[Senate Hearing 106-297] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 106-297 EXTREMIST MOVEMENTS AND THEIR THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ NOVEMBER 2, 1999 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign RelationsAvailable via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 61-869 CC WASHINGTON : 2000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402 COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware PAUL COVERDELL, Georgia PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts ROD GRAMS, Minnesota RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming BARBARA BOXER, California JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey BILL FRIST, Tennessee Stephen E. Biegun, Staff Director Edwin K. Hall, Minority Staff Director ------ SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Chairman JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey ROD GRAMS, Minnesota PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut (ii) C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Bearden, Milton, retired CIA officer, former chief of station in Sudan and Pakistan............................................. 23 Prepared statement of........................................ 24 Ijaz, Mansoor, managing partner, Crescent Equity Partners, LLC, New York, NY................................................... 18 Prepared statement of........................................ 21 Krepon, Michael, president, Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, DC............................................................. 31 Prepared statement of........................................ 32 Sheehan, Hon. Michael A., Ambassador at Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State.......................... 3 Prepared statement of........................................ 8 Starr, Dr. S. Frederick, chairman, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, Johns Hopkins University/ASIS, Washington, DC....... 27 Prepared statement of........................................ 28 (iii) EXTREMIST MOVEMENTS AND THEIR THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES ---------- TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1999 U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:15 p.m., in room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam Brownback (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senator Brownback. Senator Brownback. I call the hearing to order. I welcome everybody here to the first in what I hope will be a number of hearings on the problem of extremism and its threat to the United States. We have two panels, and excellent panels. On our first panel, the Hon. Michael Sheehan, Ambassador at Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State. Welcome, Ambassador. We are delighted to have you here. On our second panel will be Mr. Mansoor Ijaz, managing partner, Crescent Equity Partners; Mr. Milt Bearden, retired CIA officer and former CIA Chief of Station in Sudan and Pakistan; and Dr. S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. All three are excellent in their knowledge of this very important topic of key current and future importance to the United States. It is clear that the United States needs a coherent and comprehensive policy to deal with extremism. In addition to facing the existing terrorist threat, we need to be looking ahead and thinking about how to turn around what looks like a steeper and steeper slide into anti-Western extremism in certain parts of the world. I look forward to hearing from our panelists about the sources of this extremism, what keeps it alive, where we are now, and what policies the United States should be pursuing to deal with this threat. There is a certain conventional wisdom gaining some currency among experts that state sponsorship of terrorism has disappeared and that instead the U.S. faces some loosely knit independent actors who are not beholding or answerable to any foreign government. Thus, we have a Saudi national, who once lived in the Sudan, based out of Afghanistan, mounting terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in Africa. Now, who is to blame? It is my firm belief that while we may not see states specifically planning and orchestrating terrorist acts on the United States, countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and The Sudan can all be counted as state sponsors of terrorism because they provide safe haven to terrorists. They allow the operation of terrorist training camps. They allow terrorists access to funds, and may well facilitate their travel around the world. Then there is a second tier of states. Let us refer to them as aiders and abetters. These are states which are otherwise friendly to the United States, but are unwilling or unable to take the necessary steps to crack down on members of their government or on their citizens who are providing financial and logistical support to terrorist groups. Without such states, it would be infinitely more difficult for terrorists such as Osama bin Laden to operate. Take, for example, the case of Saudi Arabia. If last week's USA Today article is accurate, significant funds are being funnelled to bin Laden from private citizens in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are good friends of the United States. But permitting this sort of thing to happen is absolutely unacceptable. The Saudis have a responsibility to exert more financial control. We undertook to work with Saudi Arabia to protect their interest when they were threatened, but this is certainly a two-way street. I am also worried about what appears to be a tacit compact between the Clinton administration and the Saudis not to finger the Iranians for the Khobar Towers bombing. There seems to be a tendency to play down and even to whitewash the involvement of certain states with terrorist groups, such as Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and others. And another case in point is obviously Iraq. Ambassador Sheehan, I have seen reports that bin Laden has either been in Iraq or is contemplating setting up operations in Iraq. And I hope you will address that today in your testimony. I must confess that I continue to be disappointed in the administration's failure to match action to rhetoric in the case of Iraq. We are not moving nearly aggressively enough to remove Saddam Hussein. And as a side note on that, on Friday, Senator Bob Kerrey and myself were both in New York to meet with the Iraqi National Congress, as well as Congressman Gilman, the chairman of the International Relations Committee on the House side. It looked to a number of us that this was a very promising get-together of groups that have had difficulty cooperating, and we need to be as aggressive as possible to work with them to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In a nutshell, the Iraq question, the Iran question, and Osama bin Laden are challenges to the United States leadership and are symptoms of a phenomena with which we must deal. As a Nation, we cannot afford to tiptoe around this problem. We do need a strong and a comprehensive policy for dealing with this threat. Ambassador Sheehan, I certainly welcome you to the committee. I look forward to hearing your testimony. I have a number of questions for you and the administration about what we are doing to pull together and to carry off a comprehensive policy on dealing with extremism and its difficulty that it presents to us both now and clearly in the future. With that, welcome to the committee, and the floor is yours. STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL A. SHEEHAN, AMBASSADOR AT LARGE AND COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, DEPARTMENT OF STATE Ambassador Sheehan. Thank you, Senator, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I welcome very much the invitation to speak with you today about terrorism in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as our efforts to combat it. With your permission, I would like to submit my full statement for the record. Senator Brownback. Without objection. Ambassador Sheehan. And I will read a short summary, it should keep to about 10 minutes or so, of that statement at this time. We have witnessed in the Middle East and South Asia examples of all the detrimental effects of terrorism. Beyond immediate results of terrorism, such as a bomb or a killing, the tragic loss of life and property damage, terrorism can also take a terrible toll on peace processes and it can inflame difficult regional and local conflicts. In addition to the material damage caused by a bomb, terrorist activities can also have a long-term economic impact in the region. Foreign and local investment can be reduced dramatically in the wake of terrorist activity. And a tourist economy, such as Egypt's, can be shattered. In recent years, the locus of terrorism directed against the United States has shifted somewhat, by my analysis. In the past decades, the Middle East has been the center of activity for some of the world's most dangerous anti-U.S. terrorist groups and some of the most brazen state sponsors of terrorism. No one in the State Department, least of all my office, nor I personally, will forget the 241 marines killed in Beirut, the Americans killed in Lebanon in the embassy bombings, the TWA 847 hijacking, the hostages of the mid-eighties, 270 passengers who perished in Pan Am 103, or the 19 servicemen who died at Khobar Towers in Dhahran in 1996. I deal with the families of many of these victims, and it is my responsibility to see that the perpetrators of these terrorist acts be brought to justice. But the center of anti- American terrorism, by my analysis, has shifted eastward since the 1980's and early nineties, from Libya, Syria and Lebanon to South Asia. Our attention is increasingly focused on Osama bin Laden and the alliance of brutes operating out of Afghanistan, with the acquiescence of the country's de facto rulers, the Taliban. These Afghan based terrorist conglomerates brought about the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 1998. I will discuss this in more detail later, but I will start with a brief overview of terrorism in the Middle East. It is important to note that we have brought progress about reducing terrorism in the Middle East. It certainly has not ended. It is still a major area of concern for me. But I think it is important to recognize the progress that we have made over the last 20 years, to learn from what has worked, so that we can continue to apply the lessons of those policies that have worked in the future. During the late seventies and eighties, the Governments of Syria, Libya and Iran played a prominent role in supporting and directly promoting the activities of terrorist groups, as well as carrying out terrorist attacks themselves, using their state security or intelligence personnel. Today, following years of international pressure and sanctions, blatant state sponsorship of terrorism as we saw in the seventies and eighties has declined. Make no mistake about it, Senator Brownback, I do not mean to suggest that we no longer have problems with Middle Eastern governments, particularly Iran. But also Syria, Libya and Iraq remain on our list of state sponsors because they provide safe haven and material support to terrorist groups. But their direct sponsorship of terrorist acts has diminished. And that will have implications for our policy, which I hope we will have time to discuss. Governments are taking more decisive action against terrorists. Recent examples include the Jordanian Government's crackdown on Hamas, the counterterrorism actions of the Palestinian Authority, and Egypt's success in curbing its own domestic terrorism. We have established effective counterterrorism cooperation with more countries than ever before. This includes dramatically improved intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation across the board. My office hosted a multilateral conference this past summer that brought together senior counterterrorism officials from over 20 countries, mostly from the Middle East and South Asia. We are having greater success than in the past in persuading governments to arrest terrorist fugitives and render them to the United States for prosecution. A number of governments have cooperated with U.S. authorities in handing over individuals indicted in U.S. courts for involvement of the two 1998 bombings of our embassies. Notwithstanding these successes, our fight against terrorism in the Middle East has a very long way to go. Some groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PFLPGC continue actively to plan terrorist attacks aimed at derailing the Middle East peace process. Iran remains an active state sponsor of terrorism, giving material support to a wide range of terrorist groups. And particularly, two Iranian Government organs, the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence Security, have institutionalized the use of terrorism as an instrument of policy over the past two decades and still do so today. We continue to investigate the 1996 bombings at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 U.S. servicemen died. We will pursue that investigation wherever it leads, including following up on information suggesting that the Iranian officials played a part in planning or facilitating the attack. I will also get back to that issue as well, Senator Brownback. I know it is of interest to you. We have ongoing concerns about Syria, Libya and Iraq. In the case of Libya, a decade of international sanctions and isolation has clearly had an effect on Qaddafi's policy. Libya no longer plays host to the most violent and deadly terrorist groups in the Middle East as it did a decade ago. And this is a victory for the past several administrations that have a very committed policy on Libyan sponsored terrorism. Last April, following years of U.S.-led pressure, Libya turned over two individuals to be tried in The Hague for carrying out the Pan Am 103 bombing, 11 years after that December 1988 tragedy. This action, while important from our perspective, does not end our designation of Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism. That can only happen when we have clear evidence that Qaddafi has fully cooperated with the Pan Am 103 trial, which we will hope will start in February of next year, as well as fulfilling all the other obligations under the United Nations Security Council resolutions, and renounce the use of terrorism and sever the remaining ties to any terrorist groups. We are confronting new problems and new challenges in South Asia. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is a prime example of an alarming trend in terrorism, that you referred to earlier in your remarks, against us that are from loosely knit networks with fewer direct ties to governments. Their organization is very flat, less hierarchical than we have see in previous years. Bin Laden's organization operates very much on its own, without having to depend on a state sponsor for material support, though he certainly gets sanctuary from the Taliban. He possesses financial means and raises funds through narcotics trafficking, legitimate front companies and local financial support. Bin Laden has created a truly transnational terrorist enterprise, drawing in recruits from areas across Asia, Africa and Europe, as well as the Middle East, linked only by hatred of the United States and those governments with which we have friendly relations. Perhaps most ominously, bin Laden has avowed his intention to obtain weapons of mass destruction. And we know he is actively engaged in pursuing that endeavor. Afghanistan has become a haven for terrorist groups. In addition to bin Laden and al-Qaida, the Taliban plays host to members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, Kashmiri separatists, and militant organizations from Central Asia. We have imposed U.S. sanctions on the Taliban and have worked to bring about international sanctions, approved by the United Nations Security Council last month. Yet the Taliban persist in giving refuge to bin Laden and his associates. The Taliban is not overly hostile to the United States, but its tolerance of these groups obstruct our counterterrorism efforts and are clearly unacceptable. We have urged Pakistan, as well, to use its influence to persuade the Taliban to render bin Laden to a country where he can be brought to justice. We have repeatedly asked Islamabad to end support for terrorist training in Afghanistan, to interdict travel of militants to and from Afghan camps, to prevent militant groups from acquiring weapons, and to block financial and logistical support to camps in Afghanistan. Within Pakistan, there are numerous Kashmiri separatist groups and sectarian groups involved in terrorism, which use Pakistan as a base. We have continuing reports of Pakistani material support for some of these militants. One such group, the HUM, the Harakat ul-Mujahedin, was involved in the still unresolved July 1995 kidnapping of four Westerners, including one American, in Indian-controlled Kashmir. In February 1998, the HUM leader consigned bin Laden's anti-American fatwah, and openly promised to kill Americans everywhere in the world. One of our most effective tools is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a creation of the U.S. Congress and an instrument that is extremely important to my office, and through which this authorization we designated 28 groups as foreign terrorist organizations, or FTO's, half of which are from the Middle East or South Asia. We also continue to label seven countries, including the four Middle Eastern governments I mentioned earlier, as state sponsors of terrorism under U.S. law. We carefully review these lists to determine if the groups and countries persist in their support for terrorism. Both of these documents, the foreign terrorist organizations and state sponsorship, are meant to be living lists which can change over time as the behavior of groups and governments changes. If they end terrorist activities, we will consider removing them from the list. In my prepared statement, I describe in detail the criteria for keeping a group on the FTO, the foreign terrorist organization, list or a government on the state sponsor list. It is not just a matter of ordering and carrying out direct terrorist attacks. We are equally focused on preparations for terrorism, in which we include activities such as recruiting, training, funding, equipping, planning, and providing safe haven to terrorists. We have strong evidence of the direct involvement in terrorism over the past 2 years of groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihan, the Egyptian Islamic Group, the PFLPGC, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, and the Pakistani-based HUM. These are the most active of the groups. Then there are a number of groups which have not carried out overt terrorist acts in recent years but continue to recruit, train, equip, and plan for terrorism. These groups include the Abu Nidal Organization, the PFLP, the PLF--the Abu Abbas faction, and the two Jewish extremist groups, Kach and Kahane Chai. In conclusion, I want to reaffirm that the central element of our counterterrorism efforts remains a combination of political will and diplomatic action. We can combat terrorism only if we persuade other governments to work with us. Intelligence sharing, law enforcement cooperation and armed force are important. But they must be integrated into an overall political/diplomatic strategy, exactly as you have indicated in your opening remarks. It requires a long-term, sustained effort, however, and requires not just a firm commitment from our leaders, but we also need some resources. It is vital that we help friendly governments acquire counterterrorism skills. Part of this effort is to provide training through the State Department's anti-terrorism assistance program. This training has courses such as bomb detection, airport security, hostage negotiation, and crisis management, that helps protect Americans overseas. And as you alluded to in your remarks, Senator, we deal often with countries that are friendly but not have as strong a counterterrorism policy as we wish. We use our anti-terrorism funding and those programs to work with those countries to increase their capability, as well as, most importantly, their will to go after these terrorist organizations that may be operating within their soil. Anti-terrorism assistance is the currency that a U.S. Ambassador can use to influence a foreign government on the need for firm counterterrorism action. Without it, our representatives often have nothing to offer in the way to enlist the foreign governments to help us do such things as protect the airports, their borders and other such activities. Fighting terrorist fundraisers and bomb makers also takes some money. I do want to note that the foreign operations bill cut the anti-terrorism programs and terrorist interdiction programs by 36 percent this year. And this is unconscionable in my opinion. These cuts make it impossible for us to initiate the training that we have been planning after the embassy bombings last year, as well as additional training for some of the other areas in the world where this type of activity is spreading. International cooperation, anti-terrorism training, action to counter terrorist fundraising, advances in explosives detection equipment, exercises that deal with crises, and rewards for information--these are not abstract ideas or giveaways of foreign aid. They are good investments in the protection for American citizens and interests. Mr. Chairman, whenever there is a major terrorist incident, everyone demands that we do something. But, weeks later, when the TV images fade away, it is very difficult the next year to get the funding for the programs that we need to implement. As a former special forces operator and officer in the counterterrorism business, I realize it is often easier to get funding for other types of organizations, such as the CIA, FBI, Defense, even HHS has a growing counterterrorism budget, even some American colleges and universities have an increasing counterterrorism budget. But it is difficult to see that as these budgets are increasing that we were slashed by 36 percent. And as you indicated, sir, in your remarks, really, the work of counterterrorism policy over the long term is one of political will. A country must have the political will to go after counterterrorism. It is the job of the State Department to work with these countries to enhance their political will. It is a long slog of diplomatic action and political pressure that really brings about international cooperation and changes the behavior in groups and regimes. I know that you personally, your committee, and the members of your staff have been very, very supportive of our efforts. And we are very grateful for that. I hope that you will be able to help us get the funding we need, and continue to keep pressure on those countries and organizations that are involved in these types of activity. The bottom line, however, is the State Department will need some resources to do that. And we will need a continued, focused effort to bring the political pressure to bear where it needs to be done. And we are committed to do that and to make sure that Americans who live and travel overseas will continue to be protected and to diminish risk from whoever might carry out a grudge against them. Thank you for your time, Mr. Chairman, and for the opportunity to speak here this afternoon. [The prepared statement of Ambassador Sheehan follows:] Prepared Statement of Ambassador Michael A. Sheehan Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I welcome the invitation to come speak with you today about terrorism in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as our efforts to combat it. We have witnessed in the Middle East and South Asia examples of all the detrimental effects of terrorism. Beyond its immediate results--a tragic loss of life and property damage--terrorism can often take a terrible toll on political and economic stability. It enflames regional conflicts and brings about a vicious circle of retaliatory violence. It can often undermine--or at a minimum stall--important peace processes by complicating the task of reconciliation between hostile parties. It frequently puts pressure on governments to react in a heavy-handed manner. On the economic side, it inhibits tourism and stifles foreign and domestic investment. In recent years, we have observed a shift in the locus of terrorism directed against us. In past decades, the Middle East has been the center of activity for some of the world's most dangerous anti-U.S. terrorist groups and for some of the most brazen state sponsors of terrorism. No one in the State Department--least of all my office nor I personally--will forget the 241 U.S. Marines killed at Beirut airport in 1983, the Americans killed in Lebanon in the embassy bombings, the TWA 847 hijacking, and hostage-takings in the mid-1980's, the 270 passengers who perished in the Pan Am 103 bombing in 1988, or the 19 U.S. servicemen who died at Khobar Towers in Dhahran in 1996. I deal with the families of many of these victims, and it is my responsibility to see the perpetrators of these terrorist acts brought to justice. For this reason, I think it is fair to say that my office devotes special attention to the Middle East. But the center of anti-American terrorism has moved eastward, from Libya, Syria, and Lebanon to South Asia. As direct involvement in terrorism by most Middle Eastern state sponsors and groups has declined, our attention has increasingly focused on Usama bin Ladin and the alliance of groups operating out of Afghanistan with the acquiescence of the country's de facto rulers, the Taliban. This Afghan-based terrorist conglomerate brought about the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 1998. I will discuss this in more detail later; I'll start with an overview of the Middle East. signs of progress in the middle east It is important to note the progress we have brought about in reducing terrorism in the Middle East. State sponsorship of Middle Eastern terrorism has declined. During the 1970's and 1980's, the governments of Syria, Libya, and Iran played a prominent role in supporting and directing the activities of terrorist groups, as well as carrying out terrorist attacks themselves using state security or intelligence personnel. These state sponsors routinely used terror as an instrument of state policy to attack their opponents, both foreign and domestic, and to put pressure on their neighbors. Today, following years of more coordinated, generally U.S.-led international pressure and sanctions, governments realize they can no longer blatantly support terrorist groups, plan terrorist attacks, and harbor criminals with impunity. Make no mistake--I do not mean to suggest we no longer have problems with Middle Eastern governments-- Iran remains an active state sponsor, and Syria, Libya, and Iraq remain on our list because they provide safehaven and material support to terrorist groups--but their direct sponsorship of terrorist acts has diminished. Governments are taking more decisive action against terrorists. For example, just last month, the Jordanian government closed Hamas offices and clamped down on Hamas activities in the kingdom. The Palestinian Authority has mounted counterterrorist operations designed to undermine the capabilities of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to use terrorism to disrupt the peace process. Egypt has scored great successes in curbing domestic terrorism. Many other countries are taking steps to prevent terrorists--including those claiming religion to justify their violence--from using their territory for their activities. international cooperation In the Middle East and South Asia, we have established more effective counterterrorist cooperation with more countries than ever before. In addition to our longstanding relationship with Israel, Egypt, and Jordan on counterterrorism, we are now working these issues on a regular basis with Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and a number of Gulf states. I recently traveled to India and laid the groundwork for expanded cooperation with New Delhi in fighting terrorism. We have dramatically improved bilateral and multilateral intelligence-sharing and law-enforcement cooperation across the board, and in some cases have held joint military exercises focused on counter-terrorism. My office hosted a multilateral conference this past summer that brought together senior counter-terrorist officials from more than 20 countries, mostly from the Middle East and South Asia. We are having greater success than in the past in persuading governments to arrest terrorist fugitives and render them to the United States for prosecution. A number of governments have cooperated with U.S. authorities in handing over individuals indicted in U.S. courts for involvement in the two 1998 embassy bombings. The latest example was South Africa, which just last month turned over to U.S. custody a suspect in the Dar es Salaam bombing. Notwithstanding successes in many areas, our fight against terrorism in the Middle East and South Asia has a long way to go. Some Middle Eastern groups, such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hizballah, continue actively to plan terrorist attacks aimed at derailing the Middle East peace process. Iran, which I will discuss in more detail shortly, remains the one active state sponsor of terrorism. new challenges in south asia But we are confronting new problems and new challenges in South Asia--Usama bin Ladin's al-Qa'ida network is a prime example. Today's terrorist threat comes primarily from groups and loosely-knit networks with fewer ties to governments. Bin Ladin's organization operates on its own, without having to depend on a state sponsor for material support. He possesses financial resources and means of raising funds-- often through narcotrafficking, legitimate ``front'' companies, and local financial support. Today's non-state terrorists benefit from the globalization of communication, using e-mail and internet websites to spread their message, recruit new members, raise funds, and connect elements scattered around the world. Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida represent an alarming trend in terrorism directed against us. Bin Ladin has created a truly trans-national terrorist enterprise, drawing on recruits from areas across Asia, Africa, and Europe, as well as the Middle East. Bin Ladin's alliance draws together extremist groups from different regions, linked only by hatred of the United States and those governments with which we have friendly relations. Perhaps most ominously, bin Ladin has avowed his intention to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Afghanistan has become a new safehaven for terrorist groups. In addition to bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida, the Taliban play host to members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Algerian Armed Islamic group, Kashmiri separatists, and a number of militant organizations from central Asia, including terrorists from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. We have imposed U.S. sanctions on the Taliban and have worked hard to bring about the international sanctions approved by the U.N. Security Council last month. Yet the Taliban stubbornly persist in giving refuge to Usama bin Ladin and his associates. We have urged Pakistan to use its influence to persuade the Taliban to render bin Ladin to a country where he can be brought to justice, and we will persist in this effort. Within the territory of Pakistan, there are numerous Kashmiri separatist groups and sectarian groups involved in terrorism which use Pakistan as a base. Pakistan has frequently acknowledged what it calls ``moral and diplomatic support'' for militants in Kashmir who employ violence and terrorism against Indian interests. We have continuing reports of Pakistani material support for some of these militants. One such group, the Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM), was involved in the still- unresolved July 1995 kidnapping of four westerners, including one American, in Indian-controlled Kashmir. In February 1998, the HUM's leader co-signed bin Ladin's anti-American fatwa. The HUM has openly promised to kill Americans ``everywhere in the world.'' In addition, the HUM cooperates with bin Ladin and receives his assistance in maintaining its training facilities in Afghanistan. The HUM is also tied to the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a militant sectarian group believed responsible for the attempted assassination of then-Prime Minister Sharif in January 1999. Other groups, such as the Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami, and the Hizbul Mujahideen, operate freely in Pakistan and support terrorist attacks in Kashmir. The Taliban leadership is not overtly hostile to the United States, but its actions and its tolerance of terrorist groups seriously obstruct our counterterrorist efforts. As far as Pakistan is concerned, we have repeatedly asked Islamabad to end support for terrorist training in Afghanistan, to interdict travel of militants to and from camps in Afghanistan, to prevent militant groups from acquiring weapons, and to block financial and logistical support to camps in Afghanistan. We have also urged Islamabad to close certain madrassas, or Islamic