May 2004 101st Issue

British Comedy Night at the Hilton!

PAUL ADAMS and RIK JONES

Rik Jones on stage with competitors in Name That Tune competition.

Paul Adams, Anthony Kelly and Rik Jones trying to make each other laugh.

A hillarious evening of comedy was served, along with some British Pub grub at The Hilton on the 15th of last month.
Two of England’s rising stars were brought over to Thailand by Hua Hin agent Anthony Kelly of KoC International.
Rik Jones hosted a Name That Tune competition where the audience screamed out the answers, then a select few of the crowd were invited up on stage to blow the horn in answer to Rik’s questions.
Paul Adams followed Rik’s act and soon had a packed audience splitting their sides with his own brand of British humour.
A spokesman from the Hilton said that the hotel was pleased with the local response for the first event of this kind held at The Hilton’s Brewery Pub.

Long Beach Inn Super Bowl Party

The second annual Super Bowl party was held last month down at The Long Beach Inn in Phu Noi (Dolphin Bay). The usual gang of Canadians invaded as well as the local suspects including David aka Mr. Bean and Gait, Wee Jim, Kevin and Paeng, Captain Bob and Suzie. Craig and Nut from the U-Turn were not available as he was attending his duties at The Bangkok Open Golf Tournament. The proceedings kicked off with a cribbage tournament which turned into an all Okanogan Valley affair. Rene from Vernon, B.C was pitted against Rob from Kelowna, B.C. with the Rob eventually wearing down his opponent and claiming first prize. The banquet, hosted by owner Noi, was great fun as she barbequed her famous spareribs and served them with porgies. An early night was had as the 6:30 A.M. kick off loomed. Most were up at that unusual hour and cheering on their favourite team. Contrary to the rumour, no beer was consumed at that early hour although many Caesars, bloody Marys and Winnipeg redeyes were spotted. The game itself went from being slow to a real thriller with many lead changes and an exciting finish. Big Al and Newman were the pool winners but Noi claimed the biggest share. Bill picked the wrong team again and made another contribution to Captain Bob's retirement package. The morning was completed with a scrambled egg and filet mignon breakfast. The winners then boasted of their foresight and the losers had to complain about poor officiating and bad luck. A good time was had by all and the neighbours should have forgotten about the noise by next year's Super Bowl. www.longbeach-thailand.com

