Former Ambassador Pamela Hyde Smith Speeches

Defeating Terror, Defending Freedom and Human Rights

by the Ambassador of the United States of America to the Republic of Moldova Pamela Hyde Smith

We today rejoice in the ongoing release from oppression of the Afghan people, who, for more than five years, have been denied every form of internationally accepted human rights.

As the entire free world press is now documenting for all of us every day, the good and noble people of Afghanistan are rejoicing in their escape from the long nightmare of Taliban oppression. Women and girls have been released from the incarceration of the purdah and can now pursue education, health care, and the individual rights that free people everywhere deserve, regardless of religious affiliation.

The attacks of September 11 were an attack on the world. President Bush said it clearly, "Innocent citizens from some 80 nations were attacked and killed, without warning or provocation, in an act that horrified not only every American, but every person of every faith, and every nation that values human life."

The enormity of that tragedy notwithstanding, it is only just and right that the long-oppressed Afghan people should be the first beneficiaries of our international coalition's resolve to eradicate terror everywhere it occurs.

Today, the United States, and the world, are engaged in a comprehensive effort to seek out and destroy al Qaeda, the global network of terror that, based in Afghanistan and protected by the Taliban regime, has destroyed the lives of millions of Afghans through years of daily persecution, torture, and repression.

Despite repeated warnings, the Taliban have continued to support and to shelter Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network of killers. Al Qaeda sustains the Taliban with money, weapons, training, and, indeed, the foreign soldiers that the Taliban use to subjugate their own people. The Taliban, in turn, provide al Qaeda with safe haven and logistical support. The Taliban are a terrorist and terrorist-sponsored regime.

It is these malignant groups -- the Taliban and al Qaeda -- that we in the broad international coalition now target in our military campaign, not the Afghan people. The United States and its coalition partners repeatedly warned the Taliban to either hand over bin Laden and his associates, or share their fate. They have chosen the latter, and forced the Afghan people, their own brothers and fellow Muslims, to temporarily endure additional suffering as the international coalition methodically locates and destroys the criminal bin Laden and his killer associates.

This Taliban decision is in keeping with the regime's record of brutality and indifference to the plight of the Afghan people. Since taking power in 1996, the Taliban regime has presided over a humanitarian catastrophe. Well before September, two million Afghans had already fled the country as refugees; hundreds of thousands are internally displaced within Afghanistan itself.

President Bush said, "Our war on terrorism has nothing to do with differences in faith... it has everything to do with people of all faiths coming together to condemn hate and evil and murder and prejudice." Indeed, Taliban distortion of one of humanity's great faiths is widely condemned, both by Muslim scholars worldwide, and, as we can now see every day on television, by the newly freed people of Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden saw a Taliban-led Afghanistan as the model he wanted to inflict on the rest of the Muslim world. Operating one of the most repressive and abusive regimes in history, the Taliban systematically violated every basic norm of human rights. They attacked and burned towns, summarily killed civilians, conscripted children into military service, and profited from the heroin trade.

The regime's assault on women was unprecedented in modern times. Afghan women were prevented from attending schools or conducting business of any type, denied access to health care, and forbidden to leave their homes without escort. Women needlessly died in childbirth for want of the most basic care, and child life expectancy in Afghanistan dropped to among the lowest in the world. Widows or women without a male relative, with or without children, were treated as non-persons by the Taliban regime, and often faced starvation.

This was bin Laden's and the Taliban's prescription for their fellow Muslims. For non-Muslims, including the more than 4,000 innocent victims of the September 11 attacks, the prescription was far simpler: kill them all.

Today, the once-starved people of Afghanistan are going to sleep at night with full bellies, some for the first time in their entire lives, because the international coalition, built from freedom-loving peoples of every faith, is lifting the Taliban's oppression and has resolved to stop terrorism, wherever it occurs.

Afghanistan's immediate future will be hard, but it can be one of hope, if only because the Taliban and al Qaeda are being consigned to history. International relief agencies, with U.S. aid, are providing food, medicine, and shelter for Afghan refugees who have endured the humanitarian disaster that the Taliban have precipitated. The U.S. government has given more than $246 million in assistance to the people of Afghanistan since October 1, 2001. Since mid-October, the World Food Program has sent more than 52,000 metric tons of food to Afghanistan. The United States contributes 80 percent of all food provided to Afghans through the World Food Program. Taliban propaganda attempted to distort world opinion by manipulation of images and brutal subjugation of its own people. The true feelings of the Afghan people are better gauged in the joyous welcome given to our coalition campaign in the daily increasing number of areas now free of Taliban control, and in the aspirations of Afghans everywhere for regaining control of their future. Our aim is that Afghans, not foreign terrorists, determine the future of their country.

As Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "We want to see eventually rise a government that represents all the people of Afghanistan, that is prepared to take care of the needs of its people."

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