Pakiban I.

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Public schools are—or should be—a big issue for Pakistan. The country is very poor. It isn’t a major oil producer, nor does it have much in the way of other natural resources. Other countries in similar circumstances, like South Korea, have created a competitive advantage by investing heavily in improved “human capital.” That means public education. You build up from the primary schools to secondary schools to technical training schools to universities. Furthermore, developing countries can’t afford to ignore any segment of the school-age population in this drive for prosperity. As was the case with the American and European public schools systems created in the 19th Century, girls and boys both have to go to school. Education is only part of the solution to national and individual poverty, but it is a vital part.

Pakistan needs such a basic school system: about one-quarter of its population is aged between 5 and 16 years old. It doesn’t have one.[1]

Almost half of the school age population doesn’t go to school at all. Almost all of the children not in school are girls. The law says that they are supposed to go to school. But imams and parents say that girls should not go to school. The government doesn’t bother or doesn’t dare to enforce the law.

Test scores for primary school students matter most in a country building up its schools from the bottom. In Pakistan, about half of 10 year-olds score at the level of 6 year-olds in language mastery, at the level of 7 year-olds in arithmetic. How do you make only one year or two years of progress in five years of school?

You turn the schools into a political machine, that’s how. Right from the establishment of independence in 1947, Pakistan has botched its public school system. The school system has always been under-financed relative to needs. Then much of the funding has been diverted into the pockets of crooked politicians and their bureaucratic clients. Half of public primary schools have no electricity. Forty percent have no working toilets. A third have no drinking water.

Jobs as school teachers became a plum awarded to political supporters and nephews. Usually the teacher’s salary goes to the man who got him the job, while the teacher sells off whatever school resources fall into his grasp and takes another job. So, Pakistan has schoolrooms with students, but without teachers or books or desks. In the 1970s and 1980s the national government played to a rising religious tide by “Islamizing” the school curriculum.

Everyone knows that the schools are a disaster. Malala Yousafzai was campaigning against the many failings of the school system when she came to the attention of the Taliban. Many powerful people have a vested interest in the disaster continuing. Is it fair to ask if the government of Pakistan put the Taliban up to shooting Malala Yousafzai so that it wouldn’t have to do the work itself?

Pakistan isn’t the only developing country with a disdain for public education or for school girls. Aravind Adiga’s novel of contemporary India, The White Tiger, scalded Indian opinion exactly because it told so many truths about the country, the schools included. The kidnapping of hundreds of school-girls by the Nigerian Islamist movement Bozo Haram[2] is telling about the attitude of Islamists. The slack response of the Nigerian government is even more telling about the attitude of an elite pre-occupied with stealing oil revenues.

It’s worth comparing these places with Japan, China, South Korea, and even Turkey.

[1] Mosharraf Zaidi, “How Pakistan Fails Its Children,” NYT, 15 October 2014.

 

[2] Yes, I know, but did you ever see that guy on television?

What We Learned From the Report of the 9/11 Commission VII.

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What was more important in 1998, fending off a nuclear war on the Indian sub-continent or working out on Pakistan to get it to pressure the religious fanatics running Afghanistan to evict a co-religionist who hated Americans? After Pakistan had tested a nuclear weapon in May 1998, the Congress had slapped heavy sanctions on the impoverished, unstable country. This left American diplomacy with little leverage in the effort to apply pressure on the Taliban. Now Pakistan’s relations with India were at an apparent breaking point because of the struggle over Kashmir. Most American diplomats involved in South Asia policy-making preferred to downplay the terrorism issue until the possibility of nuclear war had been contained. Diplomacy got nowhere by the end of 1999. (pp. 177-185.)

 

Covert Action.

After the August 1998 embassy bombings, President Clinton signed a Memorandum of Notification that instructed the CIA to attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden, but authorized the use of deadly force only for self-defense. (pp. 185, 192.) By Christmas 1998 Berger, Tenet, and Clinton purportedly had all come around to favor killing Bin Laden if he could not be captured; Clinton approved a new Memorandum of Notification to this effect. (p. 193.) However, this memo referred only to the tribal fighters in touch with the CIA, it was circulated only to a handful of people at the highest level of government, Clinton greatly diluted a similar proposed agreement with the Northern Alliance, and no CIA officials ever got the idea that Clinton seriously desired to kill—rather than capture for trial—Osama Bin Laden.