In an Akha Village

Living Among Thailand's Largest Hill Tribe
By Antonio Graceffo

“Every Akha village has two gates,” Explained my host, Matthew
McDaniel, a man who has lived with and advocated for the Akha for more than thirteen years. “One at each end.” The bamboo gate, which keeps out evil spirits, seemed simple enough. We had gates back in Brooklyn too. And if you replaced gang members with evil spirits, the intent was the same. Simple. I thought. Who needed an anthropologist? Even a boy from Brooklyn could understand this Akha stuff. But I would soon learn that the only thing simple about the Akha was their material needs, which were none at all.
“If they have food they eat it.” Said McDaniel. “When they don’t, they don’t.” Apparently, when harvest was bad they would live, for long periods of time, on a diet of rice, chili, and MSG. “Everything they need they make themselves.” He added.
As for the gates, there were two kinds of gates, depending on the age and condition of the oldest elder in the village. The time and season of gate building, like every other event in an Akha village, was done in accordance with nature. There was a gate building ceremony, in which every member of the village took part, and which was presided over by the oldest member of the village. Even if all of the Akha wanted to build a gate on a given day, they would wait until the “proper” gate building day, and they would only build the appropriate kind of gate.
We hadn’t even entered the village, and I was already a little confused. “How do they know when to build a gate?” I asked. “How do they know which kind of gate to build? And who tells all of the Akha what to do in the ceremony?”
“It’s all in the Akha Law.” Explained Matthew, with a laugh. I didn't know it at that time, but this one sentence would become the answer to almost every question I had during my week long stay with the Akha.
Apparently the Akha lived by a strong code, often referred to as the Akha Law or the Akha Way. The Way was at once a religion, an oral history, a genealogy, a set of morals, and a body of law. Most outsiders have had a faulty understanding this singularly most important aspect of the Akha culture. Missionaries, who have destroyed Akha culture by forcing villages to convert to Christianity, have referred to Akha traditional religion as animism. This is a very western term, however, which has often been applied to belief systems which are closely tied to nature. But, it does not take into consideration the deep complexity of the Akha way, or its relevance in every day life.
I asked Matthew if education were available to Akha children, living in these remote mountain villages. He said that there was a Thai government school, which most of the young people attended, but then laughed at my Western interpretation of the word education. “Because of the Akha Way, children know every leaf, every bug, every plant, every stone, and every animal in the forest.”
I realized early on, that if I were going to understand the Akha, I would have to overcome my own prejudices, and stop thinking of them as primitive people. The jungle is their world, the same as the streets of my concrete city, on the other side of the globe was my world. I called them primitive, because they didn’t know how to ride the number six subway to Wall Street in the morning, do cold calls, and peddle internet stocks to widows. But now I was in their world, the jungle. And they knew all their was to know about that jungle. “Out here,” Said Matthew, “You’re an idiot compared to them.”
What’s more, where I had to go to twelve years of school, follow by six years of university to survive in my world, the Akha, learned everything they needed to know, from the elders, and without studying.
The Way dictated when and what types of crops were to be planted, when to build a house, and when and how to marry. “Every house in an Akha village has to be laid out in a certain way, in harmony with the other houses.” Explained Matthew, as we travelled the dusty roads. “Every Akha child is taught to recite his family genealogy, back hundreds of years. This teaches them respect for their ancestors and elders. It also prevents them from marrying too close, as the names have to fit together a certain way, for the genealogy to work out.”
Back home, we had to go to a hospital, where a doctor in a white coat, with ten years of higher education charged us $150 to see if two people could marry or not. Here, you would just need to ask a nine-year-old.
Out the window, I saw coffee and tea plants dying in the prolonged draught. Actually, I just saw plants. Matthew had to explain to me that they were coffee and tea, and that they were dying. Coffee to me was something that came in a styrofoam cup. Who knew that it also came from the mountains of Thailand? I asked, but Matthew said that there wasn’t a Starbucks in the village. Even more alarming, the nearest McDonalds was about a six hour drive. “But how do they survive without a Big Mac?” I wondered.
Traditionally the Akha grew food crops, such as rice, and vegetables, which they used to sustain themselves. This diet was supplemented with edible plants, provided by the forest, and birds, which they hunted with old fashioned muzzle loaders. At certain times, a pig, ox, or dog was slaughtered and the meat distributed throughout the village.
“The whole village is usually happy when they slaughter a pig. There aren’t any vegetarians in an Akha village.” Laughed Matthew.
And how did they know when to slaughter a pig? The Akha Way told them. I was beginning to like this Akha Way. I liked any system that provided me with pork ribs.
As complete a system as the Akha Way seemed to be, unfortunately, life was changing in the Akha villages. The introduction of Christianity in some villages caused them to drop the Akha Way completely. Other aspects of modern life also threatened to destroy Akha culture. They couldn’t hunt birds anymore, as most of the muzzle loaders had been confiscated by the army. In recent years, economic pressure had forced the Akha to join the cash economy. Now, instead of growing rice, for sustenance, many Akha grew coffee and tea, which they sold in town, using the proceeds to buy food and other necessities. While the Akha were living in a cashless society, they tended to share food and other resources communally. Somehow, cash just doesn’t seem to be a resource people share with their neighbours. And when an average family have a cash income of only 500 Baht, ($10 USD) per month, there wasn’t much to share.
As is often the often the way with indigenous peoples, the Akha didn’t actually own the land that they lived on. In their minds, there was really no concept of land ownership. They lived on the land and farmed it. So, it was theirs. They didn't understand how strangers, from the city, who had never been to the land, could drive them off, simply with a piece of paper.
One aspect of Akha culture that made outsiders believe they were primitive was that they believed in evil spirits (or, more accurately, unseen forces). The people from the cities said it was silly to believe in the power of invisible forces, which held sway over the lives of human beings. But yet, they could uproot an entire village with the power they believed was inherent in the paper they carried. To the Akha, this piece of paper was a charm, no different than the star shaped ornaments they attached to their gates, to keep out unwanted spirits. I realized, we all believed in magic.
