New York City Council Stated Meeting Report
Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
STATED MEETING - APRIL 9, 2003
Quote of the Day:
"If the people in the gallery were at work or at school, you wouldn't be here booing us." – Councilmember Madeline Provenzano, who voted against a bill to allow education to count toward welfare to work requirements.
Meeting Summary:
On April 9, the New York City Council overrode four mayoral vetoes, passing laws that Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposed.
The first veto override was on legislation (Intro 93-A) that would allow welfare recipients to count GED and English language classes toward welfare to work requirements. The council argues that under the current requirements people are forced to quit school for low-paying, dead-end jobs.
Mayor Bloomberg criticized the council, calling the bill "a giant step backwards in welfare reform" and promising to fight the measure in court.
"The council has chosen to turn back the clock on welfare reform, reviving a dated, discredited policy that we long ago learned was a failure," the mayor said in a statement. "Worst of all, what the council did today is a tremendous disservice to the very people it claims to be helping."
The council passed the bill into law by a vote of 46 to 5, with substantially more than the 34 votes need to override a veto.
Three Republican council members – James Oddo, Andrew Lanza, and Dennis Gallagher – and two Democrats – Peter Vallone, Jr. and Madeline Provenzano – sided with the mayor and were booed by members of the audience who came in support of the bill.
When voting against the measure, Bronx Councilmember Madeline Provenzano turned to the balcony full of advocates and made a remark. The microphone on her podium was turned off at the time and her statement was inaudible to most of the council. According to several people and reporters sitting near Provenzano at the time, she said, "You people need to go get jobs, not school."
After the meeting, Provenzano denied using the phrases "you people" or saying that they "needed to go get jobs," only that she said, "If the people in the gallery were at work or at school, you wouldn't be here booing us."
"I never had the luxury of going anywhere for three or four hours," said Provenzano, who raised three children by herself after her husband died. "I was full time mother, full time working, full time school. I think that's the way it should be."
The three other veto overrides also passed by a wide margin.
A measure the council calls the School Accountability Act (Intro 215-A) would require the Department of Education to submit quarterly reports on the status of all capital projects. All 51 councilmembers - even the three Republicans - voted to override Mayor Bloomberg's veto.
Mayor Bloomberg said the reports would cost the city $500,000 a year. "Since so much of this information is already available to the City Council and is not even read...it is hard to imagine why, during a fiscal crisis, we need to use scarce resources to pay for more bureaucracy," the mayor said in a statement.
The two other mayoral veto overrides related to the issue of emergency contraception.
One bill (Intro 278-A) requires pharmacies that do not carry the drugs Preven or Plan B, which were both approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997, to post signs indicating that they are not sold at that location. The council overrode the mayor's veto of Intro 278-A by a vote of 43 to 8. (Council members Avella, Felder, Gallagher, Jennings, Lanza, McMahon, Vallone, and Oddo voted with the mayor.)
The other bill (Intro 281-A) requires hospitals that contract with the city to inform rape victims that emergency contraception is available and to offer it if requested. The council overrode the mayor's veto on Intro 281-A by a vote of 47 to 4, with council members Felder, Gallagher, Lanza and Oddo supporting the mayor.
"These bills will significantly reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in the city and are especially important for victims of sexual assault or rape," said Councilmember Christine Quinn, one of the authors of the legislation.
The council also passed a new piece of legislation in preparation for tax season. The bill (Intro 383-A) requires tax-preparers to let New Yorkers know the interest they will be charged if they take their rebate as an immediate loan. These loans, often billed as "Rapid Refunds," can charge between 200 to 500 percent interest.
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for April 30, 2003.
Â
The state budget was due on April 1, and so somebody wishing to play an April Fool's Day joke might have predicted that the budget would be delivered on time, that it would provide for the needy of the state while exercising fiscal prudence, and that it would put aside partisan politics to consider the welfare of New York and its citizens.
Instead, to nobody's surprise, there was no state budget by the deadline -- for the 19th year in a row. This time, it is no joke.
With Albany facing a $12 billion budget deficit of its own and state lawmakers divided over what to do about it, the state is unlikely to provide the aid that Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs to push New York City out of its budget crunch. As a result, Bloomberg, who releases his executive budget next week, is drafting a proposal that will call for up to $1 billion more in cuts, including 15,000 layoffs and additional reductions of up to 18 percent at some city agencies.
The budget put forth by Governor George Pataki in January balances the budget largely by slashing spending. It calls for cuts in an array of programs, particularly education and health care. If adopted, the budget could lead to the elimination of pre-kindergarten programs and to larger elementary school classes, steep tuition hikes at public universities, and cutbacks in staffing at hospitals and services at out-patient clinics.
HOW WE GOT HERE
The state budget always presents a struggle. But this year's budget is complicated by the huge deficits at the state level, in New York City and in other local governments.
As he drafted his budget in January, Pataki faced a number of harsh realities. September 11 and the national recession, particularly severe in New York, reduced tax and other revenues for the government and boosted demand for services. During the boom years of the 1990s, Albany had increased spending and cut taxes. Now, with the good times over, the bill had to be paid.
Pataki proposed a budget with $90.8 billion in total spending, a slight decrease from the current fiscal year. He increased spending for security but cut most other areas. To maintain this level of spending with falling tax revenues, Pataki called for borrowing money and for a number of new or increased fees - including a fee for sex offenders when they register (as required) with the state and $2.25 added on to each new tire sold in New York.
The budget includes some $2 billion less in help for New York City than Bloomberg had wanted. And it does not call for the commuter tax the mayor has been banking on.
POWER TO THE GOVERNOR The budget process in New York State usually seems confused and even chaotic. But aside from the missed April 1 deadline, there are a few certainties. Governor George Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno - the so-called "three men in a room" -- play key roles. The governor sets forth the budget and holds veto power. The leaders of the State Senate and Assembly largely control what passes the state legislature, with little role for the other members. Among the three, the governor holds the most power. According to Frank Mauro of the Fiscal Policy Institute, this approach, adopted in 1927 under Governor Al Smith, was intended to allow one person to take a comprehensive look at the budget and reconcile revenues and expenditures. Despite occasional challenges, this system has prevailed. In 1998, for example, the legislature tried to assert its power by coming up with its own set of appropriations bills. In response, Pataki vetoed more than 1,000 items in the budge. The legislature could not muster enough votes to override the vetoes, and so, said Mauro, a lot of organizations went without funding that year. The legislature's chief bargaining tool, guaranteed in the state constitution, has been its ability to reduce the governor's appropriations, says E.J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "The deliberate intent of our current budgeting structure . . .is to put the governor in the driver's seat and then the second part of the process is to make it as easy as possible to keep spending in check," he said. "Once the governor proposes, the legislature can reduce any line item. . .and there is nothing he can do about it. The legislature can increase any line item that he proposes, or try to add separate line items of their own, but the governor can veto such additions." |
In fact, Pataki called for no new major taxes, other than a reinstatement of the sales tax on clothing. Instead, he asked for increases in subway and bus fares (these have already been enacted) as well as in college tuition.
Critics condemned the plan, using such words as "devastating," "disastrous" and "unconscionable." Blaire Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Group, said the governor's budget is "filled with gimmicks, one-shots and tax increases." Others charged that the decreases in spending and service cuts amounted to a tax on the poor.
The governor's proposal is now before the legislature. If past years can serve as a guide, few details will be discussed publicly and deliberations will go on late into the spring, if not the summer, leaving local governments with no choice but to guess what their funding will be.
And Democrats and Republicans will jockey for advantage. As soon as the budget came out, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, condemned the cuts and the hike in the sales tax. Some observers believe tax hikes are inevitable - the question is who gets blamed. State Senator Eric Schneiderman accused Pataki of "just throwing the hot potato to the legislature."
And just as they dodge blame for taxes, politicians will vie to get credit for saving one program or another.
THE THREAT TO EDUCATION
On a recent morning in Chinatown, 16 quiet and attentive four-year olds gathered in a semi-circle on a blue rug, in the pre-kindergarten class of Sue Auslander and Karen Risden at P.S. 126, as Miss Auslander read the book "Sam Who Never Forgets," which teaches the importance of remembering one’s promises.
That lesson was on the minds of the pre-kindergarten teachers themselves. Earlier that day, they had discussed Governor Pataki's proposed cut of $1.2 billion from state education programs, including the entire $204 million for pre-k programs.
The possible end of pre-kindergarten in New York City is among Pataki's most controversial cuts - and one of the most ironic, since six years ago, the governor signed a law calling on the state to fund "universal pre-k," as a way to prepare children for elementary school and help working families. The program never became universal - enrollment is now about two-thirds of those eligible - but that means nearly 44,000 youngsters.
Pataki's proposed cuts to education are at every grade level, including college, and total more than $462 million. (SeeGotham Gazette's Education Topic Page).
New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has charged that "those with the highest needs are being asked to absorb the highest burden of these reductions." He projects that the budget reductions could cause the city to lose 2,700 teaching positions.
For example, Pataki's budget eliminates the $89 million that New York City receives to reduce classroom size in grades kindergarten through three. The city already falls markedly short of the state goal of 20 students per classroom.
City-funded after-school programs also face elimination. New York City's Extended Day/Violence Prevention program will lose $32 million under Pataki's plan, resulting in the termination of a program for approximately 30,000 children.
Education advocates note that the cuts come just as school districts struggle to meet standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind law and various state programs.
