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| They can't see why they are hated Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad Special report: Terrorism in the US (Seumas Milne, Thursday September 13, 2001, The Guardian) Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible. Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world. But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy. As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel's 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages. If, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal insisted, the east coast carnage was the fruit of the Clinton administration's Munich-like appeasement of the Palestinians, the mind boggles as to what US Republicans imagine to be a Churchillian response. It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming. It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth. But by then Bin Laden had turned against his American sponsors, while US-sponsored Pakistani intelligence had spawned the grotesque Taliban now protecting him. To punish its wayward Afghan offspring, the US subsequently forced through a sanctions regime which has helped push 4m to the brink of starvation, according to the latest UN figures, while Afghan refugees fan out across the world. All this must doubtless seem remote to Americans desperately searching the debris of what is expected to be the largest-ever massacre on US soil - as must the killings of yet more Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, or even the 2m estimated to have died in Congo's wars since the overthrow of the US-backed Mobutu regime. "What could some political thing have to do with blowing up office buildings during working hours?" one bewildered New Yorker asked yesterday. Already, the Bush administration is assembling an international coalition for an Israeli-style war against terrorism, as if such counter-productive acts of outrage had an existence separate from the social conditions out of which they arise. But for every "terror network" that is rooted out, another will emerge - until the injustices and inequalities that produce them are addressed. Thought Not Vengeance (By Stephen Zunes) I write this as the extent of the carnage from the terrorist attacks continues to unfold. My hands are still shaking as I sit at my computer. Like most Americans, I am still in shock at the horror and the extent of innocent lives lost. There is no need to repeat that terrorism is not rational, but an emotive reaction by frustrated and angry people. Yet the common reaction to terrorism is often no less rational, no less a reaction by a frustrated and angry people. It would behoove this great nation to not respond in ways that would restrict civil liberties, particularly if the terrorists are from an immigrant community. Already, analogies are being drawn to Pearl Harbor, which resulted in the internment of tens of thousands of loyal U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry. It is also important that the United States not retaliate militarily in a blind, dramatic matter as has been done in the past. In 1997, in retaliation of the terrorist attacks of two U.S. embassies in Africa, the U.S. bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which supplied more than half the antibiotics and vaccines for that impoverished country. The Clinton administration falsely claimed it was a chemical weapons plant controlled by an exiled Saudi terrorist. In 1986, the U.S. bombed two Libyan cities, killing scores of civilians. Though the U.S. claimed it would curb Libyan-backed terrorism, Libyan intelligence operatives ended up blowing up a U.S. airliner in retaliation. Military responses usually result only in a spiral of violent retaliation. Similarly, simply bombing other countries after the fact will not protect lives. Indeed, it will likely result in what Pentagon planners euphemistically call "collateral damage," i.e., the deaths of civilians just as innocent as those murdered in New York City. And survivors bent on revenge. Today, in the Middle East, the U.S. backs an occupying Israeli army as well as corrupt autocratic Arab dictatorships, which kill innocent civilians using weapons our government supplies. We justify supporting these repressive governments in the name of defending our strategic interests in that important region. Ironically, it is just such policies that may have provoked these terrorist attacks, inevitably raising the question as to whether our security interests are really enhanced through such militarization. Even when the U.S. puts itself forward as a peacemaker, as with the Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, it may look very different to those in the region. Indeed, not only did it avoid resolving the Palestinian question--the key to peace in the Middle East--Camp David more closely resembled a tripartite military pact than a real peace agreement, in that it resulted in tens of billions of dollars worth of additional American armaments flowing into that already overly militarized region. It is no coincidence that terrorist groups have arisen in an area where the world's one remaining superpower puts far more emphasis on arms shipments and air strikes than on international law or human rights, and even blocks the United Nations from sending human rights monitors or from enforcing its resolutions against an ally. Nor is it surprising that that superpower would eventually find itself on the receiving end of a violent backlash. Similarly, it is not