Terrorist Attack on Americans (last updated May 12, 2004) (back to top)
What happened to Admiral Fitzwallace and Donna seems to be based on an attack that occurred in the Gaza Strip on October 15, 2003. A bomb detonated under a car that was part of a diplomatic motorcade, killing three Americans and wounding another. The three Americans killed - John Branchizio, Mark Parson and John Linde Jr. - were reportedly in the Gaza Strip to interview Palestinians for Fulbright scholarships to study or teach in the United States.
The United States did not take military action at the time, but did condemn the attacks and the Palestinian authorities' failure to control terrorist attacks. President George W. Bush said in a statement that "the failure to create effective Palestinian security forces dedicated to fighting terror continues to cost lives. There must be an empowered prime minister who controls all Palestinian security forces, reforms that continue to be blocked by Yasser Arafat. The failure to undertake these reforms and dismantle the terrorist organizations constitutes the greatest obstacle to achieving the Palestinian people's dream of statehood."
As of February 2004, the attack remained under investigation by Palestinian authorities.
Sources: President George W. Bush's statement on the October 15, 2003 attack on four Americans in the Gaza Strip is on-line here and Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement is on-line here.
The Gaza Strip (last updated May 12, 2004) (back to top)
The Gaza Strip is one of the territories that Israel occupied during the 1967 War and that Israel continues to occupy today, though it has transferred some responsibilities for civil government to the Palestinian Authority. In April 2004, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced a plan to remove all Israeli settlements from Gaza as a step to revive progress along the "roadmap" that was first proposed in April 2003, but Sharon's plan has faced opposition from his own party.
A CIA map of the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza Strip borders the Mediterranean Sea between Egypt and Israel and covers an area about twice the size of Washington D.C. According to a U.S. Department of State report released in February 2004, it has a population of about 1.4 million people, not including about 8,000 Israeli settlers. The economy is considered underdeveloped and has been adversely affected by Israeli curfews, closures, and military actions.
Sources on the Gaza Strip: The United States Department of State's February 2004 human rights report on Israel and the occupied territories such as the Gaza Strip is on-line here. The CIA's World Factbook entry on the Gaza Strip is on-line here.
The Israeli-Palestinians Conflict and the Roadmap (last updated September 16, 2003) (back to top)
This episode brings to home the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
Despite an ambitious proposal made in part by the United States, the intifada that began in September 2000 continues today and has claimed thousands of lives since then.
The most recent effort was a "roadmap" that was proposed in April 2003 by the United Nations, United States, Russian Federation and European Union and that sought the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005. By September 2003, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Terje Roed-Larsen reported that implementation of the proposed "roadmap" had not achieved any success because initial steps were too slow and because neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians dealt sufficiently with the core problems of terrorism by the Palestinians and occupation of Palestinian territory by the Israelis.
Recently, in April 2004, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed to remove all Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip as a step to revive progress along the "roadmap" but Sharon's plan has faced opposition from his own party.
The Current Intifada Began in September 2000
In September 2000, the current new wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence broke out with an intifada that virtually ended the entire peace process begun in the early 1990s. Events began with the September 28, 2000 visit of Israeli Parliament member Ariel Sharon (now the country's prime minister) to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Palestinians protested the visit the next day, and Israeli police reacted with violence to disperse the demonstrations, killing four and injuring hundreds.
Violence then continued and escalated through the end of 2000 and into 2001, resulting in hundreds of deaths on both sides, though mostly Palestinians. Amnesty International has reported at least 300 Palestinians were killed in the first three months of the intifada and that more than 570 Palestinians and more than 150 Israelis (including 150 Palestinian and 30 Israeli children) were killed during its first year.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee, organized by the United States and chaired by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, later reported in April 2001 that there was no evidence that Sharon's visit had been anything more than "an internal political act," or that the Palestinians had any deliberate plan to incite violence. On the other hand, the committee found, the violence resulted because "each side assumed the worst about the other and acted accordingly."
The Committee had plenty of criticism for both sides. It criticized Israel's use of military force, noting that Israel needed to differentiate better between terrorism and protests, and noting that two-thirds of the alleged "attacks" by Palestinians against Israelis did not involve firearms or explosives. The Committee also criticizes Israel's settlement policy for instigating Palestinian ire. At the same time, the Committee found that the PLO needed to make more efforts to enforce a complete stop of violence and prevent anti-Israeli terrorism.