As we drove past the bamboo huts, careful not to hit the numerous children, chickens, and dogs who ran freely about the village, it was clear that the Akha had missed the twentieth century. But now that the village had electricity, the twenty first century was creeping in. Almost every home had a television, and most had a satellite dish. There was a phone booth, and some families had cell phones. I asked Matthew if he believed that the shiny images of the exciting, modern life depicted on television would lure the young people away from the village.
Although he is an American, Matthew identified with being an Akha. Further, he is an Akha traditionalist. His children probably know more Akha Way than any other children in the village. As he fights for the continued survival of the tribal life style, it is clear that he refuses to admit that young people would ever want anything else.
“Well, a few might go to the city to find jobs.” He said, reluctantly. “But when they see all that they are giving up in terms of community, culture, and security, they will come back.” I wasn't there to argue, just to learn.
He did explain that financial pressures, mostly caused by the seizure of their farm land, had driven a number of Akha young people to seek jobs in the cities. Unable to get any other kind of work, they often took jobs in restaurants and factories, which provided them with lodgings. They would “share” the job with a relative, who would fill in, while an Akha went back to the village, to spend time with their family. Although these departures from the village were not in keeping with the Akha Way, the communal spirit and family attachment was. To the extent that it was possible, it seemed most of the Akha were trying to hold on to their way of life.
Matthew dropped me at the home of his mother-in-law, one of only two brick houses in the village. “You’ll be staying here.” Said Matthew. “My hut is at the far end of the village. When you want to come over, just tell the Akha, and they will lead you.” My experience so far was that the Akha all communicated in Akha language. “How will I tell them?” I asked. “Some of the young people speak Thai.” Answered matthew, “If that doesn’t work, a lot of the old men speak Chinese.” How uneducated could a village be if they spoke three languages? I asked, rethinking my position on “primitive” culture.
It is believed that the Akha originated in Tibet, some few centuries ago. Their physical appearance seems to support this theory, as the Akha are shorter than the average Thai, and darker in complexion. The Akha migrated across Asia, eventually settling in five countries: China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. But no one ever told the Akha that there was such a thing as a country or a border. As a result, the Akha simply crossed the border whenever they chose to. As they are officially stateless persons, without Thai or any other citizenship, I had asked Mathew what they told the border patrol soldiers, to let them pass. “They simply say that they are going across to visit a relative” He said. Here, only one and a half miles from the border, a number of the Akha personally came down from Burma, or still have relatives there.
Outside of my house, all of the village men gathered about, what looked like, the butchered carcass of a pig. The bloody meat lay in dripping piles, as the men debated over price and quantity. One man, who seemed to be in charge of the operation, knelt in the bloody mess, with a cleaver, slopping handfuls of entrails, eyes, and organs into bowls, which were then weighed. I would later learn that before a pig, or other large animal, was slaughtered, the head of each household would “buy into the pig,” place an order for a certain dollar amount of meat, which he paid for in advance. Although the shouting and animated, almost heated, discussions occurring over this unappetizing mound of flesh may have looked like selfishness, the truth was just the opposite. Every villager wanted to ensure that every other villager got his fare share of the meat. If one family felt cheated, the whole crowd would come to his aid, surging in on the man with the cleaver, and demanding the meat be re-weighed. After everyone agreed on the weight, the village headman would nod his approval, at which point, the family could go home and eat.
If not for the blood, the meat sale reminded me of the trading pits of the New York Stock Exchange, with everyone shouting orders and energetically giving hand signals. If asked, the Akha, would say the whole procedure were necessary to ensure a fair market. But I got the impression that the sale of the meat was a form of entertainment, a diversion from a life of very long days, spent toiling in the fields.
Young westerners will often go through a period of “being lost” or “trying to find themselves.” This period of confusion is not part of Akha personal development, however. Because of the Akha Way, every man woman and child was doing, at that moment, and at every moment, exactly what he was supposed to be doing. The oldest members of the village, stood beside the headman, verifying the weighing, and arbitrating in disputes. The heads of households haggled. The smallest children ran naked, in a huge gang, giggling and playing among the huts. The women sat off to the side, talking among themselves, and looking, with smiling eyes, to the meat market, which they knew would soon provide them a much needed break, from a steady diet of rice and peppers. The older children were walking on bamboo stilts, which they or their fathers made for them. Young teenagers were racing their homemade, three wheeled scooters down the mountain side. Using rollers, rather than wheels, and set on a triangular bamboo frame, the scooters looked like a car from The Flintstones. The older, unmarried teenagers, were playing a volleyball type game, in which the ball was kicked over the net. No hands were allowed. Perhaps they were dreaming about their own marriage, which would come very soon.
And I, with no other purpose in the Akha village, took photos, and scribbled notes in my book. Although they were all engaged in different activities, the one similarity between all of the members of the village was that they were all happy. Meat day is a day of celebration in an Akha village.
Walking into the house, I forgot that the Akha make very low doorways, to keep out evil spirits, and I smacked my forehead on the door frame. I stowed my backpack, and then smacked my head again, on the way out. My skull was throbbing, but to the Akha, this was the funniest thing they had ever seen in their lives. They took the Thai word for fun, sanook, to new levels, as they imitated me, first by putting their hands to their eyes, as if they had a camera, and then by banging their heads on imaginary doorways. In spite of my pain, I had to laugh hysterically. Even the headman did a passable imitation of me. I was glad that I could bring some joy into the lives of a marginalized people. If only more foreigners would come to the village and bang their heads, I thought.