schools, that actually serve as conduits for terrorism. u.s. designation of foreign terrorist organizations Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, we designate 28 groups as ``foreign terrorist organizations'' (FTO's), almost half of which are from the Middle East or South Asia. We also continue to label seven countries, including four Middle Eastern governments, as state sponsors of terrorism under U.S. law. We keep a careful eye on these FTO's and on the key state sponsors to determine-- through a painstaking review process--if they are continuing their support for terrorism. Both the FTO list and the state sponsors list are meant to be ``living'' lists, which can change over time as the behavior of groups and governments changes. If a group or country ceases its terrorist activity, we will give serious consideration to removing it from the list. We want to give them an incentive to mend their ways. There is a misconception, however, about the kinds of terrorist activity that keep a group on the FTO list or government on the state- sponsors list. It is not just a matter of ordering or carrying out a direct terrorist attack. We are equally focused on preparations for terrorism, in which we include activities such as recruiting, training, funding, equipping, planning, and providing safehaven to terrorists. In the case of many of the groups which we have just redesignated as foreign terrorist organizations--as well as most of the state sponsors--we do not have evidence they carried out direct terrorist attacks over the past two years. But we nonetheless consider them guilty of ongoing terrorist activity because they continued to be involved in the things I mentioned earlier: recruiting, training, funding, equipping, planning, and providing safehaven. We will only consider removing a group from the FTO list, or a government from the state-sponsors list, when we are convinced all such activities have stopped. In the case of the Middle East and South Asia, we have strong evidence of the direct involvement in terrorist attacks over the past two years of groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Islamic group, the PFLP-GC, the Algerian Armed Islamic group, the Pakistan-based Harakat ul- Mujahideen, and the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, also known as the LTTE. These groups are a long way from being considered for removal from the FTO list. Then, there are a number of groups which have not carried out an overt terrorist act in recent years but continue to recruit, train, equip, and plan for terrorism. These groups include the Abu Nidal organization, the PFLP, the PLF (Abu Abbas faction), and the two Jewish extremist groups, Kach and Kahane Chai. Any of these groups could end all activities in preparation for possible terrorist acts and eventually qualify for removal from the FTO list. We designate foreign terrorist organizations not to develop a ``black list'' for its own sake, but to curb their funding. We urge other governments to take similar steps. As Congress stated in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, ``foreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct.'' We encourage other governments to tighten their laws and regulations, and we are developing a training program to help them identify and block terrorist money flows. state sponsors Now turning to state sponsors, four of the seven state sponsors on our list are Middle Eastern states--Libya, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Although more reluctant today to sponsor terrorist attacks directly, they continue to give safehaven and support to terrorist groups, individuals, and activities. First, Iran Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terrorism. CIA Director Tenet affirmed before Congress earlier this year that ``hardliners continue to view terrorism as a legitimate tool of Iranian policy, and they still control the institutions that can implement it.'' As noted in this year's Patterns of Global Terrorism--the State Department's primary annual publication on terrorism--Iran continues to be involved in a range of terrorist activities. These include providing material support and safehaven to some of the most lethal terrorist groups in the Middle East, notably Hizballah, Hamas, and the PIJ. Iranian assistance has taken the form of financing, equiping, offering training locations, and offering refuge from extradition. In the case of Hizballah and Hamas, Iranian support totals tens of millions of dollars in direct subsidies each year. Tehran also continues to target Iranian dissidents abroad. In particular, two Iranian government organs, the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, have institutionalized the use of terrorism as an instrument of policy over the past two decades. These two government organs have longstanding ties to the terrorist groups I mentioned earlier, among others, and they appear determined to maintain these relationships regardless of statements to the contrary from some of Iran's political leaders. We continue to investigate the 1996 bombing at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 U.S. servicemen died; We will pursue that investigation wherever it leads, including following up on information suggesting that some Iranian officials might have played a part in planning or facilitating the attack. Iran's support for terrorism activity stands in contrast to other countries in the region, including Syria, which is telling these groups to end ``military'' activity. Although we have repeatedly assured the Iranians that we have no preconditions for beginning dialogue, we have also made it clear that there cannot be a lifting of U.S. sanctions or an improvement in relations until Iran takes meaningful steps to end its support for terrorism and cooperate in the fight against terrorism. Syria International sanctions in the 1980's, following a 1986 Syrian- directed attempt to bomb an El Al flight, had a dramatic effect on Syrian actions. Syrian officials have not been directly linked to a specific terrorist attack in this decade. Nonetheless, Syria continues to provide support and safehaven to a number of key terrorist groups, many of which have offices in Damascus and training facilities on Syrian soil and in Syrian-controlled areas of the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. These groups include Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP-GC. We recognize that Syria's role in sponsoring Middle Eastern terrorist groups has substantially diminished by comparison with its involvement in terrorism 20 years ago. We also note the recent Syrian moves to put pressure on various Palestinian groups to move from armed struggle to political action. But, until Syria ceases to give safehaven to these groups, it will remain on the state-sponsors list. Iraq Iraq's capabilities to cause trouble through international terrorism have been seriously eroded, largely through international cooperation. Nonetheless, Saddam Hussein retains a willingness to attack us by terrorist means--and the connections to Middle Eastern terrorist groups that could lead to such acts. We are concerned over the fact that Abu Nidal relocated himself and his terrorist organization to Iraq over the past year. Iraq also continues to host and arm the Iranian Peoples' Mujahedin, a terrorist group with American blood on its hands. Thus, we are not looking at removing Iraq from the list any time soon. Finally, Libya In the mid-80's, Libya hosted and supported some of the most violent and deadly terrorist groups, including the Abu Nidal organization (ANO), which operated terrorist training camps on Libyan soil. A decade of international sanctions and isolation, however, has clearly had an effect on Libyan policy. It appears they have expelled the ANO, and we no longer have evidence that terrorist camps still exist in Libya. On April 5th, following years of U.S.-led pressure, Libya turned over two individuals who will be tried in the Hague for carrying out the Pan Am 103 bombing, eleven years after that December 1988 tragedy. This action, while important from our perspective, does not end our designation of Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism. That can only happen when we have clear evidence that Qadhafi has: Fully cooperated with the Pan Am 103 trial, Fulfilled all obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions, Renounced the use of terrorism, and Severed remaining ties to terrorist groups. A French court convicted Qadhafi's brother-in-law, Libyan intelligence chief Abdallah Senoussi, for his involvement in the UTA 772 bombing. Last month, the French magistrate investigating the UTA 772 case is seeking to indict Qadhafi himself. We will be following this case very carefully over the next few months. Beyond these officially designated state sponsors, we remain concerned about other countries in the Middle East and South Asia. I spoke earlier about our efforts to persuade Pakistan to use its influence to bring Usama bin Ladin to justice. This is a bone of contention between Pakistan and the United States. I am also disturbed that Lebanon remains a haven for terrorist groups and individuals, some of whom are fugitives from U.S. justice for acts committed against Americans in the 1980's. We continually raise this problem with the Lebanese government. Long-term strategy and needs Mr. Chairman, I want to reaffirm that the central element of our counterterrorist efforts remains a combination of political will and diplomatic action. We can combat terrorism only if we persuade other governments to work with us. Intelligence-sharing, law-enforcement cooperation, and armed force are important, but they must be integrated into our overall political/diplomatic strategy. A long-term, sustained effort, however, requires not just a firm commitment from our leaders, but also resources. Let me say a word about the resources we need to fight terrorism. It is vital we help friendly governments acquire counterterrorist skills. Part of our cooperative effort includes providing training through the State Department's antiterrorism assistance program. This training in such courses as bomb detection, airport security, hostage negotiation, and crisis management is extremely important both as a foreign policy tool in fighting terrorism and also in protecting Americans who travel or work overseas. Every American ambassador has explicit instructions from the President to protect the lives and the welfare of American citizens overseas. Antiterrorism assistance permits our envoys to do their jobs. It is the currency that a U.S. ambassador can use to ``sell'' a foreign government on the need for firm counterterrorist action. Without it, our representatives have nothing to offer and no way to enlist foreign governments in protecting our citizens. Fighting terrorist fundraisers and bomb makers takes money. Yet the foreign operations bill would cut our proposed combined antiterrorism and terrorist interdiction programs by 36 percent. This is unconscionable, in my opinion. These terrible cuts are short-sighted and make it impossible for us to continue the three-year training programs launched for countries in Africa and Eastern Europe after the bombings of our embassies in East Africa last year and still provide needed training for key countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. International cooperation, antiterrorism training, action to counter terrorist fundraising, advances in explosive-detection equipment, exercises to deal with crises, and rewards for information are not abstract ideas or ``foreign give-aways.'' They are good investments in the protection for American citizens and interests. Mr. Chairman, whenever there is a major terrorist incident, everyone demands that we ``do something.'' But weeks later when the TV images fade away, it becomes frustratingly difficult in the next year to get the funding for programs that do something. I know that you and your committee have been supportive of our efforts and we are grateful. But I am not sure that the importance of these programs is understood fully elsewhere in Congress. The bottom line is that, to fight terrorism effectively, the State Department needs resources to do so. Without them, Americans who live and travel overseas will continue to risk attack from whoever carries a grudge and weapon. Senator Brownback. Thank you for your testimony. I look forward to some questions. I hope the administration, as well, puts it as a high priority on these funds on the foreign operations budget, that it is a top priority that they put forward. Because, as you know, we are in a budget negotiation, and everybody is trying to protect Social Security. And I certainly agree with that. So it is going to be important that the administration make it a high priority, this area. And I think it will be important that they do that. The thing I am searching for, and I want to go, first, on a general statement, and then I am going to have some specific questions, is the start to find the comprehensive policy that the United States is going to exert both now and in the future in dealing with these extremist threats. Because it strikes me that we need a combination of both sticks and carrots here, in working with various governments, and effective threats and penalty for terrorist groups. And you have got it really covering the front of this entire subcommittee's jurisdictional area, which covers Northern Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, and you have got different policies that need to go into play in each area. In the Sudan it might be one policy. In Pakistan it might be another. In what is taking place in Afghanistan, it could be a policy, and yet you could go just up into Central Asia, what is taking place in Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan and it will be another. There are friendly governments that seek to work with us, and we should help and work with them. There are those who oppose us clearly, and we should oppose them clearly, if that is the route that they choose to go. And then there are nations like Saudi Arabia, who have links to much of this, that we seem to kind of look the other way. I do not see the comprehensive policy thread here. Can you shine that light to me? Or I guess maybe you just pledge to work with us on developing that, to confront this extremism in that region of the world that hits us so much. Ambassador Sheehan. Mr. Chairman, I do believe we have a policy. Maybe it has not been articulated that well. I can take a crack at it this afternoon. The policy basis starts with an effort to depoliticize the use of terrorism and to criminalize its behavior. And we try to do that on a wide range of activities, with international legislation, international conventions, that we have built up over the last 20 years. We have instruments that help us define countries or organizations that are involved in terrorism. Two of those instruments were the creations of the U.S. Congress that I mentioned in my remarks--state sponsorship and designating terrorism. These are very important tools that we use to pressure the state sponsor, to bring sanctions to bear on them, which not only have an economic bite, but I think, as importantly, is to shine the light of truth on these governments and to embarrass them politically and bring international pressure against them. There is a growing consensus around the world that terrorism is an illegitimate instrument, shown by the overwhelming support for the resolution against the Taliban in the Security Council last month. A range of governments joined together to condemn the Taliban for that. That is an important aspect of our policy--gaining consensus on that. As we build that political consensus, then we need an array of instruments that we need to coordinate and synergize to leverage countries to behave properly. And beyond the state sponsors, I keep informally, in the back of my own mind, a list--what you call the aiders and abetters--I call, in the back of my mind, the nations behaving badly regarding terrorism. And we need to have concerted pressure on them to get them to change their behavior, not to allow them to turn a blind eye to terrorists that may operate in their borders or pass through their borders to conduct attacks in other places. And we have to bring all our instruments to bear--intelligence, law enforcement--as ways to cooperate with them, and use other sticks, like you say. And primarily those can be financial and trying to bring pressure to bear on them. Our Office of Foreign Assets Control in the Treasury, we work closely with them. That brings pressure on governments whose banks may not be as vigilant as they should be involving terrorism funds. So there is a whole array of instruments that we