ORIGINAL MATERIAL PRODUCED BY THE GLOBAL BEAT SYNDICATE Mark Burgess: on Madrid's new lessons about terrorism Nigel Chamberlain: on the missile defense debate in Britain Ehsan Ahrari: on the administration's credibility Jerry White: on the need for a global ban on landmines

New York University

U.S. State Department's
Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2002

The US State Department's Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2001

Need information, but having trouble with a broken link? Send an e-mail to wtd2@nyu.edu
or click here
We may be able to help

For quick access to the Global Beat, set your bookmark to:
http://globalbeat.org

Hamas demonstration in Gaza follows the assassination

Yassin created a climate that favored suicide bombers COULD BIN LADEN REALLY HAVE A NUCLEAR SUITCASE BOMB? click here for the story

ARIEL SHARON ORDERS THE ASSASSINATION OF SHEIK YASSIN, SPRIRITUAL LEADER OF HAMAS
In case there was any lingering doubt, Israel's assassination of the spiritual leader of Hamas should make it clear that there is now a state of total war with Palestinian opposition movements. The wheel-chair bound, partially blind sheik has been paralyzed ever since a teen-age soccer accident. He had just finished morning prayers and leaving a mosque, when an Israeli helicopter fired three anti-tank rockets into his entourage. Ironically, Sharon appears to have been more concerned with the internal politics in Israel's Likud party than with Hamas' terrorism. Sharon is determined to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, while annexing more profitable pieces of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Concerned that he might appear to be leaving Gaza under pressure, Sharon apparently felt that he needed to make a strong statement. Meanwhile, the assassination has outraged the Muslim world, and put pressure on the U.S. for its support to Israel. Hamas, threatening to "open the gates of hell," has also suggested that Sharon would not have acted without White House approval. The implication is that the U.S. may now find itself on the target list--an unsettling change in direction from Hamas' previous policy.
•Maariv's account of the assassination
•Al Jazeera's report
•The BBC's report with links to background and video
•Ami Isseroff on Mideast Web on Sharon's strategy
•Access Middle East's background on Hamas and its history
•Israel's International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism on Hamas' background and strategy
•Haaretz on what Sharon hopes to gain
•Hamas' website--Hamas on line
•Haaretz--U.S. could be target--"The Zionists didn't carry out their operation without getting the consent of the terrorist American Administration, and it must take responsibility for this crime," Hamas said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press. "All the Muslims of the world will be honored to join in on the retaliation for this crime," the statement said.
The threat against the United States would represent a change of tactics for the militant group, which has always said its fight was with Israel and not with the United States..."

IRAQ A YEAR LATER
President Bush insists that the invasion of Iraq has made the world safer, but it is getting harder to find non-White House sources to confirm that assessment. American reporters covering the bombing of the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Beirut last week reported that for the first time they felt personally threatened by Iraqi crowds. Newsweek's Melinda Liu, who rushed to the scene, was told, "Get out of here. They'll kill you." A Pew Foundation international survey shows a progressive degradation in American prestige abroad--largely due to the Pentagon's handling of Iraq. In Britain, where public opinion had been 61% in favor of the war, support has now fallen to around 43%. Pew found that in Jordan, roughly 70% of the population thinks that suicide are justified against Americans and Westerners in Iraq. In Pakistan, a key ally of the U.S., 46% of the population thinks suicide bombers are justified in attacking Americans. Only 36% think that they aren't justified.
•The Pew Survey (March 16, 2004)
•President Bush's assessment:"One year ago, military forces of a strong coalition entered Iraq.... Today, as Iraqis join the free peoples of the world, we mark a turning point for the Middle East, and a crucial advance for human liberty...every nation now has an interest in a free, successful, stable Iraq." (White House, March 19, 2004)
•Sleeping with lions who will eat you--Jen Banbury in Salon (Salon, March 20, 2004)
•Melinda Liu--Newsweek--A Year On, Everyone Is Torn
•Graham Usher--Al Ahram--Failing Iraq
"... Perhaps the only thing on which Iraqis agree is that one year on the Americans have made a hash of the occupation -- that while the US and Britain knew how to conquer Iraq, they have no idea how to run it.... Most fear the war, above all between themselves. Some resist the conquest. All fear implosion. Some still see light at the end of the tunnel, though even they admit the tunnel is longer and darker than they imagined. 'If the road is a 100 miles long, we have moved half a mile,' says Zaed Safar, a doctor, who welcomed the regime's fall and believes the worst thing now would be for the occupation to leave..."
•Zbigniew Brzezinski and Walter Russell Meade discuss the changes that have taken place in the last year (Jim Lehrer News Hour, March 19, 2004)

