• SUPPORT CATO
• FOR STUDENTS
• FOR MEDIA
• FREE NEWSLETTERS

• HOME

• ABOUT

• BLOG

• BOOKSTORE

• EVENTS

• EXPERTS

• MULTIMEDIA

• PUBLICATIONS

Books

Reviews & Journals

Public Filings

Policy Studies

Opinion & Commentary

• RESEARCH AREAS

• SPEAKERS BUREAU

• SUPPORT CATO

• CATO UNBOUND

• ELCATO.ORG

• FREETRADE.ORG

Cato Daily Dispatch for May 28, 2002

Al-Qaeda Now Operating Out of Pakistan

Virtually the entire senior leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been driven out of eastern Afghanistan and are now operating with as many as 1,000 non-Afghan fighters in the anarchic tribal areas of western Pakistan, the commander of American-led forces in Afghanistan said today, according to The New York Times.

The commander, Maj. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, said in an interview that intelligence reports indicated that the al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders now in Pakistan were plotting terrorist attacks, including car and suicide bombings, to disrupt the selection of a new national government in Kabul next month.

"We know that they are there and have a capability to do harm to this country," General Hagenbeck said. "Our job is to deny them the freedom of movement and sanctuary."

Though he suggested two months ago that coalition forces might cross the border in pursuit of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, General Hagenbeck said today that he did not expect that to happen, largely because Pakistan had developed its own plans to drive al-Qaeda and the Taliban from their mountain sanctuaries.

In "Take the War on Terrorism to Pakistan," Cato Vice President Ted Galen Carpenter writes; "It would be a mistake to allow misplaced gratitude to the Musharraf regime for belatedly abandoning the Taliban to deter us from taking the war against al-Qaeda to its next logical stage. The principal nest of terrorist vipers is not in the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, or Somalia. It is in Pakistan."

Colombian President-Elect Talks Tough About Drug War

President-elect of Colombia Alvaro Uribe said the U.S.-backed fight against the drugs that stream across that country's borders will be crucial to his plans to end the long-running civil war that kills thousands of people every year, according to the Associated Press.

A day after his landslide election on a law-and-order platform, Uribe said yesterday that the drug war is "essential" because Colombia's leftist rebels and their rivals, the right-wing paramilitaries, finance their fight with the proceeds from drug trafficking.

"Colombia has to defeat drugs," the Harvard-educated former state governor told a news conference. "If not, we will not create conditions to negotiate peace. As long as the violent groups are financed we will remain far from obtaining final accords."

In "Plan Colombia: Washington's Latest Drug War Failure," Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Ted Galen Carpenter writes that "Plan Colombia is ineffectual in achieving its stated objectives, and it produces a number of highly undesirable side effects. The brutal reality is that, as long as drugs are illegal, there will be a huge black-market premium--a lucrative potential profit that will attract producers. Plan Colombia cannot repeal the economic laws of supply and demand. In attempting to do so, the United States is creating even more trouble for an already troubled neighbor."

Russia Signs On To NATO

NATO, the alliance set up more than a half century ago for the Cold War containment of Moscow, formally accepted its old enemy as a junior partner today, according to the Associated Press.

"We have come a long way from confrontation to dialogue, and from confrontation to cooperation," Russian President Vladimir Putin said before he and 19 NATO leaders, including President George W. Bush, signed an agreement creating a NATO-Russia Council.

"Two former foes are now joined as partners," Bush said.

Under the new arrangement, Russia will have more authority than in an earlier, less formal arrangement set up years ago to try to nudge Moscow closer to the West.

In "NATO Expansion: Folly on Stilts," Ted Galen Carpenter warns against enlarging NATO hastily and writes that "advocates of expansion act as though NATO is a political honor society that the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are entitled to join because they have embraced democracy. But NATO is a military alliance, and the decision to extend U.S. security guarantees is serious business, not cost-free political symbolism. American troops might very well die defending those countries."

Carpenter is editor of the Cato Book "NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality."