AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Resistance Radio. This is Democracy Now! in Exile's War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The British newspaper The Guardian is reporting that U.S. and British officials backtracked yesterday on threats to oust the ruling Taliban, after Pakistan threatened to withdraw its cooperation. Pakistan’s foreign minister reminded the Western allies of failed attempts to impose governments on Afghanistan and said that any attempt to repeat the mistakes of the British and the Soviet Union “is a recipe for great suffering for the people of Afghanistan.”

We’re joined by several people right now, starting with Aniruddha Das, who is host of Asia Pacific Forum on New York Pacifica station WBAI.

Welcome back to The War and Peace Report, Aniruddha.

ANIRUDDHA DAS: Thank you very much, Amy. And thank you for continuing to do this great work where once again WBAI fails us.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, thanks for being here. I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to you since the U.S. lifted sanctions against India and Pakistan to get both of their cooperations in going after Afghanistan. But can you talk about why the sanctions were imposed and what this means for your country in Pakistan?

ANIRUDDHA DAS: The sanctions were supposedly a part of a twofold nuclear nonproliferation. It is very interesting that despite this supposed project, sanctions have consistently been used by the U.S. for very narrow, short-term goals, for Pakistan actually has had a long series of sanctions being imposed on it, starting with the Symington sanctions in 1978, when Pakistan tried to buy uranium reprocessing facilities from France. Then there were sanctions in 1980, the Pressler Amendment, again sanctions on U.S. governmental, military and economic aid to Pakistan, because at that time Pakistan was setting up to build a nuclear — a clear nuclear weapon. Then, in 1998, there was the Glenn Amendment, which led to sanctions against both India and Pakistan right after the setting off of the nuclear tests in 1998, in August 1998, in both countries 10 days within each other. Well, the irony of it is that even though these sanctions were supposedly to prevent nuclear proliferation, well, shortly after the Symington sanctions, which banned U.S. governmental aid, they were waived when the U.S. farmers wanted to sell grain, and therefore the sanctions were waived in order to do that. During the Afghan War, Reagan, every year, waived the military sanctions against Pakistan in order to provide Pakistan with arms to fight the so-called war against — the war of liberation against Afghanistan, which, of course, as your listeners know, generated people like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, whom the U.S. is now gearing up, with help from Russia, to fight the same people whom the U.S. had set up by waiving these sanctions in the first place.

Similarly, the sanctions against India and Pakistan in 1998, the Glenn Amendment, in a sense, the U.S. was forced to do that because it was part of a broader amendment against, quote-unquote, “all terrorist states,” Iraq — at the main point was Iraq — but, despite that, India was using Israel as a proxy, getting high-technology U.S. weapons, like AWACS, airborne warning and control systems, etc., through Israel, through a $2 billion military contract and with the active help of the U.S. So, these sanctions are really only a political tool. Now, on September 22nd, the administration has requested Congress once again to lift sanctions against India and Pakistan, on August 27th against India and September 22nd against Pakistan, explicitly for, quote-unquote, “for good behavior” on the part of Pakistan.

And so, this — there are obviously two issues. One is that the U.S. now just accepts the fact that India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, and even though it might lead to nuclear conflagration there. The second thing is that, well, both India and Pakistan are in the arms market. And this is the perfect opportunity for the U.S. to waive these sanctions in order that armaments manufacturers can now sell, not through proxies like Israel, but directly.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, bringing the war home here, we’re joined by Sin Yen Ling, who is a staff attorney with Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, responsible for handling the cases of racial bias attacks following September 11th. Can you talk about what has happened in these few weeks?

SIN YEN LING: Since September 11th, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund has received over a hundred calls from the South Asian community in New York City and over the country. Most of the incidents have concentrated in New York City’s metro area, but we’ve received confirmed reports of two casualties — one in Mesa, Arizona, where a Sikh man was gunned down as he was working in a gas station, and a Pakistani green grocery owner was gunned down in Dallas, Texas. In New York City alone, we’ve received many reports, ranging from students walking to school and being stoned in the back to an incident in Huntington, Long Island, where a Pakistani woman was waiting for a ride on a sidewalk when a man in his vehicle was revving his engine, and as he spotted her, he drove and aimed right at her, screaming — as he was screaming, “I’m doing this for my country!” We’ve received also reports of many businesses, specifically in Queens, where there are large South Asian populations, specifically in Richmond Hill, Floral Park, Jackson Heights, where many of these stores have been stoned or vandalized.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you recommend to people right now, aside from obviously the attacks should stop? What are you recommending?

SIN YEN LING: We believe that the message to the public at the moment should be that any types of attacks, regardless of what your ethnicity, your national origin, your religion should be, is condemned and wrong. I think our recommendation for the community in terms of safety and precaution should be to do anything that is possible for you to remain safe, whether it be asking your children to be at home, whether it be changing your work schedule so that you’re not traveling at night on a train station; if you are a taxi cab driver, for you to make sure that you have a cellphone in front of your vehicle, make sure that you have your doors locked; if you are a working-class from an immigrant family, make sure that when you exit your home, you are accompanied in a group or by friends.