Dinner was an incredibly delicious series of very simple dishes: salty vegetables, including bamboo and a type of green, leafy spinach, rice, and of course, the freshly killed pig. One of the meat dishes was chopped, uncooked pork, minced into a paste, and mixed with spices. To most westerners this probably sounds both unappetizing, and dangerous. But it proved to be one of my favorite meals among the Akha. Although there was meat in every household that night, I knew that as a guest, I was probably eating as much at each meal as an Akha family would eat for two days. Many people stopped by the smokey kitchen, where the food was cooked over a wood fire, to ask me if I was enjoying my meal. I was. But it saddened me to know that most of these incredibly kind, and joy-loving people had rarely, if ever, known the contentment of a full belly.
After dinner, the villagers drifted into the same groups they had been in during the day. Now, with electricity running into the villages, there were two street lights, and fluorescent bulbs in every house. One house had a huge TV room, where the children congregated, to watch Cartoon Network. The teenagers were all gathered at another large house, which had a karaoke machine. Both the TV and the karaoke were in Thai language. It was easy to see that even if missionaries, soldiers and tourists could be kept out of the villages, the modern world would still creep in. The older people only spoke Akha language to one another, and yet you would pick out a peppering of Thai words, as Akha lacked vocabulary to deal with many of the modern concepts they were discussing. Words such as government, TV, and computer, to name a few, were borrowed from Thai. With the teenagers the situation was a bit more extreme. Having attended Thai school for a period of up to six years, they had a much larger vocabulary than their parents, as well as more ideas and concepts, borrowed from the outside world. Although these bright young people communicated with one another in Akha language, they often lapsed into Thai, when Akha seemed inappropriate for the subject being discussed.
Around eleven o’clock, the headman came, and said it was time for bed. The TV was shut off, the karaoke machine was put away, and the fluorescent bulbs were quenched. I banged by head on the doorway, going in to get my toothbrush, remembered to duck on the way out, but banged it again on the return trip.
The next day, I was joined by a photo journalist, who also came from Brooklyn, named David Lawlitt. A house was to be built on the plot right beside mine, and by the time I woke up, the land had already been cleared. For several days, the villagers had been shaving bamboo, with a machete, fashioning bamboo twine, which is one of the principle building materials in an Akha village. The twine was used, in place of nails, to hold the bamboo frame work together. The twine was also woven, on long staves of bamboo, which would be a type of shingling, used to build the walls and roof of the A shaped house. The shingles, or house sections, were laid out in a pile, beside the spot where the men were quickly finishing the house frame. When asked how long it took to complete a house, the workers explained to us that the family would be moving in that evening.
The physical construction was not nearly as important to them, as ensuring that the requirements of the Akha Way were fulfilled. This meant that much advanced planning and discussion had preceded the construction, as the elders were consulted on such issues as: location and physical alignment of the house, the most auspicious day to complete the house, and what ceremonies were necessary to make the construction compliant. It actually took longer to consult the Akha Way, and get concession from the village elders and the headman, than it did to actually build the house.
David set his video camera on a tripod, to get a time-lapse film of the house being built. On a house building day, a great deal of rice wine is consumed. And, any time there is work to be done, the men chew heroic quantities of beetle nut. By the late afternoon, the two intoxicants made a couple of the older men belligerent, to the point that they pushed the boundaries of sanook (fun) to the limit. After repeated warnings not to step in front of the camera, they decided to do a little dance routine, blocking the shot. David shouted for them to stop, but they just smiled a toothless grin, with red spittle dripping from the corners of their mouths. Our first reaction was to get angry. But after all, it was their village, their lives, and their day. What business did we have filming them anyway? Giving up, David laughed a long with them. And I taught them a few steps of a line dance, called “The Electric Slide.” I wondered if the Electric Slide would eventually become part of the village folklore. It may not. But all day, little children were running around, holding blocks of wood to their eye, pretending to take photos.
At noon a dog was slaughtered, and I banged my head, going in for lunch. In the evening, more pig was served. As I rubbed my forehead, after banging it again, I watched in fascination, as our host cooked the pork. The meat was not refrigerated. It was simply left, covered, and uncooked, in a cool, dark corner of the kitchen. Before cooking, it was washed with water, and then fried in a pan, with generous quantities of oil. When I asked Matthew about this practice, he said. “In the west, your food is full of preservatives, and yet you need refrigeration. Here, the meat is pure, and yet it doesn’t go bad.”
The Akha were obviously a hard working people, the house was completed by evening, for example. But, many outsiders had hung a reputation of laziness on them. When I asked Matthew why this was, he gave me the typical answer. “It’s because they don’t know the Akha Way.” The following day, with no house to build, I saw groups of men standing around all day, doing nothing. “They are retired.” Explained Matthew.
In The Akha Way, a man and a woman marry very young. They work hard, in the fields, and around the village, and have as many children as possible, very young. By the time they get into their early thirties, their children are big enough that the parents’ labour is no longer needed in the fields. So, the parents get a few years of retirement. When the children are old enough for marriage, the daughters go to the new husband’s family. At that point, the family work income drops, and the parents may have to go back to work in the fields. They will work for a number of years, until they become too old, when they will retire again. But they won’t be completely retired at that point either. They will become village elders, and help to oversee the administration of the village.
Although I wasn’t quite ready to quit my job and move to the village permanently, by the end of the week, (I would never survive the constant knocks to the head) I realized that the Akha way had a number of advantages over our modern system. The Akha way just seemed more human, living in accord with the natural rhythms of the human body and of the jungle, itself. The Akha didn’t create plastics or dump chemicals. They didn’t have stress related disorders. They didn’t have a boss, or wear a tie to the office.
But the part that I admire most about the Akha, is that each and everyone of them knows his history, his culture, and the small part that he plays in the world.
At thirty seven, unmarried, and living as a freelance correspondent, with no fixed address, I wondered just which one of us was the primitive one.