Tensions and the death toll on both Israeli and Palestinian sides increased over the course of 2001, and the Israel government began taking steps directly against Yasir Arafat in 2002. In December 2001, the Israeli government publicly called Arafat an enemy and said he had become irrelevant due to his inability to stop the actions of groups such as Hamas. In March 2002, the Israeli government moved to contain Arafat within his Ramallah headquarters or to force his exile, and began extensive military operations in the occupied territories.
According to UN Special Coordinator Roed-Larsen, 2,808 Palestinians and 830 Israelis have died as a result of the current conflict from September 2000 to September 2003.
The United States has long supported Israel, but has also long criticized Israel's settlement policy as too provocative. Bush administration officials have said that they do not support Israel's efforts to eliminate or exile Yasser Arafat and that they are still committed to the "roadmap." "The roadmap is still there," President George W. Bush said during a Sept. 10, 2003 photo opportunity. "The fundamental question is whether or not peace, peaceful people, will be on the road."
Some Historical Background and Context
Territory that has been dominated by different empires for centuries, the land now known as Israel was previously known as Palestine and was controlled by the Ottoman Empire from the 1600s to the 20th century. Britain then controlled the land as a mandate from 1917 to 1948, at which time the state of Israel was created out of a United Nations partition plan supported by the United States.
From 1948 into the 1970s, Israel fought several wars with its Arab neighbors. However, Israel's decisive military victory in the 1967 war (known as the Six Days War) and its success in repelling a 1973 attack by Egypt and Syria -- as well as the 1979 Camp David accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt - have moved the conflict more or less from the military arena to the political. Instead, direct conflict has moved largely to terrorist attacks and internal fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Israel began establishing or renewing diplomatic relations with Arab states after the 1993 agreement with the Palestinians, and signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994.
Israel itself has seen its concerns fluctuate between peace and security, as shown somewhat by the shifts in power between the Labor Party and the Likud Party. The Labor Party led by Yitzhak Rabin won national elections in 1992, Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu won in May 1996, and Labor took power again with Ehud Barak in 1999. Barak himself was replaced by Ariel Sharon in February 2001. Labor is generally more secular and favors giving land for peace to the Palestinians; Likud is more religious and conservative, and has greater concerns about security.
Israel has historically received strong support from the United States, beginning first with the United States' support for the very creation of a Jewish state in 1948. It bought about $8 billion worth of military equipment from the United States from FY 1991 to 2000, though Saudi Arabia and Egypt both bought more equipment over the same period. For more on arms sales, go here.
For a timeline and for more on developments in Israel and the Palestinians, go here.
Sources: A Sept. 15, 2003 press release about Terje Roed-Larsen's report to the UN Security Council is on-line here. The roadmap proposed on April 30, 2003 by the "quartet" of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia is on-line here and here. Amnesty International's report on the first year of the intifada is on-line here. Report of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee, April 30, 2001, on-line here.
Prescription Drugs and Canada (last updated May 12, 2004) (back to top)
As suggested by this episode, Minnesota has indeed set up a website, www.minnesotarxconnect.com, that helps its citizens purchase prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reportedly questioned the safety of the program, but Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has asked the federal government to work with the state to test its approach.
Federal law (specifically 21 USC 384) currently allows only pharmacists and wholesalers to import prescription drugs, among other things, into the United States. Individuals are not allowed to import prescription drugs directly. Federal law also bans the importation of any prescription drug that is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
This law makes it harder for people in the United States to take advantage of the lower prescription-drug costs available in Canada, where the price of many prescription drugs is controlled by the Canadian government's Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. Prescription drugs now make up a large and growing percentage of all U.S. health expenditures, having grown from about 5 percent of all such costs in 1990 to about 10 percent in 2001.
Some Measures on Drug Importation
The federal government has considered proposals to allow more drug importation, but such efforts have not been successful as of yet.
