[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 131 (Wednesday, October 3, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10141-S10144]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              AFGHANISTAN

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in a matter that is very 
hard to discuss these days, when we are dealing with the aftermath of 
the destruction that has been visited upon our country. I rise to speak 
of a matter that is at the very heart of our fight against terrorism.
  Today I met with the Secretary of State, along with my Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee colleagues, including the occupant of the Chair, 
for about 2 hours. I applaud the actions of President Bush and 
Secretary Powell and the rest of the administration throughout this 
terrible crisis. I applaud what he had to say at our meeting.
  Of all the topics Secretary Powell discussed with me and other 
members of the Foreign Relations Committee, none was more important in 
my view than this: We must make a bold, brave, and powerful decision to 
provide generous relief and reconstruction aid to the people of 
Afghanistan and neighboring countries, even as we move toward war. We 
must wage a war against the vicious thugs who attacked our nation, but 
we must not permit this war to be mischaracterized as a battle against 
the people of Afghanistan or the wider Muslim world.
  If we can't make this critical distinction, all our efforts are 
doomed to failure. The people of Afghanistan, who are looking for a way 
of ridding themselves of the Taliban regime, might direct their anger 
at us rather than at the brutal warlords who have caused them so much 
misery and pain. The people of Muslim countries from Morocco to 
Indonesia could turn against the United States, with disastrous 
consequences for many years to come--notwithstanding my belief that we 
will prosecute this military effort with discreet and precise efforts 
to minimize civilian casualties.

[[Page S10142]]