try to bring to bear, often quietly, behind the scenes, but I think do represent a broader policy that we have at work. When you talk about a strategy, I think you are absolutely right. We need country-specific strategies. And I have tried to do that in my office over the past year, focusing on the primary threats that face the United States. And I alluded to those in my testimony. They are mostly emanating out of South Asia right now. Unfortunately, that is where the threats that I see coming at us are coming from there. And we have tried to design a country-by-country strategy, on finding out how we can bring pressure to bear on that equation. And so we have that policy. It probably can be better articulated. I am sure it can be improved. And as you indicated earlier, I look forward to working with you and the members of your staff, who I know have thought a lot about this, to improving that policy and making it more effective. Senator Brownback. We may look even at some legislative vehicles to put together for this next year to consider what we could do in combatting extremism. Let me take you to the specific case of Osama bin Laden. It has been in the news a great deal lately about some discussion of him leaving Afghanistan. There have been a couple of discussions about him leaving Afghanistan, and going, with safe passage, possibly to Iraq. And these are the news accounts I am just reiterating. And also about him getting financing still out of Saudi Arabia. What can you tell us? Is he continuing to get financing out of financial institutions in Saudi Arabia? Ambassador Sheehan. Let me take the first question, Mr. Chairman, regarding Osama bin Laden's possible movement out of Afghanistan. We have heard this before. And it did not pan out. He has been there for quite a while now. Right now there are increasing reports of him potentially leaving and reports of him writing a letter to the Taliban leadership about offering to leave. We have made it clear to the Taliban that they are required to turn him over to justice, not only by our own executive order, signed by the President in August, but also now, by the entire international community, as represented in the Security Council resolution. He does not have a lot of places to go. And part of the reason of that is the success we have had over the last several administrations in making it more difficult for state sponsors to take on a blatant terrorist like bin Laden. There are a couple of options out there for him. Iraq has been mentioned. I have heard Chechnya and other areas. They all have difficulties for him. And we are working with governments, a range of governments, to try to shut down his opportunity to leave Afghanistan, and make sure he has only one place to go. And that is to face justice for what he has been charged with. It remains to be seen how that will pan out. We are talking to the Taliban. We get some positive signals from them sometimes that they would like to resolve this issue. I am convinced that there are members of their organization who want to resolve this issue. But it remains to be seen what they do. And that is what matters. And up till now, they have determined that they want to provide safe haven for Osama bin Laden. But I can assure you, Senator, that we are working hard. I have been working with my colleagues at the NSC staff to try to figure out where he may be heading to, based on our intelligence reports, and trying to shut off those avenues. On your second question, regarding funding for Osama bin Laden, of course it is widely reported that he had his own resources that provided funding for his organization. He is also able to tap into resources such as the narcotics trade out of Afghanistan, which is growing significantly, my colleagues in the narcotics bureau tell me. He is able to tap that. It is also fairly evident that there is Gulf money that works its way back into Afghanistan. Senator Brownback. And to bin Laden? Ambassador Sheehan. Yes. Yes, sir, through bin Laden. Through a variety of ways. Senator Brownback. Is it going through some legitimate institutions, as well? Ambassador Sheehan. We have had conversations with a lot of our Gulf friends about some of the banks out in the Gulf. And some of that has been reported in the press. I think the article you referred to had some inaccuracies in it regarding the level of that knowledge. My personal view, from what I have read, much of that money that comes from Gulf sources is not--a lot of that money is held overseas and can be moved fairly easily in today's international financial networks. It is a difficult problem to tackle. And the terrorists, they understand the international financial markets and circuits and have found ways to move it around internationally. So it is not as easy as focusing on one or two banks in order to tackle that. They know how to move it around quickly. But we are working. We have a task force of folks in the government that are working on this issue, not only looking at some of the banks, but also at other groups, such as NGO's and other front companies that are increasingly used to launder money through to terrorist organizations. Some of the fundraising in the Gulf, in my view, is done innocently. A rich individual may be asked to contribute millions of dollars to an organization to help refugees in a certain country. And he may write that check innocently, not knowing that a lot, or portions, of that funding may be diverted to terrorist activities. Others may be writing the check knowing full well where its destination may be. It is one of the most difficult areas we have to deal with. And we are trying to advance a multi-pronged strategy on this. One of the issues we are doing in the U.N. right now is trying to get a convention on money laundering, financial support for terrorism. We think that is going pretty well. The French have sponsored that. It will provide us the legal basis that we need internationally to help go after some of these organizations and banks. Senator Brownback. Are the Gulf states all fully cooperating with the United States' efforts to stop this flow of money to extremist organizations? Ambassador Sheehan. They are cooperating, sir. We have had teams go to several Gulf states from Treasury, the White House, and the law enforcement community. They are cooperating. I will say, though, I would like to see that cooperation increase. And they need to increase their efforts. And we can help them also, providing some of the training and skills, the expertise we have developed in money laundering, often in the counternarcotics community, and bring those lessons to bear as the terrorists become more adept at finding ways to raise and move money around. Senator Brownback. I hope we will press those Gulf states if that is where the problems are. We have had a hesitancy, it seems like to me, too much of the time to confront sometimes people who have been good friends of ours, but they seem to, for whatever reasons, turn something of a blind eye to this activity, or are not as aggressive as the situation would warrant, when you have so many who have been killed and so much of a continuing upsurge in this extremism movement. I want to focus your specific view on Khobar Towers. Do we know any further about terrorist groups linked with the Iranians and what, if anything, they are doing or have been, associated with the Khobar Towers bombing? Ambassador Sheehan. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure, at this hearing, I am going to be able to add much to what Martin Indyk said in his confirmation hearings the other day, that we have information that links Iranian officials to the Khobar bombing incident. The FBI has that information. The intelligence community has that information. It is information that is being developed on a daily basis. We have not made the determination that that information clearly implicates the Government of Iran for Khobar Towers. I share with you, Mr. Chairman, the goal of getting to the bottom line truth of this incident, of this bombing which claimed 19 servicemen. I am working within the interagency community that deals with the analysis of this situation. You have the law enforcement analysis, which is trying to build a case, to get indictments, to bring people to trial. You have the intelligence community that has a different standard of information and making judgments. Collectively, we will make that judgment on the culpability of the Iranian officials and, if necessary, how far, if at all, it goes up to the Iranian Government. I commit to you, Mr. Chairman, that we will work very hard on examining this evidence and shining the light of truth on to it as we determine what the policy implications might be for that in the future. And I look forward to that. I could perhaps provide more detailed information on what we do know, but it might need a closed session in the future. And I can bring colleagues from the law enforcement and the intelligence community, perhaps with you or members of your staff, to lay out where we are right now and where we are in our judgment about the complicity of those officials. Senator Brownback. I hope that in our desires to broaden relationships with Iran, which is a laudable goal, but that we do not look past the deaths that took place at Khobar Towers. We cannot allow that to take place. And as you mentioned in your statement, about working with relatives of the people who have been killed in these terrorist attacks, we owe it to them to provide clear answers, and conviction on our part that they are not made to succumb to some overall policy desire that may or may not happen, that we get to the bottom of this and that we pursue the appropriate actions with the facts that we do learn. Let me say in closing, too, because I need to get the next panel up, and we are going to have a series of votes, I am told, around 4:15, that there is another type of extremism that is raising its head, and a number of people are getting killed associated with it. And that is in the religious persecution area in that region as well. And we are seeing it from the entire area and breadth. And I hope your office continues to do work on that issue, too. Because these are cases where there are terrorist actions that are taking place and large numbers of people are being killed. That is inappropriate altogether. So if you will look at that. I want to just mention this to you before I let you go. The list of major drug trafficking groups was due on the Hill, by law, by November 1. Has that list gotten up to the Hill yet? I do not believe it has. Is that list going to be forthcoming shortly? Ambassador Sheehan. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure, but I will check with my friend and colleague, Randy Beers, as soon as I leave this committee room, to make sure that that gets up to you in a timely manner. Senator Brownback. So we could have that to work with, as well. Ambassador Sheehan. Yes, sir. Senator Brownback. As I said, we may be working on some legislation. We look forward to continue working with your office, and also until we get to the bottom of a number of these cases. It is just that a number of different groups are operating. But the overall thing that I would like for you to really place in your mind is what we can do, working together, to put together this comprehensive strategy. Because this is not a problem that is going away any time soon. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. Ambassador Sheehan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Brownback. In the interest of time, I want to call up the next panel before we get a vote called. That will be Mr. Mansoor Ijaz, managing partner, Crescent Equity Partners; Mr. Milt Bearden, retired CIA officer and former Chief of Station in Sudan and Pakistan; and Dr. S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University; and Michael Krepon, president of the Henry Stimson Center. I welcome you gentlemen. Gentlemen, I have got a dilemma. And that is that at 4:15, we are supposed to go into a series of rollcall votes that will keep me away for a couple of hours. I guess that would be called a rain delay in baseball, or a vote delay here. We can go probably until about 4:30. And what I would like to do is if I could--because each of you deserve to be fully heard, and I want to hear your testimony--but I am wondering if we could go, say, somewhere in the 5- to 7- or 8-minute category on actual comments, take your full statement in the record, and then we will see. Maybe this vote will get delayed and we will get a chance to have an exchange. But right now it looks like we would have to probably end the hearing at 4:30. So with that, if you could participate within that structure. And I apologize again for doing that, but they just went ahead and scheduled the votes. So, Mr. Ijaz, I hope I am stating that correct, I have got you down first, if you would like to go ahead. We will take your full statement in the record. And if you could summarize in the 5- to 7-minute category, I would certainly appreciate that. STATEMENT OF MANSOOR IJAZ, MANAGING PARTNER, CRESCENT EQUITY PARTNERS, LLC, NEW YORK, NY Mr. Ijaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to be with you today and offer a perspective on how we might address some of the problems associated with extremism and terrorism. I come before you today as an American of the Islamic faith and a citizen deeply concerned about the dangers posed to free societies all over the world by unbridled extremist behavior, whether it is Islamic or otherwise. Terrorism, as you well are aware, is used by sponsors because it is a cheap and effective way of expressing challenges to what is perceived, certainly in the demographic area that we are talking about today, as Western hegemony and imperialism. It is a viral infection of the mind that cannot be seen until it is too late. For too long, the United States, in my judgment, has tried to impose a vision of societal organization and governance on countries that were either unwilling or unable to accept our doctrines, because their people were not sufficiently educated to accept a form of self-rule so heavily dependent on personal responsibility. America's abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan-- and here I am going to just say that I will talk about Pakistan and Afghanistan initially, and I will let my colleague, Milton Bearden, address the issues in the Sudan, even though I have done some work there, as well--but the abrupt withdrawal from Pakistan and Afghanistan after the collapse of communism is a prime example of how poorly thought through U.S. policies can be in germinating the very forces that we seek today to try and contain. In 1990, we left our friends in Pakistan, then a nascent democracy, healing the wounds of a decade of dictatorial rule, to deal with the remnants of our ideological war: drug trafficking, arms bazaars and millions of unwanted refugees. Our precipitous departure created a vacuum for other regional Islamic powers, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, to fight their ideological war, pitting Sunni Islam against Shia Islam, a war whose terrorist dimensions have afflicted virtually every Islamic state in Central and South Asia. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully submit to you that our policy vacuums cannot continue without serious ramifications for U.S. interests. A multidimensional approach is needed to be crafted to replace current policies of blunt instrument sanctions and isolationism in order to better calibrate--and that is the key word--to calibrate U.S. responses to terrorist acts. Now, the most important of these multidimensional approaches that I would like to talk about are education programs in these affected countries and intelligence-to- intelligence cooperation. And I will give you two examples in that process. The first is the recent military coup in Pakistan. And the second is what I did about 2 years ago to try and effect a reconciliation between the Sudan and the United States, in which I was able to bring a meaningful counterterrorism offer from the Government of the Sudan to the United States prior to our intelligence community becoming engrossed in this process of trying to figure out whether they were producing chemical weapons or not. So the question there that has to be asked is, what would have happened if they had acted on the counterterrorism offer that I brought in April 1997--I hand carried the letter from Khartoum to Washington--and gone in there with our FBI's counterterrorism units and had a good look around? That was the offer. It was an unconditional, open the doors, let us come in and see what is going on. And it was an intelligence-to- intelligence contact that we could have had. Now, on Pakistan, the coup is a manifestation, in my judgment, of how extremism has taken root at the core of societal institutions and overwhelmed the dilapidated educational infrastructure once in place to combat it. Pakistan's Islamists may have failed to win popular electoral support due to the country's unique brand of feudal politics, but they have learned that taking to the streets with a mix of sectarian violence and popular disruptions can exert enough pressure on corrupt civilian leaders to force ill-advised domestic and foreign policy decisions which serve the Islamists' narrow ideological objectives. The Kashmiri gambit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the summer of 1999 is a good example of how extremist politics can spiral out of control. Now, the origins of all of this extremism come from the Iranian revolution. In 1980, when the Iranian Shah was overthrown, you had a very large amount of money put into Pakistan. Because, as you know, at that time, Pakistan's population was exploding. It was literally growing at 3.5-5 percent per annum. So militant Saudis and militant Iranians decided that Pakistan's population explosion was a good place to try and play their own ideological struggle out. And so they started these radical religious schools. Every Pakistani family that had 10 children donated their extra sons to a life of Islam. They thought they were doing something in the cause of their religion that was the right thing to do. Instead, it turned out that their children are today's Islamic extremists. And this is a part of the process that we have not yet understood in this country. Too few of our leaders understand what Islamic extremism is about because too few of them understand what Islam is about. This is something that has to be corrected in the way that we do things. Now, I would also like to make a comment about Pakistan's intelligence services, which, in my judgment, have been a very destructive force in South Asia, after we pulled out in 1990. Let us keep in mind that we were engrossed in Pakistan. In fact, Milt ran one of the largest CIA operations in Islamabad for the period of time during which the Afghan war was going on. And during that period of time, we had a very close relationship, military to military, intel to intel. The international military exchange and training program was going on. So military officers from Pakistan were coming to the United States. They were being trained in what a military government was all about and how the military ought to act in civil society when civil rule would return. And all of these things have now been literally shut off as a result of our sanctions policies, our unilateral sanctions policies, against Pakistan. Which I think was one of the biggest blunders that we made in this country. Now, you can look at this problem in a slightly different way, as well. When you lose the ability to influence the minds of the people running the most powerful institution in a country that today has nuclear weapons, and at that time was developing nuclear capabilities at our behest, you lose the ability to influence events. We have lost our leverage, in my judgment, over what can happen in Pakistan today. Now, what are we doing to try and correct that? And I will end my comments with this example, if I might. For the past 5 years, myself and other concerned Americans of Pakistani origin--and I am a born American citizen, as you well know-- have been trying to combat the effects of these madrassa schools, these radical religious schools, by building what I call sort of the normal example of what a school ought to be, where you do not learn just the Koran and how to shoot a Kalishnikov rifle at age 12, but you learn the Koran, you learn English, you learn Urdu, you learn math, you learn science, you learn a little bit of biology. So we have been building these rural schools all throughout the northwest frontier province and Punjab, to try and combat the effects of this rising tide of radicalism that has overtaken Pakistan in a very real sense. You would be surprised to know that it only costs you $1,000 to build and operate a normal rural school, teaching up to 30 students in these very remote areas. And it only takes 5 years to get these children on the right track and make them literate as you go along. So what I would like to say in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, given the time constraint, is the following. No matter how much we do as private American citizens, our program, which is called Development in Literacy, and the acronym is DIL, which in Urdu is the word for heart, it is only a microcosm of what we really need to be able to do. We need to be able to do this on a larger scale. Education is a critical cornerstone. Just as we are fighting that battle right here in the United States, we have to devote resources to ensure that those problems do not reach our shores in other forms and other different religious beliefs, under different systems that we do not understand here. The young boys and girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan who face a life of illiteracy and religious zealotry have not chosen that path voluntarily. To sit idly by and do nothing not only dooms them, but I fear it will doom us as well in the end. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask that the balance of my remarks be entered into the record. [The prepared statement of Mr. Ijaz follows:] Prepared Statement of Mansoor Ijaz Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Subconmiittee present here today for permitting me to share with you some ideas on how to combat the growing problem of extremism and its by-product, terrorism. I come before you today as a born American of the Islamic faith and a citizen deeply concerned about the dangers posed to free societies all over the world by unbridled extremist behavior, whether Islamic or otherwise. Terrorism is used by its sponsors because it is a cheap and effective way of expressing challenges to what is perceived--certainly in the geographic region we are addressing today--as western hegemony and imperialism. It is a viral infection of the mind whose visible effects cannot be seen until it is too late. For too long, the United States has tried to impose its vision of societal organization and governance on countries that were either unwilling or unable to accept our doctrines because their people were not sufficiently educated to accept a form of self-rule so heavily dependent on personal responsibility. America's abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and Pakistan after the collapse of Communism is a prime example of how poorly thought through U.S. policies can be in germinating the seeds of the very forces we seek to contain today. In 1990, we left our friends in Pakistan, then a nascent democracy healing the wounds of a decade of dictatorial rule, to deal with the remnants of our ideological war--drug trafficking, arms bazaars and millions of unwanted refugees. Our precipitous departure created a vacuum for regional Islamic powers, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, to fight their ideological war pitting Sunni Islam against Shia Islam--a war whose terrorist dimensions have afflicted virtually every Islamic state in Central and South Asia. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully submit to you that our policy vacuums cannot continue without serious ramifications for U.S. interests. A multi-dimensional approach needs to be crafted to replace current policies of blunt instrument sanctions and isolationism in order to better calibrate U.S. responses to terrorist acts. We must develop strategies for long-term education programs aimed at preventing extremism from infecting new generations of children in susceptible regions of the world. We must increase our military-to-military and intelligence-to- intelligence contacts with unfriendly governments. And, we must more vigorously structure human intelligence networks that can inform us about extremist organizations before they become full-blown terrorist networks. The education and intelligence-to-intelligence dimensions of the strategy I suggest are best exemplified by Pakistan's recent military coup and my own efforts at reconciling the failures in our relationship with the Sudan. Pakistan's coup is a manifestation of how extremism has taken root at the core of its societal institutions and overwhelmed the dilapidated educational infrastructure once in place to combat it. Pakistan's Islamists may have failed to win popular electoral support due to the country's unique brand of feudal politics. But they have learned that taking to the streets with a mix of sectarian violence and popular disruptions can exert enough pressure on corrupt civilian leaders to force ill-advised domestic and foreign policy decisions which serve the Islamists' narrow ideological objectives. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's gambit in the heights of Kashmir during the spring and summer of 1999 is a glaring example of how extremist politics brought the world to the brink of a fourth Indo- Pakistani war. Not surprisingly, extremism has taken root within Pakistan's army as well, fracturing its western trained secular upper management from its battalions of soldiers educated in radical religious schools, or Madrassas--fractures that were also at the very heart of the October 12, 1999 coup. The origins of these fractures began some twenty years ago, at the height of the Iranian revolution, when Iran's radical Shiite mullahs and Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist Sunni clerics decided Pakistan's population explosion was fertile ground for fighting their ideological struggle. Madrassas were built throughout the Pakistani countryside with large infusions of Saudi and Iranian cash and readied staffs of Islamic clerics. Overpopulated Pakistani families donated their extra sons to a life of Islam, reducing their financial burdens and vesting themselves in the promises of redemption from extremist clerics who chided their secular ways. Today, these schools number in the thousands and teach primarily Islamic fanaticism and basic military training rather than a broad- based set of pluralistic values and diversified knowledge. Poorly educated, militarist adolescents have now grown up to populate army brigades and intelligence bureaus. These Islamists are tomorrow's generals, corps commanders and intelligence chiefs, devoid of training that breeds moderation and respect for dissension. Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, has aggressively used Madrassa graduates to man covert and overt operations. ISI-trained and financed freedom fighters now populate resistance movements in China's Xinkiang province, Chechnya, Dagestan and Kashmir among other places where radical Islam is now spreading. America's complicity in perpetuating this regional turmoil is inescapable. Take for example the decades in which the U.S. military trained Pakistan's secular army personnel under the International Military Exchange and Training Program, commonly known as IMET. IMET fostered the development of personal military-to-military bonds that allowed America to ``see'' inside Pakistani anny minds while also encouraging the development of an ethos in the army that respected civilian rule. Freezing IMET assistance in 1990 caused a vacuum that has now been incrementally filled during the past decade by the creeping footsteps of urban Islamists slowly ascending the ladder of command inside the army. It has also encouraged rogue elements to operate inside the ISI, in effect catering to the whims of corrupt civilian politicians for conducting inappropriate covert intelligence operations--often inside Pakistan's borders. In an effort to combat the destructive forces being bred in these Iranian and Saudi-financed Madrassa schools, myself and concerned Americans with Pakistani roots have been building rural schools in Pakistan for the past five years through a private U.S.-based philanthropy. You may be surprised to know that $1,000 builds and operates a normal rural school teaching up to 30 students everything from the Koran to science and math to Urdu and English for a whole year. And, it only takes five years to make a child literate in our programs. But no matter how much we do, our program is only a microcosm of what needs to be done on a much larger scale throughout the region to combat the cancerous spread of extremism. The young boys and girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan who face a life illiteracy and religious zealotry have not chosen this path voluntarily. To sit idly by and do nothing not only dooms them, in the end I fear it will doom us as well. Mr. Chairman, I would like to also briefly address the issue of developing intelligence liaisons with countries who support extremist and terrorist organizations that are directly at odds with American interests. I offer as an example my 1996-97 efforts to effect a reconciliation between the militant Islamic government of the Sudan and U.S. authorities through intel-to-intel contacts before the U.S. bombed Sudan's Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in August 1998 under suspicions it was producing chemical weapons precursors. In April 1997, I hand carried an offer by Sudanese strongman Omar Hassan El Bashir to U.S. authorities, including Congressional leaders, the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor, in which Bashir stated, ``We extend an offer to the FBI's counterterrorism units and any other official delegations . . . to come to the Sudan and work with our External Intelligence Department in order to assess the data in our possession and help us counter the forces your government and ours seek to contain.'' Jim Risen's October 27, 1999 expose in the New York Times is must reading on the internal divisions that occurred in our national security apparatus as well as distasteful efforts by senior administration officials to coordinate a cover-up of the dissension that surrounded the decision to bomb Al Shifa. What would have happened, following Mr. Risen's timeline, if U.S. authorities had responded to Bashir's April counterterrorism offer and sent the FBI into the Sudan for a good look around before U.S. suspicions arose later in the summer that nerve gas agents were being developed at Al Shifa? The offer was unconditional. On two occasions, I met privately with Sudan's intelligence chief to explore the modus operandi for such interactions. The reasoning behind my approach to Bashir was simple: if the Sudan was genuinely not harboring terrorists or fomenting radicalism after its 1996 decision to expel Osama bin Laden, the alleged Saudi mastermind of the embassy bombings, the only way to prove Khartoum's complicity or innocence was to invite America's premier institutions fighting global terrorism into the country for an unobstructed look. Had we responded, the Sudanese people could be assured America was holding true to its principle of innocent until proven guilty, while U.S. national security advisors would retain their options in dealing with signs of terrorist training camps, illicit chemical weapons factories or other problems associated with the surge in radical Islamic behavior. Equally important, ordinary Americans might not have to face angry Muslim radicals unless the evidence of guilt uncovered was compelling and condemnable not only by the U.S. but by other Muslim nations and the world community at large. Why wasn't Bashir's offer acted on sooner? In fact, it is precisely this inaction by U.S. authorities that raises the deep skepticism pervading America's Muslims as well as many Muslims elsewhere about the true agenda in Washington for dealing with complex and unstable elements in the Islamic world. The key to defusing radical Muslim behavior cannot be found by choosing its most vulnerable targets for missile practice. Rather, we should aim to raise up the Islamic world's most disaffected people so they are not as desperate to tear us down. We must resolve to engage rather than contain the elements of Islam we do not understand. American Muslims can and should be foremost in assisting with this effort. If we do not, we might find one day soon that terrorism on our soil was born of the unjust and indiscriminate policies we condoned through our complacency, inaction and ignorance. Thank you Mr. Chairman for affording me the opportunity to offer this perspective. I ask that the balance of my written remarks be entered in their entirety as part of the record and I am happy to take any questions you may have. Senator Brownback. Without objection, they will be. Thank you. You are quoting Abraham Lincoln, as well. He said that whoever controls the classroom today will control the country tomorrow. Mr. Bearden, you have had a great deal of experience dealing in these areas. I look forward to your comments and your thoughts on what we need to do. STATEMENT OF MILTON BEARDEN, RETIRED CIA OFFICER, FORMER CIA CHIEF IN SUDAN AND PAKISTAN Mr. Bearden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Brownback. I will go ahead and run the clock, just to give you an idea of where we are time-wise. Mr. Bearden. I will give you my abbreviated comments and enter for the record the full remarks. Senator Brownback. Without objection. Mr. Bearden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your kind invitation to appear before the committee today to discuss the important topic of extremist movements and their threat to the United States. It is a topic involving policy issues that will reach increasing prominence in the new millennium and in a world that is still adjusting to the end of the bipolar alignments of the cold war and the order that they exerted. I speak to you today as a private citizen, but also as one who spent 34 years in public service, 30 of that in the CIA. After many years of living and working in Islamic societies, I feel qualified to comment on U.S. policies toward Islamic states in general, and toward the states and groups we now consider the most menacing; in particular, Sudan and Afghanistan. As we are speaking of regional influences in Central Asia, Mr. Chairman, we must also discuss U.S. policy toward Pakistan, which though by no means is a terrorist state, is nevertheless a growing concern. We are at a policy crossroads with respect to all three of these countries. All are under unilateral or U.S.