New York Times
The Russian attachment to land is so deep and visceral that efforts to sell off decaying collective farms unsettle even those who understand that the country would work far better with a private farming system. Many of the huge communal farms lie fallow, bankrupt remnants of a corrupt and clumsy system that was brutally engineered by Stalin more than 70 years ago. Now President Vladimir Putin is pushing through important legislation that will allow the sale of farmland to Russian citizens or private companies. Without such basic land reform, Russian agriculture will remain mired in its Soviet lethargy.
Mr. Putin's new law will undoubtedly create a maze of rules and a tangle of bureaucratic intrigues in the various outlying districts where powerful governors will control future property sales. But when the Russian legislature finally approves it, as expected, billions of acres will finally become available to Russian buyers. ...
There have always been hazards to land reform in Russia, and Mr. Putin's is no exception. Many workers who remain on the collectives are old, feeble or simply needy. Mr. Putin's farmland policies will fare better if government agents carrying out the sales are mindful of the welfare of such workers. There is also concern that all this rich farmland will foster more corruption or entice new oligarchs like those who bought up Russia's other riches as the economy changed a decade ago.
Mr. Putin will have to watch for such lapses. Moreover, he may have been listening to these complaints in recent weeks. He endorsed amendments to the law that will bar foreigners from purchasing Russian farms and authorize local districts to limit the size of tracts to be sold to any one owner. As the market matures, those restrictions should fall away, but they can be excused for now as the political give necessary to get one of the most important economic reforms since the end of the Soviet state.
Washington Times
When Egyptian immigrant Heshem Mohamed Hadayet approached the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport on the afternoon of July 4, he was clearly bent on murdering as many people as possible. Hadayet, who was armed with two guns and a knife, opened fire on a group of people lined up at the counter, killing two people and wounding seven others before being slain himself by an El Al security officer.
Shortly after the attack, FBI officials made a series of statements that seemed to downplay the possibility that Hadayet's bloody rampage could have had anything to do with terrorism. ...
It would certainly appear that Hadayet's loathing for Israel was an important motivating factor in his decision to target El Al. Hadayet "had hate for Israel, for sure," Abdul Zahab, a native of Syria who worked for Hadayet's limousine service, told The New York Times. ...
But none of this is inconsistent with the reality that, based on the information made public thus far, Hadayet was also a terrorist, not just a thug who enjoyed preying upon people who looked or acted differently from him. The U.S. Code defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets." Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has noted that unless law-enforcement authorities come up with evidence that the attack was a bungled robbery or an act of revenge by a fired employee, the El Al attack "must be assumed to have been an act of terrorism." ...
The accurate definition of a crime is no mere semantic exercise. It can have critical implications that could help prevent future attacks. That's something law enforcement will need to keep in mind as it goes forward with the El Al probe.
San Diego Union-Tribune
The U.N.'s new report on human development in Arab nations pulls no punches. Most of the nearly 300 million people living in 22 Arab nations are living backward lives, and even oil money has not helped to raise standards of living.
This is the U.N.'s first development report devoted to a single region, and its conclusions are sobering. Arab Muslim society, from the Maghreb to the Persian Gulf, is holding people back because of repressive policies toward political freedom, gender equality, education and economic development.
The Arab population is expected to grow by half in a generation, making things worse.
The report, released last week, is remarkably timely. Planned more than a year ago under the aegis of Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, a Jordanian who is director of the U.N. Development Program's Arab regional bureau, the idea was to examine why Arab progress lagged behind that of other areas. ...
The Arab "deficits" are primarily in three areas: freedom, the empowerment of women and education. As deficits go, that's about as bad as it gets.
The report calls for rebuilding Arab society on the basis of human rights and freedoms; the empowerment of Arab women; the consolidation of knowledge acquisition and its effective utilization. This means free elections, a freer press, an independent judiciary, access to the Internet and translation of more works from outside the Arab world. ...
Whether the U.N. report has any effect depends largely on Arab political will. For a generation, many Arab states have been locked in a struggle between people who eagerly seek modernization and fundamentalist Muslims who would gladly return to the time of the Caliph Mamoun and who draw strength from the Mideast conflict. Progress will come only if the fundamentalists are defeated.