Both the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which has legally challenged the state's system for funding education, and the Citizens Budget Commission want the state to change its funding formula rather than simply slash spending. "The state system should skew aid toward more needy districts," said Diana Fortuna, director of the budget commission.
THE CITY UNIVERSITY
Nidhi Arora chose the City University of New York because it offered an affordable, quality education. Next year, when her tuition could rise by $1,200 to $4,400, it may still offer quality but Arora, who already has a part-time job, will no longer be able to afford it. As it is, "my brother was going to Queens College and had to drop out and work."
Tuition at the City University of New York has been rising steadily since then-Governor Hugh Carey instituted tuition at the formerly free university in 1976, but Pataki is proposing the largest increase in CUNY's history. Meanwhile, though, according to the New York Public Interest Research Group, CUNY's full-time faculty has decreased by nearly 49 percent since 1974, the governor also has called for cuts in the university's overall budget and in several state-funded financial aid programs.
"I can't believe they want me to pay one-third more next year to come to a school that's going to be worse off than it is now," said Brooklyn College sophomore Thermus Knosis.
The tuition hike's most drastic effects will be felt by CUNY's six community colleges, where some 60 percent of students earn less than $25,000 a year and one-third support at least one child.
Students have held protest rallies against the proposed changes, and the New York Public Interest Research Group has launched a No Tuition Hike campaign.
THE THREAT TO HEALTH CARE
Education advocates are not the only ones demonstrating against the budget. Last week, more than 30,000 health-care workers massed in front of the state capitol to protest $2 billion in cuts to health programs. Officials of 1199/S.E.I.U, the health-care workers union which helped organize the protest, said that under the Pataki plan, some hospitals will be forced to close and 22,000 jobs throughout the state will be eliminated.
A report released by the Greater New York Hospital Association, an advocacy group for nonprofit hospitals in the metropolitan area, says city hospitals are looking at losses close to $700 million over the next two years because of Medicaid cuts and a tax on hospital revenue.
Pataki's plan reworks Medicaid spending so the state would absorb prescription drug costs, while the city would take on a larger percentage of hospitals' operating budgets than it must pay now. While the swap could help upstate communities, where pharmacy costs outstrip Medicaid drug costs, the Citizens Budget Commission and the Bloomberg administration estimate this change will cost the city around $240 million.
"Medicaid cuts are a big financial finagle. . . . What the city needed was relief from Medicaid costs," said E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute.
The proposed budget also includes restoration of a .07 percent tax on hospital revenue and a reduction in the number of people eligible for Family Health Plus, a health insurance program for working people without private insurance. In testimony before the State Senate, the hospital association said (in pdf format) the budget could result in cuts in hours of clinics and reductions in staff, including residents and interns -- reducing the quality of care. And the association points out that these cuts come at a time when city hospitals are being asked to prepare for possible terrorist attacks.
Bernadette Kingham-Bez, senior vice president of Manhattan's St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center worries that the cuts could make hospitals reduce services at community medical centers, forcing more patients to come to emergency rooms with non-emergency conditions. "The enormity of these cuts will have a huge effect on every form of health care," said Kingham-Bez. "We will all feel it."
The proposed state cuts to Medicaid, teaching programs and homecare hit New York City harder than any other place in the state, according to Jennifer Cunningham, executive director for the New York State Council for Local 1199. Of the $650 million being taken from teaching and Medicaid hospitals, she said, almost $500 million will be cut from New York City hospitals because that is where most of the teaching hospitals are.
Aides to Pataki admit the cuts are unpopular. "It's not as if we went into this thinking we aren't going to take some heat," one anonymous official told the Times. " The governor is prepared to do it because he thinks it's the right thing to do for the state."
THE BATTLE OVER TAXES
Pataki and his aides say rising taxes will hurt the state economy far more than declining services. "If New York's record prior to 1995 proves anything, it's that high taxes are the surest way to weaken the economy and drive jobs across New York's borders," he said in his budget address www.state.ny.us/budget2003/budget_address03.html.
But others say cuts in services could drive away jobs - and decimate essential programs. They argue that the state should also institute careful tax hikes.
Some unions propose a temporary .07 percent increase in the state personal income tax on incomes over $100,000 and 1.4 percent for those making $200,000 or more.
Mayor Bloomberg, of course, wants a commuter tax. His proposal for "personal income tax reform" would raise nearly $1 billion by taxing commuters at the same rate as city residents. This would bring in more money than the tax on commuter salaries that existed between 1996 and 1999.
So far, the governor has adamantly resisted any kind of commuter tax. "The most the mayor can hope for is a renewal of the old commuter tax, which would raise about $400 million," said E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan institute.
This spring, a number of other tax ideas have surfaced. These include closing corporate tax loopholes and taxing stock trades and companies that do not provide health insurance for their employees. The Black, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caucus in the state legislature and the New York City Council Black, Latino and Asian Caucus have proposed a package that they say would provide an additional $8 billion in revenues. It includes a commuter tax and a graduated income tax surcharge on people with incomes of at least $100,000.
So far none of these ideas has the governor's endorsement. The caucuses do, thouh, oppose the one major tax Pataki has proposed: restoring the sales tax on clothing and footwear under $110. Pataki's plan offers four one-week "sales tax holidays," during which at least the state tax would be lifted.
Some politicians say this tax will place an unfair burden on lower income New Yorkers. Merchants fear that bringing back the tax, which was eliminated in 2000, will drive shoppers to New Jersey, which does not have a sales tax But other businesspeople are more sanguine. "While nobody likes to pay taxes, I think the merchants . . .of New York City understand the state is having fiscal difficulties," explains Lisa Rosenthal, associate director of Retail Services for the 34th Street Partners Business Improvement District. "We're optimistic that retailers will do OK."
Until 2000, New York City charged a 4.25 percent local sales tax on clothing and a .25 percent tax to raise money for transit in addition to the state tax. Bloomberg has not mentioned the city sales tax, but Ted Potrikus, senior vice president and director of government relations of the Retail Council of New York State, said he believed many local governments would reinstate their sales taxes if the state tax went back into effect.
LOOKING FOR MONEY
With every big cut or significant tax attracting controversy, Pataki and Bloomberg have embarked on a scavenger hunt for funds.
There is money to be found this way, said Blair Horner of the Public Research Interest Group. For example, the state is allowed to collect taxes on cigarette sales on Native American reservations, but doesn't, losing as much as $1 billion. Uncollected deposits on beer and soda bottles could yield another $100 million.
In his search, the governor lit upon the money from the state's landmark legal settlement with tobacco companies. Worth $681 million, the settlement was set aside for healthcare. But Pataki wanted to use it as collateral for a loan. Now, though, much of that money may not be there to borrow against because of financial difficulties at tobacco giant Philip Morris.
Last week, with Congress on the brink of giving the city and state at least of millions of dollars to fight terrorism, Pataki saw another opportunity. With 80 percent of the money earmarked for the city, Pataki aides furiously lobbied Congress to try to get an increased share for Albany.
THE PUBLIC REACTS
As the budget debate goes on, New Yorkers, including many who voted for Pataki last year, are showing signs of discontent. The leadership of Local 1199, which endorsed Pataki's reelection, still refrains from criticizing the governor directly. But some members who attended the massive demonstration in Albany last week were less circumspect. "When they go for election, they promise you that they are going to give you everything," Yolanda Carela, a home attendant who voted for Pataki told the Times. "But when they get elected, forget about it."
A Quinnipiac University poll released in February found Pataki's approval rating at a seven-year low of 49 percent. Only 26 percent approved of the way he was handling the budget, with 85 percent of respondents objecting to school aid cuts and 84 percent to the cuts in health care.
With little room to maneuver, Bloomberg remains reluctant to criticize the governor. He has said that there is "no governor with whom I would rather work." It remains to be seen whether Bloomberg will still feel this way later this year when the state passes a budget that reveals what services in the city will be have to be cut and what taxes New Yorkers will have to pay.
This article by Anne Sachs, John Gallagher, Jennifer Benepe and Zubin Soleimany
Over the past few months, despite dwindling resources and distracted audiences, cultural groups in New York have become catalysts for public debate and dissent about the war. Through works and protests, artists have resisted the flattening of debate and homogenizing of rhetoric that has accompanied the march toward war. In many cases, artists have looked to the distant past for guidance: 60 groups staged readings of Lysistrata, the 5th-century B.C. antiwar satire, and 500 artists converged on the Met to sketch ancient drawings as a show of support for the people of modern-day Mesopotamia, i.e. Iraq. The post-9/11 art of grief has evolved into a wartime art of protest.
With mounting concern about America's image abroad, some are now advocating cultural diplomacy -- a particularly idealistic form of activism that would use arts and culture to encourage international understanding. It is clear that Americans are widely loathed in the Arab World. Now, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Russia, and Turkey last month, resentment and hostility toward the U.S. are increasing among our traditional allies. This month, a conference hosted by Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program will convene historians, policymakers, U.S. and foreign diplomats, artists and arts administrators to discuss "Cultural Diplomacy Amid Global Tension."
The apparatus of cultural diplomacy has been largely dismantled since the end of the Cold War, and money to encourage international cultural relations has slowed to a trickle. Over the past 10 years, funding for government-sponsored cultural or educational programs fell by more than a third. Meanwhile, arts councils in countries such as France and England have sustained lavish programs to export their cultural products. (In January, as part of a program to reach out to Muslims, the British Arts Council sent a production of "The Winter's Tale to Iran." It was the first such exchange since the 1979 revolution.) American artists have long complained about the imbalance in cultural exchange, pointing out that -- thanks in part to unequal funding -- there are far more foreign directors, actors, visual artists, and musicians bringing their work here than there are American artists working abroad.
