SPAN: November/December 2001

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rom September 11 to September 22, Americanflags throughout the world were flown at half mast in remembrance of the innocent people-thousands upon thousands of them-who were murdered in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in the Pennsylvania countryside. Two weeks is an extraordinarily long period for a nation's flag to remain at half-mast. Even so, a single fortnight could not contain the grief felt by the American people and its friends around the globe.

The shocking manner of the slaughter and the needfor rapid action to apprehend those responsible for it have left us with scant space for grief Had our countrymen, and the citizens of 80 other nations, including India, died in a natural disaster, we would have had more time to mourn. But they did not die naturally. They died in the cruelest form of warfare-terrorist attacks on innocent civilians. The frightening thing is that the terrorists would have killed more people if they could have.

Our efforts now are focused on bringing to justice the directors, planners and financiers of the September 11 attacks. As the United States and its partners in the international coalition against terrorism have begun the campaign in Afghanistan, less is heard of the September 11 victims than is, perhaps, proper.

This memorial edition of SPAN magazine is a small way of returning our attention to the men and women whose lives were snatched from them and their families by the savage action of a few people who luxuriated in blind hatred. This magazine chronicles the homage paid to the dead. Many of the statements have become sources of inspiration, strength and renewed commitment to those now engaged in our struggle to defendfreedom and bring the international criminals hiding in Afghanistan to justice.

Homage is deserved. The many acts of heroism by the rescuers, some of whom became victims themselves, must be enshrined in our consciousness. Their example teaches us that the world must not be cowed by terrorists; nor must we let our grief and anger drive us to imitate their actions. It is for the living to renew our commitment to freedom. By making sure, as President Bush has said, "the people who conducted these acts and those who harbor them are held accountable for their actions" and by continuing to live our lives with confidence that justice will prevail.

SPAN

Letter from Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill September 1 1, 2001

Publisher J ames Callahan

By David Remnick

Coping with Enormity

Editor-in-Chief Angela Aggeler

By Jonathan Franzen and Arnitav Ghosh

Editor Lea Terhune

National Day of Prayer and Remembrance

Associate Editor A. Venkata Narayana Copy Editor Dipesh K. Satapathy Editorial Assistant K. Muthukumar Art Director Suhas Nimbalkar

Speech by President Bush

"Great Harm Has Been Done ... " President Bush addresses the Joint Session of Congress

"The World Must Join Hands" Prime Minister Vajpayee addresses the nation

Deputy Art Director Hemant Bhatnagar Production/Circulation Manager Rakesh Agrawal Research

"Americans Emerge from All Your Nations"

Services

AIRC Documentation Services, American Information Resource Center

Against Fear, Terror and Intolerance

By Prime Minister Tony Blair

Front cover: The Statue of Liberty seen against the Manhattan skyline in this view from Jersey City, New Jersey, on September 12 morning, as smoke continues to rise from the ruins of the World Trade Center towers.

AP photo by Mike Derer.

Inside front cover: Firefighters unfurl an American flag from the roof of the Pentagon on September 12, 2001, as President Bush visits the wing destroyed by the telTorist attack. AP photo by Ron Edmonds.

Note: SPAN does not accept unsolicited manuscripts and materials and does not assume responsibility for them. Query letters are accepted.

Printed and Published by James Callahan of the Public Affairs Section, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 33 I 684 I), on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

No part of this magazine may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Editor. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine, one year subscription (6 issues) Rs. 125; single copy, Rs.30.

World Opinion Ruminations on the Day of Fury

By A. Venkata Narayana

Praise for Islam in U.S. Senate And Defense of Minorities

Understanding the Fight

By Jay Tolson

Jihad and Islamic Scriptures

By Jeffery L. Sheler

Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?

By Fareed Zakaria

The Tricky Trail of Blood Money

By Pramit Pal Chaudhuri

September 11, 2001

he day began with what airline pilots call "severe clear": seemingly infinite visibility. Downtown, in the precincts of the World Trade Center, the giddy, indulgent years of stock speculation had long since ended, and in the offices and restaurants, on the trading floors and in the hallways, there was worried talk about a "crisis" in consumer confidence, a "crisis" of rising unemployment, a prolonged period of "getting worse before it gets better." It was also Primary Day in the city: four Democrats and two Republicans were lining up to win their party nominations and succeed Rudolph Giuliani in City Hall. It was fair to say that none of the candidates had, as yet, struck most New Yorkers as the next Fiorello LaGuardia.

But these were hardly wOlTies of a historic scale, not wOlTies of basic security, of existence. This was a late-summer day, a gift to enjoy.

Kirk Kjeldsen, a reporter for the magazine Waters, which covers finance and technology, was on his way to the ot1h Tower of the World Trade Center for a conference, hosted by the magazine's parent company, the Risk Waters Group, when he did something he had never done before: he fell asleep on the subway. "I don't know what happened," he said. "I had a cup of coffee, but I was going in and out of sleep. You know how you open your eyes and think, OK., it's not my stop?" He finally got to the World Trade Center, and, as he ran out of the subway station toward the North Tower, he said, "I remember looking up. It was a marvel to me how tall it was."

Kjeldsen was covering the conference, which was being held at Windows on the World, on the 106th floor. He navigated his way through the lobby and the crush of people going to work. He was told that there was an elevator for Windows on the World, an express to the 78th floor, where he could change and go on to the 106th. Kjeldsen looked at the clock on his cell phone: it was 8.44 a.m. "I was thinking, Oh, shit." He had scheduled his first interview for 8.40 a.m.

"There was a black gentleman there, a good-looking guy, strong, a linebacker type," Kjeldsen said. "It was his job to take people up and down. If it had been just me, I would have gone on up, but he held the door for a couple who were going to the same conference. The woman was dressed in a very corporate, clean-cut outfit, and just as she was stepping into the

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elevator I remember looking down and seeing a rose tattoo on her ankle. It was a little dim through her stockings. Then the plane hit. The whole building rocked. The elevator bounced up and down like a yo-yo on a string. Everyone just stood there, frozen. Nobody screamed, nobody panicked. The elevator door was stuck about three-quat1ers of the way open. The elevator operator said, "What the hell was that?" I thought a bomb had gone off in the building. It felt like the building got snapped like a towel. I could hear glass breaking.

"It was unbelievable how quickly smoke started filling the atrium once we got there," Kjeldsen continued. "I started seeing pieces of concrete around me. There would be a piece the size of an alarm clock, then I'd turn around and there would be a piece the size of a desk. My first thought was to get out of there, and I got out on some sort of platform or observation deck. I didn't know it wasn't an exit. And it was just covered with dozens of shoes. High heels. Strap-ons. A few penny loafers and business shoes. There were bodies, luggage, torsos. People were jumping. At first, I didn't know they were people, bllt I realized they were flailing on the way down. I've seen maybe a million movies where people are falling and it's always, like, choreographed, but this was really ugly. It looked like lemmings, people lining up and dropping, too many people falling. Then something landed right next to me, and I went back inside.

"There were dying people. There was this guy who had no skin left. And he had white powder all over him. He looked like a specter. And as I was walking quickly past him he took two short breaths-like 'Hah hah'-and then he stopped and then he froze up like the concrete all around him. I saw people going through a catwalk, and I joined in. I think maybe it was a glass catwalk, and I looked up at the building and the explosion of fire bloomed like a flower."

When Kjeldsen finally got out of the North Tower and onto the street, he called his girlfriend and told her that the top of the World Trade Center had just blown up. As he was talking, he saw a second plane, headed for the other tower. "It was a blur to me. I was looking at it from the ground up, and it looked like a flaming arrow had pierced the building."

Eventually, the Risk Waters Group posted a message on its Web site saying that 16 staff members and more than 50 dele-

Š 200 I David Remnick. Originally published in The New Yorker. All rights reserved. For more articles about the attacks, please visit The New Yorker online at www.newyorker.com

"Then a ...oh, God, a man in khakis and an open blue suit jacket, feet up in the air, falling ... " wrote an eyewitness, who watched with binoculars from his home 13 blocks away.

One couple held hands on the way down.

gates were "unaccounted for."

In the hours to come, the world would learn the details of a terrorist operation directed at the symbols and centers of American power and modernity: at government in Washington and at finance in New York. Four teams of terrorists, working with extreme coordination and the sick bravado of martyrdom, hijacked four planes flying east to west. Topped with hundreds of gallons of fuel, these planes-two setting out from Logan Airport, in Boston, one from Newark, and one from Dulles, in Washington-had been converted into flying bombs with human freight.

The two towers ofthe World Trade Center collapsed into flaming steel, rubble, and dust, and vanished from the skyline of southern Manhattan. The Pentagon was severed along its southwest side. Fighter jets patrolled the skies above Central Park, the aircraft carriers USS John F Kennedy and USS George Washington, along with eight other warships, patrolled the Atlantic. New York officials ordered 6,000 body bags; then they ordered many thousands more. The United States declared the attacks-by far the most catastrophic in American history-acts of war.

At 9.15 a.m., riders on the West Side lRT trains had not yet heard the news, and so there was a collective gasp when an announcer on the subway's creaky public-address system-audible for oncesaid, "Due to an emergency at the World Trade Center, there will be no service between Chambers Street and South Ferry."

On Church Street, passengers came up the subway stairs and into the sunlight only to see plates of glass the size of store windows and strips of metal larger than trucks flying out of buildings and plunging to the ground. As thousands of frightened and tear-stained people fled, some stopped to gather around an enonnous cylinder of twisted metal in front of a bagel cart, not far from Murray Street.

People were taking pictures of it, and there was a minute or so

before they realized that it was the engine of a jet plane.

Policemen kept saying that the situation was dangerous, that nobody should be there, and yet for a short while one had the strange feeling-cliched, shaming, and inevitable-of watching a movie, an outlandish disaster film in which the grave threat would increase and increase and then all the tension would be released when the action hero shot his way through and clipped the wires and set the world right. But, of course, no one would set anything right: real people were being crushed and incinerated inside the real, and buckling, World Trade towers. In the North Tower, some were jumping or diving from the highest floors. Many were clinging to beams and ledges that had bowed like melting plastic when the plane plowed into the building and set off fireballs of more than a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

Every few minutes, another desperate person lost his grip or just let go or jumped. Some dropped, rigid, all the way to earth. A firefighter was killed when he was hit by a man who had fallen from one of the towers.

A writer who lives 13 blocks north of the Trade Center and watched from his roof sent an e-mail saying, "For the last two years, we've been living with the Twin Towers-the 'Big Tow-, ahs,' as our son Ollie calls them. I often changed Ollie's diaper by their lights, and they made for beautiful spectacles during night rain when half veiled in clouds. This apocalyptic tragedy started off as a fire-engine festival for Ollie, a fun, exciting morning as seen through the eyes of a boy who is 26 months old, but the fire engines and the police cars kept coming and coming and the sirens were unrelenting, and suddenly the traffic stopped issuing from the Holland Tunnel. We didn't know it was a suicidal plane attack then. It seemed like some terrible explosion had blown open a hole three quarters up the north face of the North Tower, and the aluminum cladding had been exploded off the structure of the building.

There was a ghastly hole that showed the profile of the aircraft's wing; orange flames were burning along entire floors above and below; each window looked like the window into a kiln.

"It was astonishing and terrifying to watch the flames spread, but still inconceivable that the buildings would not survive even as charred hulks. From my roof, I could see a man waving a white flag from perhaps the uppermost floor of Above: Pedestrians flee as the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses after the terrorist attack, the North Tower, in the bay sending clouds of powdery dust, grit and smoke into the financial district in lower Manhattan (left). of windows closest to the Right, above: An emergency worker helps a woman after she was injured by flying debris. Emergency medical units soon became superfluous as it became clear-with afew exceptions-that the only river. He kept waving and survivors were those who got out before the towers crumpled. Nearly 300 firefighters who had gone into waving the white flag; the the buildings in the initial minutes after the terrorist attack lost their lives when the towers collapsed. fire kept spreading. Chairs

came flying out in splashes of glass, and then-and maybe this is why I'm writing this down-people.

"When I went up to the roof, a bunch of workers and residents from our building said, 'People are jumping,' but I didn't believe them. I looked with my binoculars, and what they were saying were people was clearly debris-sheets of metal, chairs, unidentifiable stuff, and then a ...oh God, a man in khakis and an open blue suit jacket, feet up in the air, falling down the side of the building facing the river, three, four, five seconds, gone, vanished between a low silver-skinned building and World Trade No.7 in the foreground. Then more people began to jump out the river side of the tower, and then out the front, where they fell against the backdrop of the windows, almost in sequence, like paratroopers bustling out of an aircraft."

At around 10 a.m., there was a tremendous whoosh, the sound of a rocket launch, but louder still. Suddenly, people in the area started to run: an avalanche of white debris, of powder and concrete, steel and glass, headed for the ground. The smoke and grit made it impossible to see or to breathe, and everyone was coughing, gasping for air. The police kept screaming, "There is air!

There is air!" and people ran toward them, for oxygen masks. If you looked up, it was clear what had happened: the South Tower, 110 floors, had collapsed-in seconds, a building that it had taken eight years to build was gone.

Arlington National CemetelY in Virginia. A cloud of smoke rises from the Pentagon after it was hit by the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, killing 189 people. Right. Firefighters work to douse the flames at the Pentagon after the attack.

At the corner of Church and Reade, seven blocks uptown, a clump of spectators who had been watching passively became uneasy as white smoke appeared on the street and billowed toward them. "Go north!" someone shouted. "The smoke is coming this way!"

Two boys looked up:" 0 more Twin Towers, yo!"

A pair of Haitian men were shouting at each other, but not arguing: "God gave us sense to communicate with each other.

Why?" People who had escaped from the buildings ran past. Some stopped, and remained frozen against a wall. A woman had fallen to the ground and was writhing, shouting. Her sister was trying to help her up.

A guy pulled out his cell phone: "Man, I was there! The tower just collapsed." He became frustrated. "Turn on your TV!" A policeman appeared and pointed to the smoke: "If you breathe that in, you are going to die."

This got the spectators moving, too, but they moved slowly, as if walking out of a ballpark to the parking lot after a defeat.

CPL JASON INGERSOLL

Then, just before 10.30 a.m., another collapse: the North Tower, on Liberty Street. And again the rocket whoosh, the snowball of murderous debris, the shards of glass and the glittering steel panels speeding down from the sky. Now there was unbridled panic: a stream of people, most of them in business dress, heading north or toward the bridges to Brooklyn.