  We have already seen how those who wish us ill can portray 
legitimate, restrained military action as an indiscriminate attack on 
innocent civilians, and how such an argument can be persuasive to so 
many people in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, a man who has killed 
far more Muslims than any American attack before, during, or since the 
gulf war, has depicted the United States-led actions against Iraq as an 
assault on Iraqi women and children, an assault on Islam. That is a guy 
who has killed more believers of Islam than just about anybody else--
and yet he is able to put out a boldfaced lie, the lie that our 
soldiers have gone out of their way to hurt innocent civilians. In 
fact, our soldiers have always gone out of their way to avoid 
collateral damage to civilians, even during the height of the gulf war.
  The United Nations' sanctions imposed since that time place no 
restrictions on the delivery of food or medicine to the people of Iraq. 
Quite the opposite. Yet Saddam has won the international battle. He has 
convinced a significant portion of the Islamic world that we are the 
reason the people of Iraq do not have food and medicine in sufficient 
supply. It is Saddam who is starving his own people, deliberately 
sitting on billions of oil dollars earmarked for humanitarian aid to 
the people of Iraq while he pursues his weapons of mass destruction and 
builds himself more palaces.
  The reason I bring this up is that throughout much of the Muslim 
world Saddam's propaganda remains convincing. People see these images 
of children and their mothers scrambling for food, the footage of 
destroyed buildings, and they know the United States conducts bombing 
raids to enforce the no-fly zone and we are leading an international 
coalition to maintain sanctions. So they conclude, with his distinct 
urging, that we are not acting in accordance with U.N. resolutions and 
the consent of the world community, but that we are acting in the way 
Saddam Hussein portrays us as acting: victimizing his people, 
oppressing women and children, and causing great hardship.
  No matter how we cut it, he has won the battle over who's at fault. 
If you had told me that was going to be the case after the gulf war, I 
would have told you that you were crazy. One of the reasons he has won 
is we are so accustomed in America to not beating our own chests about 
what we do for other people, we are so accustomed to thinking that 
people are going to be open minded, as we are. It is almost beyond our 
capacity to believe anyone could think we were responsible for those 
women and children and old people in Iraq starving, being malnourished, 
and not having adequate medical care.
  It is very simple in the Muslim world right now. When America bombs, 
America is blamed for anything else that happens. And not just blamed 
for what we have done, but we are blamed for what we have not done. It 
is not fair, but it is the fact. As the world's only superpower, we 
receive a lot of misdirected blame under the best of circumstances. The 
nuances and subtleties of geopolitics don't get translated to the 
language of the street. And once the bombs start to fall, any vestige 
of nuance is blown away with whatever they hit.
  We cannot allow what happened in Iraq to happen in Afghanistan. Osama 
bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, have been trying to cast 
the current conflict in terms of religion and have been calling our 
efforts a crusade against Islam.
  You mention the word ``crusade'' in the Middle East and it has a very 
different context than when we use it here. It is not accidental that 
the word is used by bin Laden. It conjures up several hundred years of 
painful history.
  This is not a crusade. It is not a war against Muslims. And we cannot 
permit bin Laden and the Taliban to portray it as such. So how do we 
prevent it from happening this time?
  We have all said the right words. President Bush, Secretary Powell, 
and most Senators gathered in this Chamber have all spoken out 
forcefully. Our rhetoric has been fine, but if we want to convince the 
world's 1.6 billion Muslims of our sincerity, it will take much more 
than our rhetoric. It will take action, real action, to save the lives 
of real people.
  After my long-time involvement with and strong advocacy for Muslims 
in Europe, whenever I go to the Balkans I can barely take a step 
without being reminded of this dynamic. If my name is mentioned among 
Muslim leaders, I am thanked for being one of their saviors; I am 
thanked for being one of the people who has fought to help them--and 
I'm sure all those American servicemen and servicewomen over there now 
protecting the Muslims in the Balkans feel the same. But none of that 
message has gotten to the Middle East. It is ironic.
  So what we need to do is back up our words with our wallets. In my 
view, we must do this ahead of time.
  We say we have no beef with the Afghan people, and we do not. But one 
out of four Afghans--perhaps 7 million people--are surviving on little 
more than grass and locusts. We say our fight is only against the 
terrorists, along with their sponsors, and it is. But the people of 
Afghanistan have been subjected to constant warfare for the past two 
decades. They are looking for help, and they are looking at us.
  We did not cause the terrible drought that brought so many Afghans to 
the brink of starvation, and we did not cause the Soviet invasion or 
the civil war that followed. We were interested in Afghanistan, but 
only when it suited our own interests. We paid attention during the 
1980s, but then came down with a case of attention deficit disorder. As 
soon as the last Russian troops pulled out in 1989, our commitment 
seemed to retreat along with them. And I was here, so I share this 
responsibility.
  The years of bloody chaos that followed were what gave rise to the 
Taliban. If we had not lost interest a decade ago, perhaps Afghanistan 
would not have turned into the swamp of terrorism and brutality that it 
has become.
  I say this not to cast stones, because I was here. We do not need to 
ask who ``lost'' Afghanistan. There is more than enough blame to go 
around. It is not a matter of political party or ideological outlook. 
Nobody--Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative--stepped up to the 
plate when it counted because we did not take it as seriously as it 
turned out to be.
  It is time we all stepped up to the plate.
  In fairness to the folks who were here, like me and others, the truth 
of the matter is we get called on from all over the world and we find 
ourselves responding to whatever the crisis of the moment is.
  It is time to reverse more than a decade of neglect, not only for the 
sake of Afghanistan, but for our sake. Not only for the sake of 
Pakistan, which faces growing instability exacerbated by the enormous 
burden of sheltering millions of Afghan refugees. Not only for the sake 
of the Central Asian republics, all of which are threatened by chaos 
fomented in Kabul and Kandahar. We have to take action not merely for 
their sake, but for our own sake.