surprising that in the Middle East and other parts of the world that have suffered violence, some people have the perverse reaction of celebrating that the United States has now also experienced such a massive and violent loss of life on its own soil. These tragedies remind us of the need to focus not on unworkable missile defense projects, but instead on improved intelligence and interdiction. Instead of continuing the cycle of violence, we need to re-evaluate policies that lead to such anger and resentment. Instead of lashing out against perceived hostile communities, we need to recognize that America's greatest strength is not in our weapons of destruction, but the fortitude and caring of its people. (Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is a senior policy analyst and Middle East editor of the Foreign Policy in Focus Project. He is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. This FPIF opinion piece was published by the Baltimore Sun September 12, 2001.) Islamists and U.S. Policy (Volume 1, Number 21 FPIF) December 1996 Written by Mamoun Fandy of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Editors: Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS) Key Problems - U.S. policy links Islamist movements and organizations with terrorism. Islamism is viewed as a force that undermines the Middle East peace process, threatens the flow of oil, and leads to the establishment of Iranian-style regimes in the region. - To counter this perceived terrorist threat, the U.S relies on the use of force by allied local regimes as the sole weapon against Islamists. - The U.S. responds to political Islam as a threat to democracy and human rights in the region, particularly the rights of women and non-Muslims. - U.S. policy, while exempting purely religious Islam, defines all political Islamic movements, as having the same anti-Western, antihumanitarian agenda. U.S. policy sees Islam in terms of two ends of a spectrum. According to Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern affairs Robert H. Pelletreau, "One end is represented by the faith of Islam. At the other end of the spectrum are a cluster of extremist groups...that practice violence and terrorism." In practice, the faith side is ignored. Washington's definition of political Islam, or Islamism, tends to equate all of its manifestations with terrorism; central to the policy is the fear of the emergence of an Islamist regime in a major Arab country, similar to that in Iran. The U.S. views terrorist activities and Islamist militancy in the Middle East as an emerging force. Islamism is viewed solely as a security threat to the peace process, to pro-U.S. regimes in the Middle East, to the flow of oil, and to the security of the state of Israel. The cornerstone of U.S. policy is to weaken the influence of Islamist forces in the region by offering a regional peace package, draining the Islamists' financial and political resources both at home and abroad, and erecting rigid military security measures. Dual containment of Iran and Iraq is central to U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Iran (in regard to its links with militant organizations such as Hezbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the Armed Islamic Group/GIA in Algeria) is considered a threat to the U.S.-sponsored regional peace process and to the security of Israel. In a speech to the Jordanian parliament in 1994, President Clinton described the contest in the Middle East as a struggle between "tyranny and freedom, terror and security, bigotry and tolerance, isolation and openness." By clear implication, he equated Islamic activism with the negative choices and Western-style secularism with the positive ones. The U.S. also uniformly views Islamist activists uniformly as zealots who use Islam to suppress the rights of minorities and women, and as Pelletreau put it, "anti-western [elements who] aim not only to eradicate any Western influence in their societies [but] resist any form of cooperation with the West." The significance of Islamist organizations who use parliamentary or other legal forms of political mobilization is largely excluded from consideration. The U.S. has placed counterterrorism at the top of its international and domestic agendas, and much of the political mobilization to win support for antiterrorism measures has been focused on the need to confront and overcome "Muslim fundamentalism" or "Islamic terror." Domestically, the U.S. government won support for sweeping new antiterrorism legislation through repeated references, both veiled and overt, to the threat posed by Islamic terrorists. In speeches before the United Nations General Assembly in both 1995 and 1996, Clinton urged greater international cooperation against terrorism. The U.S. initiated a high-profile international conference on terrorism held in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt in response to the spate of suicide bombings in Israel in 1996, using the opportunity to call for the creation of a U.S.