In Washington, at the FBI's 1. Edgar Hoover Building, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the bureau's newly appointed director, Robert Mueller, and his senior staff were wrapping up their daily briefing when they were notified that at 8.48 a.m. a Boeing 767 with 92 passengers aboard~American Flight 11, bound from Boston to Los Angeles~had crashed into One World Trade Center, the orth Tower. All the assistant directors of the bureau were there, including the counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson. It was still not clear that the crash was a terrorist attack. After the meeting, some of the staff moved into the office of Thomas Pickard, the deputy director, to watch the television coverage. At 9:06 a.m., United Flight 175, a 767, hijacked, again, along a Boston-Los Angeles route, and with 65 passengers, slammed into the South Tower. Once that second plane hit, "it removed all doubt," an official who was there said. Yet so intense was the shock that not a single agent spoke for a few moments. The FBI, like many other agencies in Washington, had repeatedly reviewed scenarios of grand-scale attacks involving weapons of mass

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destruction. But this was not in anyone's plans or imagination.

Dale Watson went to his office down the hall and, following the protocol that had been created for national emergencies, activated the Strategic Information Operations Center for crisis mode.

SIOC, as it is known, is a 3,700-square-meter room on the 5th floor, which opened in 1998 and was dedicated to George Herbet1 Walker Bush. SIOC operates around the clock, with a minimum of eight staffers. It has a high-tech secure communications system and situation maps, and is designed to deal with five crises at once.

Watson, his deputies, and various agents started calling representatives from government law-enforcement and national-security agencies to coordinate an immediate investigation. There was a sense of organized pandemonium. "Unfortunately, we've learned a lot from these terrible experiences, and we ramped up as smoothly as I've ever seen," one agent said. Meanwhile, nonessential employees were evacuated from the building.

All around Washington, security officials were scrambling to take precautions: heavily armed Secret Service agents manned posts on the roof of the White House, around the grounds, and in Lafayette Park, across the street. When, at 9:45 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77, a 757 from Dulles, bound for Los Angeles with 64 people aboard, crashed into the side of the Pentagon, rumors and reports inside the FBI and beyond intensified. It turned out that the hijackers on Flight 77 might have been aiming at the White House.

ow it appeared that yet another plane-United Airlines Flight 93, a 757 from Newark, bound for San Francisco with 45 aboard-had been hijacked somewhere over Ohio, and was heading back East, toward Washington. "There was a feeling of helplessness," one ofthe FBI officials said. "We were all waiting to see what was going to happen ...There was a tremendous focus on what planes were in the sky. What was accounted for and what was not." At 10:37 a.m., Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, southeast of Pittsburgh. It was reported that some passengers might have struggled with the hijackers, forcing down the plane before it could reach the capital.

A senior FBI official said that the bureau had quickly been able to identify most of the pilots of the hijacked planes; incredibly, agents discovered that a couple of the hijackers were on federal watch lists but had been able to slip across the borders without being detected or stopped by immigration officials. He said that within the FBI there was already a lot of questioning, "as there always is when something like this happens"-wondering whether some intercept had not been translated properly or quickly enough.

A former top FBI official said that the bureau had beeri concerned about an attack in New York City ever since this summer, when associates of Osama bin Laden, the notorious Saudi-born terrorist leader, were convicted in federal court in connection with the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Africa. "It was his trial in absentia," another official said. "We were always worried about something happening in New York." During the last several years, the government regularly planned for and simulated terrorist attacks, including scenarios that involved multipleplane hijackings, ship hijacking, and nuclear attacks. But a scenario like the one that wrecked downtown Manhattan and part of the Pentagon had not been conceived of.

A dozen interviews with past and present top intelligence officers produced the usual bureaucratic recriminations and finger-pointing over which agency was primarily responsible for the failure of American intelligence to alert the nation's leadership to such a serious threat. But there also was a consensus that there was something special, terrifyingly so, about the professionalism of the attack.

Leslie Gelb, a former Defense Department official and now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "For the past decade, there has been report after report on the coming terrorist threat-and very little has been done to implement the findings ....A lot of people said these sorts of preparations would be a waste of money, but there was little doubt in the minds of most professionals that the terrorist threat to America was far greater and more imminent than any missile attack to be defended by the President's proposed missile-defense system."

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hroughout the day, some news broadcasts talked about Osama bin Laden as if he were a singular actor, beholden to no one.

"Bin Laden is not an operational guy," Yossef Bodansky said.

"His role is that he is the most sophisticated spokesman for the grievances of the Muslim world. He gives voice not only to anger

A remnant o/the South Tower o/the World Trade Center stands like a giant tombstone amid devastation.

but to solutions-a relentless terrorist war until the West is banished from the lands ofIslam. And in such a war everything is permissible. He also sprinkles holy water on the solutions. Although he is not religiously educated, his language, his citations are all beautiful to his followers. The conservative Muslim leaders who do not believe in terror, who believe in coexistence, do not have an equal spokesman. And, finally, bin Laden is the connection, the linchpin, between the sponsoring states, without whom nothing would happen, and the perpetrators." Bin Laden's connections have extended to leaders in states with marked differences, among them Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, and Afghanistan.

Tall, gaunt, charismatic, elusive, bin Laden is not merely an impresario of rage and violence; he is also representative of a new kind of indigenous radical elite. Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, to a family that became immensely wealthy, but he did not study abroad, at Sandhurst and Cambridge, and then return with an imported brand of violent Marxism. He is distinctly homegrown, shaped by the events and currents of the Islamic world-its historical resentments, its humiliations, and its victories. The lingering American military presence in Saudi Arabia in the years after the Gulf War is central to bin Laden's rage and his constant calls for jihad. American culture-its liberties and pluralism, and the w~y it has reached the rest of the world through international travel and modern communications-is also, for the world bin Laden represents, the enemy.

"Clearly, after Belief, there is no more impOliant duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land," bin Laden wrote in 1996, in "Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War." "Due to the imbalance of power between our armed forces and the enemy forces, a suitable means of fighting must be adopted, i.e., using fast-moving light forces that work under complete secrecy.

In other words to initiate a guerrilla warfare, where the sons of the nation, and not the military forces, take part in it."

Since the late I 960s, radical Islamic theorists have described the tactics of a potential armed jihad against the West-a war of protracted terror-but no one has proved as adept or as ruthless a leader as bin Laden. He made his name first as a financier who helped the Afghan rebels drive the Soviet Union out of Kabul in 1989. Despite the defeat ofIraq in the Gulf War, bin Laden's experience in Afghanistan gave him the continuing confidence that any superpower, including the United States, could be humbled and driven from Islamic lands. Since leaving Saudi Arabia for good, in 1991, bin Laden, along with AI Qaida, his terrorist network of exMujahideen and other supporters, has been linked to at least a dozen terrorist missions, including the attack on American troops in Somalia, in 1993; the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993; the attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in 1998; and last year's attack on the USS Cole, in Aden, Yemen.

He is also said to have made repeated attempts to obtain components for nuclear and chemical weapons.

uriously, Osama bin Laden has not always been in the vanguard of the struggle against Israel. If anything, his multidirectional jihad has been more of a threat to India in Kashmir than it has been to Israel on the West Banle But bin Laden is an expert in co-opting Muslim preoccupations, and he seems to have coopted the biggest preoccupation of the moment: the year-long Palestinian uprising against Israel. This sort of political talent, combined with his striking successes in rhetoric, organization, and terrorism, has made him extraordinarily popular to many in the Muslim world. To his admirers, Osama bin Laden projects hayba, an Arabic word whose meaning could be distilled as "the awe produced by the shadow of God upon the earth." It is a quality ascribed in Muslim tradition to the caliphs. In the past few years, in Cairo, Amman, Gaza, Peshawar, Kashmir, and Kabul, countless encomiums have been attached to bin Laden's name.

Young men in the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrasa, one of the largest Taliban training schools in Pakistan's North-West

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Frontier Province, could name for a visiting reporter no heroes except bin Laden and the Prophet Muhammad himself.

While the attacks in New York and Washington were being carried out, Dennis Ross, the former special envoy to the Middle East, was addressing a seminar in Washington on the future of peace in the region. Ross said later that when he was first told of the attacks he thought that it must be some sort of hypothetical scenario being pitched at him as an academic exercise.

"We'd looked at the possibility in the past of planes being seized and flown into targets," Ross said. "It was something that certainly the Israelis had considered a possibility. But the possibility that four could happen at once?"

The operation, he went on, was astoundingly sophisticated.

"They must have surveyed the airlines, and the particular flights.

It looks as if they had even chosen flights they were fairly certain wouldn't be very full, to insure they wouldn't be overpowered." Ross said that he would never forget the expressions he

saw on the faces of Washingtonians as he walked back to his office from the morning seminar. "I've spent a lot of time in Israel," he said. "I know that look." This is a new day, he thought, a transforming event. The danger now, as he sees it, is to fall back into traditional responses to terrorism, which clearly haven't worked. He said, "We can't just do the usual thingbomb a few targets, if it turns out to be Osama bin Laden. If we respond the same old way, nothing will change." enator Hillary Clinton, who inspected the damage in lower Manhattan on Wednesday morning, also spoke in distinctly theological terms. "From the sky as we flew in, looking down on the Trade Center, what I saw were what looked like the gates of Hell," she said. "Any person of faith knows that evil is omnipresent, and the struggle we face is to overcome the tendency to lash out in violence at each other. My religion starts with the story of one brother murdering another. Human nature is always going to challenge us. But I believe that God has a purpose, and the challenge of being human is to overcome the cheap, easy all ure of evil. These attacks were cheap, insignificant displays by cowardly people whose effot1s don't compare to the hard work of ordinary people raising a family, going to work, running businesses, and building a great city."

In the night hours after the President's brief address, the event somehow seemed to grow worse. As ew Yorkers wandered through the drifts of downtown or watched hour after hour of television, it became clear that by morning, at the latest, one was likely to hear terrible news: the death of a friend, the death of someone from work, the death of someone you saw every day in the elevator, at the grocery store. Hundreds of doctors and nurses and volunteers had mobilized at all the downtown hospitals, including Beekman, St. Vincent's, Bellevue, and New York University, but, while there were plenty of injuries to treatburns, concussions, fractures, cuts, bruises fi'om the falling debris-the halls were relatively empty.

At Chelsea Piers, the spot1s complex along the Hudson River in west Chelsea, medical teams and volunteers from around the tristate area set up a triage facility: every space-the basketball courts, the gymnastics area, even a television studio, where "Spin City" is filmed-was set up for an enormous influx. The ice-skating rink was to be the morgue. Earlier that day, Bill Abramson, a vice-president of Chelsea Piers, said, "We're just a straight shot up the West Side Highway from the Trade Center. But we haven't seen many patients, maybe a dozen people altogether. There are just not people coming out of there. They thought they were going to have a lot of injuries and overflow from the hospitals and they could treat them here.

We had more volunteers than we needed, lots of doctors just walking in and asking to help. But there was nothing to do."

Similarly, at the trauma center at Bellevue there was a startling absence of activity in the operating rooms, and little illusion as to why. "Those who got out, got out," one nurse said. "Those who didn't, they died."

Katherine Ilachinski is a 70-year-old architect. As a girl, she

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survived the German bombing of Belgrade. On Tuesday morning, she was in her office on the 91 st floor of Two World Trade Center, working on a sketch for changes to an electrical substation at the Hoboken terminal of ew Jersey Transit. The first jet hit One World Trade just above the level of her office window.

"There was an explosion, and a fireball went along the side of my building where I was sitting," she recalled. "It was so hot. It was like being in a boiler. I had to get out of my office. I went into an interior passage, then into the main corridor, to the elevators. You know, I was in the building in 1993, when we were bombed, and that time my instincts were completely different.

Then, I closed my office. This time, I just wanted to get out of the building. Some people were taking the stairs. But I thought, I'm too old to walk so far down. Our elevators go to the lobby on 78. So I took the elevator to 78.

"The lobby there was mobbed, everybody trying to get in the elevators to the ground. I saw a guy who worked for me, Anthony-Anthony Portillo," Mrs. Ilachinski said. Her voice trembled. "He's a CAD operator-that's computer-aided design.

I told Anthony, 'Let's take the elevator to 44.' It was still too high for me to walk, but the elevators to the ground were so crowded.

There was no air. And 1 know what happens if the elevator gets stuck. You are doomed. But Anthony said, 'No, Katy.' He wanted to take the elevator all the way down. I didn't trust it. So I took the elevator to the 44th floor. That elevator was relatively empty.

"But the scene in the lobby on 44 was a repetition of 78th. It was just mobbed. People all the way from east to west. Most of them waiting for the elevator to the ground. That was when I decided to try to walk, and something just propelled me to the nOlth stairs. I don't know by what force 1 was propelled. But now, two days later, I can look at the pictures and see: that was the side least affected by the second jet.

"In the stairwell, it was quiet. There were announcements on the loudspeakers, saying, 'It's safe. The building is safe. Don't panic.' I think they even told us we could go back to our offices, but I'm not sure. I was just going down, down, down, like an automaton. After the plane hit our building, and the building statted shaking, there were no more announcements.

"Through almost everything, I felt amazingly calm, except for that one moment in the stairwell, when the building started shaking and I thought, I'm a goner. I wished I was back on the 9 I st floor, and I could jump. Because I could jump from the window-reluctantly, but I could do it-because then it is over. But to be trapped under rubble, that is worse. I remember, from the war, from Belgrade, what it is to be trapped under rubble.

"I don't really know where I was when the plane hit. I had with me some water, but when the stairs started shaking I dropped it. There was smoke, but not too thick. A colleague was with me when we reached the ground, and we came out of the building together.

"We started toward the Manhattan Bridge. I didn't even turn to look back. I was just walking. We had gone three blocks when the ground shook, and it suddenly got very dark, and everybody stalted running. I'm not too good at running, so I was just

Two women hold each other as they watch the World Trade Center burn following a terrorist attack on the twin skyscrapers.

walking briskly. The smoke came fi'om behind us, and everything became covered with a fine white powder. I actually thought it was an atom bomb, because that is what it's supposed to be like.

"When I heard that the Pentagon was also attacked, I became very wOtTied about my son, because he often goes there for his work. I tried to phone him, but I couldn't get through. I walked and walked. Finally, at Penn Station, I managed to get through to his home, and my daughter-in-law answered. She gave the phone to my son, and he told me he was packing to go to New York to my funeral. They had been watching TV all morning, and they saw the buildings fall, and they had already buried me. It was a conclusion that I am dead that would be easily understood. But my son told me that a very strange thing happened. He reached up to take my picture from the shelf to take with him to New York, and a book fell from the shelf, and he saw a word on the cover, 'Miracles.'

And three minutes later I called. I think it's a miracle. Do you believe in God?" Mrs. I1achinski had worked in the World Trade Center since 1980. She still talks about the buildings as if they exist. Only two weeks before the attack, she went on a tour to inspect the provisions in the structural design of the South Tower. The design, she said, was far ahead of its time. "The building was designed to move three feet from the center, which was remarkable," she said. "When we first moved in, some people got seasick. And when there was a lot of wind there was screeching in the inner core. You know, the buildings were designed for ajet hit as well.