And they can be. The report refers to progress in moderate nations such as Morocco and Bahrain and the achievements of Arab women's groups. It speaks of the possibility that occupation of Arab lands will end, allowing transfer of Arab resources from arms and armies into productive activities.
In light of Sept. 11, this U.N. report has interest for us all.
Boston Globe
The assassination Saturday in Kabul of a minister in President Hamid Karzai's government, no less than the lethal strafing of Afghan villagers by U.S. aircraft, illuminates America's need to help Afghans rebuild their nation.
It was a calamitous error for the U.S. military to use an AC-130 aerial gunship to attack four villages in Oruzgan province last week, killing dozens of women and children and wounding more than a hundred. Unless President Bush prohibits similar attacks in the future, his phoned apologies to President Hamid Karzai will be remembered as little more than a futile expression of regret from a leader who did not know how to preserve his battlefield victories. ...
Since nobody has claimed credit for the daytime assassination of Karzai's public works minister, Haji Abdul Qadir, the murder is unlikely to be part of a blood feud. It is more likely the work of forces intent on destabilizing Karzai's government.
To help that government survive and prosper, Bush should drop his administration's foolish opposition to expansion of the international security force -- now composed of Turkish troops -- that is currently confined to Kabul. If Bush wants to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of international terrorists, he must commit U.S. power and prestige to nation-building in that country. Aid money must be funneled directly to the central government for the rebuilding of roads, bridges, canals, and irrigation systems. It will be much easier and less expensive to help rebuild Afghanistan than to go on chasing Taliban bandits through the mountains for years to come.
Chicago Tribune
The tragic attack by American warplanes on a wedding party in southern Afghanistan last week took the lives of about 40 civilians -- and shattered any illusions, if there were any, that the U.S. goal to track down and obliterate whatever remains of the Taliban and al Qaida would be achieved easily or quickly. Afghanistan's treacherous terrain and the elusiveness of the enemy rule out any quick victory and, unfortunately, any guarantees that civilians will never be killed or injured.
President Bush expressed his regrets to his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai following the incident, which also injured about 140 other people, offered medical assistance to evacuate the injured and promised a full investigation. Some members of Congress have proposed setting up a fund to compensate families of the victims. Though the White House, fearing an avalanche of claims for damages to life and property in Afghanistan and elsewhere has not endorsed the idea, it ought to do so if an investigation proves U.S. negligence or error. If U.S. bombs killed innocent civilians, including children, the United States must accept responsibility. ...
Apologies, compensation and politics aside, however, the United States must not falter in its mission to wipe out any Taliban or al Qaida elements left in Afghanistan. The accidental bombing made clear that goal has yet to be accomplished. Oruzgan province, where the bombing took place, is the home of Karzai and the fugitive Taliban Leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and a hotbed of al Qaida diehards.
There is still more to be learned about this incident. ...
The investigation, including final figures of dead and injured, has not been completed. But the tragedy confirms the warning President Bush made when the Afghan campaign began nine months ago: This will not be an easy or bloodless war, but one that America -- as a matter of national survival -- must win.
New York Newsday
The assassination Saturday of Afghan Vice President Abdul Qadir has shaken the fledgling government of President Hamid Karzai and raised serious questions about what role the United States should play in ensuring its stability. It's imperative that Washington rethink its reluctance to participate in the international peacekeeping force charged with maintaining security in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where the slaying took place.
In this critical period of transition, it may be necessary to bolster the thin ranks of 5,000 peacekeepers from 19 nations with seasoned U.S. troops to fend off future attacks on key government officials, even as the top U.S. mission remains the hunt for remnants of al Qaida.
As urgent as the stiffening of security measures is a prompt resolution of the investigation into Qadir's slaying. If al Qaida is found to be behind the assassination -- a possibility, but not the only one -- then the Karzai government faces a danger best countered with greater military protection.
