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Washington recently joined the `Shanghai Five,' an unofficial pact between Russia, China, and three Central Asian states to combat `Islamic terrorism' - meaning the region's anti-communist Islamic independence movements. The US agreed to share intelligence with them and provide some funding for the crusade against Islamic insurgents.
The Clinton Administration's anti-Muslim alliance with Russia is strategically wrong and morally disgraceful. Leading human rights groups are condemning Russia for war crimes and mass murder in Chechnya, widespread torture, rape, looting, collective punishment, and operating concentration camps. Russia has killed some 140,000 Chechen civilians to date and covered that nation with millions of anti-personnel mines.
America has no business colluding with the perpetrator of these crimes, nor with China's brutal repression of Sinkiang Muslims, nor aiding pro-Moscow police states in Central Asia. All of Washington's new `friends' in the anti-Islamic crusade are major violators of human rights.
America has a better case against Bin Laden, who proclaimed jihad, or holy struggle, to `liberate Arabia and Palestine from American rule.' He may have been behind the terrorist bombings in East Africa; perhaps, too, of the `USS Cole.' But Washington has to date shown no real proof, only leaks and claims by dubious `anti-terrorism experts.'
Old comrades from the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan who know Bin Laden, tell me the US has blown him out of all proportion into a mythical caricature, the latest of long list of Muslim bogeymen beginning with the 19th-Cerntury `Mad Mullah.' Bin Laden's alleged attacks may have actually been done by other Saudi extremists of the Wahabi sect.
Afghanistan's Taliban refuses Washington's demands to hand over Bin Laden, a hero to many Muslims, until the US shows proof of his crimes , which it has not. When Bin Laden and other mujihadin battled heroically against the Russians in Afghanistan, the US hailed them as `freedom fighters.' But when these `jihadis' called for liberation of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf from US domination, they were branded `Islamic terrorists.' In 1998, the Clinton Administration showered cruise missiles on guerilla camps in Afghanistan and an innocuous drug plant in Sudan, killing over 100 civilians and fighters.
The US engineered a punishing Iraq-style embargo of war-ravaged Afghanistan at a time when many of its 18 million people are starving and homeless. Though Taliban controls 95% of the country, the US refuses to recognize or aid the Islamic regime. Washington and the US media have launched a fierce propaganda campaign against Taliban, accusing it of encouraging the opium trade, harboring `terrorists,' and abusing women. The woman's issue has resonated loudly in the west, particularly on college campuses.