But that was 30 years ago, and jets are different now. And nobody thought about the fuel."

At points, without warning, her architect's curiosity and practicality falter. "Guilt feeling you wouldn't believe," she said, with a voice full of pain. "At this time of life. And all those

young people went. Strange. Very strange. And I am only asking why. All those poor people. Thousands and thousands."

At home in his apartment, in Astoria, Queens, Kirk Kjeldsen began thinking that, just at the moment when his country's serene luck was extinguished, he had been saved. He had been inside the World Trade Center for a conference at Windows on the World, but he had made it out because he'd been running late.

He had been in a position to escape, if only by moments. He thought about the books he'd never get to write ifhe'd died, how he'd never marry, the places he'd never see. "All these things I selfishly thought," he said. Then he checked his e-mail, and there were messages from his family, his friends, people he had worked with, people he had gone to school with.

"To be honest, I'm on auto pilot most of the time, and I don't think too highly of myself," Kjeldsen said. "But when it struck me how many people cared about me, and then I multiply that on the people 1 should have been with up there at the conference, then the thousands of people who were in the building, and when I start multiplying that in my head and think about how many people it is affecting, then I stati crying."

On Wednesday morning, he called his office, on Lafayette Street, but nobody answered. He didn't know what to do. There was a hospital at the end of the street where his girlfi'iend lives, and they went to give blood, but the hospital wasn't accepting donations. He tried to go to his office, but he couldn't get below 14th Street, so he went back to Astoria. Watching television was brutal, especially when a repoti came on about the Windows on the World conference that had been hosted by the Risk Waters Group. "As of now, no one has been accounted for," the reporter said. But there was Kirk Kjeldsen, alive and watching television.

He decided he needed a break, so he went to the gym, but the gym was full of televisions. People on the screen were holding up posters showing photographs of their friends and relatives. Later, Kjeldsen recognized some of the faces in those pictures. When he picked up the pictures from his vacation in Miami, he realized that some of those shots could have been on posters as well.

On Thursday, Kjeldsen managed to reach the London office of the Risk Waters Group by telephone. Many of the people at the conference were not Americans and had no family in the city, so the company was assembling a group to survey the hospitals and morgues, when it was allowed, in order to identify any of the attendees. Kjeldsen tried to meet up with members of the group later that evening, but missed them amid all the confusion.

Finally, on Thursday night, he got to sleep, but a storm came into the city, and he was awakened at three in the morning by thunder that seemed to him like the sound of bombs.

0 About the Author: David Remnick is with the ew Yorker. This article has inputs fi'Oll1reports of New Yorker staff including Michael Agger, Peter J Boyel; Chip Brown, John Cassidy, William Finnegan, Joe Klein, Nicholas Lemann, Fral1l;oise MOLdy, Nick Paumgarten, Lillian Ross, John Seabrook, Michael Spectel; James B. Stewart, James Surowiecki, Judith Thurman, and Jeffrey Toobin in New York; Jeffrey Goldberg, Seymour M Hersh, Jane Mayel; and Elsa Walsh in Washington; Lawrence Wright in Austin; and Ari Shavit in Jerusalem.

Coping with Enormity Who would have guessed that everything could end so suddenly on a pretty Tuesday morning?

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he one recurring nightmare I've had for many years is about the end of the world, and it goes like this. In a crowded, modern cityscape not unlike lower Manhattan, I'm flying a jetliner down an avenue where everything is wrong. It seems impossible that the buildings to either side of me won't shear my wings off, impossible that I can keep the plane aloft while moving at such a low speed. The way is always blocked, but somehow I manage to turn a sharp corner or to pilot the plane beneath an overpass, only to confront a skyscraper so high that I would have to rise verticallly to clear it. As I pull the plane into a dismayingly shallow climb, the skyscraper looms and rushes forward to meet me, and I wake up, with unspeakable relief, in my ordinary bed.

Last Tuesday there was no awakening. You found your way to a TV and watched. Unless you were a very good person indeed, you were probably, like me, experiencing the collision of several incompatible worlds inside your head. Besides the horror and sadness of what you were watching, you might also have felt a childish disappoint7 World Trade Center is hosed down by firefighters.

Several buildings in the complex were casualties of the collapse of the Twin Towers.

ment over the disruption of your day, or a selfish worry about the impact on your finances, or admiration for an attack so brilliantly conceived and so flawlessly executed, or, worst of all, an awed appreciation of the visual spectacle it produced.

Never mind whether ce11ain Palestinians were or were not dancing in the streets. Somewhere-you can be absolutely sure of this-the death artists who planned the attack were rejoicing over the terrible beauty ofthe towers' collapse. After years of dreaming and working and hoping, they were now experiencing a fulfillment as overwhelming as any they could have allowed themselves to pray for.

Perhaps some of these glad artists were hiding in ruined Afghanistan, where the average life expectancy is barely 40. In that world you can't walk through a bazaar without seeing men and children who are missing limbs.

In this world, where the Manhattan skyline has now been maimed and the scorched wreckage at the Pentagon is reminiscent of Kabul, I'm trying to imagine what I don't want to imagine: the scene inside a plane one moment before impact. At the controls, a telTorist is raising a prayer of thanks to Allah in expectation of instant transport from this Copyright Š 2001 Conde NaSI Publications Inc. All rights reserved.

Originally published in The New Yorker Reprinted by permission.

world to the next one, where houris will presently reward him'for his glorious success. At the back of the cabin, huddled Americans are trembling and moaning and, no doubt, in many cases, praying to their God for a diametrically opposite outcome. And then, a moment later, for hijacker and hijacked alike, the world ends.

On the street, after the impact, survivors spoke of being delivered from death by God's guidance and grace. But even they, the survivors, were stumbling out of the smoke into a different world. Who would have guessed that everything could end so suddenly on a pretty Tuesday morning? In the space of two hours, we left behind a happy era of Game Boy economics and trophy houses and entered a world of fear and vengeance. Even if you'd been waiting for the nineties-ending crash throughout the nineties, even if you'd believed all along that further terrorism in New York was only a matter of when and not of whether, what you felt on Tuesday morning wasn't intellectual satisfaction, or simply empathetic horror, but deep grief for the loss of daily life in prosperous, forgetful times: the traffic jammed by delivery trucks and unavailable cabs, "Apocalypse Now Redux" in local theaters, your date for drinks downtown on Wednesday, the 63 homers of Barry Bonds, the hourly AOL updates on J. Lo's doings. On Monday morning, the front-page headline in the News had been "KIPS BAY TENANTS SAY: WE'VE GOT KILLER MOLD." This front page is (and will, for a while, remain) amazing.

The challenge in the old world, the 1990s world of Bill Clinton, was to remember that, behind the prosperity and complacency, death was waiting and entire countries hated us. The problem of the new world, the zeroes world of George Bush, will be to reassert the ordinary, the trivial, and even the ridiculous in the face of instability and dread: to mourn the dead and then try to awaken to our small humanities and our pleasurable daily nothing-much.

I

n199:>, soon after movi~g to Fort Greene, in B:ooklyn, my wife and I were befriended by Frank and Nicole De Martini, two architects. As construction manager of the World Trade Center, Frank worked in an office on the 88th floor of the North Tower. Nicole is an employee of the engineering firm that built the World Trade Center, Leslie E. Robertson Associates. Hired as a "surveillance engineer," she was a member of a team that conducted year-round structural-integrity inspections of the Twin Towers. Her offices were on the 35th floor of the South Tower.

Frank is 49, sturdily built, with wavy salt-and-pepper hair and deeply etched laugh lines around his eyes. His

manner is expansively avuncular. The Twin Towers were both a livelihood and a passion for him: he would speak of them with the absorbed fascination with which poets sometimes speak of Dante's canzones. icole is 42, blond and blue-eyed, with a gaze that is at once brisk and friendly.

She was born in Basel, Switzerland, and met Frank while studying design in New York. They have two childrenSabrina, 10, and Dominic, 8. It was through our children that we first met.

Shortly after the basement bomb explosion of 1993, Frank was hired to do bomb-damage assessment at the World Trade Center. An assignment that he thought would last only a few months quickly turned into a consuming passion. "He fell in love with the buildings," Nicole told me. "For him, they represented an incredible human feat.

He was awed by their scale and magnitude, by their design, and by the efficiency of the use of materials. One of his most repeated sayings about the towers is that they were built to take the impact of a light airplane."

On Tuesday morning, Frank and Nicole dropped their children off at school, in Brooklyn Heights, and then drove on to the World Trade Center. Traffic was light, and they arrived unexpectedly early, so Nicole decided to go up to Frank's office for a cup of coffee. It was about a quarter past eight when they got upstairs. A half hour later, she stood up to go. She was on her way out when the walls and the floor suddenly heaved under the shock of a massive im-

The Manhattan skyline viewed from Brooklyn, Tuesday. September 11.

pact. Through the window, she saw a wave of flame bursting out overhead, like a torrent spewing from the floodgates of a dam. The blast was clearly centered on the floor directly above; she assumed that it was a bomb. Neither she nor Frank was unduly alarmed: few people knew the building's strength and resilience better than they. They assumed that the worst was over and that the structure had absorbed the impact. Sure enough, within seconds of the initial tumult, a sense of calm descended on their floor.

Frank herded Nicole and a group of some two dozen other people into a room that was relatively free of smoke. Then he went off to scout the escape routes and stairways.

Minutes later, he returned to announce that he had found a stairway that was intact. They could reach it fairly easily, by climbing over a pile ofrubble.

The bank of rubble that barred the entrance to the fire escape was almost knee-high. Just as icole was about to clamber over, she noticed that Frank was hanging back.

She begged him to come with her. He shook his head and told her to go on without him. There were people on their floor who had been hmi by the blast, he said; he would follow her down as soon as he had helped the injured.

Frank must have gone back to his office shOtily afterward, because he made a call from his desk at about nine

o'clock. He called his sister Nina, on West 93rd Street in Manhattan, and said, "Nicole and 1are fine. Don't wony" Nicole remembers the descent as quiet and orderly. The evacuees went down in a single file, leaving room for the firemen who were runing in the opposite direction. On many floors, there were people to direct the evacuees, and in the lower reaches of the building there was even electricity. The descent took about half an hour, and, on reaching the plaza, Nicole began to walk in the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge. She was within a few hundred feet of the bridge when the first tower collapsed. "It was like the onset of a nuclear winter," she said. "Suddenly, everything went absolutely quiet and you were in the middle of a fog that was as blindingly bright as a snowstorm on a sunny day."

It was early evening by the time Nicole reached Fort Greene. She had received calls from several people who had seen Frank on their way down the fire escape, but he had not been heard from directly. Their children stayed with us that night while Nicole sat up with Frank's sister Nina, waiting by the telephone.

The next morning, Nicole decided that her children had to be told, that there was no word of their father. Both she and ina were calm when they arrived at our door, even though they had not slept all night. Nicole's voice was grave but unwavering as she spoke to her children about what had happened the day before.

The children listened with wide-eyed interest, but soon afterward they went back to their interrupted games. A little later, my son came to me and whispered, "Guess what Dominic's doing?"

"What?" I said, steeling myself.

"He's learning to wiggle his ears."

This was, I realized, how my children-or any children, for that matter-would have responded: turning their attention elsewhere before the news could begin to gain purchase in their minds.

At about noon, we took the children to the park. It was a bright, sunny day, and they were soon absorbed in riding their bicycles. My wife, Deborah, and I sat on a shaded bench and spoke with Nicole. "Frank could easily have got out in the time that passed between the blast and the fall of the building," Nicole said. "The only thing I can think of is that he stayed back to help with the evacuation. obody knew the building like he did, and he must have thought he had to."

Nicole paused. "1 think it was only because Frank saw me leave that he had decided he could stay," she said. "He knew that I would be safe and the kids would be looked after. That was why he felt he could go back to help the others. He loved the towers and had complete faith in them. Whatever happens, I know that what he did was his own choice."

President Bush Addresses the Nation September 11,2001

T

oday, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evi I, despicable acts of terror.

The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have

fai led; our country is strong.

A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.

Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America-with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for

strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.

Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, D.C., to help with local rescue efforts.

Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured, and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks.

The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight, and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business, as well.

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsiSmoke pours from the southwest corner of the Pentagon after hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building at 9.40 a.m. on September 11, 2001, killing all 64 aboard the plane and 125 in the building.

ble and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance.

America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism. Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me."

This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

Thank you. Good night, and God bless America.

D

National Day of Prayer and Remembrance Presidents of the United States, members of Congress and otherspeople of all faiths-gathered at the National Cathedral, Washington, D. C, on September 14 to observe a national day of prayer and remembrance.

The following are the remarks of President George W Bush at the service:

e are here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation's sorrow. We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who love them.

On Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes, and bent steel. ow come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning to read. They are the names of men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airpOti, busy with life. They are the names of people who faced death, and in their last moments called home to say, be brave, and I love you.

They are the names of passengers who defied their mur-

W

Left (from left to right): President George W Bush, former President George Bush, his wife Barbara Bush, former President Bill Clinton, his wife Senator Hillmy Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea Clinton participate in a national day of prayer and remembrance service after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

In the pews behind the Bushes and the Clintons were former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and their wives.

Above: Rasmieh Abed, a Palestinian American, at a candlelight vigil sponsored by the Arab American community at the Brooklyn promenade. The changed Manhattan skyline with its plume of smoke is behind her. Right: Indian freedom fighters light candles in memory of victims of the Us. terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

derers, and prevented the murder of others on the ground.

They are the names of men and women who wore the unifOtm of the United States, and died at their posts.

They are the names of rescuers, the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others. We will read all these names. We will linger over them, and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep.

To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you, you are not alone.

Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.

War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This contlict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.

Our purpose as a nation is firm. Yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed, and lead us to pray. In many of our prayers this week, there is a searching, and an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on Tuesday, a woman said, "I prayed to God to give us a sign that He is still here." Others have prayed for the same, searching hospital to hospital, carrying pictures of those still missing.

God's signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own. Yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral, are known and heard, and understood.

There are prayers that help us last through the day, or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey. And there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.

This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end. And the Lord of life holds

all who die, and all who mourn.

It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves.

This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded, and the world has seen, that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.

We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion; in long lines of blood donors; in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible.

And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself stayed until the end at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two office workers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down 68 tloors to safety. A group of men drove through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin grafts for burn victims.

In these acts, and in many others, Americans showed a deep commitment to one another, and an abiding love for our country. Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called the warm courage of national unity. This is a unity of every faith, and every background.

It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress. It is evident in services of prayer and candlelight

Left, below: A family member of a person killed in the September 11 attack on the Pentagon holds a flag and yellow roses in remembrance of his loved one when family members were allowed to visit the impact site on September 15.Below: A Russian woman adds roses to a makeshift memorial to the victims outside the Us. Embassy in Moscow.