Such complaints may now be heard in Washington. Last June, the House Committee on International Relations chair, Henry Hyde, initiated a discussion about America's image abroad, asking how "the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself?" Hyde introduced legislation that would, in part, establish a series of cultural exchanges with the Arab world. To encourage understanding of the American perspective on 9/11, the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has already sent Joel Meyerowitz's photographs of Ground Zero on a 60-city international tour. American artists may be wary of such efforts; top-down cultural diplomacy can be heavy-handed and manipulative. No one wants a return to the 1950s, when the CIA secretly funded "independent" critical journals, mounted exhibitions of Abstract Expressionist art (to counter Soviets' propagation of Socialist Realism), and reengineered the film of Orwell's Animal Farm as a propaganda tool. But, in an era of sharply reducing cultural funding, diplomacy may also be a bargaining tool; if art won't be funded for its own sake or for the sake of strong communities, why not fund culture as a tool of peace?
Instead of literal-minded propaganda efforts to "win the hearts and minds" of our enemies, independent artists can bring diverse, nuanced perspectives to those who view an America through a lens defined by Hollywood, McDonald's, and the Pentagon. Moreover, in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia where culture is strictly controlled, a demonstration of the freedom of American artists to express their own, often dissenting views would be a potent demonstration of democratic norms.
It is also important to encourage foreign artists to continue to come here. There have already been some warning signs; two French singers abruptly left the cast of a Metropolitan Opera last month, citing fears of terrorism, and the Senegalese pop singer Youssou N'Dour canceled an American tour to protest the war. Meanwhile, this July, the Whitney Museum of American Art will play host to its first exhibit of foreign art, "The American Effect," a much-needed exhibit that will explore how foreign artists respond to the presence of America around the world.
When television networks are controlled by media/entertainment conglomerates, and 1,200 radio stations are owned by a single company, there is a vital need for independent artists and small arts groups to be ambassadors of unconstrained thought abroad, as well as at home.
Back to the Blacklist?
Last month, the Screen Actors Guild sent out a news release to its members warning against possible blacklisting of actors for antiwar activities, an idea at first ridiculed (in part because of Hollywood's frequent collaboration with the Pentagon) but now gaining some credibility. Last month, New York Post columnist Richard Johnson proposed a boycott of "appeasement-loving celebs," suggesting, for example, that "those who oppose sadistic, Stalinist dictatorships won't want to show up at the Estess Arena in Atlantic City on April 25 to see Sheryl Crow's concert." The Celiliberal website mounted the Celebrity Liberal Blacklist, a list of more than 100 names that it encourages people to take with them to theaters, video stores, and music stores "so you know who to patronize and who not to." Sean Penn filed a civil lawsuit against the producer Steve Ping, claiming that Ping broke an oral agreement the two had made about a forthcoming movie after Penn traveled to Baghdad and spoke out against the war.
Update on Musicians' Strike
The Broadway musicians' strike ended on March 11 after shutting down all but one musical for four days. The League of American Theatres and Producers was unable to come to an agreement with the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 over the minimum number of musicians producers are contractually obliged to hire by the March 7 deadline. Producers had threatened to replace striking orchestra players with digital scores but, when members of Actors Equity and the stagehands' union walked out in solidarity with the musicians, that became impossible. Concerned about the financial hit to the city of the strike (estimated to have a $10 million price tag), and its dampening effect on New Yorkers' morale, Mayor Bloomberg summoned the negotiating teams to Gracie Mansion. Frank J. Macchiarola, president of St. Francis College and former NYC public schools chancellor, successfully served as moderator. After 12 hours, the two parties reached an agreement that preserves minimums for the next 10 years, though lowers the ceiling from 24 to 19 at the largest theaters. By the end of March, Broadway box office sales had picked up, in spite of world events.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi soldier Hussein Alrikabi decided to surrender because he felt that there was no way the Iraqi armed forces could resist the might of the United States army. But "George Bush stopped the Gulf war and left us in the middle," Alrikabi told Newhouse News Service. "We had to leave the country or Saddam would kill us."
After a US representative visited Alrikabi in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia and heard his story, the man who had once fought for Saddam Hussein was granted political asylum in the United States.
Each years hundreds of Iraqis like Alrikabi are able to settle in America because they are granted political asylum. In New York City, there are 1272 Iraqi immigrants, according to the 2000 census, and a sizeable number of them have been granted political asylum.
To be eligible for political asylum, foreigners, regardless of immigration status, only need to show up at a port-of entry, such as an airports or border crossing, and ask for asylum. Then they must prove that they cannot return to their home country because of fear of persecution. Fleeing the Saddam Hussien regime, some say, is enough of a reason to grant any immigrant admission to the country.
But it may not be that simple anymore. As part of the "Liberty Shield" operation, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, one of the three agencies that have replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Services, announced that it will detain political asylum seekers from Iraq and 32 other countries (officials refused to name which ones) for the entire time that their application is being processed. This process can last from several months to more than a year.
Within days of the announcement, two Iraqis were detained at the US-Mexican border for further investigation. They were reportedly using false documentation in an attempt to enter the United States and apply for political asylum.
Asylum seekers from other countries, though not to be detained, will be closely scrutinized. "We want to make absolutely certain, during this period of time, that you are who you say you are," said Tom Ridge, Secretary of Homeland Security.
This policy should affect fewer than 600 political asylum seekers out of more than 58,000 per year, officials said.
The new policy drew criticism from civil liberties groups. "The irony is that we are going to war with Iraq because of the persecution of the Iraqi citizens," said Gideon Aranoff of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a New York-based refugee resettlement organization, in The Legal Times. "Yet asylum seekers from Iraq, just such people who are feeling persecution, will be jailed if they come here"
During wartime, proponents argue, the detention makes sense because spies and terrorists might use the claim of political asylum to enter the country.
In the past some terrorists have exploited the political asylum process. One of the most famous cases is that of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. The blind cleric from Egypt came in and out of the country several times until he was ordered to be deported in 1993. He then filed for political asylum, enabling him to stay in the country.
While he was waiting for his asylum, Abdul Rahman plotted several plans to blow up New York City landmarks, one of which was the first attack of the World Trade Center in 1993. He is now serving a life-sentence for that crime.
Since then, more laws have been passed to beef up the political asylum system. Even before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, asylum seekers have had to go through an onerous series of interviews and background checks, which, some point out, made up one of the most extensive screening processes for any incoming immigrants.
So while the road to asylum in the United States seems bumpier lately, some are quick to say that it was not exactly easy street before. Many were arrested at airports and sent to county jails before they could be released on parole.
As Alex Gourevitch wrote in the American Prospect, "It's not as if asylum seekers just strolled into the United States before 9-11."
David Frum's trip from the think tank world to the White House and back was brief but eventful. Frum left the New York-based Manhattan Institute in 2001 to join the Bush administration as a speechwriter. It was there that he coined the term "axis of evil" to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. This became the signature phrase of President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech and shorthand for Bush's war on terrorism.
Frum left the Bush administration for another think tank soon after -- some say as a result of a mass e-mail by his wife expressing her "wifely pride" at her husband's previously anonymous authorship of the phrase.
But his phrase lives on, as do other ideas borne of think tanks. The concept of "pre-emptive war" was pushed by another think tank, the Project for a New Century, and the New York based Council on Foreign Relations was developing plans for post-war Iraq months before the first bombs hit Baghdad.
Think tanks long have been associated with issues of war and peace. But an increasing number also deal with domestic and even local issues, none more prominently than the Manhattan Institute. President Bush credits the institute with inspiring his program of "compassionate conservatism." He also calls The Dream and the Nightmare, a book written by Myron Magnet, the editor of the Manhattan Institutes's City Journal, the most important work he has ever read, after the Bible.
The well-financed Manhattan Institute, whose "fellows" have gone on not just to the White House but to head the CIA and serve Margaret Thatcher, clearly has influenced domestic and foreign policy. But the institute, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, has had even more of an impact on former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who adopted the think tank's ideas (and phrases) on crime, "quality of life," homelessness, and welfare.
The effectiveness of the Manhattan Institute, the only sizable national think tank that has turned its attention to the policy of a particular city, is at a crossroads. Its long dominance in New York City is being undercut by a mayor who isn't nearly as partial to their ideas as his predecessor, and challenged by a group of liberal start-ups.
Most recently, 2001 Democratic mayoral candidates Fernando Ferrer and Mark Green both have joined the world of think tanks, Ferrer becoming the president of the Drum Major Institute and Green restarting a think tank he originally launched in 1981 -- the New Democracy Project.
"There is already a war going on in this country," Green told Newsday shortly before the war on Iraq began. "And it is a war of ideas."
FROM THINKING TO MARKETING
Defining the term think tank is a bit tricky. In America, the phrase first came into use during World War II, describing secure rooms where military planners could plot without being overheard. But the organizations to which the term is generally applied -- policy research institutes -- have existed since the early 20th century, when Progressive Era philanthropists established organizations designed to enable intellectuals to share their expertise with politicians.
While those early research organizations were intended to inform instead of persuade, think tanks' priorities have changed. The 1970s saw the start of a new generation of think tanks whose research sought to advance a specific ideological line.
