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Contents:
The following article consists of responses to Special Forum #07: "Black
Tuesday: The View from Islamabad," by Pervez Hoodbhoy. This article
contains responses from Alan Tidwell, Program Officer for Education at
the US Institute of Peace; Laurent Murawiec, Senior Policy Analyst at
the Rand Corporation; and Daniel S. Zbytek of the Polish Secular Society
in Warsaw, Poland.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, in his missive "Black Tuesday: The View from Islamabad"
raises some interesting points. He is correct to draw our attention to
the matter of the underlying causes of terrorism. It does seem to me
that Osama's terrorism (if it is his) is immoral, but certainly not
irrational. Those using terror are simply pursuing their political
objectives - albeit badly - through the use of terror. Terrorism is not
irrational, but it is bad policy. It is bad policy because it invites
retribution and destroys the essence of political dialogue.
Hoodbhoy concludes that "To echo George W. Bush, "let there be no
mistake." But here the mistake will be to let the heart rule the head
in the aftermath of utter horror, to bomb a helpless Afghan people into
an even earlier period of the Stone Age, or to take similar actions that
originate from the spine. Instead, in deference to a billion years of
patient evolution, we need to hand over charge to the cerebellum. Else,
survival of this particular species is far from guaranteed."
The cerebral response would be a threefold one:
It is the third point that will be politically difficult to sustain, but
ultimately it is the point that will bear greatest fruit. Former
Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating commented in a recent address
that "In the end, there's got to be a guiding light in the way the world
is managed and that guiding light just can't be about the bounty of the
world resting with the foremost industrial nations and the rest running
up the rear." Indeed, addressing the causes of terrorism is much more
about how we envision the future of the globe. Hoodbhoy is correct in
his observation that in addressing the fundamental causes of terrorism
the US must "re-engage" with the world. I would add, however, that it
is not just re-engagement, but also the manner in which it re-engages.
The US must lead the way in reconsidering the way in which globalization
is conducted - not whether globalization continues, but how it
continues. In addressing globalization one gets closer to the root
causes of terrorism. As Keating observed, "The answer [to conflict] has
to be to make this world better by dealing with these problems at
source." There is no doubt, for example, that rates of poverty have
declined in many states where globalization has taken root (Indonesia
for example), but one must wonder at the political and social costs of
one-size-fits-all approaches to globalization. There is an alienating
aspect to globalization that must be taken into account.
By addressing the root causes of terrorism, the post industrial world
can better insulate itself against attack.
Hafez al-Assad orders the razing to the ground, by means of artillery
and aerial bombing, of the city of Homs, the center of which had been
taken over by the Syrian branch of the Moslem Brotherhood: an estimated
30,000 dead;
Elie Hobeika, head of a Christian-Arab Lebanese militia, orders the
murder of 1,500 Moslems in two refugee camps in Beirut, Sabra and
Shatila; he later becomes a government minister of Lebannon, under
Syrian supervision. (This in the framework of 15 years of civil war
with uncounted victims and hard to believe displays of cruelty);
Iraq invades Kuwait, and indiscriminately slaughters the locals; its
leader invades Iran, and sets off a war that costs hundreds of thousands
of Iraqi lives, and as many Iranian lives;
Iran's ayatollahs send dozens of thousands of boys to a giant massacre
in the war against Iraq;
The Sudanese government (Arab-Moslem) routinely massacres and enslaves
the Black Southerners, animists and Christians.
Etc.
But hear:
"Only a fool can believe that the services of a suicidal terrorist can
be purchased, or that they can be bred at will anywhere. Instead, their
breeding grounds are in a global superpower, indifferent to their
plight, and manifestly on the side of their tormentors, has bred
boundless hatred for its policies. In supreme arrogance, indifferent to
world opinion, the US openly sanctions daily dispossession and torture
of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces. The deafening silence
over the massacres in Qana, Sabra, and Shatila refugee camps, and the
video-gamed slaughter by the Pentagon of 70,000 people in Iraq, has
brought out the worst that humans are capable of. In the words of
Robert Fisk, 'those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated
population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a
doomed people,' Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy tells us.
Hear, ye all! It's "the Pentagon"! It's Israel! "refugee camps and in
other rubbish dumps of humanity, abandoned by civilization and left to
rot."
By whom? By Arab countries that always had an interest in and made a
policy out of keeping Palestinian refugees in camps, perhaps (where they
were succored by mostly Western money, via UNWRRA). Incidentally, do I
remember properly that ALL Arab governments (there was no Palestine of
course) rejected the original UN resolution mandating the partition of
the British Mandatory Palestine--the only Palestine with any historical
existence, if you please? Do I remember equally that part of the exodus
of Arabs from said Palestine was encouraged by their leaders? Do I
remember "Black September" well, when the king of Jordan, in order to
save his Kingdom from an attempted PLO takeover, had to send his Army
against them--several dozen thousand dead. I think I remember--do you?-
-that several hundred thousand Jews were expelled from THEIR ancestral
homelands, from Iraq (150,000 of them) to Yemen, by Arab governments,
who stole their assets in the process, in 1948? They were integrated
into Israel. Why could the Arab refugees not be in Arab countries?
