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During his trip to Pakistan and India Sec. of State Colin Powell found how tortured is the political path for President Bush’s war on terrorism. His presence did not halt New Delhi’s “hot pursuit” riposte to an earlier bloody attack on the Kashmir assembly. An Islamic terrorist group based in Pakistan claimed responsibility. But New Delhi had, earlier still, negotiated the release of that gang’s leader after he hijacked an Indian airliner to Afghanistan. And now New Delhi’s intelligence says he transferred money to the New York Twin Towers terrorists. When Powell tried to damp down the escalation — and the possibility of an accidental nuclear exchange — he fell into the tarpit of the interminable 50-year-old Kashmir argument. His rhetorical exit was a kind of international version of President Clinton’s “is is is?”
On to Shanghai where the Asian Pacific Economic Community was meeting: President Bush fulsomely praised China’s collaboration against international antiterrorism. But he warned against Beijing using it — as it does — to further oppress the Moslem Uighurs in China’s Central Asia province, Sinkiang. Beijing appears happy to see the Taliban go down because they trained Uighur guerrillas — even though, as in Iraq, Beijing was building Afghanistan digital telecommunications at the very moment of the U.S. atrocities.
Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia whose police have acknowledged Osama Bin Ladin operations there, and President Megawatti, who only days earlier in Washington endorsed the U.S. campaign, publicly criticized military efforts in Afghanistan, knuckling under to their own extremist Islamicists. Russian President Putin chimed in as a full partner with the U.S., even apparently abandoning opposition [this week, tune in next week] to Bush’s dedication to building missile defense. He wants his own dirty little war in Chechnya — replete with horrendous human rights violations — wrapped in the new antiterrorist package. There are reports Moscow hopes to make an end-run around any U.S.-Pakistan effort to create a broad-based post-Taliban government by sending some military into Kabul with the Northern Alliance, predominantly Tajibs and Uzbeks, before the U.S. breaks the Taliban hold on the larger Afghanistan Pusthun community.
Putin just announced new trade deals to pump more nuclear and military technology into Iran, one of the principle sponsors of state terrorism. That includes what’s generally believed was Iran’s role in the death of 19 American military at the Khobar Barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, one of Osama Bin Ladin’s early outrages. Iran, of course, is trying to build nuclear weapons to be delivered by ballistic missiles. The Chinese Communists’ favorite Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka Shing, has got a new contract for Iran’s port of Bandar Abas at the entrance to the oil sealanes coming out of the Persian Gulf. And North Korean and China are selling improved missiles to Tehran that also could threaten traffic through the narrow choke point at Hormuz. All of this while Washington “globalization” forces promote the idea of using trade concessions to reinforce the moderate elements in the Iran government, seemingly powerless until now against the ultraconservative clerics who direct the terrorism.
And there is more including increasing evidence that some of Saudi Arabia’s most respected leaders have supported Osmana Bin Ladin’s activities, either because they share his worldview or [more likely] by paying for “protection”. The suspicion that the state terrorist networks of Iraq and Syria supported the 911 terrorist activities grows with increasing evidence of the operations’ sophistication and organization. On the sidelines, the minor league terrorists continue: in Sri Lanka, where 29 people died in a suicide bomber terrorist blast two days after 911, the Tamil Tiger insurgents — supplied and financed out of South India — reportedly have new North Korean speedboats.
Thus with each passing day, we get a more and more convoluted picture of the snarl of worldwide terrorist connections and the contradictions within the coalition.
In 333 BC, Alexander the Great, reached Gordium in what is today eastern Turkey, and was shown the chariot of the ancient founder of the city, Gordius. The chariot’s yoke was lashed with an incredibly intricate knot. Legend had it that he who untied this knot was to be the future conqueror of Asia. One story is that the youthful, decisive Alexander simply sliced through the knot with his sword. But other versions say he was more cerebral, that he found the ends either by cutting into the knot or by drawing out the pole. "Cutting the Gordian knot" has come to mean a bold solution to a complicated problem.
That kind of decision awaits President Bush as winter comes on in Afghanistan, civilian casualties mount and increase criticism particularly in the Moslem world, the coalition gets more and more shaky, as he makes his way back from the empty rhetoric of the Shanghai APEC meeting.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.