-led international campaign against any manifestation of terrorism. President Clinton promised that the CIA and other U.S. resources would be marshalled for the anti-terrorism campaign. Follow-up conferences continued the Sharm-el-Sheikh initiative in other places. The U.S. also signed new counterterrorism treaties with Israel. In practice, U.S. makes no distinction between terrorism and Islamism as a legitimate political movement aimed at challenging Western, colonial, and sometimes modern influences in non-Western and traditional societies. Operationally, the U.S. views the Islamist movement as a military/security threat, and thus devises strategies to deal with it militarily: by gathering intelligence, by depleting its financial resources, by intimidating supportive popular environments, and by other covert counterterrorism operations. Problems with Current U.S. Policy Key Problems - The U.S. is mistakenly trying to replace communism with Islamism as a parallel ideology and sequential enemy. By relying on cold war tactics, Washington weakens its thrust against Islamist movements. - The U.S. fails to distinguish either between political/parliamentary forms of Islamism and those espousing violence, or between those that target U.S. interests and those mobilizing to change local problems. No alternatives to violent suppression are considered in responding to Islamist movements. - The U.S. ignores the fact that violent political Islamism is a reaction both to U.S. support for such countries as Israel, Egypt, and Turkey (which abuse the human rights of Muslims), and to the despised pop culture that represents the U.S. in the Middle East. U.S. policymakers continue to use "Islamic terror" as the replacement for "the communist menace" or the "evil empire,"as the ideological enemy against which all U.S. policy should be aimed. The U.S. is still thinking in state-based, cold war terms' disregarding transnational economic, political, and technological changes. Turkey, Israel, and corrupt Arab dictators exaggerate the threat of terrorism and Islamism to win massive U.S. aid and to get the U.S. on their side in their battles against local opposition. Accepting these exaggerated assessments as the basis of its involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, the U.S. has even supported violent Islamist organizations, most notably in Afghanistan. By limiting its reactions to Islamist violence to strictly military/security responses, the U.S. ignores the underlying causes of the phenomenon with its complex economic, political, and social roots. Yet tactics such as signing counterterrorism treaties with Israel and Egypt, and promoting security conferences between states threatened by Islamist opposition have failed to stop the attacks. Instead, the most obvious outcome has been the rise in cooperation between the U.S. and Middle Eastern police states at the level of security. This increases the efficiency of the brutal methods of these regimes in handling internal dissent but does not enhance their success. Thus instead of promoting democracy in the region, the U.S. is buttressing dictatorships and their human rights abuses, which in turn fuel further Islamist and other violent responses. This does not serve any immediate or long-term U.S. interest. Current U.S. policy fails to distinguish either between Islam as a religion and Islamic political activism (violent or not), or between Islamic political activities (violent or not) aimed at rectifying internal situations within countries and those aimed at the U.S. and its interests. The U.S. identifies all political activities that mobilize using Islamic symbols as "terrorism" aimed at undermining Washington's grand strategy in the Middle East. Although on record the U.S. fervently asserts that it only oppose terrorism and has no quarrel with the religion of Islam, it is clear that vast Muslim populations in the Middle East and elsewhere, seeing no nonmilitary U.S. response to any assertion of Islamic identity, do not believe this to be the case. Their perception is confirmed by the U.S. list of terrorism sponsors, which is dominated by Muslim states: Libya, Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Iraq. It appears to Muslims that the U.S. equates Islam with terrorism.Current U.S. policy fails to consider either a long-term view of Islamism or a long-range view of U.S. interests in the region. Islam has always gone through historical cycles of ebbs and flows, rise and decline. In the past, when Muslim identity, culture, cosmology, and mode of life was disrupted by outside forces, such as European/Ottoman colonialism or Western Christian missionary activity, movements arose claiming the mantle of defending Islam arose. U.S. policymakers have failed to understand that the current rise of political Islam is in part a response to a perceived threat against Islamic values by Western popular culture and by American military and political domination of the region, and that solely military responses are unlikely to suppress this Islamic perception. Another problem with current U.S. policy is its uncritical support of unpopular regimes in the Middle East. Washington is widely perceived in the region as the key supporter of regimes that practice mass arrest, torture, and other extralegal procedures. Attacks on U.S. bases and on U.S. personnel training the Saudi national guard, for example, are driven by the view that the U.S. is propping up a regime without respect for the human rights of its citizens. Thus any attempt by Washington to promote a human rights agenda is undermined by claims of double standards. The human rights deficiencies in some versions of political Islam are already under attack by Muslim feminists and liberal Islamic scholars. The U.S. should work to bolster the influence of these scholars as a better means of raising human rights concerns within the Islamist movement. U.S. backing of an inequitable peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and between the rich and poor of the Arab world, has also given