While the “sissies in striped pants” at State were doing their thing to no visible effect, the CIA and the FBI were busy busting up Al Qaeda operations overseas. During August and September 1998 al Qaeda people were arrested in Britain, Italy, Germany, and Azerbaijan.

The Afghan tribal fighters seemed to provide valuable intelligence on the location of Bin Laden, although no one in Langley thought that their purported efforts to kill Bin Laden were very credible. [NB: Reading between the lines, it appears that the tribals were milking the CIA for money and were not going to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs by killing or capturing OBL.]

In October, November, and December 1998 concern that al Qaeda meant to launch a terrorist attack within the United States led to various alerts and to discussion of an attempt to hit Bin Laden in Kandahar, but the decision-makers choked on the latter option—much to the annoyance of lower level officials.[1] Lieutenant General William Boykin, a snake-eater from way back and subsequently the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, later said of this time that “opportunities were missed because of an unwillingness to take risks and a lack of vision and understanding.” (quoted, p. 199.)

[1] This lower-ranks frustration with the caution of the upper-ranks is similar to the later improvisation of a response to the 9/11 hijackings. This emerges as one of the key factors in understanding American vulnerability to attack. The Federal government appears to recruit and promote cautious, consensus-oriented CYA people.

What We Learned form the Report of the 9/11 Commission VI.

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“The modest national effort exerted to contain Serbia and its depredations in the Balkans between 1995 and 1999, for example, was orders of magnitude larger than that devoted to al Qaeda.” (p. 487.) Neither the American public nor American leaders seemed to even notice terrorism as a problem in the post-Cold War environment.

 

Crisis: August 1998.

Immediately after the embassy bombings CIA Director George Tenet knew that there would be a big gathering of terrorist leaders at Khowst in Afghanistan on 20 August 1998, and CentCOM commander Tony Zinni had his cruise missile plan already to go. The responsible decision-makers talked over the issues until 20 May and sent the Vice-Chairman of the JCS to warn the Pakistanis that the cruise missiles flying through their air space were not an Indian attack. Nobody wanted a nuclear war on the sub-continent as an unintended by-product of the strike at Bin Laden, but this probably constituted a serious breach of security. The missiles missed Bin Laden by a few hours and some people think that he was warned off by Pakistan’s intelligence service. (pp. 169-171.)

Clarke wanted the cruise missiles strikes of 20 August 1998 to be the opening act for continuous efforts to kill Bin Laden. It was not to be. (pp. 175-176.)

Although JCS Chairman Hugh Shelton ordered CENTCOM to plan for additional measures, he “did not recommend any of them.” “Shelton felt that the August 1998 attacks had been a waste of good ordnance and thereafter consistently opposed firing expensive Tomahawk missiles merely at ‘jungle gym’ terrorist training infrastructure. In this view, he had complete support from Defense Secretary William Cohen. Shelton was prepared to plan other options, but he was also prepared to make perfectly clear his own strong doubts about the wisdom of any military action that risked U.S. lives unless the intelligence was ‘actionable.’”(pp. 502, 503.)

CENTCOM commander Tony Zinni, who actually had to come up with a possible scheme, believed that a long-term development of relationships with neighboring countries made the most sense. Covert action of any kind would require some kind of local base. Zinni got the feeling that Washington was picky about doing business with dictators merely because they could help out the United States. (p. 197.)

Already haunted by memories of “Desert One” and “Black Hawk Down,” decision-makers probably became even more cautious about using force to solve the Bin Laden problem in the wake of the failed cruise missile strikes of 20 August 1998. (pp. 172-173.)

In addition to missing Bin Laden, there were serious downsides to this attack: international opinion heaped abuse on the US for being “bomb-happy”; the Republicans ridiculed Clinton for “pinpricks.” (pp. 172-173.)

Soon afterward, American diplomatic and military power was being applied in the Balkans against Serbia (October 1998-March 1999) and in the Middle East against Iraq (December 1998). This distracted most of the key people from problem of terrorism.

At the same time it is important to note that people working for Allen Holmes, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, produced a paper calling on the Defense Department to assume the lead in the global fight against terrorism. (pp. 176-177.) This paper did not get very far up the chain of approval during the Clinton Administration, but it may have lain dormant until Rumsfeld came to the Pentagon.

Sore Winners and Sore Losers from Obamacare.

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Medicare provides health insurance for 98 percent of Americans aged 65 and over.

Who lacked/lacks health insurance before/since the Affordable Care Act (ACA)?

Group                                                  Before ACA               Today              Difference.