Because of this, the once venerated role of the intellectual in policy making has been denigrated, in the view of Andrew Rich, a professor of political science at Wake Forest University in North Carolina who studies think tanks. "So many organizations right now have started to call themselves think tanks to cash in on the credibility associated with think tanks," said Rich. "There is no credentialing organization for think tanks, so if you want to start a research group and say you're a think tank, there is no one there to stop you."
In many ways, the defining goal of a think tank is no longer expertise, but impact. "We aim to influence the influential," said Larry Mone, the president of the Manhattan Institute, in a speech last spring. "In any process of social change, some people matter more than others. That's our constituency. . . .We make sure our ideas cross the radar screens of these key people."
Sometimes this means working directly with public officials. Other times it means advising leading professionals in the private sector or offering expert opinions to the press. Think tanks employ policy experts to publish reports and write books and articles in newspapers and magazines. Some publish their own journals, like the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, which are distributed to journalists and policy makers.
Conservative think tanks often focus on economic issues and look to the private sector to solve many of the country's problems. The left encompasses a wide range of groups with sometimes conflicting agendas, such as labor activism, environmentalism, economic justice and minority rights. But most of its policy organizations are more likely than their conservative counterparts to see government as able to provide solutions to many of society's ills.
The marketing of ideas, particularly to the press, often becomes as important as the ideas themselves, and in this respect conservatives have been much more successful than their liberal counterparts, according to a 2001 survey, by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a leftist media studies group. The survey found that 48 percent of media citations of think tanks were from right-leaning groups, 36 percent from centrist groups, and 16 percent from groups that lean left.
Both conservatives and liberals agree that this reflects a think tank community whose right is much stronger than its left. According to David Callahan, co-founder of the New York-based national progressive think tank DEMOS and author of several studies of think tanks, "The left can't get it together. . . .It has lost the war of ideas. And if you're losing the war of ideas then you face an uphill battle on every other front.
"New York City," according to Callahan, "is a classic microcosm of this broader phenomenon. There's a handful of conservative intellectuals who have been running circles around the liberal establishment."
THE MANHATTAN INSTITUTE AND NEW YORK
The sheer size of New York City's budget attracts policy advocates, who are after either their piece of the pie or a say in deciding how the pie is cut and served. In a historically liberal city, most New York policy advocates have been liberal. Groups working on policy issues from a liberal or leftist perspective include City Project, the Fiscal Policy Institute, the Community Service Society and Advocates for Children, as well as various research organizations affiliated with labor unions(such as the Five Borough Institute), and universities.
"There are dozens, hundreds, of liberal organizations and policy groups and institutions in New York that already exist and that already receive funding," said Neil Kleiman, director of the Center for an Urban Future. "The issue is that they are just so scattered - a thousand points of light as opposed to one focused beam."
The conservatives have that focused beam in the Manhattan Institute, which operates on a budget of $5 million a year. In 1978, as Tom Wolfe recently recounted, British millionaire Antony Fisher, who had already established a British think tank to promote free market economics there, founded the Manhattan Institute to push for similar policies in the United States. The institute first came to prominence when one of its staff, Charles Murray, published Losing Ground, a book arguing that the 1960s War on Poverty had hurt, rather than helped, low income Americans. (His later book The Bell Curve, which argued that differences in IQ scores between races are real and do matter, caused even greater controversy.)
As the group gained prominence, those active in its early days moved on, one to become head of the CIA under President Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, another to advise British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The think tank itself, meanwhile, started looking at urban issues, developing its position as the sole conservative voice in New York City's liberal choir.
Besides wanting a chance to change New York, the Manhattan Institute saw an opportunity to use the city as a testing ground for its vision.
"If you really wanted to have [your] ideas reach the cities, you had to become a think tank for the cities," said the institute's vice president of development, David Desrosiers. "So in the '90s we started looking in our own backyard."
At that time, New York presented an ideal laboratory for the Manhattan Institute to formulate an urban plan, according to Fred Siegel, who from 1992 to 1993 was both a Giuliani advisor and the editor of the City Journal. The city was struggling with a sinking economy, a soaring crime rate, and a mayor whose popularity was waning. It was this environment, more than anything else, Siegel said, that led Giuliani to the Manhattan Institute.
"There was a sense in the early '90s of complete collapse," said Siegel. "Crime completely out of control, the rule of law seemingly broken. There was a sense of panic in the city, a sense of complete breakdown. In that framework, there was a lot of ferment. The Manhattan Institute had the largest vision that emerged out of that ferment."
On the heels of his loss to David Dinkins in the 1989 mayoral election, Giuliani was looking for vision and attended a Manhattan Institute conference on crime. The premise of the "Quality of Life" workshop was George L. Kelling's Broken Windows Theory. The theory, which held that policing minor disorderly behavior like graffiti or fare beating in the subways would help reduce violent crime, would become one of the foundations of Giuliani's remarkably successful policing strategy for New York.
The institute also helped Giuliani reverse his position on the homeless, according to Jack Newfield in The Full Rudy, his new book appraising Giuliani. While the candidate at first "ran for mayor as a crusader for more humane treatment for the homeless," Newfield writes, late in the campaign Giuliani changed his position; "he began attacking the right to shelter...Overnight he started to sound like the Manhattan Institute...which had..been tutoring him...They gave Giuliani a way of looking at poverty through a filter of 'a culture of dependency,' and fiscal tough love."
After becoming mayor, Giuliani continued to borrow heavily from the organization. He was particularly influenced by Murray's ideas concerning welfare reform.
Giuliani hailed the Manhattan Institute for allowing him to challenge what he referred to as the "intellectual rigidity" of New York. In a 1999 speech, Giuliani stated, "The Manhattan Institute and the City Journal have helped to shake up that rigidity. It's allowed us to think thoughts that were impossible for New Yorkers to really embrace in large numbers in the past."
LIBERALS AND NYC THINK TANKS
With the Manhattan Institute proving itself to be so effective, many New York liberals wanted something similar they could call their own. In the mid 1990s, a set of meetings was put together by Ken Emerson and Sarah Ritchie of the Century Foundation. The organizers quickly realized they did not have the resources to launch a think tank that could counter the Manhattan Institute. To provide an alternative on the cheap, they started the New York Progressive Network. Based on the model of Moving Ideas, a national network of think tanks run by the American Prospect magazine, the goal of the New York Progressive Network was, according to Ritchie, to "thicken the progressive community."
"There were all these smaller research and advocacy groups, some of which were multi-issue organizations, others were more specialized, but they seemed to be less than the sum of their parts," said Ritchie. "So what we were trying to do was basically [create] an organization of organizations that had similar political orientation that represented a wide spectrum of policy issues."
While the network model has had some successes elsewhere, as with the Progressive Los Angeles Network, it does not provide a true substitute for a strong, singular think tank. New York Progressive Network now exists only as a largely inactive web site - a kind of online phonebook for progressive organizations.
A more successful effort was the Center for an Urban Future, which came out of City Limits, an urban affairs magazine, in 1996. Many progressives claim the center as an ally, the closest thing to a strong liberal think tank that New York has.
Still Neil Kleiman, who founded the group with Andrew White, insists that the group is not progressive per se.
"There were about a dozen living room conversations about how people can create a liberal alternative to the Manhattan Institute," said Neil Kleiman. "We decided to do something completely different."
(His comments mirror those of some people connected to the Manhattan Institute who insist that the Manhattan Institute is not conservative -- that its pragmatic scholarly research simply focuses on what works and what doesn't work, and what works tends to contradict conventional wisdom, i.e. liberal beliefs.)
Taking a lesson from the Manhattan Institute, whose City Journal had become popular among urban policy makers, the Center for an Urban Future focused on the presentation of its ideas. The center described its research as investigative journalism - a departure from the academic bent of most think tank research. It sent its staff members into "the field" to do research on New York neighborhoods.
The center's main focus is economic development. It explores the effect that different industries, such as aviation or the arts, have on New York's economy, and examines how state fiscal policy affects the city.
"During campaigns we get a lot of people running for office [calling]", said Kleiman. "Especially during the 2001 cycle when everyone was running. We'd have three [competing] candidates from Bensonhurst calling, with questions about ideas and policies and programs. They want fodder."
END OF AN ERA?
The election of Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York has added two high profile names to the ranks of New York's think tanks.
While it is only in the formative stages, Mark Green's New Democracy Project has begun the Monthly Exchange, regular meetings of progressive policy advocates in New York City, loosely modeled after the Wednesday Meeting, a series of strategy meetings of conservative activists in Washington, D.C.
Ferrer said he joined the Drum Major Institute, which was founded in 1961 by a lawyer for Martin Luther King, Jr., because it presented "the opportunity to take something that had a very good heritage and turn it into a progressive public policy institute" promoting social and economic justice.
Although the organization is small, "in the marketplace of ideas you don't need the resources of the Manhattan Institute," Ferrer said. "You need creativity."
This spring, the group will hold conferences on tax policy and on how population shifts affect urban politics. It produces ProgBlog, a weekly electronic newsletter offering a progressive viewpoint on political and economic news.
Earlier this year, the Drum Major Institute worked with Bloomberg on his education program, advocating measures to make schools accountable to parents. According to Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the group's executive director, Bloomberg was receptive to the initiative and included elements of it in his plan. After years of frustration working on education in New York, she said, having a mayor who listens is "landmark stuff."
Bloomberg's willingness to listen to a variety of policy experts is in sharp contrast to Giuliani's approach, many say, and reflects the new mayor's non-ideological openness to -- in the words of think tank founder Andrew White -- "finding out what works and what doesn't."
