeria, where in 1991 Islamists seemed almost certain to win power through the ballot box, the military preempted their victory, triggering a brutal civil war that continues today. Opponents of today s rulers have few, if any, ways to participate in the existing political system.they are thus a ready audience for calls to Muslims to purify their society, reject unwelcome modernization, and adhere strictly to the Sharia. Social and Economic Malaise In the 1970s and early 1980s, an unprecedented flood of wealth led the then largely unmodernized oil states to attempt to shortcut decades of development. They funded huge infrastructure projects, vastly expanded education, and created subsidized social welfare programs. These programs established a widespread feeling of entitlement without a corresponding sense of social obligations. By the late 1980s, diminishing oil revenues, the economic drain from many unprofitable development projects, and population growth made these entitlement programs unsustainable.the resulting cutbacks created enormous resentment among recipients who had come to see government largesse as their right.this resentment was further stoked by public understanding of how much oil income had gone straight into the pockets of the rulers, their friends, and their helpers. Unlike the oil states (or Afghanistan, where real economic development has barely begun), the other Arab nations and Pakistan once had seemed headed toward balanced modernization. The established commercial, financial, and industrial sectors in these states, supported by an entrepreneurial spirit and widespread understanding of free enterprise, augured well. But unprofitable heavy industry, state monopolies, and opaque bureaucracies slowly stifled growth. More importantly, these state-centered regimes placed their highest priority on preserving the elite s grip on national wealth. Unwilling to foster dynamic economies that could create jobs attractive to educated young men, the countries became economically stagnant and reliant on the safety valve of worker emigration either to the Arab oil states or to the West. Furthermore, the repression and isolation of women in many Muslim countries have not only seriously limited individual opportunity but also crippled overall economic productivity. 16 By the 1990s, high birthrates and declining rates of infant mortality had

72 54 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT produced a common problem throughout the Muslim world: a large, steadily increasing population of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment a sure prescription for social turbulence.many of these young men, such as the enormous number trained only in religious schools, lacked the skills needed by their societies. Far more acquired valuable skills but lived in stagnant economies that could not generate satisfying jobs. Millions, pursuing secular as well as religious studies, were products of educational systems that generally devoted little if any attention to the rest of the world s thought, history, and culture.the secular education reflected a strong cultural preference for technical fields over the humanities and social sciences. Many of these young men, even if able to study abroad, lacked the perspective and skills needed to understand a different culture. Frustrated in their search for a decent living, unable to benefit from an education often obtained at the cost of great family sacrifice, and blocked from starting families of their own, some of these young men were easy targets for radicalization. Bin Ladin s Historical Opportunity Most Muslims prefer a peaceful and inclusive vision of their faith, not the violent sectarianism of Bin Ladin.Among Arabs, Bin Ladin s followers are commonly nicknamed takfiri, or those who define other Muslims as unbelievers, because of their readiness to demonize and murder those with whom they disagree. Beyond the theology lies the simple human fact that most Muslims, like most other human beings, are repelled by mass murder and barbarism whatever their justification. All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true face of Islam, President Bush observed. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It s a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It s a faith based upon love, not hate. 17 Yet as political, social, and economic problems created flammable societies, Bin Ladin used Islam s most extreme, fundamentalist traditions as his match.all these elements including religion combined in an explosive compound. Other extremists had, and have, followings of their own. But in appealing to societies full of discontent, Bin Ladin remained credible as other leaders and symbols faded. He could stand as a symbol of resistance above all, resistance to the West and to America. He could present himself and his allies as victorious warriors in the one great successful experience for Islamic militancy in the 1980s: the Afghan jihad against the Soviet occupation. By 1998, Bin Ladin had a distinctive appeal, as he focused on attacking America. He argued that other extremists, who aimed at local rulers or Israel, did not go far enough.they had not taken on what he called the head of the snake. 18

