ARTICLE EXTRACTS:
Volume XXI, No 3, FALL 2004

Prisons and the Education of Terrorists
Ian M. Cuthbertson *

Prison reformers have long been aware that the cellblock is a school for criminals, the shadow campus where the petty offender graduates into organized crime. Yet strangely, the same insight has for the most part eluded jail keepers in countries now targeted by Islamic terrorists. The usefulness of prisons as universities for terrorists, however, has not escaped Islamic radicals. They have become increasingly sophisticated in their operational methods, especially in devising ways of recruiting and training those who spearhead their assaults.

Last spring's devastating train bombings in Madrid, the mishandling of which led to the electoral defeat of the sitting Spanish government, illustrate the phenomenon. A principal conspirator, José Emilio Suárez Trashorras, a Spanish mineworker, was not religious or politically aware when he was jailed in 2001 for a drug offense. Incarcerated in the same prison was Jamal Ahmidan, a young Moroccan living in Spain, also convicted of a petty crime. Once in prison, however, both the nominally Christian Trashorras and the nonobservant Muslim Ahmidan enthusiastically embraced radical Islamic fundamentalist beliefs and were recruited into an al-Qaeda–linked Moroccan terrorist group, Takfir wa al-Hijra.

The imprisoned Ahmidan quickly gained a leadership position in the cellblock, and on emerging from prison both men were absorbed into an extensive and well-organized radical Islamic organization that trafficked heavily in drugs to support its terrorist activities. Later, Ahmidan led the cell that carried out the Madrid bombings, while Trashorras supplied the explosives and helped plant the 13 backpack bombs that killed 191 people and injured hundreds of others on four Madrid trains crowded with early-morning commuters.

The use of prisons as a means of recruiting new members into terrorist organizations while providing advanced training to existing members is hardly a new phenomenon. For more than 30 years, European countries have been beset by a variety of nationalist and leftist terrorist groups, some of them highly sophisticated organizations with large rosters of combat and support personnel.

*Ian M. Cuthbertson is a senior fellow and director of the Counterterrorism Project at the World Policy Institute.

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Whichever candidate takes the presidential oath in 2005, the Oval Office inbox is sure to contain a large folder marked "Saudi Arabia." Three critical global problems intersect in the desert kingdom: the soaring price of oil; the Saudi role, passive or active, in promoting Islamic radicalism; and the possibility that an archaic political system, with its thousands of privileged princes, may finally totter, destabilizing the strategically vital Persian Gulf. For decades, American presidents have paid only token attention to Saudi Arabia. In return for Riyadh's cooperation in keeping oil prices at tolerable levels (which also serve the kingdom's interests), and as a reward for Saudi Arabia's moderation on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Washington has played down the contentious issue of human rights and supplied the Saudis with sophisticated U.S. weaponry. But this long-standing, bipartisan arrangement was rendered obsolete by the new oil shock, by terror attacks within the kingdom, and by the September 11 assault on New York and Washington, planned by the Saudi Osama bin Laden and carried out by Saudi hijackers.

Given the ongoing turmoil in Iraq and the ongoing deadlock between stateless Palestinians and terror-traumatized Israelis, the path of least resistance in U.S.-Saudi relations would be to limit the agenda to rhetoric in return for empty promises of reform from the Saudis—thereby evading the tough questions in a troubled bilateral relationship. That would be a grave mistake.

Before September 11, Americans generally thought of Saudis as moderate Arabs and were content to set aside differences with a generally obliging client state to ensure the smooth flow of Gulf oil. Washington wanted to believe that the Saudis provided "an island of stability in a volatile region," to recall the sanguine phrase used by President Jimmy Carter to describe Reza Pahlavi's Iran in 1978, a year before the Shah's fall. Since September 11, many Americans have learned to rethink their no less sanguine views of Saudi Arabia. They have discovered that the affable demeanor of the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, conceals uncomfortable truths about his country. It is widely understood that the Saudi royal family has purchased protection for its anachronistic political system by ceding to radical Islamic movements the right to educate Saudi youth and to preach whatever they wish in the kingdom's mosques. Although Prince Bandar explains that the Saudi government has a modern and moderate view of the West, Saudi cabinet ministers argue—with a straight face and without a royal rebuke—that Israeli intelligence masterminded the 9/11 attacks.