The Manhattan Institute would surely have a different interpretation for why its local influence seems, at least temporarily, to be on the wane. Representatives from the institute declined to comment on its relationship with Bloomberg, nor their view of him. A current City Journal article on the administration's taxation and spending policies, however, might offer a clue. Its title: "Bloomberg to City: Drop Dead."
NON-PARTISAN ELECTIONS
As expected, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has created a new commission to revise the city charter -- the fifth commission in the last six years; the second in Mayor Bloomberg's 15 months in office. He has named Frank Macchiarola, the former schools chancellor, to lead it.
In announcing the commission on March 26th, the mayor charged it with considering nonpartisan elections for all city officials and to put such a proposal on the November ballot. The four previous commissions examined nonpartisan elections and failed to propose them to voters. The mayor also called on the commission "to strengthen the operation of city government" by offering proposals on structural issues such as reorganizing and consolidating city agencies and changing the way the city contracts for services and purchases goods.
The issue of non-partisan elections is bound to create intense partisan conflict, pitting Democrats, with overwhelming voter registration advantage, versus Republicans and minor parties, particularly the Independence party. Bloomberg's first policy proposal as a mayoral candidate, on June 7, 2001, was at a Independence Party event, where he endorsed nonpartisan elections in exchange for that party's endorsement.
As I wrote previously on this issue, nonpartisan elections are widely practiced in the United States, but unfortunately too little studied. Proponents of the Progressive Era reform argue that nonpartisan elections weaken the hold of parties, broaden candidate fields, make elections more competitive, broaden candidates' vision, and may increase minority turnout as well as the prospects for minority candidates. Opponents counter that parties are valuable, indeed, essential; that party cues are replaced by less desirable ones such as race/ethnicity and incumbency; that nonpartisan elections have a class bias as well as a Republican/minor party bias; and that nonpartisan elections promote governmental gridlock and encourage extremism.
The mayor hinted, as he has in the past, that he would put his own money in a public campaign for nonpartisan elections. This would be a first, a mayor funding a campaign for major change in a city's constitution -- the mayor as the Four Billion Dollar Gorilla.
HISPANIC VOTING IN NEW YORK
Once, the New York City political alphabet was simple: the three I's -- Ireland, Italy, and Israel -- were the itinerary for political success. Today, politicians court everyone from Albanians to Zimbabweans. But the most prominent destinations for New York politicians are clear -- San Juan and Santo Domingo -- and the reason even clearer: There are 790,000 Puerto Rican and 407,000 Dominican New Yorkers, according to the 2000 Census. Latinos' share of the general electorate declined to 18 percent in the 2001 general election, after reaching historic highs in the primary and the runoff.
All in all, the census counted 2,160,554 Hispanic residents of New York City in April 2000, an increase of some 400,000 from the 1990 census. Spanish is the second language of politics in New York City (indeed, in the state and the nation).
Slowly but inexorably, the Hispanics of New York City will turn percentages into power.
The huge growth in population does not swiftly and automatically translate into more political clout, however. Many Puerto Ricans (who are U.S. citizens) have left, and the immigrants who have replaced them tend to be younger -- more Hispanics are under 18 years old than New Yorkers overall -- and non-citizens. Even among those Hispanic New Yorkers eligible to register, about 657,000 actually have done so. And among those registered, only 267,000 voted in the 2001 mayoral general election.
On the other hand, those 657,000 registered Hispanic voters represent a 46 percent increase in registration from a decade earlier. And this was at a time when the city's overall eligible electorate actually declined. As a result, Latino registration accounted for about a third of the overall growth in registered voters in New York City during the decade. Hispanic voter registration increased in all boroughs, with the most growth in the Bronx and Queens
It is not so surprising then that from 1989 to 1997, Latinos' share of the total New York City electorate grew (as recorded in the ABC News exit poll) from eight percent in 1989 to 13 percent in 1993 to 21 percent in 1997.
The vast majority of Hispanics are Democrats. Among Latinos surveyed by the Hispanic Federation in June 2002 who reported being registered to vote in New York City, 74 percent were Democrats; only 10 percent were Republicans. There has been little difference in Latinos' partisan registration proclivities over the last several years. (See Table 1)
But Hispanics made history in the 2001 elections in at least two ways.
The mayoral election saw the most serious candidacy by a Latino - Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer -- since Herman Badillo's mayoral runoff against Abe Beame in 1973. In the September 25 primary (moved back two weeks after 9/11), Ferrer came in first. Hispanics made up an historically high 23 percent share of the vote, giving Ferrer 72 percent of their vote against three opponents. But he failed to reach the 40 percent threshold, thus forcing a runoff, which his opponent Mark Green won.
The 2001 Democratic mayoral primary elections were, according to John Mollenkopf and Luis Miranda, authors of a Hispanic Federation report, "a watershed for closing the gap between turnout among Latinos and the overall turnout rate." But the effect "proved to be short-lived. It collapsed in the general election." Had Ferrer been the Democratic nominee, it is almost certain that Hispanics would have turned out in record-breaking numbers - perhaps 25 percent.
This brings us to the other major political story of the 2001 New York City mayoral election. In the general election, 47 percent of Latino voters cast a ballot for Republican Michael Bloomberg, splitting the Latino vote with Democrat Mark Green, who got 49 percent. The headline was: "City's Hispanic Shift, Moving Toward the G.O.P."
What's more, this was not necessarily an aberration. It is true that Hispanics voted overwhelmingly Democratic in 1998 for Chuck Schumer (82 percent) and in 2000 for Hillary Clinton (85 percent) and Al Gore (81 percent). But the proportion of Latinos in New York City voting for a Republican candidate doubled in a dozen years, rising steadily from a quarter of the Hispanic electorate who supported Rudy Giuliani in 1989 to the nearly half in 2001. (See Table 2)
The Hispanics in New York City and elsewhere in the country (with the exception of Cubans) have historically voted Democratic. But Republicans recently have been courting Latinos heavily (in the 2000 presidential and the 2002 Senate and gubernatorial campaigns). Hispanics' strong Catholicism and cultural conservatism would seem to make them receptive to the Republican Party on social issues. And their growing numbers make them increasingly a swing constituency - a dominant one in some jurisdictions -- motivated less by party identification than by ethnicity.
Hispanics in New York City are increasing in number and diversity, sometimes producing conflict and electoral competition among Hispanic groups. According to John Mollenkopf "more recent South and Central American tend to be more conservative. They tend to be somewhat more middle class, higher income, property owning."
Old and new immigrants have produced a large second generation now coming of voting age. Like young people from all ethnic and racial backgrounds, they are less likely to vote than their elders. But, as history makes clear, this will not last forever. Shifts in the New York City political topography historically have been tectonic - gradual -- but inexorable. The Irish, then the Jews and Italians took a generation or two between their arrival in the city in large numbers and their climb to political office. Blacks followed a similar course. And so too will Hispanics.
Table 1: NYC Hispanic Voter And Party Registration, 1996-2002
Year | Percent Registered | Party Registration | |
2002 | 69% | Democrat: 74% | Republican: 11% |
2001 | 66% | Democrat: 74% | Republican: 11% |
2000 | 60% | Democrat: 69% | Republican: 12% |
1999 | 58% | Democrat: 76% | Republican: 9% |
1998 | 53% | Democrat: 71% | Republican: 12% |
1997 | 57% | Democrat: 73% | Republican: 11% |
1996 | 51% | Democrat: 70% | Republican: 15% |
Table 2: Hispanic Voting In NYC Mayoral General Elections, 1989-2001
Election | Hispanic Share | # of Hispanic Voters | Vote Choices | |
2001 | 18% (EMR) | 267,000/1,480,914 | Green: 49% | Bloomberg: 47% |
1997 | 21% (VNS) | 285,000/1,357,249 | Messinger: 57% | Giuliani: 42% |
1993 | 13% (VNS) | 245,570/1,889,003 | Dinkins: 60% | Giuliani 38% |
1989 | 8% (ABC) | 152,000/1,899,845 | Dinkins: 73% | Giuliani 26% |
1989 | 13% (CBS/Times) | 247,000/1,899,845 | Dinkins: 65% | Giuliani 34% |
Doug Muzzio is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College and a political analyst for WABC.
Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
STATED MEETING - MARCH 26, 2003
Quote of the Day:
"Go into any neighborhood in the city and you will find posters and flyers attached to trees advertising realty, weight loss programs, all sorts of music, and home repair services. These entrepreneurs/vandals have taken it
upon themselves to use our city's trees as free advertising space." – Councilmember David Weprin in support of a bill to double the fine for those who nail or staple signs to trees.
Meeting Summary:
At the March 24 Stated Meeting, the New York City Council passed four new pieces of legislation aimed at helping the city's environment.
One measure (Intro 109-A) would require that city-owned vehicles, with the exception of fire and police departments, to use recycled motor oil. Some federal government agencies such as the Department of Defense and the U.S. Postal Service already use so-called re-refined motor oil.
Another bill (Intro 240-A) would double the fine for those that put posters and notices on trees. The number of trees in the city has decreased by 30 percent since 1978 and the council argues that some of those trees have been killed by illegal postings.
Other environmental measures passed by the council included a bill (Intro 123-A) that would increase the fines for those who pollute the city's sewer systems and legislation (Intro 377) giving city agencies more flexibility if they want to purchase energy efficient products that may cost more initially, but save energy and money in the long term.