To find out more about the Akha go to www.Akha.org
You can contact the author at antonio_correspondent@hotmail.com

ASIA TIMES online www.atimes.com

Anti-terror report card:
Malaysia vs Thailand
By Todd W John

HUA HIN, Thailand - The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, more commonly referred to as the 9/11 Investigation Committee, recently issued statements as part of its investigative effort that detail Malaysia’s success in working with the intelligence community, while highlighting failures of the Thai authorities. The mixed bag of intelligence success and failures in the Southeast Asia region successfully tracked, but then lost, three terrorists - two of whom would later participate in the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001.

The commission was careful in making the remarks, saying that in the context of “hindsight” the issues were damning, but at the time no one could have predicted that the failures would contribute to the devastating attacks of September 11. They also pointed out that even had they stopped the two terrorists who did successfully enter the US, it might not have stopped the attacks anyway.
In late December 1999, US officials in Pakistan intercepted signals intelligence on a man they could only identify as Nawaf who was in Karachi but was planning a trip on January 4, 2000, to Malaysia. At the same time, they were monitoring his communications with another man, identified early on only as Khalid, who was in Yemen and planning to travel to Malaysia to meet Nawaf. The US National Security Agency (NSA) had also been monitoring communications between Nawaf and a man identified as Salem.

The investigation commission notes that at this point the intelligence community had little more to go on. However, officials were monitoring the situation, as the communications seemed to indicate that “something nefarious might be afoot”, according to the commission.

Nawaf did go through with his plan to travel to Malaysia, but Pakistani and US officials misunderstood his plan to arrive on January 4, 2000, thinking that he would leave Pakistan that same day. This was incorrect - he had actually left on January 2 and had a stopover - probably in Singapore - and continued on to his Malaysia destination on the 4th. Thus, the intelligence officials lost the opportunity to track him directly from Pakistan.

Intelligence operatives in Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were luckier in tracking Khalid from Yemen, through the UAE and on to Malaysia on January 5, 2000. During these operations the agents also learned that Salem was not far behind, making arrangements to come first to Yemen then to meet the others in Malaysia. By following his itinerary, the agents were able to learn that Khalid was Khalid al-Mihdhar. Garnering a copy of his passport, US officials quickly learned that Khalid had been issued a US visa in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in April 1999.

The Malaysian intelligence community had been alerted to the developments and sprang into action and quickly intercepted Nawaf and another Arab, monitoring their movements in Kuala Lumpur. Meanwhile back at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the directorate was following the situation closely. However, the CIA and NSA failed to work together on the issue. The NSA often waits for one of its intelligence “customers” to request an intelligence work-up, which in this case the CIA did not do. Had the CIA queried the NSA about Nawaf and Salem, it would have learned that the NSA believed that Nawaf was Nawaf al-Hazmi, the older brother of Salem. By getting Nawaf’s last name they would have learned that Nawaf al-Hazmi was also carrying a US visa that was issued in Jeddah.

Malaysian authorities monitoring the situation in their capital reported to US officials that on January 6, 2000, two Arab men being tracked departed Malaysia, one going to Thailand and the other to Singapore. Only after their departure did US officials attempt to track them, unsuccessfully. However, within 24 hours, both had returned to Kuala Lumpur. These two men were identified as Nawaf and a new player, one Khallad bin Attash.

Only two days later, things began to fall apart. Malaysian authorities reported that their Arab targets had left Malaysia on a flight to Bangkok, all three men traveling together. One was the known Khalid al-Mihdhar, the second was identified only as al-Hazmi, but of course the intelligence community failed to recognize this as Nawaf’s last name. The third man was Khallad bin Attash, but Khallad is an Arabic nickname, so it was surmised that he was traveling on an alias.

Malaysian authorities alerted their counterparts in Thailand, but because it was a weekend and the men had not been part of a regionwide alert, the warning was picked up too late by Thai authorities. Indeed, by the time Thai officials understood the magnitude of the situation, the men had disappeared quietly into the teeming streets of Bangkok. US officials begrudgingly informed headquarters that the tracking had fallen apart. The names of the men were put on a Thai travel watch list so that the Thais would identify them upon departure, gain information about their destination and alert proper authorities.

The intelligence community would later learn in the post-September 11 investigation that the three men met with two other al-Qaeda operatives in Bangkok, where they were passed money for future operations. Khallad would later go on to mastermind the USS Cole attack in Yemen that killed 17 US servicemen and crippled the warship. Nawaf and Khalid would undertake another operation entirely.

Weeks passed and no attention to the matter seemed to be on the intelligence radar. Finally, in February 2000, Kuala Lumpur asked Bangkok, “What ever happened with those missing Arabs?” Bangkok was slow to respond, possibly because it had failed to notice their departure even though US officials had placed the men on Thailand’s watch list. Several weeks later, Bangkok authorities finally responded to Kuala Lumpur, conceding that the three men had left. For the first time using his full name, the Thais reported that on January 15, “Nawaf al-Hazmi left Bangkok via a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles.” Nawaf had traveled with Khalid, but Bangkok failed to identify this. As for Khallad, he departed Bangkok on January 20 on a flight to Karachi.

The investigation commission noted that even in March the information from Thai authorities was not communicated to the Americans, only to the Malaysians to answer their query. Had the information been passed by Thailand to the United States, domestic enforcement through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) might have been able to reinvigorate the probe. By this time Khalid and Nawaf were living in an apartment in San Diego, California. Again the commission was careful not to blame the failures of Thai authorities as the defining factor, of the many errors that occurred, in losing the trail of the would-be terrorists.

However, the commission goes on in its staff statement to note that in 2001 Khalid and Nawaf traveled across the United States and actually met up with members of another al-Qaeda cell, identified as the “Hamburg cell”. Had the FBI been tracking Nawaf and Khalid at that time, they might have been able to break up at least two of the four cells that would later participate in the September 11 attacks.

As the 9/11 Commission continues its task of developing a comprehensive report and recommendations about terrorist threats to the US, intelligence failures and success, and makes key recommendations for the future, some may look at the international issues offered by the Malaysia-Thailand example to guide the future intelligence cooperation to root out multinational terrorism. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States, both Thailand and Malaysia have pledged their support for the “war on terrorism”.

Malaysia and Thailand have both opened regional anti-terrorism centers aimed at increasing their abilities and efficiency in countering terrorist threats. Malaysia is eager to work with the US and other nations to develop its counter-terrorism capabilities. Since September 11, Malaysia has cracked down on militants and closed Islamic schools it says were spreading hate. But the struggles for Malaysia will continue: Asia Times Online recently reported in Southeast Asia’s counter-terror industry on March 10 that anti-Western rhetoric of previous prime minister Mahathir Mohamad strained relations with the US.

Thailand also has its work cut out for it on the anti-terrorism front. Thailand struggles with its own civil unrest in the Muslim-majority south that it has characterized as terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists. Moreover, a recent human-rights report by the US State Department blasted Thailand for its handling of the “war on drugs” and the violence it caused. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra blasted back, characterizing the US as a “useless friend” (see UN hit as soft on Thai drug war deaths, March 5).

