Posted on 05/09/2002 10:57:27 PM PDT by Spar
U.S. Calls Bomb Blast in Russia an 'Atrocity'
Thu May 9, 5:10 PM ET
By Elaine Monaghan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States condemned as an "atrocity" a blast near the Russian region of Chechnya (news - web sites) on Thursday that killed at least 34 people, including 12 children, saying it looked like terrorism but declining to blame the attack on Chechen separatist guerrillas.
"We were saddened to learn of the bomb blast," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a news briefing after the attack that also injured more than 150 people and scattered bodies where a Russian Victory Day parade had been taking place.
"Many of the victims were elderly and were children. Our sincere condolences go out to the Russian people and the victims' families," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) blamed the attack in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk on "terrorists," the usual Kremlin term to describe separatist Chechen rebels.
Boucher drew no link with Moscow's battle in the north Caucasus region of Chechnya, the scene of two conflicts between separatists and Russian forces since the 1990s and bordering the region of Dagestan where the blast occurred.
"We strongly condemn this cowardly and violent act. We look forward to seeing the perpetrators of these attacks brought to justice," Boucher said.
"I don't think at this point we have a sense of who's responsible for committing this atrocity. I have to say it looks like terrorism plain and simple, and the first issue therefore is to find, identify and punish the perpetrators," he added.
Boucher said U.S. views on Chechnya, which are that Moscow should seek a political settlement to the conflict and that there is no military solution, were unchanged.
U.S.-Russian relations have flourished since attacks by Islamic militant followers of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon (news - web sites) near Washington on Sept. 11 that killed about 3,000 people.
President Bush (news - web sites) is due to visit Russia this month for summit talks with Putin.
Both men have made fighting terrorism a hallmark of their presidencies. Putin has emphasized alleged links between some of the Chechen guerrillas and bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
The State Department revived references to the alleged connections after Sept. 11 in an apparent reward to Putin, the first foreign leader to reach Bush after the U.S. attacks.
Putin, drawing parallels with his people's suffering in a series of apartment-building bombings that Moscow blamed on Chechens, announced an interest in political talks shortly afterward, although they have come to nothing.
Concerned by the scale of Russia's campaigns in which thousands of civilians have been killed and the Chechen capital, Grozny, virtually reduced to rubble, Washington has tried to encourage Putin to differentiate between terrorism and Chechens who seek independence for their mountainous, mainly Muslim region.
We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.It once seemed pretty clear. It amazes me how some can forget so quickly.And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
President Bush's address Thursday September 20, 2001
Time to bring back the four-flag graphic here soon after 9/11 -- three flags with crosses, representing Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox, and the Israeli flag. I didn't realize that the Cross of Jerusalem on the flag representing Catholicism was from the arms of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the Crusaders. (The Franks have certainly gone downhill since then!)
Responding to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher's advice to the Russians that they "find, identify and punish the perpetrators" of the massive bomb attack against civilians at a WWII Victory Day celebration, the Russian government has announced it will begin aerial attacks against designated targets in Washington DC and outlying suburban areas.
Citing massive evidence of United States Government complicity in forming, financing, arming and training an "arc" of militant Islamic activity along the border of the former "Evil Empire", the Russians wished the American People well in their ongoing battle against evil and terrorism "and all the governments who support these regrettable things," as a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry put it.
'Le Nouvel Observateur' (France) | Jan 15-21, 1998 | Interview
Ex-National Security Chief Brzezinski admits:
Afghan Islamism Was Made in Washington
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National
Security Adviser in 'Le Nouvel Observateur' (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76
Translated by Bill Blum
=======================================
***
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
***
Note: There are at least two editions of 'Le Nouvel Observateur.' With apparently the sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version. The Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version. *
******
Jihad Textbooks Made in America
"......THE PRIMERS, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code. As Afghan schools reopen today, the United States is back in the business of providing schoolbooks. But now it is wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence.
‘SCRUBBING’ THE BOOKS
Last month, a U.S. foreign aid official said, workers launched a “scrubbing” operation in neighboring Pakistan to purge from the books all references to rifles and killing. Many of the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and teach Muslim tenets. The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy.” Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.
Organizations accepting funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development must certify that tax dollars will not be used to advance religion. The certification states that AID “will finance only programs that have a secular purpose. . . . AID-financed activities cannot result in religious indoctrination of the ultimate beneficiaries.” The issue of textbook content reflects growing concern among U.S. policymakers about school teachings in some Muslim countries in which Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism are on the rise. A number of government agencies are discussing what can be done to counter these trends.