rise to attacks on Israeli and U.S. targets. Muslims are puzzled by the fact that the U.S. has greater potential interests in the Arab world but somehow chooses Israeli rights over Arabs rights and seems indifferent to human rights abuses inflicted on Arabs and Muslims. Toward a New Foreign Policy Key Recommendations - The U.S. needs to display more sensitivity in distinguishing between Islam and terrorism, acknowledging that violence against civilians violates Islamic teaching. - The U.S. should condemn human rights violations by friendly governments with the same rigor with which it condemns Islamists’ violence. Aid to Middle Eastern states should be conditioned on progress in democratization and human rights. - Washington should highlight aspects of American culture that coincide with Islamic values. - The U.S. should open a direct dialogue with Muslim theologians and activists and enlist the support of American Muslims in reinforcing a more tolerant and democratic version of Islam. - The U.S. must deal with terrorism not only militarily but also by attacking its root causes—pressuring Israel, Turkey, and the Arab regimes to comply with international law and human rights standards, and directly aiding low-income Arabs by funding literacy programs, hospitals, etc. U.S. policymakers should evenhandedly condemn Israel, Turkey, and allied Arab governments, including U.S. Islamic regimes, whenever they abuse human rights. U.S. aid to all Middle Eastern states should be conditioned on progress in democratization and human rights. The U.S. also should restructure this aid to suit post-cold war needs; that is, allocate more aid to education and the building of civil society and less to armaments and militarization. If Washington is interested in promoting a liberal and tolerant version of popular Islam in the Middle East, it must respond to the conditions that make people turn to sectarian religious identities as a last refuge. It is important to support and work with civil society organizations, including Islamist groups, to promote sociopolitical progress without imposing "modernism," which is viewed in the region as a set of non-Muslim values (e.g. secularism, consumerism, materialism, and disrespect for local mores and ethics). The U.S. should divert funds currently spent on military aid and covert "counterterrorism" (aimed at Islamic violence) to nongovernmental organizations and other institutions targeting the root causes of desperation in Muslim countries--poverty, government corruption, and the lack of political participation for the majority of citizens. Washington should initiate direct dialogue with Muslim intellectuals. This would reveal a great deal to policymakers about actual Islamist beliefs and intentions and would be more reliable than third-party accounts. U.S. relations with the Middle East should include a cultural component designed to show an understanding of and respect for the cultures of the Middle East and for Arab and Muslim contributions to human civilization. Washington should also encourage Middle Eastern access to serious (not only popular and commercial) U.S. culture. This could be done through the Fulbright Commission, U.S. Information Agency, and the cultural offices at U.S. embassies. The U.S. should recognize that the Iranian model of governance is not the only regional model for Islamic empowerment. Islamists in places such as Jordan, Turkey, Yemen, and Egypt have participated in parliaments and coalition governments and have shown a great deal of moderation and tolerance. Washington should support and encourage those Islamist currents that seek nonviolent political involvement. The U.S. should be wary of local regimes that attempt to justify U.S. aid by claiming they are defending U.S. interests against fundamentalism. This short-sighted policy of supporting whomever claims to oppose Islamism is destructive to U.S. interests in the long run. Washington should be willing to work with all governments, gauging the depth of its relationship on shared values of democracy, tolerance, and economic and political justice. The U.S. should maximize the involvement of U.S. Muslims as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. U.S. Muslims have both the experience of living as a minority in a secular democracy and the knowledge of Islamic theology and history with which to argue for a more tolerant version of Islam. The pluralistic American experience could help inform a theology of moderation in the Islamic world. To prevent the alienation of U.S. Muslims from mainstream U.S. society, Washington needs to be far more vigorous both in denouncing hate crimes against U.S. Muslims and Arab-Americans and in bringing the perpetrators of hate crimes to justice. In particular, during times of tension between the U.S. and countries in the Middle East, it is important that Washington take the lead in mobilizing against the scapegoating of U.S. Muslims. Bin Laden's Past Words Revisited (By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer) DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - All American men are the enemy, Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) says. And the United States owes Muslims $36 trillion, payback for ``the biggest theft'' in history - the purchase of cheap oil from the Persian Gulf. A book with that and more of bin Laden in his own words has been snapped up by Arabic readers in the weeks since he was named the No. 1 suspect in the Sept. 11 suicide bombings in New York and Washington. The book, ``Bin