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The Forgotten Lessons of Helsinki Human Rights and U.S.-North Korean Relations
John Feffer *

In the movie Lost in Translation, an aging Hollywood actor and a young American woman are thrown together in Tokyo. The city is to them a bewildering, alien landscape. We see Japanese culture through their eyes, and much of what they see appears grotesque or absurd. More clueless than ugly, these Americans are able to view Japanese culture only through the prism of their own narrow experience.

If Japanese society can remain baffling to educated American travelers after decades of cultural exchanges—after all the sushi restaurants, the translations of Tanizaki and Murakami, the fascination with Japanese art forms both traditional (flower arranging) and trivial (Pokemon) in the United States—it is not surprising that the considerably more remote North Korean society can seem impenetrable. Yet however much our superficial view of Japan—which we tend to see in terms of timeless tradition (the elegiac) or hypermodern anomie (the comic)—is to be regretted, our relations with Japan are friendly. Our relations with a possibly nuclear-armed North Korea are not. In this instance, the stakes are too high to allow a simplistic vision of North Korea as "totalitarian" to define policy.

Yet it is precisely this limited interpretation of North Korean society that is driving U.S. human rights policy toward North Korea, as revealed in the debate over the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. This legislation, which is likely to be signed soon, attempts to insert human rights into the ongoing multilateral negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program—to the possible detriment of both regional security and the human rights of North Koreans. Neoconservatives and paleo-hawks, both within and outside the Bush administration, have taken a one-size-fits-all approach to North Korea patterned on Washington's approach to the "totalitarian" societies of the Soviet bloc. Not only are the historical circumstances different, North Korea is not like the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe before 1989. Much is lost in translation, and bad policy is the result.

*John Feffer is a Pantech Fellow at the Korea Studies Program at Stanford University and the author of North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories Press, 2003) and Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions (South End Press, 1992).

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The Perpetual Migration Machine and Political Power
Michele Wucker *

The historian and diplomat George Bancroft declared in 1849 that a nation should "as soon tolerate a man with two wives as a man with two countries." This is no longer so—if, indeed, it ever was. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down most laws forbidding dual citizenship. However, the State Department did not formally acknowledge the court's decision until 1990, when it sent a memorandum to U.S. consulates around the world effectively directing them to make it easier for dual nationals to retain U.S. citizenship. Since then, many nations have begun to promote dual citizenship, absentee balloting, and even homeland legislative seats for their citizens settled abroad.

Today, more than a hundred countries, including India, Israel, and South Africa, allow dual citizenship. The Philippines and the Dominican Republic this year joined the growing roster of nations that permit absentee balloting. Hoping to lure tourism, trade, and talent, Ireland and Italy encourage not only the children but the grandchildren of émigrés to become dual citizens.

Dual citizenship and absentee voting rights have not only turned the idea of national loyalty upside down, they have become a key element in a global perpetual migration machine fueled by wealthy countries' need for migrant workers and poor countries' need for the money those workers send home (see Michele Wucker, "Remittances: The Perpetual Migration Machine," World Policy Journal, summer 2004). Remittances now amount to more than $100 billion annually, giving developing nations a strong incentive to encourage their citizens living abroad to stay connected back "home" and thus keep the cash flowing. So far, it seems, these efforts are succeeding, with the result that émigrés are pouring money into homeland development projects and contributing to the growth of civil society in the countries of their birth. Homeland political candidates now aggressively court the émigré vote and look to compatriots abroad for campaign funds.

Even as sending countries try to lure skilled workers into returning home, countries that host large, semi-permanent expatriate populations recognize that they must do better in convincing newcomers to participate more fully in their adopted communities. In a trend that began in the 1960s and accelerated through the 1980s, more than 20 nations worldwide have extended the right to vote in local elections to noncitizen residents.

These dramatic changes in traditional approaches to citizenship and political participation raise questions about the nature of democracy and national loyalty. Must one be a citizen of a nation in order to be a citizen of one's community, that is, a good neighbor? And, conversely, how much say should citizens living abroad have in their native country's affairs? How these questions are answered will reshape civil society around the world, determine who future generations of leaders will be, and influence policymaking.

*Michele Wucker is a senior fellow and a member of the Program on Citizenship & Security Core Working Group at the World Policy Institute. She is co-director of the Immigrant Voting Project (www.immigrantvoting.org).

