New York Times
When Communism collapsed in Moscow a decade ago, the Russian economy was in a stupor. It is only now springing back to life. The revival is good for Russia and its new friends in the West, but it will not be sustained unless President Vladimir Putin makes further reforms.
Russia's long-declining fortunes established a dubious benchmark not long ago when economists reported that the country ranked just above Guatemala in per capita income. The hardships were painful for millions of Russians, who thought the demise of Soviet rule would bring prosperity to a land long stunted by misgovernance. Now they can begin to hope again. Even with oil prices drifting downward, the Russian economy looks likely to expand by more than 3 percent this year. ...
The government must put in effect full-disclosure rules in Moscow's financial markets and end its tacit tolerance of shady insider deals. It should also lay the foundations for a national banking system. Further strengthening the rule of law will save companies security and insurance costs. A substantial corporate tax reform will make doing business easier, as well as recouping some of the proceeds lost in the privatizations. Rather than seeking to block the westward overtures of its Baltic neighbors, Russia should reach out to them as a bridge to Western Europe's economies, as Hong Kong and Taiwan are for China.
If Russia can achieve these changes quickly, it will be well on its way to Mr. Putin's goal of membership in the World Trade Organization and repayment of its foreign debts. But that is not enough. The Russian economy still relies too much on natural resources and heavy manufacturing, much of which supplied military hardware for the Cold War. Russia has become a formidable competitor in energy markets, but dependence on commodities makes the economy, and the government, too vulnerable to fluctuations in prices. A shift to more modern, high-technology manufacturing and services would be the true guarantor of Russia's economic future.
Des Moines Register
There's a 12-year-old boy somewhere in the United States of America who dreams of one day becoming a leader. He admires Martin Luther King Jr. and Colin Powell. The boy has opportunity, education and the freedom to fulfill the dream.
There is another 12-year-old boy 8,000 miles away. He dreams of one day being a leader. His hero is Osama bin Laden. This boy has no freedoms, is smothered by dogma and sheltered from the world. But it's just as likely this second boy will accomplish his goal.
The second boy has dedicated his life to the al Qaida and hating America. His home is (or was) a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, known by locals as "Osama school." He lives with other boys who hold similar aspirations. His food and shelter depend on his dedication to the cause. It is here he learns the value of dying for his beliefs.
As the war on terrorism marches forward, Americans are learning more about these training camps. One al Qaida recruiting technique has now become a common story in the United States. It goes like this: The terrorists left a young recruit in a room alone and told him simply to wait until someone came for him. After three days, a man returned to fetch him, only to tell the youngster he had failed because he'd looked out the windows repeatedly. The moral of the story? Al Qaida wants patient and obedient recruits. ...
There may be fine lines between fundamentalist schools, those espousing anti-American propaganda and those inciting students to kill Americans. But they all risk creating generations of automated, semi-educated fanatics. Many of those advisers closest to bin Laden are graduates of terrorist schools.
Images of thousands of young men unified in hating America are unsettling. And we can't help but wonder if the war against terrorism can ever be won as long as schools of hate offer Middle Eastern youth the only available doorway to opportunity.
Houston Chronicle
For Westerners, the all-enveloping burqa was the symbol for Taliban cruelty and women's oppression in Afghanistan. Now that many parts of the country have been freed from Taliban tyranny, many women continue to wear the sack-like garment, partly out of continued fear, partly out of tradition and partly in the realization that what they wear is the least of their burdens in a new Afghanistan.
Immediate concerns, like feeding hungry children, stand in the way for now of long-term issues, like gaining a stake in whatever ruling post-Taliban government ascends to power. However, women's place at the table should be among those issues at the forefront of the Bush administration's attentions in the current power scramble.
The Northern Alliance, which now controls much of Afghanistan, has agreed to attend a U.N.-brokered power-sharing conference of Afghan factions in Germany, due to begin Monday. According to news reports, women are to be included in the talks, which are aimed at establishing a new, broad-based, multiethnic government to replace the Taliban. But it is anyone's guess how well any of the various factions now jockeying for control of Afghanistan will take to real power-sharing with long-suffering women. Nothing in that war-torn land is uncomplicated, and neither will be creating a substantial role for women. ...
The Bush administration is pressing the Northern Alliance, itself no paragon of human rights virtue, to let the United Nations put together a broad coalition government for the country. But the United States and its allies are not in a position to dictate unilaterally who governs Afghanistan. Still, whatever inducements this country might offer to Afghanistan to include women in its nascent government, especially at the local level where power has traditionally gravitated in that nation, will only help give that government the international credibility and internal stability ordinary Afghans deserve after more than two decades of war.
Los Angeles Times
With the Taliban on the run, newspapers and television are beginning to bring images of freedom from Afghanistan. The faces of Afghan women, gazing squarely at the camera, their mandatory head-to-toe shrouds finally cast aside; children playing soccer like kids everywhere, and in cities where the Taliban has fled, laughter and celebration.
If Cicero was right 2,000 years ago when he observed that "freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered," then the fangs of many Afghan women are now especially sharp. Where women once studied and worked alongside men, the Taliban rendered them mute and invisible, forbidden to work, barred from schools and beaten for allowing an ankle to show from beneath their burqas.
As Taliban troops escape to the mountains, more turmoil and violence will surely follow in their wake. Nonetheless, now is one of those once-in-a-generation moments when freedom has a face, thousands of women's faces, in fact, appearing in the streets, bared to the winter sun, singing, laughing. And now what it means to be liberated from oppression, whether imposed by ideology or religion or just brute force, is no longer a dry civics lesson but a real, live show in our living rooms every evening, one that American schoolchildren shouldn't miss.
Washington Times
Children of the stones. That's what reporters call rock-throwing Palestinians on al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic television station. In an atmosphere of distrust and hate, al Jazeera can be counted on to throw gasoline on the fire. Since Sept. 11, the coverage of the attacks and America's response has been almost uniformly positive -- for the Taliban and other Islamist radicals, that is. In a region of the world where literacy is low and emotions run high, the impact of broadcast news is even greater than it is here; the voice of al Jazeera is something to be reckoned with.
Al Jazeera is probably the widest-viewed television station in the Middle East. Its reporters take pride in their coverage, which would make the most biased U.S. broadcaster blush. When we hear diplomats wondering if American plans will pass muster on the "Pakistani street," or "the Afghan street," it's the radicals displayed constantly on al Jazeera coverage who they mean. And what coverage it is. According to a recent New York Times article by Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins, al Jazeera's coverage of Sept. 11 and our war against terrorism have been entirely from the Taliban point of view. According to al Jazeera, our war is not a war against terror, but against what America "calls terror."
For generations, many Palestinians and radical Islamists across the Middle East have been schooled from childhood on the evils done against Islam by America and Israel. Where the schools leave off, the al Qaidas of the world and al Jazeera take over. We now have to deal with five or six terrorist-sponsoring nations in our war against the global terrorist network. Because the terrorists are motivated by religious fervor, making a lasting peace with them -- even after they are thoroughly defeated -- may not be possible unless the religious schools and figures of authority begin to preach peace instead of hatred.
In this new war, a peace with the Islamist radicals can also be made only through religious channels. But even after that, the voice of al Jazeera may not change. The clear answer is a "Voice of America" in the region. Broadcast in Arabic, Pashtun and whatever other languages, the message of prosperity, progress and peace must be made more familiar to the people than the voices of violence and hate. The president should make an American voice -- on television and radio -- a constant feature of life in the Middle East.
(Compiled by United Press International)