73 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 55 Finally, Bin Ladin had another advantage: a substantial, worldwide organization. By the time he issued his February 1998 declaration of war, Bin Ladin had nurtured that organization for nearly ten years. He could attract, train, and use recruits for ever more ambitious attacks, rallying new adherents with each demonstration that his was the movement of the future. 2.3 THE RISE OF BIN LADIN AND AL QAEDA ( ) A decade of conflict in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989, gave Islamist extremists a rallying point and training field.a Communist government in Afghanistan gained power in 1978 but was unable to establish enduring control.at the end of 1979, the Soviet government sent in military units to ensure that the country would remain securely under Moscow s influence. The response was an Afghan national resistance movement that defeated Soviet forces. 19 Young Muslims from around the world flocked to Afghanistan to join as volunteers in what was seen as a holy war jihad against an invader.the largest numbers came from the Middle East. Some were Saudis, and among them was Usama Bin Ladin. Twenty-three when he arrived in Afghanistan in 1980, Bin Ladin was the seventeenth of 57 children of a Saudi construction magnate. Six feet five and thin, Bin Ladin appeared to be ungainly but was in fact quite athletic, skilled as a horseman, runner, climber, and soccer player. He had attended Abdul Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. By some accounts, he had been interested there in religious studies, inspired by tape recordings of fiery sermons by Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian and a disciple of Qutb.Bin Ladin was conspicuous among the volunteers not because he showed evidence of religious learning but because he had access to some of his family s huge fortune.though he took part in at least one actual battle,he became known chiefly as a person who generously helped fund the anti-soviet jihad. 20 Bin Ladin understood better than most of the volunteers the extent to which the continuation and eventual success of the jihad in Afghanistan depended on an increasingly complex, almost worldwide organization. This organization included a financial support network that came to be known as the Golden Chain, put together mainly by financiers in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. Donations flowed through charities or other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Bin Ladin and the Afghan Arabs drew largely on funds raised by this network, whose agents roamed world markets to buy arms and supplies for the mujahideen, or holy warriors. 21 Mosques, schools, and boardinghouses served as recruiting stations in many parts of the world, including the United States. Some were set up by Islamic extremists or their financial backers. Bin Ladin had an important part in this

74 56 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT activity. He and the cleric Azzam had joined in creating a Bureau of Services (Mektab al Khidmat, or MAK), which channeled recruits into Afghanistan. 22 The international environment for Bin Ladin s efforts was ideal. Saudi Arabia and the United States supplied billions of dollars worth of secret assistance to rebel groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation.this assistance was funneled through Pakistan: the Pakistani military intelligence service (Inter- Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISID), helped train the rebels and distribute the arms. But Bin Ladin and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the United States. 23 April 1988 brought victory for the Afghan jihad.moscow declared it would pull its military forces out of Afghanistan within the next nine months.as the Soviets began their withdrawal, the jihad s leaders debated what to do next. Bin Ladin and Azzam agreed that the organization successfully created for Afghanistan should not be allowed to dissolve.they established what they called a base or foundation (al Qaeda) as a potential general headquarters for future jihad. 24 Though Azzam had been considered number one in the MAK, by August 1988 Bin Ladin was clearly the leader (emir) of al Qaeda.This organization s structure included as its operating arms an intelligence component, a military committee, a financial committee, a political committee, and a committee in charge of media affairs and propaganda. It also had an Advisory Council (Shura) made up of Bin Ladin s inner circle. 25 Bin Ladin s assumption of the helm of al Qaeda was evidence of his growing self-confidence and ambition. He soon made clear his desire for unchallenged control and for preparing the mujahideen to fight anywhere in the world. Azzam, by contrast, favored continuing to fight in Afghanistan until it had a true Islamist government. And, as a Palestinian, he saw Israel as the top priority for the next stage. 26 Whether the dispute was about power, personal differences, or strategy, it ended on November 24, 1989, when a remotely controlled car bomb killed Azzam and both of his sons.the killers were assumed to be rival Egyptians. The outcome left Bin Ladin indisputably in charge of what remained of the MAK and al Qaeda. 27 Through writers like Qutb, and the presence of Egyptian Islamist teachers in the Saudi educational system, Islamists already had a strong intellectual influence on Bin Ladin and his al Qaeda colleagues. By the late 1980s, the Egyptian Islamist movement badly battered in the government crackdown following President Sadat s assassination was centered in two major organizations: the Islamic Group and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. A spiritual guide for both, but especially the Islamic Group, was the so-called Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman. His preaching had inspired the assassination of Sadat. After being in and out of Egyptian prisons during the 1980s,Abdel Rahman found

