He’s on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted list, lives in Afghanistan, and escaped harm after the U.S. bombed an remote camp where he reportedly trained terrorists. Through it all, Afghanistan has refused to consider turning Osama bin Laden him over to American authorities. Now, however, bin Laden’s Afghan hosts are threatened with U.N. sanctions and an aviation embargo after an unusual unanimous vote in the Security Council. Can the U.N.’s demands force Afghanistan to cough up bin Laden?
AT FIRST BLUSH, the public answer was a resounding no. At least that’s what Afghanistan’s Taliban officials were saying out loud. Despite reports that contacts with the U.S. were underway this week, the Taliban continued to deny the existence of any talks on bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 twin bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.N. has given the Taliban one month - until Nov. 14 - to hand him over.
The Taliban, an Islamic radical movement that now controls most of Afghanistan’s territory - is not recognized here at the United Nations. But the regime desperately want to win the legitimacy that U.N. recognition can confer on their harsh rule.
Nonetheless, since the Oct. 15 vote, the Taliban has tried to dispel any notion that they would accept the demand to surrender bin Laden.
The Taliban’s foreign minister, Mullah Mohammed Hassan Akhund, publicly rejected the U.N. ultimatum. “We will never give up Osama at any price,” he said, also criticizing the world body for acting under U.S. pressure and having no authority of its own.
InsertArt(1206505)Taliban leaders maintain that they have found no “proof” that bin Laden was involved in the embassy bombings. There is also deep sympathy for bin Laden, the millionaire Saudi exile who first went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to help repel the Soviet invasion. Today, bin Laden is thought to be based in Jalalabad, where U.S. officials alleged he is a major underwriter of the Taliban.
CONTACTS CONTINUE
Yet Taliban meetings with United Nations and U.S. officials have been taking place. And U.N. sanctions already appear to offer some hope in jump-starting a solution.
There is a precedent. Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, after seven years of Security Council demands to extradite those suspected of planting the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, this year handed over two Libyans suspects to an international court in The Netherlands.
Few here doubt that some similar special arrangement and face-saving device will have to be negotiated with the Taliban, as well.
One offer by Taliban to the United States to solve the “Osama problem” centers on creating a three-judge panel of Islamic scholars who would decide on bin Laden’s guilt or innocence, after weighing the evidence.
In an interview, the Taliban’s U.N. ambassador-designate, Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, outlined how it could work: one judge would be from Afghanistan, one from Saudi Arabia and the third chosen by the United States from among the 50 plus members of the Organization of Islamic Conference. Members range from Egypt and Indonesia to Nigeria and Iran.
“It will be a big public opinion problem for the Taliban (at home) if they solve the problem non-religiously according to the Security Council demand,” Mujahid said. “It’s an Islamic issue and the scholars’ decision would be acceptable to their people.”
The U.S. doesn’t particularly buy the idea that the Taliban, one of the world’s most notoriously repressive regimes, is worried about public opinion. Indeed, the political viability of such an arrangement would be very difficult for any U.S. president to swallow. For that and other reasons, officials say, the Islamic solution doesn’t appear likely to be the final word in this regard.
CLIPPING THEIR WINGS
While Afghanistan’s war ruined economy has left the U.N. without much leverage, the threat of U.N. aviation sanctions is being taken very seriously in the Afghan capital, Kabul. The sanctions would ban flights of its national airline, Ariana, which operates between the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan and represents a vital link to the outside world for the Taliban.
Taliban officials told MSNBC that the airline is used largely to transport medical supplies, wounded Afghanis and Afghan workers visiting their families at home.
With U.N. sanctions, any humanitarian exemptions usually require advance approval, which can be problematic in time of emergency, the Taliban officials said.
“If we have 20-30 wounded overnight and we want to fly them out of the country to Dubai, what will we have to do? Call or write the U.N. for permission?” one official asked.
Regardless, issues beyond the U.N.’s demand for bin Laden surrender are also threatening to complicate a quick trial. Neither the U.N. nor U.S. appear to have many carrots to offer Taliban to win them over.
BEYOND BIN LADEN
Even if a face-saving formula for handing over bin Laden is reached, there’s no guarantee that more U.N. sanctions won’t be slapped on Afghanistan in the future.
The United Nations and activist groups are growing increasingly vocal about the human rights situation in Afghanistan, both on and off the battlefield, including what is being called the “gender apartheid” of women and girls, who are largely banned from work and school.
Canada, currently a member of the Security Council, said it wants to press for a new resolution dealing with Afghanistan’s “appalling human rights situation,” linking the current U.N. sanctions to progress on human rights issues.
Meanwhile, even Security Council members Russia and China are not on the Taliban’s side. Instead they are concerned about the movement’s possible fomenting of Islamic fundamentalism in their backyards.
The Taliban, branded an outlaw by the international community and even with few friends at the United Nations, appears to be gambling that time is on its side and that the U.N. eventually would accept its rule by virtue of its battlefield gains. (It currently controls some 90 percent of Afghanistan)
But now, with U.N. aviation and financial sanctions threatening to soon cut into its already limited international lifeline, and an apparent reversal in neighboring Pakistan’s critical support, that may no longer be the case.
In addition, even the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, who was considered quite impartial-recently bowed out in disgust, citing lack of political will to make peace
The clock for the U.N. sanctions began ticking Oct. 15 with a deadline of Nov. 14 for bin Laden’s surrender. Unless Taliban moves with alacrity, they are not likely to beat the clock. And further U.N. sanctions could also be on the horizon.
Linda Fasulo covers the United Nations for MSNBC and NBC News.