  The tragedy of September 11 served as a stark reminder that isolation 
is impossible. What happens in South and Central Asia has direct impact 
on what happens right here in the United States. If we ever were able 
to think of our nation as one buffered from far-away events, we can no 
longer maintain that illusion. So what can we do?
  Let me make this very bold proposal as to what I think we should and 
could do. The plight of the Afghans had reached a crisis point before 
September 11, and the prospect of military action has made matters even 
worse. The U.N. places the number of Afghan refugees at about 3 
million, and in Iran at about one half that, with another million 
displaced within Afghanistan itself. These people are living--if one 
can call it that--in conditions of unspeakable deprivation. One camp in 
the Afghan city of Herat is locally called, quite appropriately, ``the 
slaughterhouse.'' The expectation of U.S. attacks has already prompted 
more desperate people to flee their homes, and a estimated 1.5 million 
may soon take to the road.
  U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan has issued an appeal for $584 million to 
meet the needs of the Afghan refugees and displaced people, within 
Afghanistan and in neighboring countries. This is the amount deemed 
necessary to stave off disaster for the winter, which will start in 
Afghanistan in just a few weeks.

[[Page S10143]]

  We must back up our rhetoric with action, with something big and bold 
and meaningful. We can offer to foot the entire bill for keeping the 
Afghan people safely fed, clothed, and sheltered this winter, and that 
should be the beginning.
  We can establish an international fund for the relief, 
reconstruction, and recovery of Central and Southwest Asia. We can do 
this through the U.N. or through a multilateral bank, but we must be in 
it for the long haul with the rest of the world.
  The initial purpose of the fund would be to address the immediate 
needs of the Afghans displaced by drought and war for the next 6 
months. But the fund's longer-term purpose would be to help stabilize 
the whole region by, as the President says, draining the swamp that 
Afghanistan has become.
  We can kick the effort off in a way that would silence our critics in 
the rest of the world: a check for $1 billion, and a promise for more 
to come as long as the rest of the world joins us. This initial amount 
would be more than enough to meet all the refugees' short-term needs, 
and would be a credible downpayment for the long-term effort. 
Eventually the world community will have to pony up more billions, but 
there is no avoiding that now, not if we expect our words ever to carry 
any weight.
  If anyone thinks this amount of money is too high, let me note one 
stark, simple and very sad statistic. The damage inflicted by the 
September 11 attack in economic terms alone was a minimum of several 
hundred billion dollars and a maximum of over $1 trillion. The cost in 
human life, of course, as the Presiding Officer knows, is far beyond 
any calculation.
  The fund I propose would be a way to put some flesh on the bones, not 
only of the Afghan refugees, but on the international coalition that 
President Bush has assembled. All nations would be invited to 
contribute to this fund, and projects for relief and reconstruction 
could be carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. 
Countries that are leery of providing military aid against the Taliban 
could use this recovery fund as a means to demonstrate their commitment 
to the wider cause.
  Money from the fund would be used for projects in several countries. 
In the short term, it could help front-line countries handle the social 
problems caused by existing refugee burdens or the expected military 
campaign. This would further solidify the alliance and give wavering 
regimes, especially Pakistan, a valuable ``deliverable'' to present to 
its own people.
  The fund would also be used for relief efforts within Afghanistan 
itself. This could take several forms. It could help finance air drops 
of food and medical supplies. It could support on-the-ground 
distribution in territories held by the Northern Alliance and other 
friendly forces. And perhaps, most significantly, it could provide the 
Pashtun leaders of the south with a powerful incentive to abandon the 
Taliban and join the United States-led effort.
  Think of the impact. Many Pashtun chiefs, including current 
supporters of the Taliban, are already on the fence. If the Pashtuns, 
who are now going hungry, saw relief aid pouring into neighboring 
provinces or in from the air, with their own leaders stubbornly stuck 
by Mullah Omar and refused such aid well, we could suddenly find 
ourselves with a lot of new allies. The seemingly intractable problem 
of forging a political consensus in Afghanistan might become a whole 
lot easier to solve.
  A massive humanitarian relief effort will not guarantee a favorable 
political solution. But it clearly is within the realm of possibility. 
We can establish our credibility by committing ourselves to providing 
this aid now, before the first bomb falls.