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have repeatedly spotlighted the Afghan textbooks in recent weeks. Last Saturday, Bush announced during his weekly radio address that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to Afghan schools would teach “respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry.”
$6.5 MILLION IN GOVERNMENT MONEY
‘It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction. But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.’
— KATHRYN STRATOS AID spokeswoman
The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide textbooks and teacher training kits. AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said. “It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.” Some legal experts disagreed. A 1991 federal appeals court ruling against AID’s former director established that taxpayers’ funds may not pay for religious instruction overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert at American University, who litigated the case for the American Civil Liberties Union. Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the White House has “not a legal leg to stand on” in distributing the books. “Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are religious,” she said.
Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.
ONE TANK, TWO TANKS, THREE TANKS, FOUR
During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.
“I think we were perfectly happy to see these books trashing the Soviet Union,” said Chris Brown, head of book revision for AID’s Central Asia Task Force. AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996. Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers.
“The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse,” said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-based nonprofit.
ONE BOOK, 43% VIOLENT
An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages. The military content was included to “stimulate resistance against invasion,” explained Yaquib Roshan of Nebraska’s Afghanistan center. “Even in January, the books were absolutely the same . . . pictures of bullets and Kalashnikovs and you name it.” During the Taliban era, censors purged human images from the books. One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier’s head is missing. Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.
“We were quite shocked,” said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. “The constant image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have to create it.”
NEW BOOKS, OLD TEXTS
‘We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime curriculum.’
— CHRIS BROWN Central Asia Task Force, U.S. Agency for International Development
After the United States launched a military campaign last year, the United Nations education agency, UNICEF, began preparing to reopen Afghanistan’s schools, using new books developed with 70 Afghan educators and 24 private aid groups. In early January, UNICEF began printing new texts for many subjects but arranged to supply copies of the old, unrevised U.S. books for other subjects, including Islamic instruction. Within days, the Afghan interim government announced that it would use the old AID-produced texts for its core school curriculum. UNICEF’s new texts could be used only as supplements. Earlier this year, the United States tapped into its $296 million aid package for rebuilding Afghanistan to reprint the old books, but decided to purge the violent references. About 18 of the 200 titles the United States is republishing are primarily Islamic instructional books, which agency officials refer to as “civics” courses. Some books teach how to live according to the Koran, Brown said, and “how to be a good Muslim.”
UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old “militarized” books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy, according to U.N. officials. On Feb. 4, Brown arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani border town in which the textbooks were to be printed, to oversee hasty revisions to the printing plates. Ten Afghan educators labored night and day, scrambling to replace rough drawings of weapons with sketches of pomegranates and oranges, Brown said. “We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime curriculum,” he said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Afghan Saudi Islamism Was Made in Washington.. of course this is the brand of radicalized Islam that was exported to al queda camps in afganistan, and around the arab and islamic street, so to many, this point is moot.
Just thought I might mention it, for clarity's sake.
I don't think that we can very well say that selling to Iran (a nation that supports terrorism) is bad, while us selling to Saudi Arabia (a nation that supports terrorism) is good.
We also sell to staunch allies like Egypt, Kuwait, and the UAE, too. I think all of them have spoken out against us since 9/11, too.
It is my belief that the biggest benefit a secure alliance with Russia could offer (besides huge amounts of raw materials just waiting to be exploited in Siberia) is that between the two of us, we could pressure just about every country in the world to stay in line. Kind of like how it was in the Cold War, only us working together.
Which, as I'm sure you know, is the largest importer of American arms. Keeping their neighbors supplied, maybe?
The American action in Afghanistan was due to a terrible and unprovoked act of terrorism. The causes of the Russian action in Chechnya are not so clear cut. Chechen bandits may well have been reponsible for the kidnappings and torture of Russian citizens post 1996, but they did not represent the Chechen Government. The Moscow bombings could have been done by anyone, the FSB are my bet.
For example, if the FSB bomb that was planted in Ryazan was just an exercise, as was claimed by the FSB, then why did the FSB originally blame it on terrorists?
Answer: That was their original plan. But they had to accept reponsibility because their agents were seen planting the device and the Police could prove that the device was real and not a fake.
Why was it almost two days before the FSB stated it was only an exercise?
Answer: because they realised that the Police could prove the bomb was real and could also prove it was planted by the FSB.
Why after planting the bomb, were the FSB agents concerned, advised on the telephone by the FSB HQ, to split up because the railway station was being watched by the Police?
Answer: Because the bomb they planted was real and they didn't want to be caught!
Why has Putin classified all records pertaining to the Ryazan bomb for 75 years?