(Note that a very large part of the 1948 Arab population were very
recent immigrants, from Syria, Lebanon, and even Bosnia!)
"The "video-game slaughter by the Pentagon of 70,000 people in Iraq"?
Please, sir, please! Did Iraq invade Kuwait?
How about: these people are rotting because of their despotic, thieving,
tyrannical, torturing, murderous governments? They are rotting because
of the Arab-Moslem world's thoroughgoing rejection of the economic,
social, cultural ways of lifting them out of misery? How about: how
convenient it is to keep the populace mobilized (brainwashed) around the
Palestinian question so as to avoid all the rest, and divert their
attention?
For those imbued with a sense of justice--why not go after the Arab (or
Moslem) governments who commit the crimes listed above? Oh! But that's
just Arabs killing Arabs, isn't it? It's all so normal, usual, routine,
no reason to worry, no cause to denounce. It's when the Faranji, the
"Crusaders," "the Jews" do it, that righteous indignation is aroused.
Where are ye, proud combatants for justice and truth, where were you?
Ah! But there are other agendas lurking behind the grand moralizing:
"stop trying to force a new Cold War by pushing through NMD, pay its UN
dues, and cease the aggrandizement of wealth in the name of
globalization." Read, good old anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist
rhetoric. American anti-missile defense, the cause of terrorism. Gee,
that's a new one. The root cause of terrorism is the greed of American
capitalists and their thirst for power. Thanks for letting us know.
So, in short, while the crime of the World Trade Center is abominable,
atrocious, terrible, to be condemned, etc. (gush of emotions, fountains
of sentimentality), there are reasons, well not to that particular
crime, but to, well, perhaps not terrorism as such, but, well ... there
are reasons. There are good reasons. And if the victim--the United
States--did not behave the way it does, then it would not feed the
grievances.... Oh! Rhetoric! Oh! Ideology! Oh! Sanctimonious self-
righteousness!
How about: the Moslem world needs a Renaissance, a Reformation, an
Enlightenment all wrapped in one? How about: since the end of ijtihad
in the 11th century, an intellectual, scientific, cultural and social
decline has benumbed and stultified the Moslem world, with frightful
consequences, in particular an inability fully to participate in the
world of science, technology, industry, and the persistence of archaic,
dysfunctional forms of governance which make torture, killing, arbitrary
and capricious rule, patrimonial appropriation of the State by tribes
and clans, the norm in the Arab and in the Moslem world?
Before posing forever as the aggrieved victim, what about looking at
oneself? In order to evade the paranoid world-outlook of the Great
Conspiracy by America the Great Satan, the tempter forever trying to
"subvert" innocent Moslems, how about some hard questions to oneself?
What have we done (if I may be allowed to utter a proposopeia on behalf
Arabs and Moslems) that we are so backward? So crassly indifferent to
the suffering we inflict, or is inflicted in our name? Why are our
cultures so brutal, so cruel, so reckless in their disregard for the
life and well-being of people, our own included? Why do we remain
silent when our people (part of the Ummah) commit horrors?
Please, answer. Not to me - to yourself, to yourselves.
Firstly, citizens of the North are obliged to rethink their approach to
the South. People of Europe and North America all the time are making
one important mistake. We are looking from the point of view of our
society and not the societies that have produced terrorist
organizations, breeding them and supporting them morally. For these
societies, contact with us is very painful. We are proud of our
achievements, of our technology, of our liberties. For the feudal
societies of Afghanistan, Arab countries, it means, that their way of
life is to be destroyed.
Look at Afghanistan, the country most affected. In the past they had a
king and bosses of different tribes commonly agreeing by consensus. It
was a stable society, backward in our understanding but in which each
man's and woman's position was clearly defined. In the seventies, their
country became a battlefield of strange powers. What has been offered
for them by Russians and Americans? Weaponry, secret service operations
- nothing else. We have destroyed their traditionally organized system
without offering any replacement which they could understand. These
people has been living in hostile natural environment--deserts and high
mountains--having patriarchal families in which men have been masters of
the outside world, and women masters at home. Rules have been known and
accepted for centuries. These societies are not prepared for
globalization, open civil societies achievement, equal rules for women,
as we understand this and so on.
I think that it is now time to understand that we are unable to change
them within one generation, offering them wealth and technology: even
rich countries, like Saudi Arabia, mentally are still living according
to other rules. It is in our interest to understand them and proceed in
way that they will be able to understand us. This means we should react
decisively to the terrorist attack - that is also understandable for our
and their societies. But now when we are in the process of creating a
global human society, we cannot use Third World countries as
battlefields: economic or political.
Usually their territories are the margins of our activities, usually
utilized by second grade entrepreneurs. But for them we are villains,
destroyers of order. It is the most urgent time for our leaders--the
group of G8 for example--to meet and decide about global policy, not
globalization, which for the time being means only more freedom for the
activities of multinational companies, and which in fact are responsible
to a big extent for the actual situation. A New Deal is needed, on
global scale.
The Nautilus Institute invites your Responses. Please send
responses to:
speciallist@nautilus.org (preferably using "response to
special forum #13" as the subject). Responses will be considered
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