The council also passed a bill (Intro 178-A) aimed at protecting taxicab drivers from excessive fines if their hazard lights burn out. "An automatic penalty is not only unfair, but it encourages a driver to work without fixing the light to recoup their losses from the fine," said Councilmember Diana Reyna who drafted the legislation.
Each piece of legislation will now go to the mayor, who has 30 days to sign or veto each bill.
At the meeting, the council also received official notice that Mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed three bills passed in recent weeks.
The mayor vetoed legislation (Intro 93-A) that would allow welfare recipients to count GED and English language classes toward work requirements. Bloomberg said the bill "mandates education at the expense of work." The mayor also said the measure could jeopardize the city's ability to comply with state and federal work requirements and that the city could be fined over $200 million a year.
Bloomberg also rejected legislation (Intro 278-A) which would require pharmacies that do not carry emergency contraceptives to post signs indicating that they are not sold at that location and a bill (Intro 281-A) requiring hospitals to inform rape victims that emergency contraception is available and to offer it if requested.
"It is the responsibility of the city to ensure that victims of rape and sexual assault receive the best possible care during their recovery," said Councilmember Christine Quinn.
The council has 30 days to override the mayor's vetoes and can do so with a two-thirds majority of the council. The council is expected to override all three.
The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for April 9.
The New York Stock Exchange arbitrarily prevented the Al Jazeera network's financial analyst from its trading floor, as the television channel faces criticism in the United States for its coverage of the American and British attack on Iraq.
A stock exchange spokesperson said that the decision was based on its desire to minimize the number of TV networks on its floor, but no other network, in exception to Al Jazeera, has been banned yet.
The New York Stock Exchange withdrew Al Jazeera financial analyst Ammar Alsankari's pass, and also asked the other analyst, Ramzi Shibr, to turn in his pass immediately.
Exchange spokesman, Ray Pellecchia, said: "we had to focus our efforts on networks that focus on responsible business coverage." He described the Al Jazeera ban as "indefinite."
Several other news organizations have also been denied from entering to the exchange's Manhattan trading floor in the past few weeks, Pellecchia added, though he declined to name them.
"We believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the media," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He added that the ban would set a bad precedent.
From Al Jazeera and Reuters
Translated from Arabic by Elias Saber
In preparation for the most treacherous fighting of all, house-to-house combat in Iraqi cities, American soldiers have been training for weeks at Camp New York, a forlorn desert landscape in Kuwait's northwest corner. Here they built a bleak Hollywood set of streets, houses, and cut-outs of human targets in order to prepare for the coming urban battles in Baghdad and other cities, which are expected to produce high casualty rates.
Meanwhile, the real New York, touched though it may be by such official homage, is doing what it has always done: hoping for help from allies like the federal government, but taking care of itself in the grim recognition that little aid may be forthcoming. Earlier this month Police Commissioner Ray Kelly introduced his plan to beef up security in the event of a war in Iraq, which he called Operation Atlas. "Broadly speaking," he said at a March 18 press conference, "we are tightening the protective net around New York City." His boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, met with President George W. Bush the next morning to ask for $900 million in federal aid. Bush made no commitment; that very evening, the president launched the war in Iraq, and the mayor put Operation Atlas into full effect.
Kelly's plan is expected to cost New York $5 million a week, a painful sum for a city facing a nearly $4 billion annual deficit, generated in part by the terrorism that has incited the nation to war.
DEFENDING NEW YORK
Within the last ten years New York has endured two terrorist attacks — and the city reportedly remains the American target mentioned most often in communications by terrorist groups intercepted by intelligence agencies around the world. According to the New York Times, terrorist intercepts specifically mentioned the economic disaster that would follow a major disruption of routes into New York.
Some terrorism experts, such as Rohan Gunaratna (Read "An Assessment Of The Threat From Al Qaeda in 2003"), believe that this might be just wishful thinking on the part of Al Qaeda at this point. U.S. military and intelligence activity abroad has caused Al Qaeda to suffer "severe disruption to its command and control"; increased security in the U.S. and in New York City make it easier for Al Qaeda to focus their efforts and (diminished) capabilities on Western targets elsewhere.
But Al Qaeda is by no means the only terrorist organization and, whatever beefing up in security that has taken place over the past 18 months, "no assurances have been given, nor would they be believed; Israel offers bloody proof that no degree of vigilance is a guarantee," in the words of an overview in last Sunday's New York Times of security measures in the city, entitled "In New York, A Security Blanket With Holes."
So in a way, the launching of the U.S. war against Iraq was simply as good a start date as any for implementing the New York Police Department's security plans, which have been evolving since September 11, 2001.
Militarily, New York is hard to defend. Its economic assets as a transportation hub — elaborate corridors by land, sea, and air — are strategic deficits. Its systems that have so successfully delivered goods and services for decades now must be secured to block deliveries rather than permit them. Since this can not really be done without destroying New York economically, the police department's Operation Atlas is pouring thousands of heavily armed, uniformed police officers onto the streets to investigate, intimidate and deter terrorist or retaliatory activity.
Some sites, such as the bridges and tunnels into the city, and some institutions, such as hotels, theaters, embassies, media headquarters, mosques and synagogues, get extra protection, some with uniformed presence and others with drive-by surveillance. Emergency Service Unit cops armed with submachine guns and backed by armored vehicles have been assigned to what Commissioner Kelly calls "signature locations." Wall Street, for example, has been given highly visible 24-hour coverage. The financial industry remains uneasy, however, and, as the Times reports, major banks and exchanges have developed backup sites and alternative trading floors.
Hazardous material units and disaster response teams (first developed for the 2000 millennium) have been deployed throughout Manhattan. The police department has distributed gas masks, first-aid kits, and rubber gloves to about 15,000 police officers, to help protect them if either a chemical or biological attack occurs. (Masks and kits were paid for by a $4 million federal grant.) And bomb-sniffing dogs have been accompanying their human partners on subway trains and the Staten Island ferry, as well as on walks through Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station.
Governor George Pataki has added extra protection to the city's reservoir system, located upstate, and asked the federal government for additional patrols of the Indian River nuclear plant in Westchester.
BY LAND AND BY SEA
Almost all of New York's goods come in by truck. Only about four percent come by train. But bombs can also be delivered cheaply and efficiently in trucks; witness the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The police department feels they have little choice but to set up movable checkpoints at the bridges, tunnels, and crucial arteries, most recently across 96th Street on all southbound avenues. These checkpoints can, of course, be disastrously expensive for businesses. All of the river crossings had huge delays last week as cops asked drivers for license and registration, and used small handheld devices to scan cargo and trunks for dangerous materials.
The city is also preparing for ship-based bombs in its waterways. Armed Coast Guard cutters and New York Police Department harbor ships are patrolling the harbor and escorting ferries. The Coast Guard is said to be scanning ships with Geiger counters to detect radiological material. Even though New York has had no known ship-based terrorist attack, the terrorist bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in October 2000 offers a sobering precedent. An expert on Al Qaeda, Rohan Gunaratna (a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland's University of St. Andrews) recently debriefed New York Police Department officials, showing them photographs of boats that Al Qaeda had designed for suicide attacks against ships, according to the New York Times.
In a policy memo summarizing his presentation to the police, Gunaratna says that the beefed-up protection of land and aviation targets will shift the threat to sea targets, particularly to commercial maritime targets.
The U.S. Customs Service, which basically agrees, has changed its top priority in New York's seaport from slowing the flow of illegal drugs to stopping potential terrorist weapons. It reportedly has invested millions of dollars in new technological devices to detect components of a nuclear weapon or a radiological dirty bomb that could be hidden in one of the huge shipping containers coming into the port.
BY AIR
(Not) Patrolling The Skies Because of federal "preemption," no one patrols the lower airspace above New York during normal times. The New York Police Department patrols the streets, but the Federal Aviation Administration controls the skies. The police can inspect trucks for bombs as they come through the tunnels, but they cannot stop an armed helicopter from flying overhead. This has long been a contentious issue in the city. A year before the World Trade Center attack, United Nations officials complained that helicopters flying below the roofline of their East Side headquarters were a security threat. They were worried about a gunship attack — not unreasonably, given reports of specific terrorist plans to attack the U.N. The Federal Aviation Administration replied that the skies were free and nothing could or would be done. The FAA, which sees its role as promoting the aviation industry, argues that flying freely anywhere in the country is a basic American right. It believes that all small aircraft should be able to fly low, with no restrictions, over major cities and national monuments. When crises occur — like war — the FAA makes general pronouncements about "restricted air space" that get duly reprinted in newspapers. But "restricted air space" may, like so many security measures, grossly inconvenience businesses and passengers without making the city much safer. The way the system usually works is that planes flying above 2,500 feet are under the control of the LaGuardia or Newark air control towers, but planes below that level fly under visual flight rules. Thus pilots flying small planes or helicopters need not ask permission to enter New York's airspace, or identify themselves to FAA regional or local controllers. In normal times, anyone can fly under visual flight rules below 1,100 feet over the Hudson River or over the East River south of the 59th Street bridge, without even communicating with the FAA. Planes flying above 1,100 feet, or flying at any altitude across midtown and northern Manhattan, must check in with the La Guardia tower, give their tail number, and receive a heading intended to prevent congestion. No security check is involved. The FAA does not know who is piloting these planes, apart from their tail ID number. Nor does the FAA have any enforcement power. Fighter jets patrolling New York's skies are the major enforcers — although it is not at all clear what behavior would trigger fighter jet intervention. Anyone with a license can rent a plane at many of the approximately 2,000 general aviation airfields within a short flight of New York. Licenses are issued by civilians on the basis of a pilot's proficiency and training. Easily forged and without photos, pilot licenses are seldom verified at general aviation airports, which in any event have notoriously lax security. Planes can legitimately be flown into New York airports — to refuel, for example — from anywhere in the country. Planes are not inspected on arrival or before departure. Helicopters, which constitute a huge portion of local, low-level air traffic, do not even need an airport for departure. What is the solution? Aviation security is a law enforcement function. Common sense dictates that it belongs with a law enforcement agency, not the FAA, which is a business promotion agency. A solution to New York's vulnerability from the air is for the Office of Homeland Security to delegate authority over the lower air space to the New York Police Department, which has an aviation unit and a fleet of helicopters — and which could be as capable in the air as it is on the ground. Even without real authority, NYPD helicopters have been known to escort small planes from the vicinity of Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty, and to chase pilots flying too close to bridges. |
The assumption behind much of Operation Atlas is that individual attackers or small groups present greater terrorist risks than larger, carefully planned assaults. Bruce Hoffman, vice president of the RAND Corporation, thinks that though this scenario was the common wisdom up until September 11th, it may now be wrong. Before then, says Hoffman, for reasons not well understood, terrorists had usually not undertaken coordinated operations, with some exceptions, such as the Irish Republican Army's 1979 assassination of Mountbatten and near-simultaneous remote-control mine attack in Northern Ireland.
