San Diego Union-Tribune
Union-Tribune

October 13, 2001

A-1

Jihad rooted in despair
   Anti-U.S. message finds willing ears in refugee camps

By MARCUS STERN 
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE 

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Zabiullah Khan traveled here after enduring four nights of bombing in neighboring Kabul, Afghanistan. But he said he didn't come to escape the bombs. He came to join a global Islamic holy war against America.

"The day will come when a young man like me will wrap bombs around himself and go into every country to blow up American embassies all over the world," he said. "I will go to Washington myself to do it, God willing."

Such talk is commonplace in Peshawar these days and, indeed, throughout the Islamic world. Zabiullah made his comments yesterday during one of many protests against the United States in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

He was standing on a rooftop looking down on thousands of Muslim men as they torched an effigy of President Bush and beat it with sticks in what has become a familiar image broadcast around the world in recent weeks.

Zabiullah's commitment to global jihad, or holy war, may in part be a product of trends associated with today's shrinking world -- advances in communications technology, mass migration and economic interdependence.

If there is one man associated with the globalization of jihad, it is Osama bin Laden, who moved from his native Saudi Arabia to help the Afghans fight an ill-fated Soviet occupation of the Muslim country from 1979 to 1989.

He recruited, transported and trained Muslims from the Arab world for the fight. Many have since returned to their more moderate Arab states or moved elsewhere in the world, continuing their commitment to bin Laden and jihad. Zabiullah, an Afghan, said he had served at the age of 16 as an interpreter for a squad of bin Laden's Arab fighters there. He has stayed, enduring years of civil war after the Russians left in defeat.

The U.S. military reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including the pursuit of bin Laden, has galvanized many Muslim men to join -- or at least talk about joining -- a holy war against America.

"I served with Osama during the Russian occupation," Zabiullah said. "And now I will serve with him again."

While it is clear that jihad is going global, the roots of the phenomenon remain murky. Peshawar, however, offers some clues.

They can be found in the crumbling mud villages throughout the city that are home to about 560,000 Afghan refugees. They can be seen in the eyes of the children, some of whom have been born to children who themselves were born in the camps -- camps that were set up as long ago as 1979.

They are hauntingly similar to Palestinian camps.

And there are the newer refugee settlements -- squalid even by refugee standards, without any assistance from government or private relief agencies.

The open-air market of Taj Abad is also an open-air bathroom, with men squatting only a few feet from food carts. A naked child sits urinating on an ox cart displaying produce for sale to desperately poor refugees who may hope to get a charred ear of corn to eat.

It can be seen in the degradation of the environment, where what were lush fields only 20 years ago have become barren, dust-filled refugee camps; where cold, blue streams that once were refreshed by the melting glaciers of the Hindu Kush mountains in northern Pakistan have become fetid, disease-bearing canals.

For the refugees themselves and the longtime residents of Peshawar hosting them, the situation has become chronic and intolerable. Everywhere, there is a sense of despair over the continuing humanitarian tragedy and the world's seeming indifference after the end of the Cold War.

The camps and the city have become fertile ground for bin Laden and other religious, political and military activists seeking warriors for global jihad against any country they see as unjust to Muslims -- especially Israel, the United States, India and Russia.

Money from wealthy supporters in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations have funded a proliferation of schools -- called madrassas -- where children in the refugee camps have been isolated and schooled in a more militant brand of Islam. For most, it represents their only economic or social opportunity.

Another clue is the pervasiveness of misinformation on the street. Virtually everyone interviewed expressed almost absolute certainty that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were the handiwork of Israel.

Many believed Bush is attacking Afghanistan only because it is Muslim and because of his interest in the still-largely untapped oil and gas fields of Central Asia. They insist it is a war on Muslims, not terrorists. And the more the United States blames bin Laden for the Sept. 11 attacks, the more popular he has become. He is now a household figure and hero.

And few here seem impressed with Bush's recent emphasis on providing relief for the Afghans or his refrain that the action is being directed against terrorism -- not Muslims.

In Pakistan, the political chess game continues between President Pervez Musharraf, who supports the U.S. strikes in Afghanistan, and the maulanas -- or leaders -- of the religious political parties, who see them as an attack on the Muslim brotherhood.

The religious parties have continued to get faithful followers to the streets for noisy demonstrations. But while they reflect a point of view held widely by Pakistanis, the number of people in the streets remains a fraction of the nation's population of 140 million.

Musharraf has deftly handled the dissent, relying in the end on tools readily available to a president installed by a military coup in a country with a tradition of martial law -- batons, tear gas, and a heavy police and military presence.

While Musharraf's strong hand may hold the religious dissenters in check for now, the threat of global jihad clearly remains a long-term concern for much of the world -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- including the United States, Pakistan, Israel, India, Russia and moderate Arab states.

One man in the streets of Peshawar yesterday didn't blame Israel for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, which he referred to as "the accident of Sept. 11."

"I like the United States," said Aqil, 22. "I want to go there. But if it keeps up its policies toward the Muslims, those kinds of 'accidents' are going to continue."