75 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 57 refuge in the United States. From his headquarters in Jersey City, he distributed messages calling for the murder of unbelievers. 28 The most important Egyptian in Bin Ladin s circle was a surgeon, Ayman al Zawahiri,who led a strong faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.Many of his followers became important members in the new organization, and his own close ties with Bin Ladin led many to think of him as the deputy head of al Qaeda. He would in fact become Bin Ladin s deputy some years later,when they merged their organizations. 29 Bin Ladin Moves to Sudan By the fall of 1989, Bin Ladin had sufficient stature among Islamic extremists that a Sudanese political leader, Hassan al Turabi, urged him to transplant his whole organization to Sudan.Turabi headed the National Islamic Front in a coalition that had recently seized power in Khartoum. 30 Bin Ladin agreed to help Turabi in an ongoing war against African Christian separatists in southern Sudan and also to do some road building.turabi in return would let Bin Ladin use Sudan as a base for worldwide business operations and for preparations for jihad. 31 While agents of Bin Ladin began to buy property in Sudan in 1990, 32 Bin Ladin himself moved from Afghanistan back to Saudi Arabia. In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Bin Ladin, whose efforts in Afghanistan had earned him celebrity and respect, proposed to the Saudi monarchy that he summon mujahideen for a jihad to retake Kuwait. He was rebuffed, and the Saudis joined the U.S.-led coalition.after the Saudis agreed to allow U.S. armed forces to be based in the Kingdom, Bin Ladin and a number of Islamic clerics began to publicly denounce the arrangement.the Saudi government exiled the clerics and undertook to silence Bin Ladin by, among other things, taking away his passport.with help from a dissident member of the royal family, he managed to get out of the country under the pretext of attending an Islamic gathering in Pakistan in April By 1994, the Saudi government would freeze his financial assets and revoke his citizenship. 34 He no longer had a country he could call his own. Bin Ladin moved to Sudan in 1991 and set up a large and complex set of intertwined business and terrorist enterprises. In time, the former would encompass numerous companies and a global network of bank accounts and nongovernmental institutions.fulfilling his bargain with Turabi,Bin Ladin used his construction company to build a new highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.meanwhile,al Qaeda finance officers and top operatives used their positions in Bin Ladin s businesses to acquire weapons, explosives, and technical equipment for terrorist purposes. One founding member, Abu Hajer al Iraqi, used his position as head of a Bin Ladin investment company to carry out procurement trips from western Europe to the Far East.Two others,wadi al Hage and Mubarak Douri, who had become acquainted in Tuc-