Answer: Because the FSB planted a live bomb in Ryazan, in order to blame the subsequent atrocity on the Chechens.
Why does Putin continue to block an investigation into the Moscow Bombings, the worst cases of terrorism on Russian soil?
Answer: Because he knows they had nothing to do with Chechens and it was actually the FSB who was responsible for them.
The Chechen rebel incursion into Dagestan was what kicked off the Russian conflict against invading Chechen forces. However, Putin seized on the Moscow bombings to gain popular support for an invasion of Chechnya to impose a puppet pro-Moscow Government on that rebellious region.
No one is suggesting that Russia should lie down and suffer terrorism. But the mass torture, rape and killing of Chechen civilians is state coordinated terrorism. Besides, Russia has subjugated Chechnya for two hundred years, so its not as if they didn't have an ulterior motive to start the second Chechen war.
Finally, why is it that everytime there is some kind of terrorist incident in Russia, Putin automatically blames it on Chechens without any evidence?
Answer: I suppose he can be sure that the FSB will always be able to find some evidence that the latest bombing was done by Chechens, whether or not that evidence exists. Perhaps, its because he wants to use every atrocity he can to excuse the ongoing Russian mass murder in Chechnya.
As said as it is to say, to bad it wasn't 3 thousand dead in DC instead of NYC...would have cleared up reality for these Washington human leeches...er politicians...a bit.
Why should a fair, just, democratic country like the USA, want to get involved with a vicious pretend democracy (or should I say oligarchy) with no respect for human rights or justice, like Russia?
I'm sure the Russian Government would have loved it if September the 11th had been even worse for America. Because then the US Government would have been ready to turn a blind eye to Russia's genocide against the rebellious Chechen people forever.
As for Chechnya, ethnic cleansing started in '91 with the expulsion at the end of a gun of 450,000 Russians, Georgian, Jews and Armenians, shortly followed by the expulsion of 500,000 moderate Chechins. This continued with the self exile of 250,000 more Chechins as the Russian forces drove in during '99. But then again, refugees vote with their feet..and where did these Chechins vote? In Russia, as they were all heading North, while Federal Forces were heading South!
As for why this war started, couldn't have anything to do with the proclamation of the Mashkedov government of the rise of the Taliban Republic of the Caucusses to stretch and include all the lands of the Caucuses and Southern Russia/Ukraine. And the invasion of Daghestan by Bashkedov, the Minister of Defense of Chechnya, and the subsequent (all video taped by the Chechyns themselves) extermination of several Daghistani villages that resisted.
Oh, but it must have been those conspiracy theories, after all, Islam is all loving. You live in a fantasy world...and for your information, most American records are kept secret for 50 years and Brit records for 90 years.
Am I Russophobic because I don't believe everything the Russian Government says? Do you believe everything the FSB says? Do you think Vladimir Putin cares more about his people or about his country's Military status?
If I don't care about Russian conscripts, then why would I bother doing all that research into their circumstances and posting a message giving the contact details of an organisation that defends their rights? The fact is, you think that everyone who criticises Russia is Russophobic. That sort of Russian paranoia seems to be very common, perhaps its all those compulsory Military training classes you had to attend at school! Just because someone doesn't agree with you, that doesn't automatically make them your enemy.
The second you showed up you had your political agenda out and about.
What political agenda? Is it wrong to be suspicious of a country whose secret service has a history as infamous as Russia's and which is led by an ex-KGB career officer?
Jugding by your past article you are seriously anti Russian (ELECTED) government and into conspiracy theories.
Vladimir Putin and the current Russian Government didn't have much competition as I remember it. Especially, after he made it clear he would invade Chechnya in the wake of the Moscow bombings, which made him very popular with the Russian masses.
The Russian Constitution gives him massive power, he can only be deposed if it can be proved he has committed high treason. He has immunity from criminal prosecution, he can pass laws without any consultation and veto laws suggested by the Duma. Does that sound like democracy to you Stavka2?
The devices were identicle to those used by the Bin Ladin in the US Embassy bombings (as was the testimony of the FBI head of forensics to the US Congress) or do you believe those were also planted by the CIA.
I'm sure the FSB are perfectly capable of making their bombs look like a bona fide Chechen device.
Say what you like about me Stavka2, the facts show that the Russians have exploited terrorist incidents, without any evidence about who caused them, in order to gain popular Russian support for the war in Chechnya.
If Putin was so obsessed with Russian military supremicy, why does he spend so little on it? Just like last time, your arguements have large holes in them. Try thinking through them a bit more, next time.
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