But too much attention has probably been focused, he says, on the extremes: the low-end threat posed by car and truck bombs against buildings and the more exotic high-end threats, entailing biological or chemical weapons or cyber-attacks. American planning scenarios through the 1990s assumed that attacks would involve germ or chemical agents or result from widespread electronic attacks on critical infrastructure. Here is the crucial weakness: it was thought that any conventional or less extensive incident could be addressed simply by planning for the most catastrophic threat. This, argues Hoffman, left a painfully vulnerable gap in American anti-terrorism defenses while a traditional and long-proven tactic, airline hijacking, was neglected in favor of other, less conventional threats.
Thus it was not, for example, the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway that should have been the dominant influence on counter-terrorist thinking, but the 1994 hijacking in Algiers of an Air France passenger plane by terrorists intending to crash the fuel-laden plane with its passengers into the Eiffel Tower.
Is New York still jeopardized by Hoffman's "painfully vulnerable gap" in the skies? Certainly New York still suffers from the New York Police Department's lack of authority to patrol its skies, which remain under the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration. (see blue box)
On March 18, the Federal Aviation Administration put into effect some new rules, imposing an ADIZ (air defense identification zone) in overlapping 34 mile-rings around New York's three airports.
Pilots flying up to 18,000 feet must file a flight plan stating destination, amount of fuel they are carrying, and number of passengers — even if they are flying under visual flight rules. All pilots must also stay in communication with air traffic controllers, and must notify the FAA when they leave the zone or land. But these rules may do nothing more than complicate the lives of legitimate pilots. The Federal Aviation Administration admits it lacks the manpower to review advance plans quickly, while doing nothing to identify threats. After all, pilots can be anybody, including terrorists. They do not carry official identification.
Meanwhile, even as small planes continued to fly freely over New York, the FAA issued rules preventing aircraft from flying below 3,000 feet within three miles of Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida, calling them "potential targets of great symbolic value."
BIOTERRORISM
Small planes are obvious potential carriers of biological weaponry. A private plane or helicopter could carry a light but high-impact payload aimed at people rather than buildings. Slow-moving, low-flying small aircraft - planes, helicopters, sky-writers, or crop dusters - are excellent vehicles for delivering either a radiation bomb or biological agents.
So why hasn't this happened outside of a Hitchcock movie?
One reason is that biological agents are so difficult to control-equally liable to hurt the perpetrator as the intended victims. And while terrorist groups have successfully recruited young people as suicide bombers, bombing is a simpler form of violence and its effects more precisely targeted. Nonetheless, prominent terrorist experts have been predicting since the late 1970s that such an attack would occur in a Western capital city such as New York. On the day after Mayor Bloomberg met with President Bush, federal Health & Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that his agency would give New York City $33 million to fight bio-terrorism, up from $26 million last year. Meanwhile, the crucial federal defense funding formula administered by Homeland Security remains on a per capita basis, which means that a huge state like Texas, never a terrorist target, will get more than New York. Mayor Bloomberg remains hopeful that this will be corrected.
LOOKING LIKE THE ENEMY
Some experts worried about bio-terrorism also support the Bush administration's decision to detain asylum seekers from Iraq and 33 other countries where terrorist groups operate. This directive, which has been severely criticized by civil libertarians and immigration lawyers, represents a second wave of policy changes, the first being the severe tightening of asylum laws enacted by Congress after an asylum-seeker tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. The administration calls the detention simply one of a number of counter-terrorism measures, and says it should affect fewer than 600 immigrants annually, most of them Iraqi.
The problems are enormous. Certainly Americans want to welcome those genuinely seeking asylum from Iraq. But only some 20 percent of asylum-seekers arrive with papers, making identification difficult. "We want to make absolutely certain during this period of time you are who you say you are," says Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge.
Dozens of Iraqis and suspected Iraqi sympathizers are being detained in New York and four other U.S. cities, according to the New York Post.
Government officials say Iraqi sympathizers may be plotting terror attacks on America from within American cities, again particularly New York. Federal agents are seeking three Iraqi agents they say have gone into hiding — two former guards at the Iraqi U.N. mission on the East Side of Manhattan and the New York correspondent of the Iraqi news agency. All were ordered to leave the country. Instead, they disappeared.
PREDICTIONS GONE WRONG
RAND analyst Brian Jenkins notes that experts on terrorism have long predicted some scenarios that have not happened. There has been no significant increase in terrorist attacks on energy systems, for example. Jenkins is not sure why this would be, though one harsh conclusion is that terrorists "prefer to advertise or kill." Pure sabotage is less appealing to them, goes this argument, the city's reservoirs and power plants less effective targets from the terrorists' point of view because few deaths would occur.
On the other hand, because law enforcement and security efforts have worked, says Jenkins, some traditional terrorist tactics, such as hijackings and embassy takeovers, occur far less frequently today. This law enforcement success may, ironically, encourage terrorists to attack targets that had not previously appealed to them. Terrorists always have the advantage, says Jenkins: They can attack anything, anywhere, at any time.
In this terrible scenario, the huge New York Police Department presence makes sense.
Despite being the most hunted movement in history, Al Qaeda and its associated organizations will pose a significant threat in 2003. Al Qaeda will fragment, decentralize, regroup in five zones of the world, work with like-minded groups, select a wider range of targets, focus on economic targets and population centers, and conduct most attacks in the global south. Although the group will be constrained from conducting coordinated simultaneous attacks against high profile symbolic or strategic targets in the West, together with its regional counterparts Al Qaeda will conduct similar attacks in Asia, Africa, Middle East, and even in Latin America. Despite heavy losses, including the likely capture or death of its core and penultimate leaders, Al Qaeda's anti-Western universal jihad ideology inculcated among the politicized and radicalized Muslims will sustain support for Islamism, Islamist political parties and Islamist terrorist groups. With the detection, disruption, and degradation of its human and material infrastructure, Al Qaeda may evolve and survive as a state-of-mind among Islamist territorial and migrant pockets. With a skewed US Middle Eastern policy, Islamist support for political violence will grow, prompting terrorist groups to conduct mass casualty attacks, especially suicide bombings of economic targets and population centres.
Since October 7, 2001 when US-led coalition forces began to dismantle Al Qaeda's state-of-the-art operational and training infrastructure, its intention to attack has not diminished but its capability to attack has gravely suffered. With US working with several Middle Eastern and Asian governments, Al Qaeda's strength has depleted to a third of its rank and file especially the loss or capture of its key leaders and experienced operatives. For instance, in Afghanistan, its military commander Mohommad Atef was killed in a predator attack; in Pakistan, its director of external operations Abu Zubaidah was captured, as was its maritime commander Al Nishri in the United Arab Emirates. Al Qaeda as an organization has gravely suffered severe disruption to its command and control. Therefore, the group is increasingly probing targets that can be attacked with least effort and least cost. In keeping with its doctrine of repeating its successes, Al Qaeda and its associate groups are increasingly adopting the tactic of suicide terrorism against soft targets.
While Al Qaeda's priority will be to attack US targets, it only has the resources and opportunity to attack US allies and friends. With diminished Al Qaeda assets and hardened US and Israeli diplomatic targets, the group will mount and attempt to mount attacks against British, French, German, Italian, Canadian, Australian targets and possibly other European and Japanese targets. Throughout 2002, Al Qaeda or its associate groups killed German tourists in Djerba, Tunisia; French naval technicians in Karachi, Pakistan; Australians and Westerners in Bali, Indonesia; and Israelis in Mombassa, Kenya. Osama bin Laden's pronouncements in October and November 2002 will be the best guide to unfolding Al Qaeda events in 2003. As such more effort is needed to track and target Al Qaeda experts moving worldwide and disrupt them from coordinating attacks together with Al Qaeda associate groups with which it had shared ideology, finance and training during the last decade in Afghanistan and in other conflict zones.
Countermeasures, especially target hardening, by law enforcement and protective services of vulnerable government personnel and infrastructure have forced Al Qaeda to focus on economic targets and population centers. Hardening of government targets will displace the threat to softer targets making civilians prone to terrorist attack. Economic targets, especially the tourist and the hotel industry, will suffer from terrorism. Churches, synagogues, and other non-Islamic institutions as well as trade and investment will remain particularly vulnerable. Similarly, hardening of land and aviation targets will shift the threat to sea targets particularly to commercial maritime targets. Due to the difficulty of hijacking aircraft to ram them against targets difficult to acquire from surface attacks, Al Qaeda will acquire and employ hand held Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). If appropriate and immediate countermeasures are not taken to target the Al Qaeda shipping network, SAMs under Al Qaeda control held in the Pakistan-Kashmir-Afghanistan theater, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa will find its way to the Far Asia and to Europe, and possibly even to North America. Other groups operationally and ideologically unconnected to Al Qaeda will learn from Al Qaeda technologies, tactics, and techniques.
With US security forces and the intelligence community targeting Al Qaeda's nerve center in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Al Qaeda will decentralize even further. While its organizers of attacks will remain in Pakistan and its immediate neighborhood, its operatives will travel back and forth coordinating with Al Qaeda nodes in the south. To make its presence felt, Al Qaeda will increasingly rely on its global terrorist network of like-minded groups in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Horn of Africa, Middle East, and the Caucuses to strike its enemies. Already attacks in Kenya, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Kuwait and Yemen seek to compensate for the loss and lack of space and opportunity to operate in Afghanistan. Its operatives will work together with Jemmah Islamiyah (JI: Southeast Asia), Al Ithihad al Islami (Horn of Africa), Chechen Mujahidin (Khattab faction: Caucuses), Tunisian Combatants Group (Middle East), Jayash-e-Mohommad (South Asia) and other groups it trained and financed in the past decade. In addition to its own members, Al Qaeda will operate through the Salafi Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) and Takfir Wal Hijra – two groups it had infiltrated in Europe and North America. With the transfer of terrorist technology and expertise from the center to the periphery, the attacks by the associated groups of Al Qaeda will pose a threat as great as Al Qaeda.
Although attacking inside North America, Europe, Australasia and Israel remains a priority, the measures and countermeasures taken by these governments will make it difficult for Al Qaeda to mount an operation in the West. Al Qaeda finds it less costly to operate in parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East where there is lack of security controls. Therefore, most attacks will be against Western targets located in the global south. While focusing on Western targets will remain a priority, Al Qaeda will continue to conduct operations against Muslim rulers and regimes supporting the US-led "war on terror." The physical security of Pakistani and Afghan leaders will remain particularly vulnerable and their regimes will come under sustained political challenges. While a number of Pakistani groups fighting in Kashmir will come under greater control of Al Qaeda, the group working together with the surviving elements of the Taliban will develop a clandestine network inside Afghanistan to conduct guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and political assassination.
For greater impact, Al Qaeda prefers to conduct coordinated simultaneous attacks against symbolic, high prestige or strategic targets with the intention of inflicting maximum damage to human and physical infrastructure. With Al Qaeda resources under strain and its operatives coming under increasing scrutiny in the global north, Al Qaeda will be constrained from mounting multiple attacks in the global north. However, Al Qaeda and its associate groups are still able to mount multiple operations in the global south where they have greater leverage, space, and time to operate. For instance, JI attacked Sari and Kuta clubs and the US consulate in Bali, Indonesia on October 12, 2002; and Al Qaeda attacked an Israeli-owned hotel and aircraft in Mombassa, Kenya on November 29, 2002.
RESILIENCE
Al Qaeda has suffered with the arrest of nearly 3,000 organizers, operatives and supporters in 98 countries since October 2001. With the increase in pressure, Al Qaeda is increasingly depending on its associate groups to conduct attacks. Traditionally, Qaeda with better trained, more experienced and highly committed operatives wanted to attack more difficult targets, especially strategic targets, and leave the easier and tactical targets to its associated groups. Today, with Al Qaeda operatives working closely together, the lethality of the attacks conducted by the associate groups of Al Qaeda is increasing. As Bali demonstrated, the attacks conducted by the associate groups of Al Qaeda can be as lethal as the attacks conducted by Al Qaeda itself. With attacks conducted by Al Qaeda's associated groups posing a threat as great as Al Qaeda, the theater of war will widen. US assistance, presence and influence will grow in the Muslim world, generating wide-ranging reactions.
With the loss of Afghanistan as a "liberated theater of jihad," Islamists will seek to create new theaters. Dr Ayman Zawahiri, Osama's deputy, designated successor and principal strategist of Al Qaeda considers Afghanistan and Chechnya as the only two liberated theaters of jihad. Already due to the difficulty of movement of recruits and flow of support from Islamist migrant pockets in the West and in the Middle East to Afghanistan, there has been a partial diversion of support to Chechnya. Although there is a significant reserve of Afghan-trained active and sleeper terrorists in the West, terrorists entering the West to attack Western targets may be trained in a number of theaters, especially Chechnya. With Al Qaeda fragmenting ,several other groups will take over the role of waging a universal jihad. More territorial Islamist groups will espouse universal agendas and more Muslim separatist groups will become vulnerable to penetration by Islamist groups.
Al Qaeda will be operating across the technological spectrum but is likely to use low-tech high impact attacks, especially civilian infrastructure to attack civilian society and critical infrastructure. With greater border controls, members and associate members of Al Qaeda will use what can be readily purchased off the shelf especially from pharmacies, chemist shops, and hardware stores. Al Qaeda members will live off the environment and turn commercially available material into weapons. Al Qaeda's Tunisian member conducted a suicide attack against the oldest Jewish synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, using a LPG truck; JI used a consignment of chlorate purchased from the port city of Surabaya in Indonesia against targets in Bali; and 9/11 hijackers used passenger aircraft against America's icons. The latter attack, an Al Qaeda detainee said, was "like using your own finger to prick your eye." Using multiple identities, Al Qaeda members will travel to target countries, receive instructions, plan and prepare attacks through the Internet, and attack targets. They will generate support from low level crime, organized crime, infiltrated charities, and from politicized and radicalized segments of their migrant and diaspora communities.
With the capture of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohommad alias Mohommad the Pakistani alias MP, the head of the military committee of Al Qaeda, on March 1, 2003, Al Qaeda has lost tactical control of its cells. He was central in the planning and preparation of attacks. His persona highly influenced the nature of almost all Al Qaeda attacks -- first, mass casualty attacks, second, the abundant use of suicide terrorism, third, bombings, and fourth, assassination. As mass casualty attacks need a large number of operatives, greater resources, and planning over a long period of time, Al Qaeda today will be able to conduct fewer attacks. But still they are likely to become spectacular or theatrical attacks. Assassination will be used more frequently, although suicide bombings will be the most predominant form of attack. As suicide attacks are very difficult to disrupt in the execution phase, 2003 will see the tactic of suicide terrorism being used more widely. As Al Qaeda maximizes its successes and partial successes of attacks and minimizes its failures, suicide attacks will become increasingly common. Although Al Qaeda's long term and sustained interest to use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents has not diminished, conventional terrorism will remain the preferred mode of attack.
CONCLUSION
US policies towards the Middle East, especially the unilateral US invasion of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian issue, will strengthen support for Islamism, Islamist political parties and terrorist groups. US's skewed foreign policy will continue to pose a significant terrorist threat to Western interests both at home and overseas. In many countries, Islamism will move from the periphery to the center, making it difficult for many governments to openly support the US-led "war against terrorism." With support for Islamism rising, Islamists will campaign either politically or violently or both in Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other emerging democracies. In addition to well-organized groups, individual terrorists will mount operations, similar to the shooting at the El Al counter at the Los Angeles Airport on America's Independence Day 2002. With more news in the media about Islam, the Muslim public will become more aware of Islam. The number of Muslims directly supporting violence will remain very small but there will be more support for a Muslim way of life, especially the implementation of Sharia laws. Furthermore, the need to wage jihad in support of their suffering brethren will rise among politicized and radicalized segments of the Muslims.
If the threat posed by Islamism is to be countered and the life span of Islamist terrorist groups is to be shortened in the long term (10 years), the current Western, especially the US, approach of 95 percent military and five percent ideological will have to be reversed. To reduce the space for the Al Qaeda to survive and grow, the international community must develop a multipronged, multidimensional, multiagency, and multijurisdictional approach against terrorism. Failure to develop a comprehensive long term strategic response will mean, Al Qaeda changing shape, surviving and continuing the fight.
As much as 2002 was, 2003 will be a year of experience and learning both for government law enforcement and intelligence agencies. With the wider acknowledgement that there is no standard textbook for fighting Al Qaeda, it will be a learning process where new structures and institutions will have to be built and shaped to fight a rapidly evolving cunning and ruthless foe, willing to kill and die. To win, governments will have to repeat their successes and build upon their successes.
In its founding charter, Al Qaeda Al Sulbah (The Solid Base) is defined as the "spearhead of Islam" and the "pioneering vanguard of the Islamic movements." The existing and emerging Islamist groups burdened with the Al Qaeda ideology will pose a continuous terrorist threat. Although Al Qaeda as a physical entity will be relegated to history, it has at least partially accomplished its primary role of "showing the way" to other groups, especially the need to go beyond a limited territorial agenda and wage a universal jihad. The momentum Al Qaeda has so successfully unleashed will spawn and sustain a dozen existing and emerging Islamist groups at least in the immediate (1-2 years) and in the mid term (5 years).