-led multilateral sanctions, and all are considered potential threats to peace to the United States or to our own vital interests. In 1998, the United States launched cruise missile attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan, driving to a new low our already severely strained relations with those countries. And during the ensuring 14 months, anti-American sentiments in Pakistan have become so heated that the cries for jihad against Americans have been heard in the streets of Peshawar and Islamabad for the first time in almost 20 years. As we assess the situation in Sudan and Afghanistan, and separately in Pakistan, we might instinctively conclude that Islamic fundamentalism is the root cause of our concerns. But a more thorough assessment might lead to another conclusion. In a frank appraisal, we might deduce that the common denominator among these three countries is not really fundamentalist Islam or the tragic and frightening specter of the crushing poverty of failed or failing states. We might determine instead that the real common root of our concern is the U.S. disengagement from each of these countries for most of the last 10 years. Being the world's sole superpower carries with it awesome responsibilities. The immense military and economic power of the United States and our truly remarkable national values weigh equally heavily whether we apply them to isolate or to help failing states. To be successful in dealing with the changing nature of the terrorist threat, our government must commit itself to a disciplined and demanding approach to the problem and to the formulation of policies designed to provide lasting solutions rather than expedient demonstrations of power. Our government must take care to concentrate the focus of American power on clearly illegal and disruptive acts carried out by hostile governments and groups, while avoiding dwelling excessively on the aspects of their cultures, which we may find alien or noxious. In short, it is time to ask whether or not the best policy is to continue to attempt to isolate these troubled states and, in the process, possibly ensure that they slip into chaos, or whether we should take steps that might lift them out of their isolation and, in the process, deny them as safe havens for extremists elements that wish us harm. Mr. Chairman, if there is a new world order for the next century, it is this. The United States, as the sole remaining superpower, can no longer choose to isolate and ignore entire nations without dangerous consequences. The time-honored expectation of the last half century that the other side would somehow bring them under control if we let them go has expired. Things may have worked out that way in the bipolar world of the U.S. and the USSR, but they do not work that way today. Mr. Chairman, the entire concept of a failed state is new. It is a post-cold war concept, and I do not think we have developed policies to deal with it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And my full remarks can be entered into the record. [The prepared statement of Mr. Bearden follows:] Prepared Statement of Milton Bearden Mr. Chairman, thank you for your kind invitation to appear before the committee today to discuss the important topic of ``Extremist movements and their threat to the United States.'' It is a topic involving policy issues that will reach increasing prominence in the new millennium and in a world that is still adjusting to the end of the bipolar alignments of the Cold War and the order they exerted. I speak to you today as a private citizen, but also as one who spent 34 years in public service, 30 of that in the CIA's Directorate of Operations. In many years of living and working in Islamic societies, I feel reasonably qualified to comment on U.S. policies toward Islamic states in general and toward the states and groups we now consider among the most menacing: Sudan and Afghanistan. And as we are speaking of regional influences in Central Asia, we must also discuss U.S. policy toward Pakistan, which, though by no means a terrorist state, is nevertheless of growing concern. We are at a policy crossroads with respect to all three countries. All are under unilateral or U.S.-led multi-lateral sanctions and all are considered potential threats to peace, to the United States, or to our vital interests. In 1998, the United States launched cruise missile attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan driving to a new low our already severely stressed relations with those countries. And during the ensuing fourteen months anti-American sentiments in Pakistan have become so heated that cries for Jihad against Americans have been heard in the streets of Peshawar and Islamabad for the first time in almost twenty years. As we assess the situation in Sudan and Afghanistan, and separately Pakistan, we might instinctively conclude that Islamic fundamentalism is the root cause of our concerns. But a more thorough assessment might lead to another conclusion. In a frank appraisal we might deduce that the common denominator among these three countries is not really fundamentalist Islam or the tragic and frightening specter of the crushing poverty of failed or failing states and their attendant slides into violence and drug trafficking. We might determine instead that the real common root of our concerns is U.S. disengagement from each of those countries for most of the last ten years. Being the world's sole super power carries with it great responsibilities. The immense military and economic power of the United States and our truly remarkable national values weigh equally heavily whether we apply them to help or to isolate failing states. Having served as the CIA chief in The Sudan as it slipped into Islamic fundamentalism in the early 1980's, and in Pakistan during the last three years of neighboring Afghanistan's brutal war to free itself of Soviet occupation in the late 1980's, I am personally familiar with both the U.S. foreign policy positions and the cultural realities in these countries and how they have come into dangerous conflict. The United States, once viewed as a close friend by the people of Sudan, is now viewed by the Sudanese as having indiscriminately attacked a harmless pharmaceutical plant. America, who once worked hand in hand with the people of Afghanistan in their struggle against the ten-year Soviet occupation, is now viewed by the people of eastern Afghanistan as the latest in a succession of foreign powers to attack those tortured foothills of the Hindu Kush. And the people of Pakistan, despite an enormous reservoir of good will toward the United States, have come to view us as at best unreliable and at worst erratic and bullying. To respond to these specific situations, a policy of diplomatic, and, in the case of Pakistan, military reengagement might well produce results we seek, but which have been so elusive for the last decade. In South Asia, Pakistan has been the United States' most reliable ally in the years since WWII. Pakistan stood on the side of the West during the early years of the Central Treaty Organization; it lent a hand at the critical moment of our opening to China in 1971, and it offered its territory for the U.S. to coordinate the effort to aid the people of Afghanistan in their war against the Soviet Union from 1979- 1989. In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, setting in motion a wave that crested the Berlin Wall seven months later. But in 1990, the United States invoked sanctions against it old ally, Pakistan, because of its ongoing nuclear weapons program, and abruptly ended military-to-military contact. In the ensuing ten years we have seen the Pakistani Army, born in the British Army tradition and tempered by decades of close cooperation with the United States, become increasingly radicalized. The once outward-looking officer corps of the Pakistan Army whose foundations were laid at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, and whose flag rank officers all attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, is being replaced by inward-looking officers who have been trained only in religious fundamentalist Madrassa schools. I cannot stress how the ranks of the Pakistan Army below general officer level have changed in the decade since military-to-military contact between the U.S. and Pakistan was terminated because of the strictures of U.S. legislation. If those laws were designed to punish Pakistan, they have, indeed, succeeded. But at the same time they have gone a long way to create the very conditions we most fear--an increasingly radicalized Pakistan with an ``Islamic Bomb.'' Last month the Pakistan Army seized power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It is right and proper that the suspension of the constitution by the military National Security Council, however temporary, be decried. But such a development is not without some positive openings, particularly if through pressure by the international community, General Musharraf sets an early timetable for new elections. More immediate, however, are new opportunities these developments in Pakistan may present. Pervaiz Musharraf is a member of the last generation of Pakistani Army officers who remember the military partnerships of the past with the United States. He was trained at Fort Bragg, and was an early member of the elite 19th Baluch Regiment, the Pakistani Special Services Group, that trained jointly with U.S. Army Special Forces a few decades ago. At one time, he was just one among a majority in the Pakistan Army with such ties to the United States military. General Musharraf may represent a last good chance to bring the powerful force of our standing in the world and our system of values to bear on the course Pakistan will chose for the new millennium. If we choose to engage Pakistan, even cautiously, he might be able guide elements within Pakistani society away from the dangerous, fundamentalist path so many seem to be taking out of desperation and on to a more reasonable and responsible course that will have positive effects not only in South Asia but across Central Asia. Afghanistan's Taliban, who control perhaps two thirds of the country, may have already begun responding to events in neighboring Pakistan. In last week's ministerial shuffle in Kabul a few key hard- line and unyielding mullahs appear to have been replaced by leaders more open to compromise. I am convinced that events across the border in Pakistan, particularly the curbing of the most dangerously vocal fundamentalist elements by the military council, is prompting this realignment in Afghanistan. While it is by no means clear how the issue of Osama bin Laden will play out in the coming days and weeks, I believe that the Taliban want to be rid of the bin Laden problem almost as earnestly as the United States wants to bring it to resolution. If we prudently reengage the Taliban after years of abandonment, and if in the process of talking the problem through, we show a minimum of respect for Afghan culture and traditions, we may take those first steps toward success in our goal of closing down the terrorist training camps, reducing opium poppy cultivation, and ultimately bringing about some of the changes we and many Afghans seek in their society. If, however, we wave our fingers in the faces of the Afghans, and threaten them with more cruise missiles there will be no winners. Sudan is another case of the costs of U.S. disengagement. Since the Bashir regime came to power in 1989, we have chosen not to deal with Sudan for a number of reasons, initially ranging from the suspension of the democratic process by Bashir's takeover, to the political position Sudan took in opposing the Gulf War against Iraq. But over the years the list of complaints against Sudan has grown to include all that an American focus group considers evil. On international terrorism, Sudanese Islamic leader Hassan al Turabi, with his face appearing on the cover of the Department of State's publication on terrorism, has become the personification of state sponsored terrorism. Beyond that, the perception of the Arab north of Sudan against the African south in a brutal seventeen year civil war that has probably claimed a million lives, provides another reason to despise the Khartoum government. Muslim north versus Christian south plays to yet another constituency. And the slavery issue, just now being treated with some doubt, rounds out a Khartoum regime that can do no right, only evil. The United States has not had meaningful diplomatic contact with Khartoum since 1996, while all of our closest allies have chosen to remain engaged. Nevertheless, the Sudanese Government has repeatedly stated its willingness to work with the United States and the international community on issues of terrorism. At the behest of the Saudi Government and with U.S. encouragement, Khartoum expelled Osama bin Laden in 1996. It handed over fugitive terrorist Carlos, The Jackal, to French security agents a year later, and has again offered to cooperate with the United Sates and its allies on terrorist issues. Even after the cruise missile attack, the Sudanese signed the Chemical Weapons Convention as a sign of their intentions. It is time to consider engagement, rather than isolation. To be successful in dealing with the changing nature of the terrorist threat our government must commit itself to a disciplined and demanding approach to the problem and to the formulation of policies designed to provide lasting solutions rather than expedient demonstrations of power. Our government must take care to concentrate the focus of American power on clearly illegal and disruptive acts carried out by hostile governments and groups, while avoiding dwelling excessively on the aspects of their cultures which we may find alien or noxious. In short, it is time to ask whether or not the best policy is to continue to attempt to isolate these troubled states, and in the process possibly insure that they slip into chaos, or whether we should take steps that might lift them out of their isolation and in the process deny them as safe havens for extremist elements that wish us harm. If there is a new world order for the next century it is this. The United States as the sole remaining super power can no longer chose to isolate and ignore entire nations without dangerous consequences. The time honored expectation of the last half century--that the other side will bring them under control if we let them go--has expired. Things may have worked out that way in the bipolar world of the U.S. vs. the USSR. But they don't work that way today. Senator Brownback. Yes, without objection. That was an excellent thought, and well put and succinctly put, too. It was well done. Dr. Starr, please proceed. STATEMENT OF DR. S. FREDERICK STARR, CHAIRMAN, THE CENTRAL ASIA-CAUCASUS INSTITUTE, NITZE SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC Dr. Starr. Thank you very much, sir. I will be brief. The phenomenon of radical political Islam is common throughout this large inner Asian region, and extends across the former Soviet Union's south--Central Asia--and into Xinjiang, in China, and