All Americans under 65                      16.4 percent                11.3 percent    -31 percent.

Hispanic-Mexicans                              26.2 percent                16.5 percent    -37 percent

Blacks                                                             24.1 percent                16.1 percent    -33 percent.

Whites                                                14.1 percent                10.0 percent    -29 percent

Asians                                                             13.6 percent                 9.7 percent    -29 percent

Aged between 18 and 34,                   21.6 percent                14.2 percent    -34 percent[1]

Aged 35 to 44                                     16.4 percent                11.2 percent    -32 percent

Aged 45 to 54                                     15.0 percent                10.6 percent    -29 percent

Aged 55 to 64                                                 12.7 percent.               9.1 percent    -28 percent

Poorest 20 percent of neighborhoods 26.4 percent                17.5 percent    -36 percent

Next poorest 20 percent                      21.6 percent                14.3 percent    -34 percent

Middle 20 percent,                              17.6 percent                11.9 percent   -33 percent

Next highest 20 percent                      13.4 percent                 9.4 percent    -30 percent

Richest 20 percent                               6.5 percent                6.5 percent    ————–

 

Overall and within almost all groups, the ACA has reduced the uninsured by about one-third. Still, two-thirds of those who were uninsured before the ACA remain uninsured today.

Why hasn’t a plan intended to provide almost all Americans with health insurance come anywhere near to achieving that goal? In large measure, the failures of this part of the ACA go back to its design. The ACA originally sought to coerce the states into expanding Medicaid to cover many of those who are uninsured today. In 2012, the Supreme Court rejected that component of the plan. States were left free to expand or not expand Medicaid. So far, twenty-seven states have chosen to expand Medicaid, while twenty-three have rejected it.

Why did many states reject Medicaid expansion? One answer would be Republican wrecking tactics directed against the center-piece of President Obama’s agenda. However, not all Republican-led states rejected expansion and not all Democratic-led states accepted it.

It is possible that rational calculation played a role. The states that rejected expansion had an average uninsured rate of 18.2 percent before the ACA, while those that accepted expansion had an average uninsured rate of 14.9 percent. Federal subsidies for expanded Medicaid are scheduled to be reduced in a few years. States will have to increase their share of the expanded costs. Many of the states that rejected Medicaid expansion pursue a low-tax strategy to attract business. Other parts of the ACA were not completely thought through. Perhaps the failure to make the complete Federal subsidy permanent is another such “glitch.” It will take a Democratic House, Senate, and White House to fix it.

Even in states that expanded Medicare, 9.2 percent of people remain without insurance.   Why? Ignorance? A libertarian resistance to coercive good intentions? Most Republicans have an ideological opposition to an “entitlement” that was forced on them by Democrats. Unlike post-war Europe, there is no consensus on this issue.

Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz, “Obama’s Health Law: Who Was Helped Most,” NYT, 29 October 2014.

[1] Understates the gain because it doesn’t include the three million people who are allowed to remain on parents’ insurance.

Signals from the Depths.

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Democratically-elected governments have been responding to the “Great Recession” by trying to cut public spending.[1] This is a throw-back to the initial—and disastrous—response to the “Great Depression” after 1929. It is a rejection of the subsequent Keynesian deficit-spending policies that eventually got countries out of the Depression. The “sequester” in place of more stimulus has dragged on American economic recovery since 2011; the Germans insist upon austerity in the European Union, and Japan’s parliament recently passed a higher consumption tax that short-circuited an attempt to stimulate growth there.

In the absence of spending programs, central banks have used, are using, or may be about to use purchases of long-term debt (called “quantitative easing”) to pump money into the economy. This is better than nothing.[2] The Federal Reserve Bank has just ended its buying of long-term bonds and has hinted at higher interest rates in 2015. Thus, it is signaling its belief that economic recovery is well underway in the United States.

Still, amidst all the talk about an improving American economy, there have been signs of new troubles ahead in the world economy.[3] By early October 2014, world prices for bonds, currency, and commodities were being read to suggest the possibility of a new global slowdown. It isn’t clear that there are any policy tools that could check this descent.

Economic growth should reduce un-employment. Over time, lower unemployment should lead to a rise in wages and to higher prices. However, all the major advanced economies seem headed toward low long-term interest rates. There appears to be a widely-shared belief among knowledgeable people that inflation is not going to fire up any time soon. Why would people believe this?