But if Qadir was the victim of a revenge plot in a blood feud or in retaliation for his part in the drug trade, then Karzai faces knotty internal problems for which increased security is a lesser solution. ...
The biggest obstacle to unifying Afghanistan into a functioning nation is the resistance of ethnic warlords to granting loyalty to a central national authority -- especially if the Kabul government bows to Western pressure and tries to suppress the opium trade, the only certain source of income for Afghanistan. This is a problem that will require immense political skill, patience -- and luck.
Washington Post
It is not clear who killed Abdul Qadir, one of Afghanistan's vice presidents, but the message from Saturday's assassination is obvious enough. Afghanistan's post-Taliban political order remains fragile; it is threatened by all the forces that may lie behind the killing: ethnic tensions, rivalries between the provinces and the center, the opium trade. The United States and its allies need to recognize that, without stronger efforts to stand behind Hamid Karzai's interim government, the opportunity to stabilize Afghanistan will be fumbled. ...
In January President Bush promised to "help the new Afghan government provide the security that is the foundation for peace." But his administration has no apparent plan to deliver on this promise in the foreseeable future. It has resisted expanding the peacekeeping force beyond the capital, despite requests from Mr. Karzai and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It is training a new Afghan army, but this is a long-term project: The United States aims to prepare 14,400 troops over the next 18 months. By contrast, there are an estimated 75,000 soldiers and another 100,000 militiamen working for local commanders in Afghanistan. It will be years at this rate before the central government has the clout to impose its will upon local warlords.
Mr. Bush has vowed not to abandon Afghanistan; he has even likened his ambitions for reconstruction to the Marshall Plan. But that plan involved funneling nearly $100 billion, in today's dollars, into Europe; the United States this year has pledged just $296 million for Afghanistan. Even the administration's sympathizers are stressing the need to ramp up U.S. efforts. "I fear that we may see this government and our efforts unwind here if we don't make the appropriate investment of men and effort and resources," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) on Sunday. "If this goes backward, this will be a huge defeat for us symbolically in that region ... (and for) confidence in Americans all over the world. We cannot allow this to go down."
San Antonio Express-News
The Group of 8 recently approved what could be the most important anti-terrorism measure of all: strengthening cooperative efforts with Russia to secure and neutralize nuclear materials.
At its recent meeting in Canada, the group of industrialized nations that includes the United States, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United Kingdom pledged to spend $20 billion over the next decade.
Half will come from the United States and half from the other members to help Russia and other former Soviet states dispose of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Even that amount may not be enough. Sam Nunn, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Eugene Habiger, a retired four-star general who ran the nuclear anti-terror program for the Energy Department (and now heads the San Antonio Water System), noted recently that some 60 percent of nuclear material in Russia is not adequately protected. They warn that, at the current rate, it will take years to identify and secure the material. ...
"The most likely, most immediate, most potentially devastating threat America faces is the threat of nuclear terrorism," Nunn and Habiger wrote in the Washington Post not long ago.
It's time to do what it takes to confront that threat. This is a good start in the effort to keep such weapons out of the hands of terrorists.
Portland Press Herald
It's all about tradition . . . the tennis whites, the curtsy, the grass courts.
If there's one tradition at Wimbledon that merits dropping, though, it's the pay disparity for men and women.
At both the Paris Open and Wimbledon, the men's winner earns far more than the women's champion. This year, the total purse at Wimbledon awarded nearly $1 million more to the men than to women.
We think it's time women got paid what they're worth for winning the big events. After all, it's women's tennis that holds the public spellbound. Women play the best matches, provide the marquee draws and are offered the big endorsements.
Wimbledon provides the best evidence. Casual fans can name the women's finalists (Serena and Venus Williams), but only real enthusiasts can name the men (Leyton Hewitt and David Nalbandian).
At one point, the argument could have been made that the men's game was worth more to tournament organizers, sponsors and television broadcasters. That simply doesn't hold true today. Even former tennis pro John McEnroe, who once railed about the inferiority of the women's game, has penned op-ed pieces in support of equal pay.
Keep the curtsy, Wimbledon, but ditch lower pay for women.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