In July 2003, the House of Representatives did pass a measure by 243-186 that would have allowed "qualifying individuals" to import prescription drugs, but the measure has not made it through the Senate and did not become law. In passing the measure, the House found that "Americans unjustly pay up to 1000 percent more to fill their prescriptions than consumers in other countries," and that "allowing and structuring the importation of prescription drugs ensures access to affordable drugs, thus providing a level of safety to American consumers they do not currently enjoy."
The Medicare changes enacted in December 2003 help Medicare beneficiaries save money on their annual prescription-drug costs, but do not ensure lower prices overall or allow more importation from countries with lower drug costs. However, the plan did call for the creation of a task force to examine drug importation; this task force was created by the Department of Health and Human Services in February 2004 and is to complete a study by December 2004.
Changes to Medicare
Under the new plan enacted in December 2003, Medicare recipients will be able to choose prescription-drug plans that will cover prescription drugs based on the amount they spend in a year: Medicare will cover 75% of annual drug costs between $250 and $2,250 in drug spending and will cover about 95% of the costs above $3,600. Medicare recipients can also get drug-discount cards that can reduce the cost of covered prescription drugs.
Seniors with annual prescription-drug costs less than $810 a year probably will not save much money, if any. Seniors who would otherwise spend $2,250 in prescription-drug costs will save around 50%, but seniors who would otherwise spend $5,120 will save about 20 percent.
The following graphs show how much a senior would pay and save on annual drug costs under the new prescription-drug plan, assuming that the annual premium will be about $420 ($35 a month) but not taking into account the savings offered by the new drug discount cards.
Some have criticized the plan for not providing more assistance, for not covering all prescription drugs, and for not taking steps to ensure lower prices overall.
Sources: Minnesota's new prescription-drug importation program is on-line here. The Department of Health and Human Services' February 26, 2004 press release announcing the creation of a new task force is on-line here. A Senate hearing on November 20, 2003 on prescription drug importation is on-line here. The U.S. Department of Health has a Dec. 8, 2003 analysis of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 on-line here. Data on prescription-drug expenditures is from the National Center for Health Statistics' Health, United States, 2003 report, available on-line here. The Medicare Rights Center is on-line here and is one of many groups with information about the new plan.
Afghanistan and Drugs (last updated March 18, 2003) (back to top)
A poor country with little industry, Afghanistan became the world's largest opium and heroin producer in the late 1990s and remains so today, even with the change in regimes.
Opium cultivation and production did drop dramatically from 2000 to 2001 due to a ban imposed by the Taliban in July 2000, but the Taliban enforced this ban through methods considered draconian and unsustainable by the United States. The ban also did little to halt drug trafficking, as the Taliban did not halt the distribution of opium stockpiled from previous harvests, and the ban probably benefited the Taliban through the taxes on the opium that could be sold at a higher price due to the reduced supply.
Now led by Hamid Karzai, the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan Government again banned the cultivation, processing and trafficking of opiates in January 2002 and has committed to developing alternative livelihoods for the country's opium farmers. Even so, opium poppy cultivation in 2002 again increased to levels near that of the early 1990s and the country is again the world's largest opium producer.
Even before the events of late 2001, Afghanistan had known political chaos and violence for almost three decades, revolving around a decade-long Soviet invasion that ended in 1989 and left the country to even more years of civil war and tribal warfare. In 1996, the Taliban took control of the country and implemented a government based on an extreme form of Islamic interpretation. The Taliban was sanctioned by the international community for its harboring of terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden even before the September 11 attacks, and it was finally driven out of power in November 2001.
Slightly smaller than Texas in terms of land size, Afghanistan is located in the Near East at the crossroads between the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Central Asia. The country is largely Muslim (85 percent Sunni Muslim, 15 percent Shi'a) and has long been divided amongst ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Pashtun ethnic group (about 38 percent of the population).
History
Afghanistan has had a troubled time since the 1970s and especially since it was caught up in Cold War politics. For the past two decades, it has had the distinction of producing the world's largest-ever single refugee caseload each year. About a third of the country's population fled during the Soviet invasion, and though millions have returned since then, about 2.6 million refugees remained in exile in early 2000.
The 40-year reign of Mohammad Zahir Shah, who took the throne as king when he was 19 years old after the assassination of his father, ended in 1973, when his cousin took power and established a short-lived republic. King Shah went to exile in Italy, staying there for the next 29 years until he finally returned in April 2002 to help create a new government for Afghanistan.