People streamed in to express condolences. Bottom: New York University students join in a candlelight vigil in New York's Washington Square Park.

vigils, and American flags, which are displayed in pride, and wave in defiance.

Our unity is a kinship of grief, and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And this unity against terror is now extending across the world.

America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for. But we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America, because we oare freedom's home and defender. And the commitment of ~our fathers is now the calling of our time. ~ On this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask ~almighty God to watch over our nation, and grant us ~patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He ~will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. ~We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the ~promise of a life to come. ~ As we have been assured, neither death nor life, nor ÂŤ angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, can separate us from God's love. May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country.

God bless America.

D

"Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss.

And in our grief and anger we have found our mission."

President George W Bush speaks to ajoint session of Congress and the American people, September 20, 2001. Thefollowing is an edited transcript of his speech:

r. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, members of Congress, and fellow Americans: In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union. Tonight, no such report is needed. It has already been delivered by the American people.

We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground~passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer.

We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We have seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers-in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. We have seen the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own.

My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union-and it is strong.

Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

I thank the Congress for its leadership at such an important time. All of America was touched on the evening of the tragedy to see Republicans and Democrats joined together on the steps of this Capitol, singing "God Bless America."

M

And you did more than sing; you acted, by delivering $40 billion to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military.

And on behalf of the American people, I thank the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our ational Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

We will not forget South Korean children gathering to pray outside our embassy in Seoul, or the prayers of sympathy offered at a mosque in Cairo. We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning in Australia and Africa and Latin America.

Nor will we forget the citizens of 80 other nations who died with our own: dozens of Pakistanis; more than 130 IsraelIS; more than 250 citizens of India; men and women from EI Salvador, Iran, Mexico and Japan; and hundreds of British citizens. America has no truer friend than Great Britain. Once again, we are joined together in a great cause-so honored the British Prime Minister has crossed an ocean to show his unity of purpose with America. Thank you for coming, friend.

On September II, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known warsbut for the past 136 years, they have seen wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war-but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks-but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day-and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.

Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who attacked our country? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated ten'orist organizations known as Al Qaida. They are the same murder-

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (left) and Senate President pro tempore Robert Byrd applaud President Bush during his address to Congress on Capitol Hill.

ers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS Cole.

Al Qaida is to terror what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money; its goal is remaking the worldand imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.

The terrorists practice a fringe form ofIslamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics-a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam. The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children.

This group and its leader-a person named Osama bin Laden-are linked to many other organizations in different

countries, incl.uding the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction. the leadership of AI Qaida has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controll ing most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see AI Qaida's vision for the world.

Afghanistan's people have been brutalized-many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan ifhis beard is not long enough.

The United States respects the people of Afghanistanafter all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid-but we condemn the Taliban regime. It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists.

By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder.

And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of AI Qaida who hide in your land.

Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every telTorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion.

The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commjt evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends.

Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

Our war on terror begins with Al Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end unti I every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber-a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They

every necessary weapon of war-to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territOly and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and coveti operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every na~ tion, in every region, now has a decision to make.

S Either you are with us, or you are with the terroro ~ ists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be ÂŤ regarded by the United States as a hostile regiIne. Our nation has been put on notice: We are not immune fi'om attack. We will take defensive measw'es against tetTorism to protect Americans. Today, dozens of federal depaJiments and agencies, as well as state and local governments, have responsibilities affecting homeland security. These effOlis must be coordinated at the highest level. So tonight I announce the creation of a Cabinet-level position reporting directly to me-the Office of Homeland Security.

And tonight I also announce a distinguished American to lead this effOli, to strengthen American security: a military veteran, an effective governor, a true patriot, a trusted friend-Pennsylvania's Tom Ridge. He will lead, oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism, and respond to any attacks that may come.

These measures are essential. But the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.

Many will be involved in this effOli, from FBI agents to intelligence operatives to the reservists we have called to active duty. All deserve our thanks, and all have our prayers. And tonight, a few miles fi'om the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military: Be ready. I've called the Armed Forces to alert, and there is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.

This is not, however, just America's fight. And what is at stake is notjustAmerica's freedom. This is the world's fight.

This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.

We ask every nation to join us. We will ask, and we will need, the help of police forces, intelligence services, and

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President Bush sits with his National Security Council during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on September 12,2001. (Left to right) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretmy of State Colin Powell, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

hate our freedoms-our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble a,"!ddisagree with each other.

They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Afhca.

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way.

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies ofthe 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions-by abandoning evety value except the will to power-they follow in the path offascism, and azism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command-every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and

banking systems around the world. The United States is grateful that many nations and many international organizations have already responded-with sympathy and with support.

Nations fi'om Latin America, to Asia, to Africa, to Europe, to the Islamic world. Perhaps the ATO Charter reflects best the attitude of the world: An attack on one is an attack on all.

The civilized world is rallying to America's side. They understand that if this terror goes unpunished, their own cities, their own citizens may be next. Terror, unanswered, can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments. And you know what-we're not going to allow it.

Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat.

I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.

I ask you to continue to support the victims ofthis tragedy with your contributions. Those who want to give can go to a central source of information, libe11yunites.org, to find the names of groups providing direct help in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The thousands of FBI agents who are now at work in this investigation may need your cooperation, and I ask you to give it.

I ask for your patience, with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security; and for your patience in what will be a long struggle.

I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity. They did not touch its source. America is successful because ofthe hard work, and creativity, and enterprise of our people. These were the true strengths of our economy before September 11, and they are our strengths today.

And, finally, please continue praying for the victims of terror and their families, for those in uniform, and for our great country. Prayer has comforted us in sorrow, and will help strengthen us for the journey ahead.

Tonight I thank my fellow Americans for what you have already done and for what you will do. And ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, I thank you, their representatives, for what you have already done and for what we will do together.

Tonight, we face new and sudden national challenges. We will come together to improve air safety, to dramatically expand the number of air marshals on domestic flights, and take new measures to prevent hijacking. We will come together to promote stability and keep our airlines flying, with direct assistance during this emergency.

We will come together to give law enforcement the additional tools it needs to track down terror here at home. We

will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans ofterrorists before they act, and find them before they strike.

We will come together to take active steps that strengthen America's economy, and put our people back to work.

Tonight we welcome two leaders who embody the extra 01'dinaly spirit of all ew Yorkers: Governor George Pataki, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. As a symbol of America's resolve, my administration will work with Congress, and these two leaders, to show the world that we will rebuild New York City.

After all that has just passed-all the lives taken, and all the possibilities and hopes that died with them-it is natural to wonder if America's future is one of fear. Some speak of an age often路or. I know there are struggles ahead, and dangers to face. But this country will define our times, not be defined by them. As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age oftetTor; this will be an age of libet1y, here and across the world.

Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom-the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time-now depends on us. Our nation-this generation-will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our eff0l1s, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

It is my hope that in the months and years ahead, life will return almost to normal. We'll go back to our lives and routines, and that is good. Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened. We'll remember the moment the news came-where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire, or a StOly of rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever.

And I will carry this: It is the pol ice shield of a man named George Howard, who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. This is my reminder oflives that ended, and a task that does not end.

I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is cel1ain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

Fellow citizens, we'll meet violence with patient justice-assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America.

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"The World Must Join Hands" Prime Minister A tal Bihari Vajpayee's address to the nation on terrorist attacks on the United States, September 14,2001.

s you know, terrorists have struck yet another blowat the United States of America, at humanity, at the civilized way oflife.

But I have not the slightest doubt about the eventual outcome. Democracies, open, free and plural societies shall prevail.

Our prayers rise for those who have been killed. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their loved ones.

Every Indian feels for them.

More than that, at least 53,000 families in India know exactly the pain they are going through at the moment: for terrorists have mowed down and blown up that number here in India over the last two decades.

For years we in India have been alerting others to the fact that terrorism is a scourge for all of humanity, that what happens in Mumbai one day is bound to happen elsewhere tomorrow, that the poison that propels mercenaries and terrorists to kill and maim in Jammu and Kashmir will impel the same sort to blow up people elsewhere.

In the address I had delivered at the joint meeting of the United States Congress a year ago, I had said:

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"Many of you here in the Congress have in recent hearings recognized a stark fact-no region is a greater source of terrorism than our neighborhood. Indeed, in our neighborhood-in this, the 21 st century-religious war has not just been fashioned into, it has been proclaimed to be, an instrument of State policy. Distance offers no insulation. It should not cause complacence. You know-and I knowsuch evil cannot succeed. But even in failing it could inflict untold suffering. That is why the United States and India have begun to deepen their cooperation for combating terrorism. We must redouble these efforts."

In the wake of this new blow, Rashtrapatiji has assured President Bush that we stand united with the American people in this hour of grief. I have reiterated to President Bush that what the terrorists have done "sends a strong message to democracies [that we] redouble our efforts to defeat this grave threat to our people, our values and our way of life."

I have assured him that "we stand ready to cooperate

with you in the investigations into this crime and to strengthen our partnership in leading international efforts to ensure that terrorism never succeeds again."

It is for the same reason that India has taken the lead over the last two years to have the United Nations adopt a Comprehensive Convention against Terrorism. That Convention is ready. The international community should finalize it, and begin acting on it in conceit. I can scarcely stress that too much-the imperative that peoples and governments act in conceit. Those who wreak evil have their networks across the world.

Those who will thwart them must be united too. We must strike at the roots of the system that breeds terrorism. We must stamp out the infrastructure that imparts the perverse ideological poison by which the terrorist is fired up. We must hold governments wholly accountable for the terrorism that originates from their countries.

In a word, to get at the terrorists, the world community must get at their organizations, at those who condition, finance, train, equip and protect them. To get at the organizations, it must isolate, and thus compel the States that nurture and SUppOltthem, to desist from doing so.

And we must do so, recognizing that the death inflicted on some distant people is as revolting as death inflicted on us. It is as necessary that the perpetrators of such horrors be brought to justice-whichever place, whoever is their target in any particular instance.

In a word, my countrymen, the terrorists and those who give him a safe haven are enemies of every human being, they have set themselves against the world. The world must join hands: to overwhelm them militarily, to neutralize their poison.

As an integral part of this battle, it is necessary that we bear in mind that no religion preaches terrorism. The fringe elements of society, which seek to cloak terrorism in a religious garb, do grave injustice to both their faith and its fol-

lowers. Our revulsion against their barbaric acts should not prejudice us against the innocent people who practice the religion, for which the telTorists claim to act. If this happens, we would only be furthering the terrorists' agenda of fomenting hatred and division in society along communal lines. The fiendish destruction in the U.S. has immediate consequences for us, it has direct lessons for us.

What the terrorists ·have inflicted on the U.S. once again reminds us that the people and countries that are peace loving have to be prepared for the entire spectrum of violence-for it is the aggressor, the terrorist who shall choose what weapon to deploy. His target has to build the capacity to counter whichever device he deploys. ow, being prepared across the spectrum, costs resources, it costs enormous amounts. But that is the price we have to pay for holding our own in the world of today.

In a personal letter to President Bush, Prime Minister Vajpayee expressed his outrage at the terrorist attacks on the United States, which, he said, "challenge the civilized order in this world. " ewDelhi September II, 2001

I am shocked and appalled by telTorist attacks in New York and Washington today and deeply saddened by this enormous tragedy. The people of India and my Government share the sense of outrage with the American people. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people ofthe United States and with the bereaved families. We condemn this heinous crime in the strongest terms.

This dark hour is a stark and telTible reminder ofthe power and the reach of the telTorists to destroy innocent lives and challenge the civilized order in this world. It sends a strong message to democracies to redouble our efforts to defeat this great threat to our people, our values and our way ofIife.

Mr. President, I am confident that you and the American people will find the strength and resilience to overcome this tragedy. We stand ready to cooperate with you in the investigations into this crime and to strengthen our partnership in leading international efforts to ensure that terrorism never succeeds again.

Yours sincerely, A.B. Vajpayee

That is all the more so in the region in which we are placed. As this region has become the hub of terrorism, much of the response to the destruction that the ten'orists caused on 11th September could take place in our vicinity.

Quite apalt from the dangers with which we are confronted on our own, this response itself will impose heightened costs. We have to brace ourselves to bear them. And remember that this turn has come at a time when the world economy was already on the edge of a substantial slow down.

The pressures are certain to become more intense: • India spends almost Rs. 90,000 crore on importing oil.

An increase in the price of a barrel of oil by just a dollar increases our import bill by Rs. 3,600 crore.

• On the one hand, there is liable to be less demand for our expOlts; on the other, our competitors, facing the same pressures, are liable to exert even harder to push their expolts; • On the one hand, because of heightened uncertainties, the flows of foreign direct investment are liable to shrink; on the other, we will have to try even harder to convince the potential investor that India is a better destination for his funds than other countries.

For reasons such as these, we have to redouble our efforts, we have to prepare ourselves for harsh measures in the coming months. But we have to do more than just bear economic costs.

We have to review our hobbled laws, our dilatory procedures. That even the first stage of the trial ofthose who carried out the serial blasts in Mumbai has not been completed is an open invitation to terrorists to continue with impunity.

But governmental agencies are not the only ones that have to pull themselves up. Each of us has to willingly put up with the inconveniences that come our way as the security forces go about their work.

In the end, I am sure each of you would want me to once again convey heartfelt sympathies to the families of those who have been killed. Our condolences also to the families of the numerous Indians and Indian Americans who have lost their lives. These were our children, who were using their genius to unite India and the United States in a common quest for a strong and peaceful future. Their death binds our two countries in a common resolve to defeat forever the forces often·or.

My countrymen, the coming months are going to be months of trial. All who love freedom-peoples as well as governments-all democracies must stand firm, and united, and resolute. And in India, all of us must be one. The first requisite in this battle is that• We maintain peace and communal harmony at home. We remain united in purpose; • We remain unflinching in our resolve to bear the hardships that come our way.

Every Indian has to be a part ofthis global war on telTorism.

We must, and we will, stamp out this evil from our land, and D from the world.

Rudi Giuliani to the UN

"Americans Emerge from All Your Nations" New York is the home of the United Nations. Its distinctive skyscraper overlooks the East River, uptown but not far from the World Trade Centelc On October 1, 2001, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani opened the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Terrorism. He had just spent two harrowing weeks supervising rescue work after the worst terrorist attack in history. Speaking as the mayor of "a city of immigrants ...within a nation of immigrants," he urged the UN to go beyond talk and take decisive action against terrorism.

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hank you very much for the oppOltunity to speak, and for the consideration you've shown the City in putting off your General Session. As I explained to the Secretary General and the President of the General Assembly, our City is now open, and any time we can alTange it, we look forward to having your heads of state and your foreign ministers here for that session.

On September 11,2001, New York City-the most diverse City in the world-was viciously attacked in an unprovoked act of war.