of course in Pakistan, Afghanistan, et cetera. It is worth asking, whom are these movements against? Perhaps in our self-preoccupation we think we are the focus of their passion, or the West in general. And certainly there is much truth in that. But the real enemy is generally much closer to home. It is those secular states that rule in pious Muslim societies. This is an arrangement which obviously reflects the Kamalist tradition in Turkey and elsewhere. It is an arrangement which is anathema to many of the radical Islamicists. And the Islamicists' enemy is not just these states that maintain secular principle, but particularly the Muslim muftis and mullahs and the faithful who support such an arrangement. We forget this. The strongest passion is reserved for those fellow Muslims who have accepted and find value in the arrangement of a secular state, ruling an essentially pious Muslim society. Now, the question I would like to raise here is, can you break out of this cycle of radicalism that is settling in the region? I am not going to pause on the interesting and precarious experiment in Tajikistan, where a legalized Islamic party now exists. Let me just suggest reasons why, in general, it may not work. First, you, sir, have mentioned the substantial international funding for such activities. That has been discussed here. Second, I would add and put immense emphasis on the importance of the drug trade. The phenomena of radical Islam in this part of the world and drug trafficking are intimately interlinked today. The drug trafficking from this part of the world is now the largest, most developed narcotics trade on the planet. And it is obviously a threat to any kind of normal society. However, looming over all these issues and, it seems to me, the one thing that must be the first object of American long- term attention, is poverty. We know about the poverty of Afghanistan. Tajikistan was the poorest of the poor in the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan, even though it was the first former Soviet country to join the WTO, is desperately poor. The Ferghana Valley is poor. But, above all, we are talking about the poverty that exists in this vast mountain zone of inner Asia. These are people who have been neglected not simply by Soviet development processes but largely by Western development and development agencies as well. We are talking about people who, in many cases, were uprooted, who were told the only way out is for them to go to the big city, to abandon everything that their life has focused on up to that point. These people are now in a truly desperate plight. And I would just like to point out the obvious comparison that exists between the widespread radicalism in this region and that which exists in Bosnia, in Karabakh, in Chechnya, in Dagestan, in Chiapas in Mexico, and in Peru, where the Sundero Luminosa was strikingly similar to the general pattern of sophisticated urban organizers stirring up passion among a desperately poor mountain people. The core problem, then, is mountain poverty. Is this a hopeless issue? Is this mountain poverty something we should just build a fence around and walk away from? I do not believe that is the case. On the contrary, it seems to me, on the basis of my own observations in the region, that poverty in mountain zones can be alleviated. I have been particularly impressed by the efforts of the Aga Khan Development Network in the northern territories of Pakistan. They have also worked in the Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan, which for the entire Soviet period was 95 percent dependent upon outside food sources. In a very few years, amid civil war, this region is now 85 percent self- sufficient in food. The AKDN is also working in the Garm Valley, which was the locus of some of the most extreme radicalism during the Tajik civil war. It is obviously too early to declare victory there, but the AKDN is working with exactly some of the people who were most upset during the fighting. What I am suggesting here is that there really exists the basis of a long-term strategy. It is not terribly expensive to have a huge impact on this mountain poverty. It seems to me that in the long run this has to be done. We can delay it. But it has to be done. Ultimately we will find ourselves addressing mountain poverty in Afghanistan, as well. Thank you very much, sir. [The prepared statement of Dr. Starr follows:] Prepared Statement of Dr. S. Frederick Starr Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly on an important and generally misunderstood subject, namely the role of Islamic extremism in the region under your committee's purview. I speak as one who is devoted to the study of the broad Central Asian region that includes Afghanistan, Iran's northeast, northern Pakistan and China's Xinjiang province, as well as the five new states that were formerly republics of the Soviet Union. My message, in brief, is that diverse types of adherents of politically radical Islam control Afghanistan and important parts of Pakistan but have at least a foothold in every other country of the region. Their major enemy is neither America nor the West but what they see as the discredited authority of mainstream leaders of Islam's several principal branches and the secular states to which those leaders lend their support. This is, in short, a kind of civil war within Islam. These radical groups are small and unlikely in the long run to prevail over the more deeply rooted religious and community traditions of the region, let alone over the forces of secular modernity. Yet if ignored or mishandled, they have the potential to destabilize a broad zone that includes present nuclear states and formidable regional powers. This is the more likely because they are increasingly linked with the narcotics trade. It is in the interest of the United States to see that this does not happen. I will suggest that the core problem is not ideology but poverty, especially in mountain areas. Whereas direct efforts to repress political extremism and the drug trade have largely failed, the problem of rural poverty can be successfully addressed today. This should be the focus of U.S. policy in the region. The genealogy of political radicalism within Islam trace to the 1920s and 1930s in Sunni Egypt and Pakistan, to the 1960s and 1970s in Shiia Iran and southern Iraq, and to a small and more recent current within the Wahhabi faith that prevails in Saudi Arabia. All came together in the Afghan civil war that erupted in 1979. In other words, politically radical Islam was international from the outset. Nowhere in the region--even in Afghanistan--is radical Islam a mass or ``popular'' movement. It is, instead, a network of small and clandestine bands of young activists, most of whom have no other profession. Such groups invite repression and thrive on it. Wherever possible, they seek to organize armed bands from the local population that can take over a small territory and provide stability and modest rewards to communities that accept their control. When thwarted in this, they often turn to terrorism, as in the many recent murders in Dushanbe, the February 16 explosions that rocked Tashkent or the many bombings in Xinjiang. Viewed from the safe distance of a peaceful western capital, it is tempting to suggest that the best way to head off these possibilities is to open the electoral systems to Islamic parties. Maybe this is so, in spite of the negative experience of Pakistan. The recent decision by Tajikistan to allow religious-based political parties bears watching. But across the region, a very diverse group of political leaders have rejected this route, opting instead for some variant of the Kemalist formula of a secular state in an essentially Muslim society, backed by repression. In nearly every case they receive strong support from the better-educated and ``modern'' segment of their citizenry. The United States, let it be noted, has supported this approach in Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. One reason leaders as different as Askar Akaev in Kyrgyzstan and Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan have opposed bringing adherents of radical Islam into the system is that their movements receive such strong clandestine financial support from abroad. It is a sad irony that significant financial backing for the movement today comes from private citizens in three countries that are oriented towards the western security system, namely Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Much attention has been focused on the single figure of bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire who has purportedly funded some of the more extreme terrorist groups. But it is a mistake to think that he is the sole financier for these movements. Ample financial aid flows from private citizens and groups in all three of these countries, as well as from the Gulf states. Their governments have had little or no success in stopping this flow of money. In the case of Saudi Arabia one wonders if the government is even trying. Few news reports fail to characterize adherents of radical Islam as ``anti-American'' or ``anti-western.'' This is certainly true in some general sense. They despise what the French anthropologist called the ``global monoculture'' and equate this most directly with the modern West. But their main enemies are closer to home. Of course, they abhor the very idea of a secular state and vow to bring it down. The fact that secular leaders across Central Asia profess Muslim piety, support the construction of mosques, establish Muslim universities and maintain them with tax money, and pay for citizens to make the haj to Mecca, only makes them more loathsome in the radicals' eyes. Even more objectionable to these people are the main-stream Muslim muftis and clerics who support this arrangement. Never mind that devout Muslims since the time of the Caliphate have made their peace with non- clerical governments, provided they respect the Faith. Westerners are quick to blame the new secular governments in Central Asia for their supposed ``paranoia'' towards radical Islam. What they fail to note is the even stronger defensiveness and fear with which mainstream Muslim leaders and most of their flock regard the insurgents. As the leader of one of the main Sufi movements puts it, ``We are under assault by people who reject our Saints and would tear down their shrines, all in the name of Islam.'' Twenty years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, that country remains at the center of the human circuitry that constitutes radical Islam in Central Asia. It is revealing that when Kyrgyz negotiators sought to open contact with leaders responsible for the recent armed incursion into their country from Tajikistan, they went directly to Afghanistan. It is undeniable that rural-based rebel bands of Tajiks who were not included in that country's peace process remain a threat, as do Uzbek activists who were excluded from their country's political life in the first years after independence. But the main organizational focus, staging point, and safe haven for all these groups remains Afghanistan. There will be no constructive movement on the larger issue of radical Islam in Central Asia until the international community solves the Rubic's Cube of that long-suffering land. At the heart of the Afghan problem, and hence of the problem of political Islam across the region, is the narcotics trade. Sustained by demand from the West, Afghanistan is now the world's largest drug producer and all the surrounding countries have been drawn into its vortex. It is well and good for outsiders to preach about the incompatibility of narcotics with Islam, or, for that matter, with Christianity in Colombia. But profits from the production and transport of drugs are so enormous that few, if any, human communities can resist it, especially those that are desperately poor. Today, radical Islam in Central Asia is inextricably linked with traffic in narcotics. Is there any way to address this problem? Many think the best approach is to ``build a fence around Afghanistan.'' But as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakstan, Iran, and Pakistan are all drawn deeper into the narcotics industry, and as this industry's capacity to fund radical movements increases, this fence will have to grow ever longer and higher. Barring a reduction in demand, it is probably impossible to address the problem this way. But that does not mean that no solution exists. The single common element linking all the areas spawning radical Islamic movements in Central Asia today is poverty. Poverty is the fertile soil in which radical groups have germinated in the Ferghana valley of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. More to the point, it provides the soil for extremist movements throughout the vast mountain zone of Central Asia, just as it has in Chechnya, Bosnia, Chiapas in Mexico, and the Andean highlands of Peru. I submit that the great engine driving both radical Islam and the drug trade in Central Asia is poverty, and that the most desperate and dangerous zone of poverty is that vast mountain region embracing the western Himalayas, Hindukush, Pamirs, Tien-Shan, and Kopet Dag ranges. Like the extremist movements and drug trade it has nourished, this region is international in scope, embracing not only Afghanistan but large parts of Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as important areas of Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Xinjiang, and Turkmenistan. Until the problem of poverty in these mountain zones is addressed, there will be no solution to any of the region's other urgent problems. Unfortunately, the very notions of development that informs the work of governments in the region and of many international agencies active there only exacerbate the problem. Under the USSR, development meant movement from the mountains to the lowlands, in other words, the destruction of traditional mountain communities. The new states have yet to break with this tradition. All too often, international agencies have focused their attention on macro-economic issues, neglecting rural areas where most people live and especially the mountain populations. But there exists at least one successful model for rural development in the mountain zones of Central Asia, namely, the work of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). Beginning in the Northern Areas of Pakistan and now extending into Tajikistan, the AKDN has developed a model of sustainable development in mountain zones that enables mountain peoples to be self sufficient and to develop their own schools and micro-credit institutions. Suffice it to say that the bleak Badakhshan Autonomous District of Tajikistan, which imported 95% of its food throughout the Soviet period, is now able to provide 85% of the food it needs. In short, sustainable development is a real possibility, even in the mountain areas that have generated political extremism and the narcotics trade. Nowhere is this truth more clearly manifested than in the notorious Garm region of Tajikistan, home to many of the most radical Islamic groups during the Tajik civil war. Today the AKDN is working productively in the Garm valley, often with the same people who a few years ago were fighting with the Islamic militants. It is far too early to claim success there, but it is not too early to conclude that success is indeed possible, and with a surprisingly modest expenditure of funds. At some point in the future, one might realistically hope that these AKDN projects in Pakistan, Badakhshan, and Garm might provide a useable model for similar projects elsewhere in this politically volatile region, and, yes, even in Afghanistan. It is not surprising that the new governments of Central Asia should respond to the rise of Islamic militancy with blind fear and measures of repression that often prove counterproductive. But their shortsightedness is no greater than that of the international community, which has largely failed to recognize that the core problem is rural poverty, especially in mountain areas, and has yet to put its shoulder firmly behind workable programs for its alleviation. Fortunately, such programs exist, and, if replicated, can realistically be expected to bear fruit. In the long run, this is the only solution to the problem of Islamic extremism and drug trafficking. Senator Brownback. Thank you, Dr. Starr. And our final witness, Mr. Krepon, I hope I am saying that right, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center. Thank you for joining us. STATEMENT OF MICHAEL KREPON, PRESIDENT, HENRY L. STIMSON CENTER, WASHINGTON, DC Mr. Krepon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As subcommittee chairman of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, you