AMY GOODMAN: I also have been talking to cab drivers and heard in a forum how a number of people who are South Asian carry the American flag or put it up in their taxi cab as protection.

SIN YEN LING: That’s correct. We’ve received many reports, not only from the South Asian community, where gas station owners have put up signs saying “I am not Arab” or “I am an American.” We’ve received reports from family, who have pasted up an American flag to prevent themselves from being targets of attacks. And this is not just exclusive to the South Asian community, but also to other Asian ethnic communities across the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Salina Ali, who is a member of SAYA, the South Asian Youth Association, of Bangladeshi origin, now in 12th grade at Richmond Hill High School.

Welcome to The War and Peace Report.

SALINA ALI: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Thanks for coming in. You had a forum this past weekend.

SALINA ALI: Yes, on Saturday. Actually, I wasn’t able to attend the SAYA member forum, but I spoke to a couple of friends, and they had told me about it and what it consisted of. And they had said that 30 young people attended who were South Asians and some African Americans who were Muslims. They went through a couple of workshops. There was one presentation about the relationship between America with the Middle East. And there was another short presentation. It was actually to educate people about the legislation. When the Oklahoma bombing happened, everyone — actually, many people accused the suspects to be Muslim terrorists. So, before they found out that it was Timothy McVeigh, the Congress had passed out an anti-terrorism law in 1996. So, the person that presented this was talking about how we might see something like that happen again due to the September 11th incident.

ANIRUDDHA DAS: There was another broader discussion also of what the U.S., quote-unquote, “should do,” whether it should respond militarily to the attacks on September 11th, whether it should take more of a peaceful effort. What was the broad consensus amongst your peers, particularly those people whose parents were from Bangladesh and Pakistan, who had themselves suffered the grave effects of war?

SALINA ALI: Right. Well, majority — actually, almost all of the youth feel that they shouldn’t go to war — I mean, America shouldn’t go to war, because their parents, like their parents’ generation, has gone through wars in our country, so they don’t want their parents to see the devastation again happening in America.

AMY GOODMAN: Has anything happened to you, on your way to school or being in the community or at school?

SALINA ALI: Actually, I just got harassed a little. Actually, I actually got into an argument with another student in my class, because they were making remarks about Muslims. And I tried to speak up. I was like, “You know, you shouldn’t make racist comments like that. It’s not right.” You know, so — and, actually, my cousin, she actually goes to a Muslim school, and they actually had bomb threats, so the school was closed for a couple of days. And what happened was that she actually covers her hair, her head, with a hijab. And so, they were really afraid, actually, you know, to come out of school. So, when school opened, when they came out of school, they actually took off their headpiece, because they were afraid of being attacked, you know? So…

ANIRUDDHA DAS: Sin Yen, much of the discussion in these questions of the racial attacks, the discussion has centered around the very positive statements that have been made by Giuliani and by Bush opposing any such racial bias. On the other hand, do you think that official actions sanctioning the racial profiling in catching suspects, etc. — do you think that those are actually sanctioning some of these racial biases in the country?

SIN YEN LING: Since September 11th, we’ve received reports not only of racist bias incidents from individual private citizens, but the government had also perpetrated many of the backlash against the South Asian and Arab community. Although Bush, Pataki and Mayor Giuliani have condemned and come out and said that bias crimes are wrong, none of these sentiments are changing people’s minds. None of these sentiments are changing the way the local police departments, not just in New York City but other departments across the country, in profiling South Asians, particularly Sikh men, in profiling Arabs, in arresting these individuals without a disposition. The fact of the matter is, is that despite the fact that our elected officials are coming out and taking a stand against bias crimes, people of color and immigrants’ communities are being targeted and being scapegoated for — because of the color of their skin.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all very much for being with us. Unfortunately, we’ve come to the end of this conversation for today, but not forever, because we want to continue to come back to you to talk about what you’re facing as these very critical times unfold. I want to thank Sin Yen Ling, staff attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York; Salina Ali with South Asian Youth Association; and my colleague, Aniruddha Das. Thanks for joining us, Aniruddha.

ANIRUDDHA DAS: Thank you very much, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: From Asia Pacific Forum in New York’s WBAI. That does it for the program. Democracy Now! in Exile is produced by Kris Abrams, Brad Simpson and Miranda Kennedy. Anthony Sloan, our music maestro and engineer. Errol Maitland at WBIX.org. You can also hear us at webactive.com. Special thanks to Chase Pierson, Tony Riddle, Rick Jungers, Hoy No [phon.], Karen Ranucci, DeeDee Halleck, Tom Poole, Lenny Charles and our hosts at Downtown Community Television, Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno. And a very good fortune to Brad Simpson, our producer, who’s getting married this weekend. Have a wonderful wedding. We’re in the historic firehouse of Engine 31 in Chinatown in the evacuation zone, in exile from the embattled studios of WBAI. From the studios of the banned and the fired, from the studios of our listeners, I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Democracy Now! in Exile’s War and Peace Report. You can see us on MNN, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, today and tomorrow on channel 56.