Unless Malaysia, Thailand, the US and all allies in the “war on terrorism” work together to develop their anti-terrorism capabilities, then failures like those of the past may become the catalysts for global terror in the future.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

The emergence of hyperterrorism
By Pepe Escobar

“If you don’t stop your injustices, more blood will flow and these attacks are very little compared with what may happen with what you call terrorism.”
- Abu Dujan al-Afghani, purported military spokesman for al-Qaeda in Europe, claiming responsibility on video for the Madrid bombings.
The “al-Qaedization” of terrorism in Europe is a political “big bang”. According to intelligence estimates in Brussels, there may be an invisible army of up to 30,000 holy warriors spread around the world, which begs the question: how will Western democracies be able to fight them?
The Madrid bombings have already produced the terrorists’ desired effect: fear. Cities all across Europe fear they may be targeted for the next massacre of the innocents. On his October 18, 2003 tape, Osama bin Laden warned that Italy, Britain and Poland, as well as Spain - all staunch Washington allies in the invasion and occupation of Iraq - would be struck. Sheikh Omar Bakri, spiritual leader of the Islamist group al-Mouhajiroun, said in London he “wouldn't be surprised if Italy is the next target”.
Social paranoia inevitably will be on the rise - and the main victims are bound to be millions of European Muslims. Racist political parties like Jean Marie le Pen’s National Front in France and Umberto Bossi’s Northern League in Italy will pump up the volume of their extremely vicious anti-Islamic xenophobia. For scores of moderate European politicians, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain their support for a solution to the Palestinian tragedy - as the Sharon government in Israel spins the line that both Israel and Europe are “victims of terrorism”.
This Wednesday, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will ask the EU to name an expert to be in charge of “coordinating” the action of the 15 countries (soon to be 25). Belgium's Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has proposed the creation of a European Intelligence Center to combat terrorism. Currently, each national intelligence service acts on its own, not always connected with Europol, the continent’s police body in The Hague. A special cell in Brussels, for instance, conducts its own, separate investigations.

The new al-Qaeda virus
The special cell in Brussels considers that the Madrid bombings required “minute preparations, money, experience and cohesion”. This has led European specialists on Islamist movements, like Antoine Basbus, director of the Observatory of Arab Countries, and Olivier Roy, a research director at the French Center of Scientific Research, to agree that al-Qaeda is now operating on three layers: the originals, or Arab-Afghans who were part of the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s; the franchised local groups; and the recent “converts” who provide the crucial link between the “base” and the local outfits.
The anti-terrorist experts in Brussels tell Asia Times Online they had known for some time that the original “base” of the al-Qaeda was greatly depleted. After all, Mohammed Atta, the leading military planner, and Mahfouz Ould, one of the leading ideologues, have been killed. Abu Zubaida, in charge of recruiting, and Ibn Sheikh Al-Libi, in charge of training, are in jail. But unlike the Americans roughly a year ago, the experts in Brussels did not assume that al-Qaeda was broken. They stress that al-Qaeda’s real danger is “their persistent capacity to incite and collaborate with local groups” - they estimate there may be around 40 of these - to act in their own countries. “But we are even more concerned about groups that we don't know anything about.”
The Moroccan arm of al-Qaeda, for instance, is the little-known Moroccan Islamic Combatants Group. The experts in Brussels now confirm that Saudis and Moroccans came to Madrid to plan the bombings alongside Islamist residents of Spain. But al-Qaeda is not only active in the Maghreb: it is very well connected in sub-Saharan Africa, in places not yet fully investigated like the Ivory Coast and the Central African Republic.
For months now, ever since the Istanbul bombings in November 2003, different European intelligence services have been afraid they would have to confront a mutated enemy. Most services were in fact sure that Istanbul represented the first attack on Europe. The possibility of further use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, and even nuclear “dirty bombs”, was not, and now more than ever is not, discarded.
Roy says that recruiting is now being conducted locally because “mobility is more difficult; there is not a place anymore where one goes to meet the chief or to get training”. Recruiting campaigns continue all over the EU. For instance, one of the perpetrators of the bombing of the UN office in Baghdad in August 2003 was recruited in Italy. Other recruits in Spain, Germany and Norway ended up in Iraq via Syria. Global jihad, of which al-Qaeda is the leading exponent, is above all an idea. It thrives on spectacular terrorist attacks. Targets may have no strategic interest: what matters is terror as a spectacle - like bombing a nightclub in Bali. Madrid represented something much more sophisticated because in the Western collective consciousness it was the link between an American ally and the war on Iraq.
Spain may have become a new symbol of the clash between the jihadis’ version of Islam and the “Jews and Crusaders”. But as far as global jihad is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether a European democracy like Spain is governed by conservatives or socialists. Al-Qaeda is an apocalyptic sect betting on the clash of civilizations: Islamic jihadis against “Jews and Crusaders”. It is the same with the Bush administration spinning a “war on terror”: James Woolsey, a former Central Intelligence Agency head, believes this is the Fourth World War and conservative guru Samuel Huntington bets on, what else, a “clash of civilizations”.
Al-Qaeda's biggest problem is that it has no legitimacy in the Middle East as far as the key issues, Palestine and Iraq, are concerned. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's No 2, were never interested in the Palestinian struggle. In Roy's formula, “Al-Qaeda represents the globalization of Islam, not of the Middle Eastern conflicts.”