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In September 2000, at a historic summit attended by 147 heads of state, the United Nations unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration. The delegates pledged to work toward a world that would promote peace and social justice, eradicate chronic poverty, and support sustainable development. These fine words were then distilled—after consultation with the International Monetary Fund (imf [small caps]), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the U.N. General Assembly—into seven millennium development goals, or MDGS. These were: 1) eliminate extreme hunger and poverty; 2) achieve universal primary education; 3) promote gender equality and empower women; 4) reduce child mortality; 5) improve maternal health; 6) combat hiv/aids, malaria, and other diseases; and 7) ensure environmental sustainability.

In December 2000, U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan was authorized by the General Assembly to prepare a "road map" for achieving the goals laid out in the Millennium Declaration. The Office of the Secretary General issued its consensual road map in September 2001. The road map included an eighth goal—to develop a global partnership for development—and outlined seven "mutual responsibilities and obligations" of the U.N. member states. In December 2001, the U.N. General Assembly formally adopted resolution 5695 approving the eighth goal, and at the U.N.'s inaugural International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002, 50 heads of state and over 200 ministers from developed and developing countries agreed on a new compact that stressed mutual responsibilities with respect to the initiative. The Monterrey Compact called on the developing countries to deepen their economic reform programs and improve governance, and on the developed countries to step up their support by providing more aid to developing countries and opening their markets.

In accepting the eight mdgs, each country committed itself to attaining ambitious, measurable "targets" by the year 2015. There are some 48 indicators, each associated with a specific target, by which progress is to be gauged. U.N. "country teams" are to help integrate millennium goals into national development frameworks. The Office of the Secretary General is required to submit an annual report to the General Assembly on progress achieved toward implementing the Millennium Declaration.

The postwar period has seen an array of grandiose plans and programs aimed at solving the problems of poverty, inequality, and economic underdevelopment. Despite the dedicated efforts of many people and the expenditure of huge sums of money, the results have been disappointing. In this "elusive quest for growth," there have been a few unexpected achievements, and a great many failures. Will the millennium project be any different?

*Shalendra D. Sharma is professor of political science at the University of San Francisco. His most recent book is The Asian Financial Crisis: Crisis, Reform and Recovery (Manchester University Press, 2003).

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ADVOCACY
Global Public Health Trumps the Nation-State
Maureen T. Upton *

It is generally agreed that governments are responsible for the protection of their citizens, a responsibility that falls under the rubric "national security." Today, the concept of national security, and even the idea of national sovereignty, is being challenged by the spread of infectious disease, particularly by the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS.

The term "security" has traditionally referred to safety from some form of violent attack. A decade ago, the United Nations, in the Declaration of Principles on Human Rights and the Environment (1994), broadened the definition of the term to include access to such basic requirements for human well-being as food, healthcare, education, and the like. Disease, which recognizes no borders, attracts less attention than warfare and civil strife, yet it can be even more threatening to state survival. Three times as many people die from aids [small caps] each day as died in the attacks on September 11, and the disease has killed more people than all the wars of the twentieth century. It is the leading cause of death in Africa and is on the rise in many of the world's most populous countries. These facts should concern us not solely for humanitarian reasons but because, as the political scientist Andrew Price-Smith warns, "Rapid negative change in the health status of a population and pathogen-induced demographic collapse may...figure in the destabilization of states."

Ironically, our notion of sovereignty, which prohibits both state and nonstate actors from intervening in the affairs of sovereign states, has aided the global spread of infectious disease. As Price-Smith notes, "In the case of states like South Africa and Zimbabwe, where there remains an enduring culture of denial regarding hiv/aids [small caps], this means that the international community has little choice but to stand by and watch the ruling elites of these countries preside over the destruction of their populaces. According to a U.S. intelligence estimate published in 2002, over 25 million people have died of aids [small caps] in the past two decades and 40 million people are currently living with hiv [small caps]. By the year 2020, it is estimated that 70 million people will have died from the disease, 55 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Civil institutions are being decimated, and along with them the economic prospects of highly infected nations. Some 40 percent of Zambia's and 70 percent of Swaziland's teachers are hiv[small caps]-positive. Up to half of Malawi's healthcare workers are expected to die of aids by 2020, and the disease is expected to kill similar numbers of civil service workers throughout the rest of sub-Saharan Africa over the same period. As a result, poverty, political instability, and cross-border conflict are likely to increase. Stefan Elbe of the University of Essex, who has looked closely at the strategic implications of hiv/aids [small caps] on national armed forces, international peacekeeping forces, and political stability, concludes that the spread of the disease may well undermine the ability of states and the international system to manage and contain conflict.

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