Newsletter No. 149
December 30, 2005

 

FOREIGN MINISTER ASO PREPARES FOR PAKISTAN MISSION UNDER A TERRORIST CLOUD

MOFA has now released details about Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s plan to visit Pakistan. It turns out that this will be a combined mission to India and Pakistan, and will be FM Aso’s debut in direct, bilateral diplomacy in Asia. His visit will last from January 3rd to January 6th, starting in India and then finishing in Pakistan.

According to MOFA, the topic of Aso’s discussions in Pakistan will center on “wide-ranging issues, such as the fight against terrorism and assistance for the earthquake disaster, to further strengthen the bilateral relationship in the wake of Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to Pakistan and Japan's assistance after the disastrous earthquake in Pakistan.”

A couple of days ago, FM Aso praised Pakistan for playing a “key role in the War on Terrorism” and described Japan-Pakistan relations as “cordial and friendly.” During his visit, he is scheduled to meet with President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, and Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.

It will be recalled that Deputy Foreign Minister Tsuneo Nishida had just visited Islamabad last week as well (Shingetsu Newsletter No. 145). Prime Minsiter Koizumi had himself visited Pakistan at the end of April 2005, before the Shingetsu Newsletter began in June.

The main reason why Japan-Pakistan relations have been warming appears to be due to the War on Terrorism, in which both Prime Minister Koizumi and President Musharraf share a hardline perspective. Previously, the bilateral relationship had been chilled by Pakistan’s May 28, 1998, nuclear tests, which announced to the world that Pakistan had become the first Muslim country to join the nuclear club. After September 11, however, both leaders made a similar strategic calculation to fully jump on board the Bush Bandwagon, and this has brought them closer together.

For President Musharraf, it was a decision of considerable physical courage, since it has made him Al-Qaida Enemy Number One, and put him in constant danger of assassination. Musharraf is a wily, survivor-type, however, and has managed to keep a step ahead of the assassin’s bullet so far. For Koizumi, the personal risks have always been much lower, and his decision to align with Washington has gradually become the keystone of his entire foreign policy.

That said, evidence is emerging that may eventually change some of the calculations. The Sankei Shinbun is reporting that a Pakistani extremist entered Japan in 2003 in order to establish a Japanese branch of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), an Islamist group that was banned by Musharraf after September 11. The idea seems to be that this man had intended to establish a terrorist cell that might carry out attacks on Japanese soil. He visited mosques to try to recruit members among the resident Muslim community.

Said a police source to the Sankei: “We will step up efforts to grasp the actual conditions of the Islamic community in Japan that could be used improperly by terrorists.”

This is the second case of this nature, following the Lionel Dumont case that was reported in May 2004. Clearly, this is bad news for ordinary Muslims in Japan as it is sure to put them under even more suspicion.

Prime Minister Koizumi’s decision to fully back the Bush Administration’s War on Terrorism has brought Tokyo some short-term benefits. But one wonders: How long can the era of Pain-Free Engagement really continue before the trouble really begins?

 

THE ASAHI SHINBUN ON THE PREVENTION OF TERRORISM

The Asahi Shinbun, always skeptical of PM Koizumi’s foreign policies, has recently produced the following editorial on the War on Terrorism.

 

Prevention of Terror
December 29, 2005

This year, indiscriminate acts of terrorism that instantly deprived people of their peaceful, everyday lives and threw them into hell occurred in Iraq, Britain, Indonesia and elsewhere around the world. Young sympathizers of Islamic fundamentalism gave up their lives as suicide bombers for the cause of jihad. There are no signs that terrorism will subside in Iraq, either, as it struggles to rebuild itself.

It has been four years since U.S. President George W. Bush declared "a war against terror" prompted by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States. Many countries, including Japan, joined the war. Yet, there are no prospects for it to end. People who are going overseas over the winter holidays are concerned about terrorism. The actual situation may be worse than before.

Afghanistan became the first battleground in the war against terror. The Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist regime that had nurtured and harbored terrorists, was overthrown.

Osama bin Laden, the leader of the international terrorist organization al-Qaida, is believed to have escaped to the Afghan-Pakistani border area. Meanwhile, a new Afghan government somehow came into being as a result of an election, and the country is on its way to reconstruction under the support of international society and the United Nations.

And the battlefield shifted to Iraq. It is here that things started to go wrong. The Saddam Hussein regime collapsed in less than a month under the attack of U.S.-led forces that used high-tech weapons. But after that, terrorism and bloodshed continued.

Many people were killed, including American soldiers and those belonging to multinational forces. With the elimination of tyranny under Saddam, Bush sang praise to the achievements of democratization. But how many lives were lost in the process?

The unity of international society, which joined hands to prevent the recurrence of terrorism as a common enemy, also broke down.

Fear that weapons of mass destruction may fall into the hands of terrorists was shared by many. But it turned out that Iraq had no such weapons. Before we knew it, the enemy in the war against terrorism had changed to Sunni Muslims and supporters of the former Saddam regime.

The Bush administration shifted the focus of the fight from "anti-terrorism" to "democratization." Still, the U.S.-led multinational forces failed to be accepted as "liberators" and remain a target of hatred as "occupiers."

U.S. miscalculation does not end there. The United States kept detaining Afghans and Iraqis as "enemy combatants" without a trial for a long time. Furthermore, suspicions that it set up "secret detention centers" in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and tortured detainees also surfaced.

In short, the fight against terror is about how much we can win the people's hearts for the cause. What are the values that need to be protected? Who is our enemy? Only when international society shares a common recognition on these points, it can be united and build a common front to conquer the enemy.

In that sense, we have no choice but to say the war has been a failure up to now.

The 9/11 terrorism brought American society together. But now, rifts are starting to develop. As the death toll of American troops keeps rising, an anti-war mood emerged and lawmakers of both ruling and opposition parties are starting to call for withdrawal.

What is serious is the emergence of open criticism against the granting of strong power to authorities that allows them to wiretap and detain suspects without a warrant in the name of terrorist investigation. Critics say such acts violate human rights. U.S. Congress passed a law to ban all forms of torture.

The move is seen as a reflection of an awareness that the U.S. Constitution, which advocates values of human rights and democracy, is facing a crisis. It is a sign that people's hearts are starting to drift apart within the United States.

"The war against terror" is said to also include areas such as Chechnya and China's Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region. Are countries for or against terrorism? The Bush administration is emphasizing its opposition against Islamic radicalism and forcing others to make a simple choice between the two. But it is unreasonable to treat the ideology in the same way as deep-seated anti-U.S. sentiments prevalent in the Islamic world.

It is illogical to lump together conflicts, whose backgrounds and histories differ, under the name of terrorism. Doing so would only make international unity even harder to achieve. It is not completely unreasonable that Arab society interprets the situation as "a clash of civilizations" and is becoming increasingly antipathetic.

We must overturn this structure and create a broader front that can also win the support of the Islamic world. For that, we should make a harder effort at settling the Palestinian issue, which is the greatest problem in the Middle East. Radicals claim that the United States is strengthening its pro-Israeli stance, while waging a war against terrorism that targets Islam. "Jihad against a Jewish and Christian crusade" actually carries conviction in the Arab society to an extent.

If international society seriously tackles Palestinian peace, it should be able to soften such anti-U.S. and anti-Western sentiments. We should make a greater effort to contain the pretext of "jihad" to win the hearts of the people of Islamic society.

Can we rebuild a broader front in the fight against terror and change anxiety into hope? This is a problem that world leaders need to contend with next year.