First, the value of the dollar has been rising against the currencies of Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Japan. You could read this as investors taking flight from those currencies to the security of currently stable dollars. This may reflect a belief that by investors that the world economy is headed downhill and that there aren’t any policy tools to control the descent.

Second, stocks and bonds usually move in opposite directions. In an expanding economy, money will flow toward stocks as investors try to share in profits and rising share prices. In a shrinking economy, money will flow to bonds as people try to avoid being stuck with stocks whose price is falling. Monetary policy usually seeks to keep interest rates low when the economy needs to be propped-up. Until that is shown to be working, investors will accept even low yields from bonds. The interest rate on 10-Year US bonds has fallen over the course of the year from 3.0 percent to 2.2 percent. Purchasers are bidding-down the interest on these bonds out of their eagerness to have them in their portfolio.

Third, the price of commodities has been falling. The price of crude oil is down 22 percent since the end of June. The price of corn futures has fallen by 31 percent since late April. Abundant production is forcing down prices. It comes at an awkward time for confidence in the world economy.

What do you do when unelected experts and private investors disagree with elected representatives on the best policy? What if the experts and investors are right?

[1] Neil Irwin, “What the Bank of Japan’s Surprise Move Means for the Global Economy,” NYT, 31 October 2014.

[2] Moreover, it pushes up the prices of assets, which are owned by upper income groups, better than it stimulates employment or raises wages. So, many voters find themselves preoccupied by inequality.

[3] Neil Irwin, “The Depressing Signals the Markets Are Sending About the Global Economy,” NYT, 15 October 2014.

What we learned from the Report of the 9/11 Commission V.

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Between 1996 and 1998, Bin Laden rebuilt al Qaeda in Afghanistan. However, “Pakistan was the nation that held the key to [Bin Laden’s] ability to use Afghanistan as a base from which to revive his ambitious enterprise for war against the United States.” (p. 95.) Pakistan is a failed democracy in which the army’s most recent intervention in politics had led to an appeal to Islamist sentiment as a form of legitimization. Pakistan also is a failed economy in which large numbers of refugees from the Afghan war were educated in Saudi-funded Wahhabist “madrasas” that taught religious fervor in place of life skills. Bin Laden had long-standing ties with Pakistan’s intelligence service. [NB: Which is scary when you think about the ties between the ISI and A.Q. Khan.]

Bid Laden was hurting for financial resources, a number of al Qaeda members or allies went off on their own on the assumption that he was in decline, and one of his chief operations people had died in a ferry boat accident on Lake Victoria.

Not everything was against Bin Ladin by any means. Most of Afghanistan was governed by the Taliban, a bunch of religious fanatics who thought that anything and everything OBL said made a lot of sense. While the Pakistanis may have wanted a friendly government in Afghanistan to give their country “strategic depth,” Pakistan also provided Afghanistan with the same sort of strategic depth against American retaliation. Afghanistan swarmed with terrorist-wannabes and jihadist from all over the Muslim world.   Various veterans of the war against the Soviets ran terrorist training camps, and supplied weapons, and arranged travel for jihadis. Donations from all over the Arab world, but especially from Saudi Arabia, kept most of these enterprises afloat. As one of the American counter-terroism people would later phrase it, “Under the Taliban, Afghanistan is not so much a state sponsor of terrorism as it is a state sponsored by terrorists.” (p. 263.)

 

Bin Laden revived his activities of the Afghan war and shared the results with the Taliban: the “Golden Chain” fund-raising system provided money and the recruiting system among Islamic fundamentalists provided manpower. Bin Laden seems to have creamed off the best of both for his own movement. (pp. 97-99.) Thus, the “Golden Chain” raised about $20-30 million a year. Al Qaeda paid the Taliban about $10-20 million a year for protection and support, so al Qaeda had about $10 million a year to spend on all his projects. (pp. 247-248.) Al Qaeda ran terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. About 70 percent of the people in the al Qaeda camps were Saudis; another 20 percent were Yemenis; and 10 percent came from various other places. (p. 336.) By 1998, after a year to a year-and-a-half of hard work, Bin Laden and al Qaeda were back in business.

Along the way, Bin Ladin renewed contact with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They had known each other in the Afghan war in 1987, but had not been in contact since 1989.

One thing worth noting is that Bin Laden was rebuilding al Qaeda at the same time that George Tenet was rebuilding the CIA. While bin Laden’s efforts were smaller than were those at CIA, they were also more tightly focused. Who would be ready first?

Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: St. Martin’s Press

Climate of Fear VIII.

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In September 2014 the New York Times published a hard-headed essay by Robert Stavins, one of the authors for multiple reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[1] He made some important points.

First, Americans first became sufficiently concerned about the environment to take action back in the late 1960s, when air and water pollution had become too obvious to be ignored. Then their attention turned to the issue of climate change during the 1980s and 1990s. Joining in a movement with other advanced economies, the United States signed a series of international agreements to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. As a result of those agreements, emissions by these countries were held flat or even reduced.

Second, developing nations (China, India, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa) refused to join in such agreements because their own industrialization is both carbon-fueled and essential to raise the living standards of their people. China leads this process: China produces 29 percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions and will pass the United States as the world’s leading total carbon emitter before mid-century. None of the developing countries want to check their own emissions because they fear that it will check economic growth. Their preferred solution is that the advanced countries restrict their emissions even more than they have to make space for the emissions of developing countries.

Third, unlike economists such as Robert Frank and Eduardo Porter (see: Climate of Fear II), Stavins doesn’t try to sugar-coat the costs of limiting emissions. The UN wants to hold the temperature rise to two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial temperature. That would entail reducing carbon emission by 40 to 70 percent by 2050. Stavins argues that this would reduce economic growth by 0.06 percent per year from now to the end of the 21st Century. In total, that would cumulate to an annual reduction of economic activity of 5 percent.

Furthermore, even those predictions depend to some extent upon the rapid development of cheap alternative energy sources and technologies to limit emissions. Absent such cheap new technologies and the cost estimates are more than twice as high. Stavins appears skeptical that this will happen. Furthermore, cutting carbon emissions will require a large-scale use of nuclear energy and a world-wide carbon tax.

Fourth, the politics of meeting popular expectations raise a huge barrier to action. This isn’t a “democracy versus autocracy” issue. The rulers of China and India are sensitive to the economic aspirations of their people, even if they aren’t real democracies or democracies at all. Greenhouse gases are invisible and their impact is slow to show itself, rather than dramatic in form. So what if the people of the Seychelles have to take to the boats? Imposing costs immediately to avoid something bad in the future (or to someone else in the present) isn’t going to be popular anywhere. Similarly, the UN is just trying to limit the rise in temperature in the future, not to roll-back the 0.8 degrees Celsius rise that has already taken place. “If you make big sacrifices, then things will stay the way that they are now or get a little worse.” Try putting that on a bumper-sticker, then run for office.

Couple of things worth thinking about. On the one hand, is the best we can hope for a patchwork of wavering national efforts to limit emissions through administrative action? On the other hand, is there a way to make higher energy prices and more nuclear reactors palatable to voters? Or do we just adapt by drilling for deep water and moving back from the coasts?

[1] Robert N. Stavins, “Climate Realities,” NYT, 21 September 2014.

 

Climate of Fear VII.

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Back in 1792, the Marquis de Condorcet was in hiding from some French Revolutionaries who wanted to cut off his head. To while away the time in a garret, he wrote an essay predicting the continual improvement of the human situation. Science would tell us more about the world, while education would make that knowledge widely understood and the emancipation of women would enrich the stock of human capital. A week later he was dead, but his philosophical essay continued to inspire optimists. In 1798, Thomas Malthus approached the issue of human progress from the hard-headed perspective of mathematics. Human population would always tend to run ahead of food supply. Most people would find their standard of living forced down to the bare subsistence level. Two intelligent people approaching the same question from two different perspectives arrived at radically different answers.[1]

Accept that global warming is real. What’s the worst that could happen? As was the case with Condorcet and Malthus, the answer depends on who is doing the imagining. Diane Ackerman, The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us (New York: Norton, 2014) is “enormously hopeful.” For one thing, humans have been remodeling the planet almost since they climbed down out of the trees. It has been one long Lowe’s project: dams, dikes, canals, logging, and moving life-forms (bacteria, plants, animals, people) from continent to continent. All of this even before the Industrial Age began. Human beings do stupid things, or smart things that turn out to have awkward, unforeseen consequences. However, human beings are also endlessly inventive when solving problems. Florida may become uninhabitable as the seas rise, but Florida only became inhabitable for large numbers of people in the first place through the invention of air-conditioning and insecticide. People will accommodate to a changing environment; new technologies will emerge to deal with new demands.[2]

Both Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future (New York: Columbia UP, 2014) and Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014) are less sanguine.[3] Klein argues that “we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis.” Where will this lead? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BmEGm-mraE Naomi Klein at least, urges a “Great Transition” away from capitalism that will solve not merely the climate crisis, but will also resolve a host of other social ills.