cover some of the most important territory and some of the most problematic territory on the face of the globe, as you have discovered. These countries have long histories, but real short time lines as independent states. Many of them came to life as independent states when Great Britain, an exhausted imperial power, withdrew after World War II. A colonial hand penned borders before leaving. And it did not work out, and people immediately took up the gun. And violence has been a part of both regions ever since. The difference between South Asia and the Middle East, or at least one difference, is that in the Middle East there is a peace process. In South Asia there is no peace process. Whether there is a peace process or not, there is going to be political violence, and violence directed against noncombatants. If there is a peace process that seems to be making headway, irreconcilables are going to take to the gun, as leaders in the Middle East have discovered. But at least if there is a peace process, there is the hope to an end to violence. In South Asia, there is no peace process. There is continued violence. And without a peace process around the central issue of Kashmir, the prospect is just unending sorrow. Now, I want to talk to you a little bit about Kashmir, because I know you are going to be spending a fair amount of time worrying about that problem and about India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan each have a one-track approach to the Kashmir issue. The Indian one-track strategy is counterinsurgency. And they are pretty good at it. The Pakistani strategy revolves around support for insurgency. The official Pakistani position is that we only give moral, diplomatic and political support. But as you have seen from the testimony of my colleagues, there is also some military support, as well. Pakistan is caught up, regrettably, in the Kalishnikov culture. It is caught up in it vis-a-vis its neighbor, Afghanistan, and it is caught up with the gun culture because of its connectivity with Kashmir. And I believe this is causing grave, grave harm to Pakistan. My sense is that both India and Pakistan need to reevaluate their one-track strategies toward Kashmir. A counterinsurgency- only strategy is not going to work. It is not going to work. It puts a very, very heavy burden on Indian security forces. And it puts an even heavier burden on Kashmiris. But a political strategy to complement that, a serious political engagement for India, with Pakistan and with disaffected Kashmiris, is not happening. Pakistan also needs to reconsider its one-track strategy of support for insurgency. It is damaging the country. The new chief executive, General Musharraf, has listed a series of very ambitious and necessary reforms that are needed domestically. I do not know that he can do it unless he reevaluates his country's Kashmir policy. I have gone over the time limit. I know you have other things to do. But maybe we can continue this conversation later. [The prepared statement of Mr. Krepon follows:] Prepared Statement of Michael Krepon Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Other witnesses have discussed terrorism in the Middle East. With your indulgence, I will limit my remarks to the issue of terrorism as it relates to India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir dispute. In South Asia, terrible acts of violence afflict Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, as well, but others could help you understand these tragedies far better than I. The independent states of India and Pakistan, like the State of Israel, emerged from the contraction of an exhausted imperial power after World War II. Great Britain left hurriedly from both outposts, sparking conllict upon its withdrawal from the subcontinent and Palestine. These conflicts remain unresolved to this day, although Israel has made far more progress in this regard than India and Pakistan. Unresolved conflicts are the breeding grounds for acts of violence, including those directed expressly against non-combatants. These acts of violence are designed to affect political outcomes. The current Israeli government understands that an effective strategy against acts of violence requires not only well-planned and executed counterinsurgency operations, but also purposeful diplomacy to resolve the underlying bases for continued conflict. Violent acts will be generated by a peace process and by the absence of a peace process. If peace making appears to be making head way, irreconcilables will seek to stop positive momentum. Serious efforts at peace making, however, offer the promise of an end to violence. In contrast, the absence of a peace process invites never- ending sorrow. In South Asia--in stark contrast to the Middle Fast--the political ``track'' to conflict resolution has been almost entirely absent. Substantive dialogue between India and Pakistan or between Indian officials and disaffected Kashmiris has rarely occurred. In the absence of substantive dialogue between aggrieved parties, counter-insurgency operations can have only limited effect. Put another way, in the Middle East or in South Asia, there is no light at the end of a tunnel defined solely by counter-insurgency operations. Israel has understood that counter-insurgency operations must be supplemented by a strategy of political reconciliation and conflict resolution. In India, this recognition is not broadly accepted and has not yet translated into government policy. As a result, the Government of India's relies heavily on a one-track policy based on counter- insurgency operations. New Delhi's Kashmir policy therefore places a heavy burden on Indian security forces and a heavier burden on Kashmiris. A reconsideration of India's one track Kashmir policy might therefore be wise. It would also be very difficult to do, given India's vibrant domestic politics as well as Pakistan's well-entrenched policy toward Kashmir. Successive governments in Pakistan have publically maintained that their support for insurgency is limited to moral, political and diplomatic initiatives. Few Pakistanis--and fewer outsiders--believe these assertions. Pakistan's military and political leaders have been deeply involved in supporting militancy in Kashmir and in Afghanistan. By supporting the ``Kalashnikov culture'' in Afghanistan and across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, Pakistan is also paying a very heavy price. The gun culture and sectarian violence within Pakistan are growing. The rule of law within the country is endangered. Critical social indicators are trending downward. Meanwhile, militant groups involved in the Kashmir and Afghan struggles educate and train new cadres within the country and hold press conferences in Lahore and Islamabad. Pakistan's Kashmir policy might also benefit from a fundamental re- evaluation. Who is benefitting from Pakistan's Kashmir policy? How has a decade of support for the struggle in Kashmir helped Kashmiris or helped Pakistanis? Is Pakistan better off now, after a decade of support for insurgency, than before? A new government in Pakistan under General Pervez Musharraf has been established to deal with that country's manifold domestic problems. General Musharraf has properly identified the urgent tasks facing Pakistan: rebuilding morale;, restoring national cohesion; reviving the economy; ensuring law and order; depoliticizing state institutions; devolving power to the grass-roots level; and ensuring accountability for misdeeds. Can these critical tasks be tackled effectively without a fundamental re-assessment of Pakistan's Kashmir policy? I do not believe so. Pakistan's well being must be won in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan, and not in Kashmir. Pakistan, like India, presently has a one track strategy for Kashmir. While India's strategy revolves around counter-insurgency, Pakistan's strategy revolves around support for insurgency. Diplomatic efforts by both countries are designed to place the other in a negative light, not to resolve basic issues. Of course, these one-track strategies are mutually reinforcing. They combine to create misery for Kashmiris and for villagers on both sides of the Line of Control--the dividing line over which India and Pakistan fought this summer. One-track strategies succeed only in negative ways. They succeed in allowing sitting governments to avoid hard political choices, and they succeed in imposing pain and suffering. The impact of these complementary, one-track strategies differ, however: India appears able to absorb the challenges of counter-insurgency. It is less clear whether Pakistan can continue to absorb the domestic challenges of supporting insurgency. Does this mean that Pakistan should give up its claims over Kashmir? No. It means that India and Pakistan should settle their differences in an honorable way, and in a way that involves centrally those who have suffered so much as a result of this dispute. South Asia needs a peace process--one that might take different shape than the Middle East peace process, but one with similar seriousness of purpose. In the fall of 1998, India and Pakistan finally agreed to a structure for substantive bilateral discussions on Kashmir, peace and security, and on a variety of other topics. Since then, both countries have been on a roller coaster ride, including nuclear weapon tests, an extraordinary summit meeting in Lahore, and the undeclared war this summer along the northern reaches of the Line of Control. After this undeclared war, trust is in short supply in South Asia. The newly elected Indian government headed by Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee has said that it is willing to resume substantive dialogue with Pakistan, but that Pakistan's support for militancy across the Line of Control must subside. This is a reasonable position. The new Chief Executive of Pakistan, General Musharraf, has stated his willingness to resume substantive dialogue with India. Bilateral dialogue is likely to resume. Whether these talks are serious or pro forma will depend, in large part, on whether Pakistan and India re-evaluate their separate but interlocking Kashmir policies. If these talks remain rooted in mutually reinforcing one-track strategies, we will continue to witness a dialogue of the deaf. Meanwhile, nuclear capabilties are growing, along with political alienation in Kashmir and centrifugal forces within Pakistan. Senator Brownback. I hope so. And I think we are going to have plenty of chance to, because this is a big topic. The vote is on, but we have a few minutes. I would like to ask a couple of questions. Mr. Bearden, why do the Saudis fund some of these operations? Mr. Bearden. Funding some of the operations? Senator Brownback. Mr. Ijaz talked about some of the schools that are training some people. Mr. Bearden. The Saudis have been involved, as has bin Laden, going back to the early eighties, during the struggle against the Soviet occupation, collections, large collections of Gulf fundraisers. And that is what bin Laden was, was a fundraiser. He was not a warrior inside the Afghan war. It brought in large amounts and established a funding mechanism that would bring in, after the jihad turned in favor of the Mujahedin in 1986-87, of maybe up to $25 million a month coming in through Gulf sources. I do not think it has ever stopped. I think that those mechanisms have been in place. I think they have been in place for the Wahabbis, who have brought their brand of Islam into Pakistan and who have done everything from those funding mechanisms to building one of the largest mosques in the universe in Islamabad. This goes on. And it creates competition from the Iranians, who have been involved in some of the madrassa schools that Mr. Ijaz mentioned himself. I do not think that you can point to a reason why. I think it has been going on so long and it is so much a part of the Saudi interest in being competitive for a plumb like 130 million to 140 million Pakistanis. I do not even know how many there are. It is that kind of an issue. And I do not think, without discussion, one could even think about stopping it. Senator Brownback. Do you have a thought on that, Mr. Ijaz? Mr. Ijaz. May I just add one thing to that? And that is the following. That I would characterize it a little bit differently. I think the Saudis and the Iranians, who are the major forces of Sunni and Shia Islam, they house the holy sites in each country of each of the sects of Islam, they are interested in fighting this ideological struggle that has gone right back to the time of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon Him. And the problem is that they are not willing to fight it on their soil. They want to fight it somewhere else. It is like keep it out of my back yard, but I still want to have the ideological struggle in my name. And so the funding that goes on is to try and win, as Milton Bearden correctly said, as many new converts to the process as you can. And because Pakistan is a country that has so many different kinds of problems, population control being one of them, it was an ideal and very fertile ground on which they could fight that struggle. And so what they did is they went in and they said, all right, let us build a school and put 35-40 students in it right away. People will be brought from families that have extra children that they do not want to have. And what they were doing in their own minds, the fathers and the mothers that gave those sons away, were two things. One, they are giving them to a life of Islam, which is a good thing in our religious beliefs. And the second was that some of them thought, well, maybe they will work in the army one day and they will bring glory to our family in that way. And, most importantly, it reduced the financial burden on these families. Now, what would happen if you took exactly the same amount of money that he is talking about and the amount of money that you talked about last week when you went on this trip to New York to meet with the Iraqis, and we just form an education program and fund it year after year? You start building a base up. We have already lost one generation. The question is whether we are going to lose multiple generations thereafter. And that is really what I think needs to be looked at. Senator Brownback. Dr. Starr, did you have a comment on this? Dr. Starr. As a professional educator, I can hardly be against what has just been recommended. And I heartily agree. On the other hand, there are philosophical and religious differences that we can never resolve, of course. We also talk about problems of foreign support for radical Islamicists. But this would have the potency and destructive force that it does were it not for the fact that this whole region is so desperately poor, particularly the mountain areas. We are talking about people who have $5 a month. We are talking about people who have no way out. None of us is so strong that we would withstand the temptation to drug trafficking and violence. Until we have a long-term strategy that is based on giving these people the capacity to live normal lives in situ, in the place where they live and where their forefathers have lived, until that happens, we will not make any real progress. We cannot deal with the drug issue directly unless we are prepared to kill the demand. And we cannot deal with any of these issues in the long run on a fundamental basis unless we address the issue of poverty. And we can do this. That is the good news in this story. There is no party to this conflict that would not welcome American initiatives, provided that there are a little more intelligent and well framed than many of our initiatives in the past. Senator Brownback. Well, I think we will be talking about this a great deal more. This has been an excellent panel and very experienced and thoughtful people, and I appreciate that a great deal. As I stated, I hope to have several hearings on this, because I think this is critically important that we reengage, as virtually all of you have said. And you have put forward some good, different ideas. I invite you to put more flesh on the bones of the ideas that you have. And if they are things that we can work together on in developing this overall strategy, I would love to hear them, because this is an important problem facing us. I regret I am going to have to excuse myself now and that we are going to have to terminate the hearing. We may have some questions. If you would like to amend your statements to the record, it will remain open for a period of 3 days. I believe that is what is required. Thank you again very much for joining us. The hearing is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 4:30 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]