Columnist sees ‘conspiracy of silence’ on bin Laden

ORONO – The fact there still are no takers for the $25 million bounty on Osama bin Laden more than a year after the terrorist attacks on this nation suggests that there could be an even larger incentive for not disclosing the whereabouts of the elusive al-Qaida leader, an authority on Afghanistan said Saturday.

“Somebody out there knows something,” said Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat assigned to the Afghan capital city of Kabul. “What we have here is a conspiracy of silence.”

Though he declined to speculate on what that incentive might be and who might be offering it, Azoy noted that $25 million would be a powerful incentive for someone living in Afghanistan, where a majority of the population lacks adequate food, clothing, housing and medical care, according to published accounts.

Azoy recently met with Pentagon officials to provide them an independent assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, where the millionaire Saudi terrorist was last seen.

Azoy also said that if the U.S. is serious about bringing stability to Afghanistan, it must be prepared to provide the needed financial and military support for the long haul, “at least a quarter of a century.”

These were some of the intriguing tidbits Azoy served up after his luncheon address Saturday at the University of Maine.

Azoy, who began writing what would become a series of columns for the Bangor Daily News shortly after last year’s terrorist attacks, was a featured speaker during “The United States and the Arab World,” a two-day conference this past weekend at the University of Maine.

The conference – sponsored by the U.S. Army War College, the University of Maine’s International Affairs Program and the William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce – drew approximately 120 educators, students and interested people to the Orono campus for two days of panel discussions.

The talks were led by national and international experts in topics ranging from economics, politics and international affairs to the military, the Middle East and the Muslim world, and brought to the Orono campus under the auspices of a $25,000 grant from the War College, according to UM political science professor Bahaman Baktiari, who organized the event with Diane Lawson, associate dean of the UM College of Business, Public Policy and Health.

Lawson said the event was aimed at giving participants perspectives from “both sides of the issue. This will give participants a better understanding of what they see in the media so they can better assess the information they are getting.”

The conference and Azoy’s address were especially timely, given the United States’ ongoing pursuit of those responsible for the terrorist attacks and, more recently, the growing tensions in the Middle East and the congressional resolution President Bush signed last week authorizing war against Iraq.

In his address, Azoy said that it was a “power vacuum” in Afghanistan that created the conditions that enabled al-Qaida and the Taliban to set up a base of operations there.

Some reasons for Afghanistan’s inability so far to develop national unity, Azoy noted, are its lack of national resources, which means it has little income with which to develop a government; its geography – the country is split from east to west by the Hindu Kush mountain range; and its “ethnic hodgepodge” of people divided primarily on north-south lines.

Similarly, the country’s borders were set by outsiders, with little geographic or ethnic logic, he said. The “nation-state” government structure that evolved as a result of European influences is not based on the Koran, which focuses on the family as the mainstay of Afghan society, meeting needs that government cannot.

Leadership also has been an issue, Azoy said. Afghanistan’s last truly successful leader, Amir Abdur Rahman, who ruled until 1901, wrote in his memoirs about the importance of unity to the country’s future. Many regimes, including the Soviets, have come and gone. More than a century later, however, Afghanistan still lacks unity, though Azoy said an “excellent man,” Afghan President Hamid Karzai, recently came into power, thanks in part to his own skill and support from the United States.

As Azoy sees it, this is a critical time for the United States, its credibility and its relations with the Arab world.

“It’s where our image is at stake,” he said. “What happens in Afghanistan is closely observed by the rest of the world. Will Bush succeed? Will the participants go home successful or leave [without accomplishing their objectives]? The question is very much open.”

To that end, he said, the $4.5 million that international donors have pledged to help rebuild war-ravaged Afghanistan must be kept out of the hands of war lords. In addition, Americans must be added to the International Security and Assistance Force, comprised of 4,800 troops from 18 countries and, for now, confined to Kabul.

“Without Americans, it won’t be taken seriously,” he said.