Laden, Al-Jazeera - and I'' by Jamal Abdul Latif Ismail, includes a 54-page transcript of the complete 1998 interview that was broadcast in abbreviated form on Al-Jazeera, a popular television program. Al-Jazeera has rebroadcast its version of the interview, conducted by Ismail, since the attacks. Those hungry for more often found copies sold out in book stores across the Mideast. Readers have been borrowing and photocopying the book from friends. Bin Laden spoke to Ismail in a tent in mountainous southern Afghanistan (news - web sites) four months after the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa - attacks in which he's also a suspect. Bin Laden began the interview with personal notes, saying he was born 45 years ago, in the Muslim year of 1377, in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The family later moved between the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the port city of Jiddah. Bin Laden's father, Muhammad, who was born in the Yemeni region of Hadramawt, was a prominent construction magnate who built the major mosques in Mecca and Medina and undertook repairs on Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock. He died when bin Laden was 10. After getting a degree in economics at a university in Jiddah, bin Laden joined his father's company before beginning his road to jihad. Even before President Bush (news - web sites) mentioned the word ``crusade'' in describing the anti-terror campaign, bin Laden was using that term to describe alleged U.S. intentions against Muslims. ``There's a campaign that's part of the ongoing Crusader-Jewish wars against Islam,'' bin Laden told Ismail. Asked about his 1998 fatwa, or edict, urging Muslims to target not only the U.S. military, but also American civilians, bin Laden said only American men were the target. ``Every American man is an enemy whether he is among the fighters who fight us directly or among those who pay taxes,'' bin Laden said. Bin Laden claimed Western attacks on Arabs, such as the British-U.S. bombings of Iraq, were directed by Israelis and Jews who have infiltrated the White House, the Defense Department, the State Department and the CIA (news - web sites). His views on other issues: - On reports he was trying to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, bin Laden said: ``At a time when Israel stores hundreds of nuclear warheads and bombs and the Western Crusaders control a large percentage of these weapons, this should not be considered an accusation but a right. ... It's like asking a man, 'Why are you such a courageous fighter?' Only an unbalanced person would ask such a question. ``It's the duty of Muslims to own (the weapons), and America knows that, today, Muslims have acquired such a weapon.'' -On whether he's ready to stand trial in an Islamic court: ``We are ready at any time for a legitimate court ... If the plaintiff is the United States of America, we at the same time will sue it for many things ... it committed in the land of Muslims.'' -Bin Laden denied he was behind the 1998 embassy bombings, but acknowledged he ``has incited (Muslims) to wage jihad.'' -Asked about the freezing of his assets, bin Laden said even though the United States has pressured several countries to ``rob us of our rights,'' he and his followers have survived. ``We feel that the whole universe is with us and money is like a passing shadow. We urge Muslims to spend their money on jihad and especially on the movements that have devoted themselves to the killing of Jews and the Crusaders.'' -On the U.S.-backed fight against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan: ``Those who waged jihad in Afghanistan ... knew they could, with a few RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), a few anti-tank mines and a few Kalashnikovs, destroy the biggest military myth humanity has ever known. The biggest military machine was smashed and with it vanished from our minds what's called the superpower.'' - Asked about the money the United States put on his head, bin Laden said: ``Because America worships money, it believes that people think that way too. By Allah, I haven't changed a single man (guard) after these reports.'' - Bin Laden claimed the United States has carried out the ``biggest theft in history'' by buying oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. According to bin Laden, a barrel of oil today should cost $144. Based on that calculation, he said, the Americans have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims and they owe each member of the faith $30,000. ``Do you want (Muslims) to remain silent in the face of such a huge theft?'' bin Laden said. - His message to the world: ``Regimes and the media want to strip us of our manhood. We believe we are men, Muslim men. We should be the ones defending the greatest house in the world, the blessed Kaaba ... and not the female, both Jewish and Christian, American soldiers.'' Bin Laden was referring to the U.S. troops that have deployed in Saudi Arabia since 1990 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. ``The rulers in the region said the Americans would stay a few months, but they lied from the start. ... Months passed, and the first and second years passed and now we're in the ninth year and the Americans lie to everyone. ... The enemy robs the owner, you tell him you're stealing and he tells you, ``It's in my interest.' ``Our goal is to liberate the land of Islam from the infidels and establish the law of Allah.'' |
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