Nathaniel Rich, “Books: Feeling Our Rising Temperature,” NYT, 23 September 2014, D5.

 

So who is correct? Goldilocks. It’s likely to be worse than Ackerman expects, especially if you live in one of the fragile zones of the Earth. Human adaptivity will deal with the changes better than Klein, Oreskes, and Conway fear.

What is the most prudent response? Do what we can to limit the changes that will come, while creating an environment to stimulate adaptive responses and new technologies. Carbon taxes would be a good place to start. Raise the price of carbon. Let consumers and entrepreneurs—not governments—figure out how to respond.

[1] Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich continued this debate in the late 20th Century.

[2] My own hope is to grow rich by building a marina and resort on Baffin Island.

[3] I suppose you could call them “Naomi-sayers.” Ha! Is joke.

 

The 9/11 Commission Report.

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The 9/11 attacks took place in 2001.  The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, commonly called the 9/11 Commission, issued its report in 2004.  Ten years on seems like a useful point at which to look back on the Report.

The historical “lessons” of the 9/11 Report have entered into the understanding of that “informed public” beloved of college professors and newspaper editors.  They shape much  American policy in the world.  They are worth examining if only on those grounds.

The Report also identified serious problems in American government and politics.  It defined a broad agenda for reform.  In this it resembles earlier American manifestos, like the journalism of the “muckrakers” in the Progressive Era and the reports on crime and violence, and on race relations that came out in the 1960s.  It is fair to ask, ten years on, how far have we come in reforming our problems?

I thought that I would spend some time  revisiting what we learned from the Report fo the 9/11 Commission.  Comments are always welcome.

What did we learn from the Report of the 9/11 Commission? III

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Osama bin Laden seems to have encountered Sayidd Qutb’s philosophy through the tape recordings of a Palestinian evangelist named Abdullah Azzam, while attending Saudi Arabia’s Abdul Aziz University in the late Seventies. (p. 82.) Bin Laden adopted this worldview and only the conversion of everyone everywhere to his version of Islam would end his war with them. (pp. 76-77.)

Then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to support a threatened Communist regime. The Afghans fought back and devout Muslims from all over the world came to participate in the “jihad” against the Soviets. While the CIA channeled immense amounts of American aid to the “mujahideen through the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), a parallel private network—the so-called “Golden Chain”—also raised money in Saudi Arabia and recruited fighters for Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam played an important part in this latter effort.

At some point Bin Laden developed “a vision of himself as head of an international jihad confederation.” (p. 86.) When, in April 1988, the Soviets cried uncle and announced their plans to leave Afghanistan by the end of the year, Bin Laden and Azzam cast around for a new enemy to attack. Azzam argued for struggling to create a pure Islamic state in Afghanistan, then attacking Israel; Bin Laden argued for a global war. (p. 84.)

In fall 1989 Hassan al Turabi, an important Islamic fundamentalist leader in Sudan, invited Bin Laden to use Sudan as a base of operations. Turabi had a vision of Sunni and Shi’a putting aside their religious differences to make common cause against Israel and the United States. (p. 90.) Did Azzam oppose this move? On 24 November 1989 Azzam died in a car bombing. At the time, the bombing was attributed, but which now looks suspiciously like Bin Laden settling the debate.

Bin Laden then accepted al Turabi’s invitation. He sent men to begin buying property, while he himself returned to Saudi Arabia. Soon afterward, Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. A broad international coalition formed, led by the United States, to oppose a move that threatened the stability of the world oil market. Between August 1990 and April 1991 Bin Laden made himself deeply unpopular with the Saudi government by bitterly criticizing its decision to ally with the United States rather than calling on Islamic volunteers to oppose the invasion of Kuwait. By this time he was already profoundly anti-American. (p. 87.)

In April 1991 he escaped from Saudi Arabia and established himself in the Sudan. For the next few years Bin Laden worked hard at building covert international networks for finance and operations. He called his group al Qaeda. In this effort he seems to have had the strong support of Hassan al Turabi. The Sudanese leader created a “Popular Arab and Islamic Conference” as a forum for “violent Islamist extremists” who came to confer in the Sudan. Most of these groups forged links to al Qaeda. (p. 90.) Sudan also provided a safe haven for other terrorists who would attack surrounding Arab countries.

 

Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004).