  The funding that I propose will address not only the short-term goal, 
but the more important (and more difficult) longer term ones as well. 
Whatever we do in Afghanistan--whether it involves the commitment of 
military, political, or humanitarian assets--must be geared toward a 
long-term solution. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. If we 
think only in the short term, only of getting Bin Laden and the 
Taliban--which we must do, but that is not all we must do--we are just 
begging for greater trouble down the line.
  We have a unique opportunity here and right now--a window of 
opportunity that will not be open forever. Now, while the attention of 
the country and the world is focused on this vital issue, we can create 
a consensus necessary to build a lasting peace in the region.
  This will be a multinational, multiyear, multibillion-dollar 
commitment. And if we take a leading role, I am confident that other 
nations will follow.
  Today is not the time to speak about political reconstruction of 
Afghanistan. The situation is extremely fluid, and delicate 
negotiations are in progress. This Chamber is not the appropriate place 
for such a sensitive discussion.
  Today is also not the time to discuss all the details of the long-
term economic reconstruction package for the region. Once the immediate 
refugee crisis is dealt with, there will be plenty of opportunity to 
deal with the nitty-gritty of how best to help the people in the region 
rebuild their lives. I will not presume to lay out a long-term agenda 
today. But some of the foremost items on such an agenda might include 
the following:
  Creation of secular schools, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to 
break the stranglehold of radical religious seminaries that have 
polluted a whole generation of Afghan boys. The Taliban movement is an 
outgrowth of this network of extremist seminaries, a network which has 
been funded by militant forces around the world and has fed off the 
lack of secular educational opportunities.
  We can also be involved in the restoration of women's rights. The 
Taliban created a regime more hostile to the rights of women than any 
state in the whole world. Women under Taliban rule have been deprived 
of even the most basic of human rights. A critical element of the new 
school system, I should emphasize, will be providing equal education 
for girls and boys alike. If Afghan girls and women do not have a 
chance to go to school, they will never be able to have the rights they 
are so cruelly denied now by the Taliban.
  De-mining operations: Afghanistan is the world's most heavily mined 
country. Clearing these mines will take time, money, and expertise. 
Until these fields are cleared, farmers--whether currently trapped in 
refugee camps or trapped by drought--cannot start farming their land.
  Creation of full-scale hospitals and village medical clinics in 
Afghanistan and throughout the region. As in the case of schools, the 
absence of such services has created a void filled by radical groups.
  People sometimes ask why extremist organizations have been so 
successful in recruiting support in the Muslim world. Let me tell you, 
they don't do it all by hate. Many militant groups provide valuable 
social services in order to gain goodwill, and then twist that goodwill 
to vicious ends.
  Another thing we can provide is a crop substitution program for 
narcotics. This week, the Taliban reversed its short-lived ban on 
growing opium. As part of a long-term solution, we have to help the 
Afghan farmers find a new way to support their families. We cannot let 
Afghanistan resume its place as the world's No. 1 source of heroin.
  Building basic infrastructure: Just as Saddam manipulated images of 
war in Iraq, the Taliban could have success doing the same. We have to 
counter this effort by drilling wells, building roads, providing 
technical expertise, and a whole range of development projects.
  We are portrayed as bringing destruction to the region. We must fight 
that perception: we must prove to the world that we are not a nation of 
destruction, but of reconstruction.
  This afternoon, the members of the Foreign Relations Committee and I 
had a very productive meeting with the Secretary of State. Everything I 
have said here today is an attempt to support Secretary Powell and 
President Bush in their efforts to send the world a simple message: Our 
fight is against terrorism--not against Islam. We oppose the Taliban 
not the Afghan people.
  We stand ready as a great nation, as a generous nation, as a nation 
that has

[[Page S10144]]

led the world in the past, a nation whose word is its bond, and we 
stand ready to match our words with our actions.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Carnahan). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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