More than 5,000 innocent men, women, and children of every race, religion, and ethnicity are lost. Among these were people from 80 different nations. To their representatives here today, I offer my condolences to you as well on behalf of all New Yorkers who share this loss with you. This was the deadliest terrorist attack in rustOlY.It claimed more lives than Pearl Harbor or D-Day. This was not just an attack on the City of New York or on the United States of America. It was an attack on the very idea of a free, inclusive, and civil society.

It was a direct assault on the founding principles ofthe United Nations itself. The Preamble to the UN Charter states that this organization exists "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person ...to practice tolerance and live together in peace as good neighbors ... [and] to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security."

Indeed, this vicious attack places in jeopardy the whole purpose of the United Nations. Terrorism is based on the persistent and deliberate violation of fundamental human rights. With bullets and bombs-and now with hijacked airplanes-terrorists deny the dignity of human life. Terrorism preys pmticularly on cultures and communities that practice openness and tolerance.

Their targeting of innocent civilians mocks the efforts of those who seek to live together in peace as neighbors. It defies the very notion of being a neighbor.

This massive attack was intended to break our spirit. It has not done that. It has made us stronger, more determined and mOl'eresolved.

The bravery of our firefighters, our police officers, our emergency workers, and civilians we may never learn of, in saving over 25,000 lives that day---earrying out the most effective rescue oper-

ation in our history-inspires all of us. I am very honored to have with me, as their representative, the fire commissioner of New York City, Tom Von Essen, and the police commissioner of ew York City, Bernard Kerik.

The determination, resolve, and leadership of President George W. Bush has unified America and all decent men and women around the world.

The response of many of your nations-your leaders and people-spontaneously demonstrating in the days after the attack your support for New York and America, and your understanding of what needs to be done to remove the threat of terrorism, gives us great, great hope that we will prevail.

The strength of America's response, please understand, flows from the principles upon which we stand. Americans are not a single ethnic group. Americans are not of one race or one religion. Americans emerge from all your nations.

We are defined as Americans by our beliefs-not by our ethnic origins, our race or our religion. Our beliefs in religious freedom, political freedom, and economic freedom-that's what makes an American. Our belief in democracy, the rule oflaw, and respect for human life-that's how you become an American. It is these very principles-and the opportunities these principles give to so many to create a better life for themselves and their families-that make America, and New York, a "shining city on a hill."

There is no nation, and no City, in the history ofthe world that has seen more immigrants, in less time, than America. People continue to come here in large numbers to seek freedom, opportunity, decency, and civility.

Each of your nations-I am certain-has contributed citizens to the United States and to New York. I believe I can take every one of you someplace in New York City, where you can find someone from your country, someone from your village or town, that speaks your language and practices your religion. In each of your lands there are many who are Americans in spirit, by virtue of their commitment to our shared principles.

It is tragic and perverse that it is because of these very principles-particularly our religious, political and economic freedoms-that we find ourselves under attack by terrorists.

Our freedom threatens them, because they know that if our ideas of freedom gain a foothold among their people it will destroy their power. So they strike out against us to keep those ideas from reaching their people.

The best long-term deterrent to terrorism-obviously-is the spread of our principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human life. The more that spreads around the globe, the safer we will all be. These are very powerful ideas and once they gain a foothold, they cannot be stopped.

In fact, the rise that we have seen in terrorism and terrorist groups, I believe, is in no small measure a response to the spread of these ideas of freedom and democracy to many nations, pal1icularly over the past 15 years.

The terrorists have no ideas or ideals with which to combat freedom and democracy. So their only defense is to strike out against innocent civilians, destroying human life in massive numbers and hoping to deter all of us fi'om our pursuit and expansion of freedom.

But the long-term deterrent of spreading our ideals throughout the world is just not enough, and may never be realized, if we do not act-and act together- to remove the clear and present danger posed by terrorism and terrorists.

The United Nations must hold accountable any country that supports or condones terrorism, otherwise you will fail in your primary mission as peacekeeper. It must ostracize any nation that supp0l1s terrorism. It must isolate any nation that remains neutral in the fight against terrorism.

Now is the time, in the words of the UN Charter, "to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security." This is not a time for further study or vague directives. The evidence ofterrorism's brutality and inhumanity-of its contempt for life and the concept of peace-is lying beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center less than two miles from where we meet today.

Look at that destruction, that massive, senseless, cruel loss of human life ...and then I ask you to look in your hearts and recognize that there is no room for neutrality on the issue of terrorism.

You're either with civilization or with terrorists.

On one side is democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human

life; on the other is tyranny, arbitrary executions, and mass murder.

We're right and they're wrong. It's as simple as that. And by that I mean that America and its allies are right about democracy, about religious, political, and economic freedom.

The telTorists are wrong, and in fact evil, in their mass destruction of human life in the name of addressing alleged injustices.

Let those who say that we must understand the reasons for terrorism come with me to the thousands of funerals we are having in New York City and explain those insane, maniacal reasons to the children who will grow up without fathers and mothers, to the parents who have had their children ripped fi'om them for no reason at all.

Instead, I ask each of you to allow me to say at those funerals that your nation stands with America in making a solemn promise and pledge that we will achieve unconditional victory over terrorism and terrorists.

There is no excuse for mass murder, just as there is no excuse for genocide. Those who practice terrorism-murdering or victimizing innocent civilians-lose any right to have their cause understood by decent people and lawful nations.

On this issue-terrorism-the United Nations must draw a line. The era of moral relativism between those who practice or condone terrorism, and those nations who stand up against it, must end. Moral relativism does not have a place in this discussion and debate.

There is no moral way to sympathize with grossly immoral actions. And by trying to do that, unfOlwnately, a fertile field has been created in which terrorism has grown.

The best and most practical way to promote peace is to stand up to terror and intimidation. The Security Council's unanimous passage of Resolution 1373, adopting wide ranging anti-terrorism measures in the international community is a very good first step. It's necessary to establish accountability for the subsidizing of terrorism.

As a former United States Attorney, I am particularly encouraged that the UN has answered President Bush's call to cut terrorists off from their money and their funding. It's enormously important. We've done that successfully with organized crime groups in America. By taking away their ability to amass large amounts of money, you take away their ability to have others carryon their functioning for them, even if they are removed, arrested, prosecuted, or eliminated through war or through law enforcement. It cuts off the life-blood of the organization. So I believe this is a very good first step.

But now it's up to the member states to enforce this and other aspects of the resolution, and for the United ations to enforce these new mechanisms to take the financial base away from the ten路orists.

Take away their money, take away their access to money, and you reduce their ability to cany out complex missions.

Each of you is sitting in this room because of your countly's commitment to being pm1of the family of nations. We need to unite as a family as never before-across all our differences, in recognition of the fact that the United Nations stands for the proposition that human beings we have more in common than divides us.

If you need to be reminded of this, you don't need to look very

that we're getting through to the same God, even though we may be doing it in slightly different ways. God is known by many different names and many different traditions, but identified by one consistent feeling, love. Love for humanity, particularly love for our children. Love does eventually conquer hate, but it needs our help.

Good intentions alone are not enough to conquer evil.

Remember British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, ::; who-armed only with good intentions-negotiated with the s ~ Nazis and emerged hopeful that he had achieved peace in his time. Hitler's wave of terror was only encouraged by these ~ attempts at appeasement. At the cost of millions of lives, we learned that words-though important-are not enough to guar~ antee peace. It is action alone that counts.

For the UN, and individual nations, decisive action is needed New York firefighters make their way through the rubble of the World Trade Center:S twin towers after the September 11 terrorist attacks. to stop terrorism from ever orphaning another child. That's for nations. For individuals, the most effective course of action they can take to aid our recovery is to be determined to go ahead with far. Just go outside for a walk in the streets and parks of New York City. You can't walk a block in New York City without see- their lives. We can't let terrorists change the way we live-otherwise they will have succeeded. ing somebody that looks different than you, acts different than In some ways, the resilience of life in New York City is the you, talks different than you, believes different than you. If you grow up in New York City, you learn that. And if you're an intelultimate sign of defiance to terrorism. We call ourselves the ligent or decent person, you learn that all those differences are Capital of the World in large part because we are the most diverse City in the world, home to the United Nations. The spirit of unity nothing in comparison to the things that unite us.

We are a City of immigrants-unlike any other City-within a amid all our diversity has never been stronger.

On Saturday night I walked through Times Square, it was nation of immigrants. Like the victims ofthe World Trade Center crowded, it was bright, it was lively. Thousands of people were attack, we are of every race, religion, and ethnicity. Our diversity visiting from all parts of the United States and all parts of the has always been our greatest source of strength. It's the thing that renews us and revives us in every generation-our openness to world. And many of them came up to me and shook my hand and new people from all over the world. patted me on the back and said, "We're here because we want to So from the first day of this attack, an attack on New York and show our support for the City of New York." And that's why America, and I believe an attack on the basic principles that under- there has never been a better time to come to New York City. lie this organization, I have told the people of New York that we I say to people across the country and around the world: if you should not allow this to divide us, because then we would really were planning to come to New York sometime in the future, lose what this City is all about. We have very strong and vibrant come here now. Come to enjoy our thousands of restaurants, Arab and Muslim communities in New York City. They are an museums, theaters, sporting events, and shopping ...but also come equally important part of the life of our City. We respect their reli- to take a stand against terrorism.

We need to heed the words of a hymn that I, and the police gious beliefs. We respect everybody's religious beliefs-that's what America's about, that's what New York City is about. I have urged commissioner, and the fire commissioner, have heard at the many funerals and memorial services that we've gone to in the last two New Yorkers not to engage in any form of group blame or group hatred. This is exactly the evil that we are confronting with these weeks. The hymn begins, "Be Not Afraid."

Freedom from fear is a basic human right. We need to reassert terrorists. And if we are going to prevail over terror, our ideals, principles, and values must transcend all forms of prejudice. This is a our right to live free from fear with greater confidence and detervery important part ofthe struggle against terrorism. mination than ever before ... here in New York City ... across This is not a dispute between religions or ethnic groups. All America ...and around the world. With one clear voice, unanimously, we need to say that we will not give in to tenorism. religions, all decent people, are united in their desire to achieve Surrounded by our friends of every faith, we know that this is peace, and understand that we have to eliminate terrorism. We're not a clash of civilizations; it is a conflict between murderers and not divided about this.

There have been many days in New York when I was running for humanity.

This is not a question of retaliation or revenge. It is a matter Mayor, and then since I've been Mayor, when I would have a weekend in which I would go to a mosque on Friday, and a synagogue on of justice leading to peace. The only acceptable result is the comSaturday, and a church-sometimes two churches--on a Sunday. plete and total eradication of terrorism.

And by the time I finished, I would say to myself, "I know that New Yorkers are strong and resilient. We are unified. And we we're through to God." We're talking to Him in every language that will not yield to terror. We do not let fear make our decisions for He understands, we're using every liturgy that exists, and I know us. We choose to live in freedom.

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Against Fear, Terror and Intolerance In an article for the Muslim media, Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the international coalition against terrorism is working hard to achieve a world where "we all, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, wish to live in peace, not under the daily threat of terrorism. "

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uring my visit to Oman and Egypt I have been struck by the force ofthe condemnations that I heard there of the September 1I attacks on America.

Everyone I have met has told me that these attacks were contrary to all the tenets of Islam and the teachings of the Koran.

Everyone wants to see those who canied out the wholesale murder of innocent men, women and children, brought to justice.

Of course, nobody wants military conflict. Of course, we would all prefer a diplomatic solution. But we have to ask ourselves: was one ever possible?

We gave the regime in Kabul four weeks to hand over the chief suspect in the September 11 attacks. The U.S. has been seeking Osama bin Laden's extradition for years for other terrorist attacks. As part of the diplomatic and political effort I myself have traveled to Russia, Pakistan, India, the United States, Switzerland, Oman and Egypt. Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, has traveled to the Middle East including Iran. There is an unprecedented global consensus against tenorism. And yet despite all this diplomatic pressure, Kabul still refused to hand over Osama bin Laden to face justice.

We also have to ask ourselves: what will the world look like if we don't stop Osama bin Laden and people like him?

Osama bin Laden likes to pretend that he speaks for the Palestinian cause. He likes to pretend that he is driven by faith. Neither ofthose claims, it seems to me, are true. They

are a cover for his real motivation, which is power; power that he wields through terror. The power game that he is playing is to install Taliban-type regimes in other countries. Let nobody believe this is about religious faith, when in the pursuit of his goals he has been willing to murder innocent women and children, including Muslims.

Osama bin Laden's real objective is to undermine Muslim governments who seek world peace and order and replace them with militant regimes who seek chaos.

He has already succeeded all too well in Afghanistan. He has claimed to have direct influence over the Taliban Government and there is no reason to dispute that. All reports suggest that he is a real power behind the scenes; and that it was he who organized the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masood, a Muslim hero of the anti-Soviet resistance and the main opposition to Kabul. This was pali of his payment to the Taliban for harboring and supporting him. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime are two sides of the same coin.

The question Muslims around the world have to ask themselves is: do you want to live under the sort of regime we see today in Kabul? Because that is what bin Laden and Al Qaida want for you.

We in the West realize the Kabul regime emerged out of the chaos that ravaged Afghanistan after the Soviet army withdrew. Initially many Afghans believed the new regime could restore order to the country. But let us make no mistake about the sort of people they are. Public administration is chaotic and getting worse. The country is desperately poor and getting poorer because of the regime's policies. Teachers, doctors and other educated Afghans have been forced to flee or live in terror. Because the Kabul regime has so badly mismanaged the economy, the Afghan people are starving.

Virtually the only arm of civil government that functions effectively is the Ministry of Enforcement of Virtue and the

Britain s Queen Elizabeth II, who said she had watched the attack "with disbelief and total shock, " attended a special memorial service at St. Paul s Cathedral in London.

Earlier she sanctioned an unprece~ dented event at Buckingham Palace: ~ the Us. national anthem "The Star ~ Spangled Banner" was played at the changing of the guard. ~

I

Suppression of Vice. This Ministry enforces strict observance of all Taliban decrees on social and moral behavior which bear scant relationship to the teachings ofIslam. But they are ruthlessly imposed.

Most Government resources go on the war effort and internal security. Corruption has returned. To raise further funds, they have now turned to growing and trafficking heroin. The regime has become increasingly extreme. The decision to destroy ancient Buddhist monuments earlier this year was symbolic of their increasing intolerance. Yet historically, Islam has been very tolerant of other religions.

The Muslim world was a beacon of civilization and tolerance when Europe was in the dark ages.

Along with terror, this is the kind of intolerant, backward-looking regime Osama bin Laden wants to export throughout the Muslim world: in permanent conflict with the world and with anyone who disagrees; against any form of modernization and economic progress; ruthless in suppressing any opposition and other ways of life; women treated abominably; denouncing Muslims who live and work in the West as traitors; supporting ofthe most extreme interpretation oflslamic Law imaginable.