The Osama factor
Al-Qaeda is a nebula in total dispersion, locally and globally. Take Osama’s audio-video productions: they are always delivered to the world via Islamabad, but the distribution chain is so fragmented that no one can go back to the source. Tribal chiefs protect bin Laden all over the Pakistan-Afghan border for two reasons: because he is a Muslim and because he fought in the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s. This has nothing to do with September 11 - which for tribal leaders is something akin to a trip to the moon - and it goes beyond the US$25 million bounty on bin Laden’s head. Most Afghans don’t like Arabs and blame them for every disaster in the last 25 years. But every tomb of an Arab killed by an American bomb in 2001 is honored like a holy place.
The experts in Brussels consider that the possible capture of Osama in the upcoming spring offensive may not change anything, because in the current global jihad modus operandi the “base” retains all the initiative.
Roy insists military muscle simply does not work: “We are able to fight al-Qaeda with police operations, intelligence and justice. On a political level, one must make sure that they don’t have a social base: already they don’t have a political wing, sympathizers, intellectuals, newspapers or unions. They must be isolated. There’s only one way for this to happen: full integration of Muslims,” That’s the exact opposite of the stigma privileged by conservative governments and racist, xenophobic parties.

Key conclusions
According to the experts in the Brussels anti-terrorist cell, proving al-Qaeda’s responsibility in the Madrid bombings will lead to three important conclusions:
1. Al-Qaeda is back in the spectacular attack business, even if the attack is perpetrated by affiliates.
2. Cells remain very much active around Europe, and the West as a whole remains a key target.
3. Global jihad has achieved one of its key objectives, which is to strike against one of Washington’s allies in Iraq.
The repercussions of all these conclusions are of course immense - from Washington to all major European capitals and spilling to the arc from the Middle East to Central and South Asia.
Brussels also alerts that this happens independently of other al-Qaeda objectives which remain very much in place: the departure of all American soldiers from Saudi soil; the fall of the House of Saud; and the expulsion of Jews from the Middle East. Al-Qaeda's ultimate objective is a caliphate. As far as the absolute majority of Muslims in the world are concerned, the global jihad’s most seductive appeal undoubtedly remains its struggle to end the American imperial control of Islamic lands.
Romano Prodi, head of the European Commission, says that force is not working against terrorism: “Terrorism now is more powerful than before.” Most European politicians and intellectuals - apart from Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar and their friends - consider that the Bush administration's response to asymmetric warfare has only served to increase the threat. It's a classic reductio ad absurdum. Increasingly lethal American military muscle deployed all over the Islamic world has led to more lethal terrorist attacks, in the Islamic world and also in the West. More muscled defense of hard targets, or strategic targets, has led to more indiscriminate attacks on so-called soft targets (like the Madrid trains). Madrid is a tragic mirror of Baghdad and Karbala: more than 200 innocent workers and students died in Madrid, more than 200 innocent pilgrims died in Iraq.
Not only in Brussels or the European Parliament in Strasbourg is there practically a consensus that the beginning of a solution for the terrorism problem is the end of both the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the American occupation of Iraq. Madrid once again proved that terrorism practices the ultimate in nihilist politics. There's no possible diplomacy. No possible negotiation. It does not bend when attacked by military power. It has no territory and no population to defend, and no military or civil installations to protect. Al-Qaeda is not a Joint Chiefs of Staff: it is an idea. It commands faithful servants, not soldiers. It has nothing to do with war - as the Bush administration insists - and much less with a war on Iraq. One of the reasons invoked for the war on Iraq - the link between Saddam and al-Qaeda - was turned upside down: more al-Qaeda infiltration in the West is a consequence of the war, not less.
In the corridors of Brussels, and in the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Milan, London and Paris, Europe was given a rude awakening. All the evidence now screams that reshaping the Middle East from a base in occupied Iraq is not leading to less terrorism: it is leading to hyperterrorism.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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