76 58 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT son,arizona, in the late 1980s, went as far afield as China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Belarus. 35 Bin Ladin s impressive array of offices covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities. The network included a major business enterprise in Cyprus; a services branch in Zagreb; an office of the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo, which supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with Serbia and Croatia; and an NGO in Baku, Azerbaijan, that was employed as well by Egyptian Islamic Jihad both as a source and conduit for finances and as a support center for the Muslim rebels in Chechnya. He also made use of the already-established Third World Relief Agency (TWRA) headquartered in Vienna, whose branch office locations included Zagreb and Budapest. (Bin Ladin later set up an NGO in Nairobi as a cover for operatives there.) 36 Bin Ladin now had a vision of himself as head of an international jihad confederation. In Sudan, he established an Islamic Army Shura that was to serve as the coordinating body for the consortium of terrorist groups with which he was forging alliances.it was composed of his own al Qaeda Shura together with leaders or representatives of terrorist organizations that were still independent. In building this Islamic army, he enlisted groups from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea.Al Qaeda also established cooperative but less formal relationships with other extremist groups from these same countries; from the African states of Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Uganda; and from the Southeast Asian states of Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Bin Ladin maintained connections in the Bosnian conflict as well. 37 The groundwork for a true global terrorist network was being laid. Bin Ladin also provided equipment and training assistance to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines and also to a newly forming Philippine group that called itself the Abu Sayyaf Brigade, after one of the major Afghan jihadist commanders. 38 Al Qaeda helped Jemaah Islamiya (JI), a nascent organization headed by Indonesian Islamists with cells scattered across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It also aided a Pakistani group engaged in insurrectionist attacks in Kashmir. In mid-1991, Bin Ladin dispatched a band of supporters to the northern Afghanistan border to assist the Tajikistan Islamists in the ethnic conflicts that had been boiling there even before the Central Asian departments of the Soviet Union became independent states. 39 This pattern of expansion through building alliances extended to the United States. A Muslim organization called al Khifa had numerous branch offices,the largest of which was in the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn.In the mid- 1980s, it had been set up as one of the first outposts of Azzam and Bin Ladin s MAK. 40 Other cities with branches of al Khifa included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Tucson. 41 Al Khifa recruited American Muslims to

77 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 59 fight in Afghanistan; some of them would participate in terrorist actions in the United States in the early 1990s and in al Qaeda operations elsewhere, including the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa. 2.4 BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION, DECLARING WAR ON THE UNITED STATES ( ) Bin Ladin began delivering diatribes against the United States before he left Saudi Arabia. He continued to do so after he arrived in Sudan. In early 1992, the al Qaeda leadership issued a fatwa calling for jihad against the Western occupation of Islamic lands. Specifically singling out U.S. forces for attack, the language resembled that which would appear in Bin Ladin s public fatwa in August In ensuing weeks, Bin Ladin delivered an often-repeated lecture on the need to cut off the head of the snake. 42 By this time, Bin Ladin was well-known and a senior figure among Islamist extremists, especially those in Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Still, he was just one among many diverse terrorist barons. Some of Bin Ladin s close comrades were more peers than subordinates.for example,usama Asmurai,also known aswali Khan, worked with Bin Ladin in the early 1980s and helped him in the Philippines and in Tajikistan. The Egyptian spiritual guide based in New Jersey, the Blind Sheikh, whom Bin Ladin admired, was also in the network.among sympathetic peers in Afghanistan were a few of the warlords still fighting for power and Abu Zubaydah, who helped operate a popular terrorist training camp near the border with Pakistan.There were also rootless but experienced operatives, such as Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who though not necessarily formal members of someone else s organization were traveling around the world and joining in projects that were supported by or linked to Bin Ladin, the Blind Sheikh, or their associates. 43 In now analyzing the terrorist programs carried out by members of this network,it would be misleading to apply the label al Qaeda operations too often in these early years.yet it would also be misleading to ignore the significance of these connections.and in this network, Bin Ladin s agenda stood out.while his allied Islamist groups were focused on local battles, such as those in Egypt, Algeria, Bosnia, or Chechnya, Bin Ladin concentrated on attacking the far enemy the United States. Attacks Known and Suspected After U.S. troops deployed to Somalia in late 1992, al Qaeda leaders formulated a fatwa demanding their eviction. In December, bombs exploded at two hotels in Aden where U.S.troops routinely stopped en route to Somalia,killing two, but no Americans.The perpetrators are reported to have belonged to a