Let us be clear. If we don't take a stand against Osama bin Laden and his puppet regime in Kabul, he will seek to overthrow other Muslim states and put in place regimes of fear, terror and intolerance.

It is always possible for the TV cameras to get pictures of people protesting at military action. But I do not believe the majority of Muslims in any country on earth want a Kabultype regime in their country. Whatever sympathy they may feel for the people of Afghanistan, and we feel it too, they are the victims of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

Whatever the cultural and historical links, when the people look at their incompetence as a Government, when they look at the way that even their most basic rights are denied, when they look at the basic cruelty and viciousness of the regime, is that really something that they would want in their own country? I do not believe that it is.

I believe we all, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, wish to live in peace, not under the daily threat of terrorism. That is what we are now working so hard to achieve.

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On September 12, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1368, which condemns "in strongest terms" the recent terrorist attacks on the United States and calls on all member states to bring the perpetrators to justice. Following on this, the UN General Assembly adopted a Resolution on Condemnation of Terrorist Acts in the United States that calls for "international cooperation to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the outrages of September 11, 2001, " and "to prevent and eradicate acts of terrorism. " Political and religious leaders and organizations around the world, some who know well the suffering brought by terrorism, added their words of condolence and resolve: "This barbaric attack was directed against thefree world and our common values. It is a watershed event and life will never be quite the same again. European institutions and governments will work closely together with our American friends and partners in the defense offreedom. " Romano Prodi President, European Commission

"We condemn in no uncertain terms the horrifying attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. Weare shocked and angered by such brutality and share all the emotions of ourfellow citizens against these attacks, which targeted all Americans without exception. Wefirmly believe that there can be nojustification for such horrible acts."

"There is no doubt that such inhuman actions cannot be left unpunished. The whole international community must rally in thefight against terrorism."

Vladimir Putin President, Russia

"These barbaric acts constitute intolerable aggression against democracy and underline the needfor the international community and the members of the Alliance to unite theirforces infighting the scourge of terrorism."

Lord Robertson Secretary General, NATO

"When the United States got attacked, we Muslim Americans felt we ourselves had been violated. We lost many people in those attacks. We are American. We are here as part of this nation. " Yahya Basha Chairman of Board of Directors, American Muslim Council

"Tehran S citizens express their deep hatred of this ominous and inhuman move, strongly condemn the culprits and express their sympathy with New Yorkers. We hope with a resolute cooperation among all peaceloving nations, terrorism will be rooted out. " Morteza Alviri Mayor, Tehran and Mohammad Atrianfar Head, Tehran City Council

"Japan strongly supports the United States and is resolved to spare no effort in providing necessary assistance and cooperation. We must stand firmly together with the concerned nations of the world to ensure that such acts are never repeated. " Junichiro Koizumi Prime Minister, Japan

"GAS condemns in the strongest terms the terrorist acts visited upon the cities of New York and Washington, D. c.) today, and reiterates the need to strengthen hemispheric cooperation to combat this scourge that has thrown the world and the hemispheric community into mourning."

Organization of American States Special General Assembly, Lima

"Hijacking planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood, constitute a form of injustice that cannot be tolerated by Islam) which views them as gross crimes and sinful acts."

Shaikh Abdulaziz-AI-Shaikh Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia

"We need to be conscious that we now face a common enemy) an enemy that operates clandestinely) in cowardly fashion but with great sophistication, an enemy frequently linked to other international crimes) such as drug trafficking) money laundering and the diverse forms of organized crime that facilitate and finance the commission of these criminal acts."

Francisco X. Aguirre Sacasa Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicaragua

"What these people stand for is completely against all the principles that Arab Muslims believe in. And so, on these principles alone, 1 think it will be very, very easy for people to stand together. This is a fight against evil, and the majority of Arabs and Muslims will bond together with our colleagues all over the world to be able to put an end to this horrible scourge of international terrorism. And you'll see a united front. " King Abdullah II Jordan

"American Muslims unequivocally condemn these vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism. " "Islam respects the sacredness of life, and rejects any express statement or tacit insinuation that Muslims should harm innocent people .... Using the concept of Jihad to justify harming the innocent is contrary to the letter and spirit of Islam."

Council on American-Islamic Relations Canadian Office and Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association

"This is not an attack against the US.A. alone. A terrorist attack of this magnitude is an attack against democracy in the whole world.

In this respect, it demonstrates once again how small the world we live in is and how fragile, and how necessary it is in this fragile world that there is cooperation between the states. " Mart Laar Prime Minister, Estonia

"This is not only an attack on the United States but an attack on the civilized world. "

Gerhard Schroeder Chancellor, Germany

"Sadly, there will be some Muslims-afew, mostly impoverished, starving, illiterate ones who need our help and prayers-ready to believe Mr. bin Laden S contention that the us. 'Operation Enduring Freedom' is an open Western 'war against Islam. ' L for one, don't know what that really means, because Muslims in the West can practice their faith more freely than in many so-called Muslim countries."

Mohamed Elmasry National President, Canadian Islamic Congress

Ruminations on the Day of Fury

uesday, September 11, around 8 a.m. local time. I was in my Chicago hotel room getting ready for a meeting. The phone began ringing incessantly. I was a bit reluctant to answer it because I was late for a meeting of the Foreign Service National Educational Program (FSNEP) participants. We had come from different U.S. embassies across the globe for three weeks of specialized training. Since the phone rang nonstop I realized that the caller was desperate to talk to me. I picked up the phone.

The voice at the other end was familiar. It was my colleague, M. Koteswara Rao, Telugu editor in the information section of the American Consulate General in Chennai. "Is your TV on?" he asked me hurriedly with a trembling voice. "The World Trade Center has been bombed. Turn your TV set on right now," he said, putting the phone down.

As I turned the TV on, news of the attack on the World Trade Center was breaking on every channel. For a couple of minutes I sat glued to the TV and watched the live pictures in a state of shock-a huge fireball and thick clouds of smoke engulfed the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At that point of time, a commercial jetliner was thought to have accidentally crashed into the North Tower. There was no inkling that it was a terrorist attack.

Being behind schedule for my meeting, I ran into the lobby where 30-odd fellow program participants had gathered. We all stood around in a palpably somber mood. Bill Richey and Tom Genton, Public Diplomacy training officer and deputy director respectively, also tour coordinators from the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia, looked glum. We speculated about the causes of such a bizarre crash.

Richey broke the silence and announced the terrible news to the group, news every one of us knew by then. Neverthelessit was too early to gauge the enormity of the tragedy-Richey briefed us about the busy schedule for the day: appointments at Medill School, the Chicago Tribune and the International Business Council. He read out the itinerary and shepherded us onto the Ponteralla chartered bus which took us to Chicago's Medill School of Journalism, the first appointment for the day.

Aboard the bus on the TV, we watched with horror as another commercial jetliner crashed into WTC's South Tower. The plane was navigated into the South Tower with clinical precision. We now realized that it was not a random attack but a well orchestrated onslaught against an icon of New York City.

When we arrived at the Medill School, we continued to watch

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the news, and saw the 11O-story North Tower collapse like a pack of cards. And then the second tower went.

The two-hour-long lecture by the Medill School's associate professor Rich Gordon was intermittent, as he broke off several times to watch news in an adjoining room. Neither we nor the professor were in a mood to continue with the lecture.

Gloom enveloped us all. Most of my colleagues were in tears, as if they had lost their own near and dear ones. Sensing the mood, Richey called off the day's appointments, and drove us back to the hotel. "How can these mindless terrorists commit a heinous crime against humanity? What do they achieve by killing several thousands of innocent people in a sweep?" lamented Sevinj Mirzoyeva, an FSNEP participant from Baku, Azerbaijan.

Then we learned the terrorist attacks were not confined to

New York's Twin Towers alone. "The first of a series of coordinated terrorist attacks, two hijacked planes crash into and level New York's 110-story World Trade Center," the news anchor was saying, and "In Washington another hijacked plane hits Pentagon." Reports continued: "Bombs explode near State Department building"; "All federal buildings evacuated in Washington, D.C."; "The Federal Aviation Authority stops all outbound flights and diverts the international flights to Canada"; "New York City clogged. Roads are blocked. The subways are closed. The bridges and tunnels on to and off Manhattan are closed."

I was still trying to digest the images that I had seen on TV, of the burning buildings, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the problem.

These were the spots that I visited 10 days ago. My heart sank.

It was during our orientation course in Washington, D.C., that FSI officials suggested that we make best use of the The author with MK. Rao atop the South Tower of the World Trade long Labor Day weekCenter, September 2,2001. TV end. A tour to New York antenna of the North Tower is in might be a good idea, the background. Left: The author on they said. Koteswara Rao a ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty, and I decided to take a the lower Manhattan skyline and break from Washington the imposing Twin Towers form and boarded a Greya backdrop. hound bus to New York.

Before I embarked on my U.S. tour in August, my friends advised me about one thing: don't miss New York City on your tour. "If you haven't seen New York, you haven't seen the United States." And "if you haven't visited the World Trade Center, you haven't visited New York City," was a chorus.

After checking into the hotel on 27th Street at 2 p.m., Rao and I set out for the first landmark on our itinerary in New York-the World Trade Center. There were long queues at the entrance.

People waited patiently to buy tickets to get into the South Tower. Ticket counter agents were quick. Security checks were smooth. Later the visitors were ushered into a lobby from where the express elevators carried a payload of 55 passengers per trip

might. Under the Twin Towers was a vast underground mall with coffee shops, bookshops, banks, supermarkets and the subway rail system. As a symbol of American progress and prosperity, WTC was clearly an irresistible lure to America's foes. In 1993 terrorists targeted the Twin Towers. Seven people died in that incident. We spent more than six hours there, visiting every place which was open to public. I didn't expect the Twin Towers to tumble down. I thought the terrible fire might engulf the interiors, and the firefighters would ultimately save the buildings from collapse. Now as I look at the New York skyline on a TV set, it still doesn't quite register. The skyline looks somehow desolate.

The FSNEP participants went on a guided three-hour tour to Pentagon on September 6. The security system was in right place, and perhaps the only route for an enemy was from the air.

This magnificent building, the heart of U.S. military might, provides space for more than 24,000 employees. A news channel announced that employees at the Pentagon were watching horrific images of the WTC's Twin Towers burning in New York when the jet plowed into their building. In fact, many senior officers were in the midst of putting together a crisis response team for the attacks in New York when their own building came under attack.

Our tour in Chicago was called off on September 12. There were no indications of the air service being resumed soon, so we were not sure whether the final leg of the tour to Seattle would happen or not. Richey and Genton called a condolence meeting of the group in the hotel lobby. Every participant wanted to be a voluntary blood donor. Ali Kassay, a colleague from Jordan, took the lead to enroll people from our group for a blood donation. We tried to give blood on September 12 evening, but one had to stand for about eight hours, with throngs of people waiting for their turn. It was a good feeling to know that so many responded so fast. The hospitals were overwhelmed with blood donations, and the biggest problem for the blood centers was crowd management.

Chicago rose to the occasion. Mayor Richard M. Daley made a public appeal for donating blood, food and clothes for the victims of the disaster. That was before we knew so few victims would survive the WTC inferno and collapse. Sensing the need for more firefighters, search and rescue teams in the rehabilitation effort of New York on an emergency basis, Daley dispatched a batch of 150 volunteers drawn from the pol ice and fire departments. The Chicago City Council called an emergency meeting to express solidarity with the victims' families and grant relief funds. t() thp ()h"pr\l"t(lr\l IT,,\lp!l'nCT Thfu : llTft5'&l 'UtI 11'J:irmrdl 1iffi; 'Wd:> : mmrdin1Ct (lUU ·vnfruUlIu. to the observaLOry rrave mg "tt" a a~nPPrlo"f'r'U.0XrPeth".n.. ~peel 0: lIlU WC1.Il ':2()l"il~ jV •• IUlllC;ters per hour. Escalators within the building took the visitors fur- Some said that the events have both scared them and given them ther to the rooftop observatory, from where one could have a a firm sense of resolve. Mark Ackennan, administrative assistant with the First National Bank in Chicago, said: "We will learn breath-taking view of the New York City.

The World Trade Center was a large complex comprising a much in the days and weeks ahead. But this much we have total of seven buildings of which the Twin Towers were the already learned: The world as we know it changed forever Tuesday morning. Pearl Harbor is no longer a love story at a tallest. These imposing towers stood as sentinels at the bottom cinema house. It has come to a neighborhood near you."

0 of Manhattan. They became symbols of American economic

Senator Harry Reid shares letter from Muslim American girl.

I appreciate very much Sanaa sending me this letter. I hope everyone in the Senate will become familiar with her letter and become familiar with the tenets of her religion. I have been on the floor before, speaking about Islam and what a great religion it is. I have said before and I repeat that my wife s primary physicians are two members of the Islamic faith, her internist and the person who has performed surgery on her. I know them well.

I have been in their homes. I have socialized with them. I have talked about very serious things with them. We have helped each other with family problems. I have been to the new mosque with them in Las Vegas. They are wonderful people with great families. I have come to realize Islam is a good religion, it is a good way of life. Muslims maintain a good health code as their religion dictates, and they have great spiritual values as their religion dictates. It is too bad there are some people-evil people around the world-who would target the innocent in the name of Islam. I believe that the strength of Islam, and the faith andfortitude of more than one billion Muslims around the world, will overcome these evil people and their evil deeds.

Dear Senator Reid, It is unfortunate that Americans do not have the basic knowledge about Islam. This is the faith practiced by almost seven million Muslims living in the United States, and over one billion people around the world. It is the fastest growing religion in the world. As a research topic for a: my ninth grade English pro- ~ ÂŤ ject, I chose to highlight the ~ ::0 basic tenets ofIslam, in order ~ to develop a better under- ! standing among my friends ~ and teachers in school. I would like to send this to you so that you may share with your friends and colleagues.

The Islamic belief is structured around five main pillars: (l) the profession of faith; (2) daily worship; (3) fasting during the month of Ramadan (based on the Islamic lunar calendar);

(4) charity; (5) making the pilgrimage to Makkah.

The profession of faith is simple. It's declaring that one believes in one God and that Muhammad (may peace be upon him) is the messenger of God. By reciting this, one may convert to Islam. Muhammad (MPBUH) was the last prophet of God who lived from 570-633 A.D. Daily worship is praying five times a day: at dawn, midday, afternoon, evening, and at night. These prayers are short and include recitation of verses from the Qur'an, the holy book for Muslims. During these prayers, Muslims bow their heads in the direction of Makkah, Saudi Arabia, the holiest place for Muslims. Charity in Islam is called zakat. This is the obligation to share what one possesses with the poor. Muslims are required to give 2.5 percent of all the money and jewelry they own once a year to less fortunate people.

Fasting during the month of Ramadan is also mandatory.