RUMORS OF A SUITCASE BOMB SURFACE IN AUSTRALIA AND IN THE NEW YORK POST
The New York Post and New York Sun both reprinted an AP story Monday quoting an Australian television interview with Hamid Mir, the biographer of Osama Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to Mir, al-Zawahiri claimed that Al Qaeda had bought several of the suitcase bombs, available on the black market. Rumors of suitcase-sized bombs have circulated ever since a Russian lieutenant colonel, Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed, remarked during an interview that some 200 bombs, originally prepared for Sovie-era intelligence operatives, had disappeared. Lebed had had experience in Afghanistan. Since then, stories about the bombs' existence have continuously circulated through Central, South and East Asia. A number of proliferation experts interviewed by UPI found the current stories cominhg from Australia unlikely. the U.S. maintains special nuclear search teams, known as NEST, which regularly track down reports of portable nuclear threats. The information is generally not reported publicly to avoid creating panic, and to discourage copycat hoaxsters.
•New York Post story
•AP story on News Max
•United Press International polls counter-proliferation experts
•The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists describes NEST operations in tracking down nuclear devices (April, 2002)
• Fox News provides a primer on portable nuclear devices
•An amateur Australian website interested in counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence lists the chronology and background on various stories about suitcase bombs (we have no way of determining the reliability of information on this site).

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS RECOMMENDS RENEWING TIES TO EUROPE
A new report, chaired by Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers, assigns top priority to repairing damage to the Atlantic Alliance. (Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Summers, Charles A. Kupchan, CFR, March 2004)

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN SPAIN
David Remnick, writing in the New Yorker, notes that Osama Bin Laden has succeeded in changing the way the world relates to itself. The real reason for Spain's election upset, Remnick suggests, was a public perception that the government had misled it. In the war against terrorism, Remnick argues, honesty with yourself is a prerequisite.
(David Remnick, The New Yorker, March 22, 2004)

GEORGIA'S ECCENTRIC BREAKAWAY LEADER KNOWS DRAMA
Aslan Abashidze, the eccentric leader of Adzharia, avoided two foreign reporters for two days, only to whisk them back from Batumi airport as they were about to board a flight bound for Moscow on Saturday.
Abashidze ordered the flight to wait as he invited reporters to his palatial residence for an interview, in which he said that his compromise with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili last week had left him in firm control over Adzharia in return for a minimum of concessions.(Simon Ostrovsky, Moscow Times, March 22, 2004).

KOSOVO ERUPTS AGAIN
Last week's violence between the Christian Serb minority and the dominant, mainly Muslim ethnic Albanians was surprisingly swift and widespread. It was probably inflamed by extremist Albanians, and casts doubts on the UN's ability to administer the province and the capability of NATO-led peacekeepers to prevent more killings.
Most of all, it shows how little progress has been achieved in helping create the kind of Serb-Albanian harmony that would justify international support for an independent Kosovo. (Tania Matic, Tania Vujisic, Institute for War, Peace Reporting, March 22, 2004)
•Violence stunned everyone

SYRIA IS ALSO CHALLENGED
Syria's 41-year old government is based on a Baathist model similar to Iraq's. The current president may not have Saddam's history, but the regime is nevertheless badly in need of reform. Knight-Ridder's Warren Strobel analyzes the situation on MENA-FM (Middle East North Africa- Financial Network).

PAKISTAN'S DEVOLUTION PROBLEM
The International Crisis Group reports that Pakistan's transfer of more autonomy to local administrations is actually strengthening the Army and undercutting established political parties. (ICG, March 22, 2004)

RWANDA TEN YEARS LATER
Ten years ago, Rwanda reminded the world that the potential for genocide is still very real in the world. (Human Rights Watch, March 2004)

The Security Policy Working Group

Daily News flashes in English on developments in the Republic of Georgia (click on logo)