The new republic that replaced King Shah lasted only a few years before it was itself overthrown in 1978, this time by a communist party. The Soviet Union then sent troops into Afghanistan in December 1979 to support the communist regime, thus beginning a decade-long struggle which ultimately emboldened the resistance (supported and trained by the United States and other countries) and sent about a third of the population fleeing the country as refugees. Negotiations to end the war culminated in the 1988 Geneva Accords, and the last Soviet troops withdrew in February 1989. The country then soon broke down into tribal warfare, which lasted for years and left a power vacuum that the Taliban filled in 1996.
The Taliban
The Taliban, which literally means "religious students" and which refers to the educational background of the movement's leaders, controlled about 90 percent of the country at its peak. Taliban leadership, many of whom received training to fight against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, adhered to the Hanafi school of Sunii Islam and attended Deobandi-influenced seminaries in Pakistan; the Deobandi school seeks to purify Islam by discarding supposedly un-Islamic accretions to the faith and re-emphasizing the models established in the Koran and the customary practices of the Prophet Mohammed. The Taliban was ruled by Mullah Omar, Head of State and Commander of the Faithful, and a ruling council known as the Shura.
The Taliban emerged as a power in 1994 and, with Pakistan's help, took the capital city of Kabul in September 1996. Overcoming the traditional segmentation of the various Pashtun tribes by emphasizing Islamism and targeting non-Pashtun ethnicities, the Taliban then imposed a strict list of regulations on the Afghan people and enforces these regulations through a religious police force under the control of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice and through Islamic courts.
These restrictions had their greatest impact on women. Upon taking power in 1996, the Taliban immediately forbade girls to go to school and banned women from working outside the home, which had far-reaching impacts on health care services and education; some of these restrictions were reportedly eased in 1999. The Taliban also imposed rigid lifestyle restrictions on women, restricting them to their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative and requiring them to wear a burqa (a garment covering the body from head to foot with a small, lace-covered opening for the eyes) or risk a beating.
The Taliban also banned music, movies and television on religious grounds. In 1998, the Taliban prohibited television sets and satellite dishes in order to enforce the prohibition, though this regulation was reportedly not strictly enforced. Regulations covered many aspects of daily life, including the length of a man's beard. According to Taliban regulations, men must have beards extending longer than would a fist clamped at the base of his chin or face beatings or imprisonment for 10 days.
The United Nations condemned the Taliban government several times, beginning shortly after it came to power. In particular, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions and a military embargo against the country once the Taliban began supporting and harboring terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization. During the Taliban's rule, the United Nations continued to recognize the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the anti-Taliban movement.
Isolated from the international community, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was just one of a handful of conservative Islamist states and was recognized by only three countries: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And even though Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was ruled by a fundamentalist Islamist government, there were some crucial distinctions between it and its neighbor, Iran. While both countries are fundamentalist Muslim, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was largely Sunni Muslim and entirely under religious rule, whereas Iran is largely Shia Muslim and has a secular government that has some independence from the totalitarian religious structure.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the United States moved to attack al-Qaeda forces located in Afghanistan and to drive out the Taliban government that supported them. U.S. and British forces began air strikes in early October 2001, and began ground attacks later that month. By late November, the Taliban had lost control of Afghanistan's major cities to the Northern Alliance forces. In December 2001, Afghan leaders meeting in Germany signed an agreement to establish a broad-based, multi-ethnic, post-Taliban government, beginning with an interim administration headed by Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai and culminating with emergency council meetings chaired by the former king.
Sources: The State Department has collected information on Afghanistan on-line here, and the CIA World Factbook entry on Afghanistan is available on-line here. The State Department's 2002 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report on Afghanistan is on-line here, and the entire report and previous years' reports are collected here. Annual country reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch, Crisis of Impunity: The role of Pakistan, Russia, and Iran in fueling the civil war, available on-line here. Annual reports by the U.S. Department of State on human rights practices and on international religious freedom, available through the department and its archives here. United Nations Security Council resolutions and reports regarding Afghanistan are available here. A U.S. State Department chronology from September to December 2001 covering U.S. activity in Afghanistan is on-line here. An April 11, 2002 special briefing on the rebuilding of Afghanistan is on-line here.
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