78 60 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT group from southernyemen headed by ayemeni member of Bin Ladin s Islamic Army Shura; some in the group had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Sudan. 44 Al Qaeda leaders set up a Nairobi cell and used it to send weapons and trainers to the Somali warlords battling U.S. forces, an operation directly supervised by al Qaeda s military leader. 45 Scores of trainers flowed to Somalia over the ensuing months, including most of the senior members and weapons training experts of al Qaeda s military committee.these trainers were later heard boasting that their assistance led to the October 1993 shootdown of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters by members of a Somali militia group and to the subsequent withdrawal of U.S. forces in early In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside a Saudi-U.S. joint facility in Riyadh for training the Saudi National Guard. Five Americans and two officials from India were killed.the Saudi government arrested four perpetrators,who admitted being inspired by Bin Ladin.They were promptly executed. Though nothing proves that Bin Ladin ordered this attack, U.S. intelligence subsequently learned that al Qaeda leaders had decided a year earlier to attack a U.S. target in Saudi Arabia, and had shipped explosives to the peninsula for this purpose. Some of Bin Ladin s associates later took credit. 47 In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb detonated in the Khobar Towers residential complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that housed U.S. Air Force personnel. Nineteen Americans were killed, and 372 were wounded.the operation was carried out principally, perhaps exclusively, by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received support from the government of Iran.While the evidence of Iranian involvement is strong, there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown. 48 In this period, other prominent attacks in which Bin Ladin s involvement is at best cloudy are the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, a plot that same year to destroy landmarks in New York, and the 1995 Manila air plot to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific. Details on these plots appear in chapter 3. Another scheme revealed that Bin Ladin sought the capability to kill on a mass scale.his business aides received word that a Sudanese military officer who had been a member of the previous government cabinet was offering to sell weapons-grade uranium.after a number of contacts were made through intermediaries, the officer set the price at $1.5 million, which did not deter Bin Ladin.Al Qaeda representatives asked to inspect the uranium and were shown a cylinder about 3 feet long, and one thought he could pronounce it genuine. Al Qaeda apparently purchased the cylinder, then discovered it to be bogus. 49 But while the effort failed, it shows what Bin Ladin and his associates hoped to do. One of the al Qaeda representatives explained his mission: it s easy to kill more people with uranium. 50 Bin Ladin seemed willing to include in the confederation terrorists from

79 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 61 almost every corner of the Muslim world. His vision mirrored that of Sudan s Islamist leader,turabi, who convened a series of meetings under the label Popular Arab and Islamic Conference around the time of Bin Ladin s arrival in that country. Delegations of violent Islamist extremists came from all the groups represented in Bin Ladin s Islamic Army Shura. Representatives also came from organizations such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah. 51 Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support even if only training for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States.Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Ladin reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations.as will be described in chapter 7, al Qaeda contacts with Iran continued in ensuing years. 52 Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against Crusaders during the Gulf War of Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army. 53 To protect his own ties with Iraq,Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad s control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam.There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy. 54 With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request. 55 As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.

80 62 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Sudan Becomes a Doubtful Haven Not until 1998 did al Qaeda undertake a major terrorist operation of its own, in large part because Bin Ladin lost his base in Sudan. Ever since the Islamist regime came to power in Khartoum, the United States and otherwestern governments had pressed it to stop providing a haven for terrorist organizations. Other governments in the region, such as those of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and even Libya, which were targets of some of these groups, added their own pressure.at the same time, the Sudanese regime began to change.though Turabi had been its inspirational leader, General Omar al Bashir, president since 1989, had never been entirely under his thumb.thus as outside pressures mounted, Bashir s supporters began to displace those of Turabi. The attempted assassination in Ethiopia of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in June 1995 appears to have been a tipping point. The would-be killers, who came from the Egyptian Islamic Group, had been sheltered in Sudan and helped by Bin Ladin. 56 When the Sudanese refused to hand over three individuals identified as involved in the assassination plot, the UN Security Council passed a resolution criticizing their inaction and eventually sanctioned Khartoum in April A clear signal to Bin Ladin that his days in Sudan were numbered came when the government advised him that it intended to yield to Libya s demands to stop giving sanctuary to its enemies. Bin Ladin had to tell the Libyans who had been part of his Islamic army that he could no longer protect them and that they had to leave the country. Outraged, several Libyan members of al Qaeda and the Islamic Army Shura renounced all connections with him. 58 Bin Ladin also began to have serious money problems. International pressure on Sudan, together with strains in the world economy, hurt Sudan s currency. Some of Bin Ladin s companies ran short of funds. As Sudanese authorities became less obliging,normal costs of doing business increased.saudi pressures on the Bin Ladin family also probably took some toll.in any case,bin Ladin found it necessary both to cut back his spending and to control his outlays more closely.he appointed a new financial manager,whom his followers saw as miserly. 59 Money problems proved costly to Bin Ladin in other ways. Jamal Ahmed al Fadl, a Sudanese-born Arab, had spent time in the United States and had been recruited for the Afghan war through the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn. He had joined al Qaeda and taken the oath of fealty to Bin Ladin, serving as one of his business agents. Then Bin Ladin discovered that Fadl had skimmed about $110,000, and he asked for restitution. Fadl resented receiving a salary of only $500 a month while some of the Egyptians in al Qaeda were given $1,200 a month. He defected and became a star informant for the United States. Also testifying about al Qaeda in a U.S.court was L Houssaine Kherchtou,who told of breaking with Bin Ladin because of Bin Ladin s professed inability to provide him with money when his wife needed a caesarian section. 60 In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials from the

