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Islamabad, Riyadh, Kabul doing little against radicals

WASHINGTON: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan remain key breeding grounds for radical Islam that fuel terrorism, a US forum tracking the pace of reforms after the September 11, 2001 attacks was told on Tuesday.

Despite constant public condemnations, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have refused to take the fundamental step of illegitimising radical Islamic groups, experts told the hearing.

“In these countries there still is a climate that certainly makes it possible and doesn’t make it illegitimate to embrace this ideology,” said Dennis Ross, the US pointman on the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Ross was among experts who assessed the progress of reforms recommended by an independent commission that investigated the circumstances under which the 2001 attacks occurred, AFP reports.

President Pervez Musharraf tackles terrorism in an “episodic” and not “systematic” fashion, Ross told a forum organised by former commission members to boost domestic security.

He said Musharraf was also half-hearted in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, posing a dilemma for the United States.

The commission had recommended that the United States support Islamabad in its struggle against extremists, including military aid and backing for better education, especially revamping Islamic seminaries.

Musharraf had the “intellectual firepower” and the “leadership capability” to rein in the madrassas, former assistant secretary of state Elizabeth Jones said. “That’s something he should exercise and we should be there with the funding to help him do that,” she said.

Saudi Arabia’s new King Abdullah has to urgently “address the sense of statelessness, the sense of wanting to act in extremist ways of a considerable minority of Saudis,” Jones said.

“Even today, we’re getting reports that the Saudis may be a source of significant terrorist financing, including financing of the insurgency in Iraq,” Ross said.

In Afghanistan, the experts warned that the scourge of narcotics and extremism together with an insurgency driven by the ousted hardline Islamic regime continued to pose a problem to the nation.

Khalid Hasan adds: Pakistan “has not been all that helpful, really, in helping us hunt for Osama Bin Laden,” according to the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, former congressman Lee Hamilton.

Hamilton said at a commission hearing televised by C-Span that President Pervez Musharraf was doing too little to capture Osama Bin Laden. Elizabeth Jones, who served as deputy chief at the US embassy in Islamabad at one time, said that the Pakistani leader faced the “most difficulty” in forcing Pakistan’s military intelligence agency to end its covert support for anti-American factions across the border in Afghanistan.

Former US ambassador Dennis Ross said Bin Laden continued to enjoy substantial support among many of Pakistan’s 150 million Muslims, a political reality that makes General Musharraf cautious in any effort to capture the man.

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