Fasting is refraining from food and drink from dawn until dusk.

Muslims go by the Islamic lunar calendar making Ramadan the ninth month. Fasting is significant because it makes you a stronger person by realizing the significance of self-control, discipline, and restricting one's desires.

The last pillar is making the pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia. This pilgrimage is called Haj. The holiest mosque is in Makkah, Masjid-al-Haram. Haj occurs only once a year during the 12th month of the Islamic calendar. It is required that you perform Haj at least once in your lifetime if one can financially afford it. The prophet ofIslam is Muhammad (MPBUH). He was born in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, in 570. In 610, the angel Gabriel carried the revelation from God and brought it down to Muhammad (MPBUH). After a period of time, these revelations were placed into one book called the Qur'an.

I hope this information, though very basic, would at least provoke some thought process toward efforts to better understand Islam.

Sanaa Khan Las Vegas

Left: A young Muslim girl at a candlelight ceremony honoring victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks at the Islamic Institute of Knowledge, Dearborn, Michigan.

Above: President George W. Bush with Muslim religious leaders at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., September 16.

Understanding the Fight President Bush discussing "the American message o/tolerance and taking action against prejudice" with Sikh community leaders in the Roosevelt Room o/the White House, September 26.

Whereas all Americans are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the terrorists who planned and carried out the attacks against the United States on September 11,2001, and in pursuing all those responsible for those attacks and their sponsors until they are brought to justice; Whereqs Sikh Americans form a vibrant, peaceful, and law-abiding part of America's people; Whereas approximately 500,000 Sikhs reside in the United States and are a vital part of the Nation; Whereas Sikh Americans stand resolutely in support of the commitment of our Government to bring the terrorists and those that harbor them to justice; Whereas the Sikh faith is a distinct religion with a distinct religious and ethnic identity that has its own places of worship and a distinct holy text and religious tenets; Whereas many Sikh Americans, who are easily recognizable by their turbans and beards, which are required articles oftheir faith, have suffered both verbal and physical assaults as a result of misguided anger toward Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack; Whereas Sikh Americans, as do all Americans, condemn acts of hate and prejudice against any American; and Whereas Congress is seriously concerned by the number of crimes against Sikh Americans and other Americans all across the Nation that have been reported in the wake of the tragic events that unfolded on September 11,2001: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That Congress(1) declares that, in the quest to identify, locate, and bring to justice the perpetrators and sponsors of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Sikh Americans, should be protected; (2) condemns bigotry and any acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans, including Sikh Americans; (3) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to work to prevent crimes against all Americans, including Sikh Americans; and (4) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all those who commit crimes.

Passed the Senate October 18, 2001.

Has a "clash of civilizations" threatened "the end ofhistory"?

mericans now have at least an idea of who the enemy is: a network of terrorists who mayor may not have the support of one or more nations. But there is another question, with potentially greater implications for u.s. foreign policy: What are we fighting?

Terrorism alone is a complicated challenge, of course.

Defeating it, experts say, will require the same sustained commitment needed for fighting a conventional war, along with a shrewd appreciation of how it differs from a classic military operation. Without drawing these subtle distinctions, says Martha Crenshaw, a professor of government at Wesleyan University and a terrorism specialist, "you are likely to create expectations ...that might be impossible to meet: What is victory? And when does it arrive?" To balance the desire for revenge and justice with the need for lasting security, two objectives should be utmost, Crenshaw says: "In the ShOli run, we have to crack down on the networks; in the long run, we have to drain the swamps that spawned them."

And to drain those swamps, Washington has to know what it is fighting-a question that goes to the heart of the two most provocative theories on global politics after the Cold War, published in articles by Francis Fukuyama ("The End of History?") and Samuel Huntington ("The Clash of Civilizations?").

Writing in the same year as the fall of the Berlin Wall, Fukuyama, then a State Department official, argued that the end of the Cold War signaled the approaching end of "mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." In other words, the West had won. There would be blips on the screen, he allowed, and temporary setbacks in different parts of the world, but the path to an essentially harmonious global political economy was set.

Not too long after Fukuyama outlined his scenario, Huntington, a professor of government at Harvard,

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issued a far more ominous forecast. The ~ passing of the Cold War had brought an end ~ to serious competition among nation-states, ~ but it had also launched an era of growing ~ competition among the world's major civi-l lizations. Where once ideologies had been ~ the points of conflict, now religion, ethnic ity, and cultural values were. "Most important," he wrote, "the efforts of the West to promote its values of democracy and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military predominance, and to advance its economic interests engender countering responses from other civilizations." The stage for epic struggles-the West versus the rest-had been set. And none loomed more menacingly than the one between the West and the Islamic world.

So, then, in the still-smoky aftermath of the horrors, has Huntington been vindicated and Fukuyama disproved? Huntington has so far declined to comment, but Fukuyama remains guardedly hopeful. "In general, the Muslim world has had the most problems with modernizing," he says, "but even there the modernizing trends are strong." At the same time, Fukuyama cautions, "A lot depends on how the administration responds."

To many Islamic specialists, even suggesting that the current conflict is a clash between civilizations is handing victory to the terrorists. To Osama bin Laden, who in 1998 declared that his struggle was a continuation of the struggle against infidel Crusaders of the Middle Ages, nothing sounds sweeter than President Bush using the word "crusade" to describe America's intentions. It confirms, in his own eyes and those of his followers, bin Laden's sense of himself as a modern-day Saladin-the sultan of Egypt and Syria who captured Jerusalem and defended it during the Third Crusade.

Islam versus Islam. Some scholars say the battle lines are different: "It's not Islam versus the West as much as it is Islam versus Islam," says Akbar Ahmed, former Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom and professor of [slamic studies at American University in Washington, D.C. Ahmed calls for what he terms a more Islamic response to the radical fringe.

Many Islamic extremists (like many American commentators) equate globalism with Americanism and Westernization, for example, ignoring the Koran's own words: "There is neither East nor West for God." They also fail to acknowledge, Ahmed says, the long history of Muslim interaction with disparate religious cultures. Other scholars go even further, saying that extremism denies the spiritual richness and diversity within Islam, ignoring the Prophet's own call for tolerance.

While there are many variants of extreme Islam, most share qualities with a movement launched by an 18th-century scholar, Mohammed ibn Abd al- Wahhab, who lived in central Arabia

and found a receptive ear in the Saud family, which in 1932 became the ruling dynasty of the new kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Claiming to return to original Islam, Wahhabism rejected all innovations, stressed literal belief in the Koran and hadith (the traditions of Mohammed), and called for the creation of a state run strictly according to Islamic law. Most threateningly, says Sheik Hisham Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, the fundamentalists "considered traditional Muslims apostates," a judgment that the Prophet had said no mortal should make. The Prophet had foreseen that there would be many divergent practices within Islam, Kabbani notes, but said only God could judge which version is true.

Islamic civilization continued to spread and diversify. But the European nations' surrender of their colonies during the first half of the 20th century left the newly independent Islamic nations throughout North Africa and the Middle East with great challenges. Without democratic traditions, all acquired autocratic regimes of one kind or another. Their intellectuals and elites, meanwhile, tended to embrace the secularism of their former colonizers in their quest for modernity and progress. Religious practice and scholarship were neglected, and the rulers increasingly cracked down on their critics. Into this era offerrnent came the Jewish state of Israel, which arose in the center of the Levant. One of its primary supporters, the United States, became a major player in the region, more than once having its way by supporting or installing unsavory regimes.

Social justice. Thus the region became ripe for movements (particularly fundamentalist ones) promising social justice and ethnic solidarity. And all the better if they painted Uncle Sam as

JIHAD AND ISLAMIC SCRIPTURE

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lmost without exception, Muslim leaders around the world denounced the terrorist attacks as flagrant violations of Islamic law. Yet Muslim extremists often use religion to justifY what others call barbaric acts of violence. What do the scriptures and traditions of Islam teach about waging "holy war?" A brief rundown: Jihad. Islamic scholars say jihadliterally "to struggle"-pertains first and foremost to mastering one's passions and leading a virtuous life.

According to one tradition, after a military campaign the prophet Mohammed once declared, "We have returned from the lesser 'jihad' to the greater 'jihad.' " When asked to describe the greater jihad, he said, "It is the 'jihad' against one's sou!." However, when Islam or Muslim lands are threatened, scholars say, Muslims are bound by Islamic tradition to wage a "jihad of the sword." There are ground rules: "Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you, but do not exaggerate," the Koran says (Sura 2:190). And if an enemy is ready to lay down arms, "if they incline toward peace, incline thou

also toward it." Some Muslims argue that U.S. support for Israel constitutes a threat that justified jihad.

Attacks on civilians. In mainstream Islam, rules of jihad forbid the targeting of non-combatants. "There is no terrorism in jihad or a threat to civilians," says Abdul-Moti Bayoumi of the Islamic Research Center at Cairo's al-Azhar University. "A Muslim should fight only the one who fights him; and children, women, and the elderly should be spared." Islamic scholars often cite an ancient tradition that says Mohammed, when informed that some Muslims engaged in ajihad had killed women, raised his hands and prayed, "0 God, be my witness that my. hands are innocent of this crime." Attacking civilians, they say, is clear violation of Islamic law.

Martyrdom and suicide. Both the Koran and Islamic tradition teach that God deals harshly with those who take their own lives. "And do not throw yourselves into destruction with your own hands," the Koran says in Sura 2:195. Mohammed warned of dire consequences: "Whoever kills himself with a knife will be in hell forever stabbing himself in the stom-

ach. Whoever drinks poison and kills himself will drink it eternally in the hellfire." Yet Islamic tradition also teaches that those who sacrifice themselves for the sake of God are deemed martyrs and can expect lavish rewards: "They are alive in the presence of their Lord," says the Koran, "and are granted gifts from him."

Muslim extremists who strap on explosives and blow themselves up "often see themselves as fighting injustice inflicted against their people," says Yvonne Haddad, professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University. Some find a biblical precedent, she adds, in the story of Samson, the Israelite hero who pulled down a temple, killing himself and his enemies.

But in an interview earlier this year with the London newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, Saudi Arabia's grand mufti, Sheik Abdul Aziz aI-Sheik, declared that suicide bombings "are illegitimate and have nothing to do with jihad in the cause of God. I am afraid it is another form of killing oneself."

0 About the Author: Jeffery L Sheler is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report.

:.......------------------------------------------------------....,,,:' the Great Satan, the wicked meddler in local affairs. But the notion that the United States is the decisive factor behind the rise of fanatical Islam-or of the terror it inspires-is absurd, as Richard Cohen noted in the Washington Post. Even as Washington attempted to broker a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian authority, bin Laden's associates carried out their attacks on U.S. embassies and the USS Cole.

If there is a failing within America's foreign-policy establishment, says Charles Fairbanks, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, it is that it needs to figure religion more seriously into the geopolitical equation: "It's in the interest of the United States and other countries to try to encourage the recovery of traditional Islamic religious learn-

ing." Sheik Kabbani concurs, adding that it's the fanatics who "now have the mike." But to be helpful, Americans need a rudimentary knowledge of Islamic traditions and teaching so that they will know who should get aid, and who should not. At present, says Kabbani, some extremists "are getting support even from the regimes they are trying to destroy." If the United States and other nations do not help the traditionalist Muslims win the theological struggle within Islamic civilization, then the West may face what the extremists want: a real and possibly cataclysmic clash between civilizations.

0 About the Author: Jay Tolson is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report.

The Politics of Rage

Why Do They Hate Us? To the question "Why do the terrorists hate us?" Americans could be pardoned for answering, "Why should we care?" The immediate reaction for the murder of 5,000 innocents is anger, not analysis.

Yet anger will not be enough to get us through what is sure to be a long struggle. For that we will need answers.

T

he ones we have heard so far have been comforting but familiar. We stand for freedom and they hate it. We are rich and they envy us. We are strong and they resent this.

All of which is true. But there are billions of poor and weak and oppressed people around the world. They don't turn planes into bombs. They don't blow themselves up to kill thousands of civilians. If envy were the cause ofterrorism, Beverly Hills, Fifth Avenue and Mayfair would have become morgues long ago. There is something stronger at work here than deprivation and jealousy. Something that can move men to kill but also to die.

Osama bin Laden has an answer-religion.

For him and his followers, this is a holy war between Islam and the Western world. Most Muslims disagree. Every Islamic country in the world has condemned the attacks of September II. To many, bin Laden belongs to a long line of extremists who have invoked religion to justifY mass murder and spur men to suicide. The words "thug," "zealot" and "assassin" all come from ancient terror cults-Hindu, Jewish and Muslim, respectively-that believed they were doing the work of God. The terrorist's mind is its own place, and like Milton's Satan, can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell. Whether it is the Unabomber, Aum Shinrikyo or Baruch Goldstein (who killed scores of unaimed Muslims in Hebron), terrorists are almost always misfits who place their own twisted morality above mankind's.

Admiration for bin Laden But bin Laden and his followers are not an isolated cult like Aum Shinrikyo or the Branch Davidians or demented loners like Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber. They

come out of a culture that reinforces their hostility, distrust and hatred of the West-and of America in particular. This culture does not condone terrorism but fuels the fanaticism that is at its heart. To say that AI Qaida is a fringe group may be reassuring, but it is false. Read the Arab press in the aftermath of the attacks and you will detect a not-so-hidden admiration for bin Laden. Or consider this from the Pakistani newspaper The Nation: "September II was not mindless terrorism for terrorism's sake. It was reaction and revenge, even retribution." Why else is America's response to the terror attacks so deeply constrained by fears of an "Islamic backlash" on the streets? Pakistan will dare not allow Washington the use of its bases. Saudi Arabia trembles at the thought of having to help us publicly. Egypt pleads that our strikes be as limited as possible. The problem is not that Osama bin Laden believes that this is a religious war against America. It's that mill ions of people across the Islamic world seem to agree.

This awkward reality has led some in the West to dust off old essays and older prejudices predicting a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. The historian Paul Johnson has argued that Islam is intrinsically an intolerant and violent religion. Other scholars have disagreed, pointing out that Islam condemns the slaughter of innocents and prohibits suicide. Nothing will be solved by searching for "true Islam" or quoting the Quran. The Quran is a vast, vague book, filled with poetry and contradictions (much like the Bible). You can find in it condemnations of war and incitements to struggle, beautiful expressions of tolerance and stern strictures against unbelievers.

Quotations from it usually tell us more about the person who selected the passages than about Islam. Every religion

is compatible with the best and the worst of humankind.

Through its long history, Christianity has supported inquisitions and anti-Semitism, but also human rights and social welfare.

Why Now? Searching the history books is also of limited value.

From the Crusades of the 11th century to the Turkish expansion of the 15th century to the colonial era in the early 20th century, Islam and the West have often battled militarily. This tension has existed for hundreds of years, during which there have been many periods of peace and even harmony. Until the 1950s, for example, Jews and Christians lived peaceably under Muslim rule. In fact, Bernard Lewis, the pre-eminent historian of Islam, has argued that for much of history religious minorities did better under Muslim rulers than they did under Christian ones.

All that has changed in the past few decades. So surely the relevant question we must ask is, Why are we in a particularly difficult phase right now? What has gone wrong in the world of Islam that explains not the conquest of

Constantinople in 1453 or the siege of Vienna of 1683 but September 11,2001?

Let us first peer inside that vast Islamic world. Many of the largest Muslim countries in the world show little of this anti-American rage. The biggest, Indonesia, had, until the recent Asian economic crisis, been diligently following Washington's advice on economics, with impressive results. The second and third most populous Muslim countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have mixed Islam and modernity with some success. While both countries are impoverished, both have voted a woman into power as prime minister, before most Western countries have done so. Next is Turkey, the sixth largest Muslim country in the world, a flawed but functioning secular democracy and a close ally of the West (being a member of NATO).

Only when you get to the Middle East do you see in lurid colors all the dysfunctions that people conjure up when they think of Islam today. In Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, the occupied territories and the Persian Gulf, the resurgence oflslamic fundamentalism is virulent, and a raw anti-Americanism seems to be everywhere. This is o the land of suicide bombers, flag-burners ~ and fiery mullahs. As we strike Afghanistan z ยง it is worth remembering that not a single ~ Afghan has been tied to a terrorist attack I 3 against the United States. Afghanistan is the !2: campground from which an Arab army is battling America.

But even the Arab rage at America is relatively recent. In the 1950s and 1960s it seemed unimaginable that the United States and the Arab world would end up locked in a cultural clash. Egypt's most powerful journalist, Mohamed Heikal, described the mood at the time: "The whole picture of the United States ... was a glamorous one. Britain and France were fading, hated empires. The Soviet Union was about 8,000 kilometers away and the ideology of communism was anathema to the Muslim religion. But America had emerged from World War II richer, more powerful and more appealing than ever." I first traveled to the Middle East in the early 1970s, and even then the image of America was of a glistening, approachable modernity: fast cars, Hilton hotels and Coca-Cola. Something happened in these lands. To understand the roots of antiAmerican rage in the Middle East, we need to plumb not the past 300 years of history but the past 30.

0 About the Author: Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek international editions.

First Priority

Humanitarian Aid F

ood shortages became alarming in Afghanistan even before the United States began bombing raids against the Taliban regime and terrorist training camps. A four-year drought following hard upon two decades of war and five years of brutal Taliban rule had already pushed Afghans to the edge of starvation. Since bombing raids were initiated the number of refugees clinging to the borders or trying to cross high mountain passes has swelled. The harsh Afghan wintyr is beginning.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) began sending aid six months ago in response to the impending famine in Afghanistan. A Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) arrived there in June 2001 and remained, assisting the United Nations and NGOs in humanitarian aid distribution. The terrorist attacks of September II in ew York and Washington dramatically altered the U.S. perception of Afghanistan. Elements there who actively promote international terrorism could no longer be ignored.

Despite-and because of-the military campaign in Afghanistan, the United States continues its efforts to provide food and essential supplies to Afghans.

In mid-October, Andrew Natsios, administrator of USAID, testified before a joint hearing of Senate subcommittees about the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan: "The long drought has caused the near-total failure of rain-fed crops in 18 provinces. Only 10 to 12 percent of the country is arable, and much of that land cannot be used due to mines and the fighting that has raged about the country since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Thirty percent of Afghanistan's irrigation infrastructure has been damaged or fallen into disrepair."

Twenty years ago, Afghanistan was able to feed itself, he says, but "currently, there is a food deficit of nearly two million metric tons." The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that the country will produce only 10,000 of the necessary 400,000 tons of seed for next year's planting. atsios adds, "We know the reason: most of the seed has already been eaten by farmers who fear they may not survive until the next crop."

The United States has long been the largest donor to the World Food Program's Afghanistan effOli, giving $185 million in humanitarian assistance in the past year. President Bush has recently sanctioned another $320 million contribution for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.

As air strikes against Taliban and terrorist training camps began, efforts to distribute much-needed food and supplies to innocent Afghan civilians were stepped up. U.S. military planes drop food parcels throughout the countryside, while GOs transpOli supplies overland. Besides foodstuffs, provi-

sions include tents, plastic sheeting, blankets, pOliable warehouses, kerosene lanterns, and water jugs.

Neighboring countries Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are also receiving supplies to help them cope with an influx of Afghan refugees. Among the international aid agencies coordinating efforts with USAID/OFDA (Office of Disaster Assistance) are Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED), Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), Save the ChildrenlU.S. and U.K., CARE/U.S., International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the International Medical Corps (IMC), Mercy Corps International (MCI), Shelter Now International (SNl/U.S.), along with several United Nations agencies.

0 Clockwise from right: Workers load sacks of wheat for Afghan refugees from the World Food Program (WFP) in downtown PeshawGl; Pakistan; Afghan girls waitingfor food in Mashlak refilgee camp near Herat; loading food supplies to trucks in PeshawG1: Food supplies include wheat and other staples.

In addition, Humanitarian Daily Ration drops are meant to provide sustenance to the population in a crisis, and is a stopgap until more conventional relief can be resumed They are designed to conform to the widest range of cultural and dietary restrictions while providing a nutritionally balanced 2,200 calories a day.

The rations dropped in Afghanistan contain no meat or animal by-products. A typical menu is lentil stew, beans and rice, peanut butter and crackers, and cookies which are ready to eat.

The TrickY Trail of Blood Money Freezing assets is one thing, but shadowy underworld conduits may move more money than banks. And with hard-to-trace international money transfers through seemingly innocuous accounts, it is not an easy puzzle to solve.

ddressing the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services in early October and a little over three weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., United States Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said, "Money can be as lethal as bullets." O'Neill was referring to a simple fact: that the suspected perpetrator of September II's horrific acts, Osama bin Laden, accomplished his task in large part thanks to a shadowy financial network.

Going after the sources of terrorism funding has become an integral theater of operations in the world's larger war against telTorism. The U.S. State Department's coordinator for countetierrorism, Francis Taylor, told congressmen on September 25, "Funding is a critical element in these large-scale terrorist operations and in the recruiting of supporters. We need to choke it off."

Moving against terrorist financing was a top priority for the administration of George W. Bush after September 11.

President Bush issued Executive Order 13224 ten days after the telTorist attacks, declaring a national emergency with respect to acts of terrorism and threats of the same. A key facet of that order was attacking the means by which terror was funded.

The order was followed by United Nations Security Council resolution 1376 which sought to make aiding and abetting terrorism illegal among all the UN's member-

A

states. U.S. Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, praised the resolution as "unprecedented."

He noted that the resolution obliged all UN members "to deny financing, suppoli and safe harbor for all terrorists."

The UN resolution provides crucial international legal legitimacy to the campaign against terrorist finance.

More recently, the U.S. Government turned to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international body formed in 1989 to curb money laundering worldwide, to generate new global standards to make the financing of terrorism more difficult. After an extraordinary plenary on October 29-30, FATF expanded its mission to include terrorist financing and issued a set of Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing. Washington has wide suppOli among many countries to ensure these norms are adopted worldwide.

Picking out and blocking, let alone seizing, the financial assets of global terrorism will be an arduous and difficult process. In its own way, it may prove more complex and difficult than the military campaign against bin Laden's network of terrorist organizations called Al Qaida. It will almost certainly require an unprecedented degree of international and institutional cooperation. As Secretary O'Neill said after a recent FATF meeting, "No nation can combat terrorist financing alone. We must all cooperate."

The Treasury Department Undersecretary for Enforcement, Jimmy Gurule, recently outlined the broad program the U.S. and its allies had adopted to tackle the problem.

The first part, he said, was to "identify and investigate targets." An outward manifestation of this was Washington's blacklisting of various individuals and organizations with links to telTorists, especially to AI Qaida. This list began with 27 names. Twelve names were added later. More names have been recommended, say U.S. officials.

The second part was the identification and blocking of

the assets of terrorist institutions. President Bush's Executive Order froze many such assets. When announcing the order, he said, "If you do business with terroristsyou will not do business with the U.S." The Group of Seven and 66 other countries have adopted the U.S. list. Some 110 others are working toward adoption. India, for example, is expected to pass a pending money laundering bill during the winter session of Parliament. Collectively, an estimated $20 million of such assets have been put on ice.

However, the main impact of this move lies in the future. It was well known that Al Qaida no longer kept the bulk of its assets in the West or in traceable accounts.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the real intent of these lists "is to deter those who might now seek to contribute to bin Laden's coffers."

Possibly the trickiest part of the program will be the third part-identifying the methods such funds were moved around. This is tied up with the various methods that terrorist organizations raise and transfer funds.

Terrorists process their money in two distinct ways. The first is to raise money legitimately through business activities or charitable donations, and diveli some of this money to pay for violent activity. French Senator Andre Rouviere calls this "reverse money laundering"-where licit money is used for criminal purposes. This is bin Laden's favored means of finance.

The second is to follow the path taken by organized crime and launder illegally-earned profits for later use. The revenue earned from heroin cultivation in Afghanistan, for example, helps support the Taliban regime and the terrorist groups to which they provide shelter.

Reverse money laundering is a relatively new development to which responses are still being fashioned. "Bank officials, police and intelligence experts will need to develop new patterns or models of how terrorists use the finan-

cial system because-unlike with money laundering-terrorists often sue legitimately obtained money to fund their attacks," commented the Financial Times recently.

Bin Laden operates businesses in fields like shipping and construction. The New York Times ran a lengthy article describing how a network of honey shops were used by bin Laden to move funds. The firms' accounts are then rigged to allow for the diversion of small amounts of money to terrorist activities.

Since the mid-1980s, say U.S. authorities, bin Laden has taken special care to transfer and hide his finances to avoid detection. "Today Al Qaida receives the bulk of its financial support from a collection of Islamic charities and relief organizations, the majority of whose money comes from wealthy individual donors suppOliive of bin Laden's cause," said a V.S. Treasury official recently. Again, such donations are white money which are patiially used for black purposes.

President Bush noted in a press conference in September that terrorists "often use nice-sounding NGOs as fronts for their activities." Who would believe that innocuous sounding charities like Help Africa People and Mercy International were front organizations for the likes of Osama bin Laden?

Commenting on their financial expertise, Deputy Treasury Secretary Dam said bin Laden and his ilk could be called "international venture terrorists."

Bin Laden depends less on traditional money-laundering, but they still represent a major and alternative source of revenue for terrorism. The key criminal activity which provides revenue to AI Qaida is the drugs trade, most of which revolves around Afghanistan's heroin production.

However, as one V.S. official noted, "Some Al Qaida operatives engage in petty theft to support their cells." For example, one popular means to get money by terrorists is credit card fraud.

Undersecretary Gurule says another part of this program would be to identity gaps in law enforcement and regulation that make terrorist finance possible. In this, the U.S. and the world community will be building on the legislation and negotiations that began over a decade ago to control the money laundering practices of organized crime syndicates, most notably drug cartels.

These earlier attempts sought to stifle the movement of illicit funds by closing down offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Nauru. Some success has been had in this direction: the Bahamas, for example, announced their intention to eradicate money laundering by their banks.

Says Raj Boiroliya of Forensic Accounting, a financial fraud expert, "The fight against money laundering doesn't have a hope of succeeding as long as tax havens continue to exist."

Besides tax havens, there are a number of countries like Russia or Lebanon with loose regulatory standards that end up assisting money launderers. But the speed and volume of electronically-driven financial transactions in places like ew York City or London also provide excellent cover for criminal banking.

Germany, for example, was revealed to be a popular hub for black money movement because of major regulatory loopholes. It is recognized that uncovering and disrupting the web of financial activity that supports terrorism will be extraordinarily difficult. For one thing, global finance is a universe of incredible size, rapid movement and infinite versatility.

While estimates vary, it is generally believed money laundering activity handles some one trillion dollars each year worldwide. The International Monetary Fund says the actual figure could be twice as much.

Electronic transactions alone, said a United Nations Drug Control Program expert panel report in 1998, total 700,000 wire transfers wOlih $2 trillion every day. A study

by Australia's financial intelligence unit six years ago calculated that despite that country's relatively tight money rules, police were intercepting only one percent of the funds being laundered there.

Electronic transfers border on the transparent when compared to informal, traditional money markets like the hawala system that stretches across West and South Asia.

The hawala system transfers funds across borders on the basis of personal trust, there are no written documents and estimates of the system's size or reach are largely guesswork. Unsurprisingly, it is a money channel that has been used in the past by AI Qaida operatives.

Another problem when it comes to terrorist financing is that they tend to come with relatively small price tags. The U.S. Federal Bureau ofInvestigation (FBI) estimates bin Laden's foiled attempt at bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 cost him only $20,000.

The budget for the far larger September 11 attacks has

been put at only a few hundred thousand dollars.

Finally, there is the problem of scores of national and institutional sovereign jurisdictions regarding finance that cover the world. These are serious barriers to investigation.

Sovereign borders are so insurmountable that many banks have "walking accounts" which automatically get transferred to another country at the first hint of official inquiry.

E

xpetiS say one means money is laundered, for example, is called the "boomerang." In this, funds are sent in a large arc around the world, moving from country to country, bank to bank, until it returns to where it originated. The sheer legal and administrative difficulties of following a trail that cuts through so many jurisdictions would tie up any investigation for years. At least, under the present international路regime.

Opening the windows and doors of the world financial system to the fresh air of transparency will be a Herculean diplomatic process. It wi II not only mean 'getting countries to change their ways, but persuading a range of financial institutions ranging from banks on Wall Street to streets ide hmvala merchants to reconsider business practices that have been seen as normal for centuries. Undersecretary Gurule pointed out that shutting down the Islamic charities network that feeds Al Qaida alone "will require intense international coordination and cooperation."

This is not just about dealing with governments, but also with banks and financial firms. Secretary O'Neill said, "We have to enlist the active help of financial institutions to hunt down the financial benefactors who uI1derwrite murder and mayhem."

There seems to be no lack of international determination to take action against blood money of this variety. As the Deputy Secretary Dam recently said, "The same talent pool and expertise that brought down Al Capone will now be dedicated to investigating Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network."

However, much of the institutional and legal requirements to wage such a campaign are still being put in place. For example, a UN global convention against financing terrorism, sponsored by France, opened for signature last year. Among the first countries to sign was India. Even within the U.S. Government, interagency groups like the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, have only recently been put in place. Similar information-sharing and coordination at the international policy level is still in its infancy.

Secretary O'Neill put it bluntly after an emergency meeting in early October of the Group of Seven finance ministers. "We are going to pursue the financiers often'orism like they've never been pursued before."

0 About the Author: Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is an associate editor a/The Hindustan Times in New Delhi.