81 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM 63 United States and other governments, asking what actions of theirs might ease foreign pressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered to expel Bin Ladin to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions, certainly by March. Saudi officials apparently wanted Bin Ladin expelled from Sudan.They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and would not tolerate his presence in their country. And Bin Ladin may have no longer felt safe in Sudan, where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, or both. In any case, on May 19, 1996, Bin Ladin left Sudan significantly weakened, despite his ambitions and organizational skills. He returned to Afghanistan AL QAEDA S RENEWAL IN AFGHANISTAN ( ) Bin Ladin flew on a leased aircraft from Khartoum to Jalalabad, with a refueling stopover in the United Arab Emirates. 62 He was accompanied by family members and bodyguards, as well as by al Qaeda members who had been close associates since his organization s 1988 founding in Afghanistan. Dozens of additional militants arrived on later flights. 63 Though Bin Ladin s destination was Afghanistan, Pakistan was the nation that held the key to his ability to use Afghanistan as a base from which to revive his ambitious enterprise for war against the United States. For the first quarter century of its existence as a nation, Pakistan s identity had derived from Islam, but its politics had been decidedly secular.the army was and remains the country s strongest and most respected institution,and the army had been and continues to be preoccupied with its rivalry with India, especially over the disputed territory of Kashmir. From the 1970s onward,religion had become an increasingly powerful force in Pakistani politics. After a coup in 1977, military leaders turned to Islamist groups for support, and fundamentalists became more prominent. South Asia had an indigenous form of Islamic fundamentalism, which had developed in the nineteenth century at a school in the Indian village of Deoband. 64 The influence of the Wahhabi school of Islam had also grown, nurtured by Saudifunded institutions.moreover,the fighting in Afghanistan made Pakistan home to an enormous and generally unwelcome population of Afghan refugees; and since the badly strained Pakistani education system could not accommodate the refugees, the government increasingly let privately funded religious schools serve as a cost-free alternative. Over time, these schools produced large numbers of half-educated young men with no marketable skills but with deeply held Islamic views. 65 Pakistan s rulers found these multitudes of ardent young Afghans a source

82 64 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT of potential trouble at home but potentially useful abroad.those who joined the Taliban movement, espousing a ruthless version of Islamic law, perhaps could bring order in chaotic Afghanistan and make it a cooperative ally.they thus might give Pakistan greater security on one of the several borders where Pakistani military officers hoped for what they called strategic depth. 66 It is unlikely that Bin Ladin could have returned to Afghanistan had Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advance knowledge of his coming,and its officers may have facilitated his travel. During his entire time in Sudan, he had maintained guesthouses and training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.These were part of a larger network used by diverse organizations for recruiting and training fighters for Islamic insurgencies in such places as Tajikistan, Kashmir, and Chechnya. Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced Bin Ladin to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near