Jan 1, 2003 Op Eds

The year 2002 has come to a close. It was a year full of news. A great deal of it was of global importance and many of the stories were related to Islam and the Muslim world.

There is no longer any serious doubt anywhere that the events of Sept. 11 created a new world order. And in that new order there is no doubt at all that there is now only one superpower: The United States. At present the superpower is behaving like the proverbial bull in a china shop. It is not yet breaking but it is certainly threatening, accusing and blackmailing. It is committing acts that would cause America’s legendary Founding Fathers to turn in their graves if they knew.

Far too much American anger, wrath and simple belligerence has been directed against the Muslim world. America, it seems, has to have an enemy and in the absence of “godless communism,” their war on terror is viewed by many as a “war on Islam.” The evil done by a few Muslims has been expanded in the American media to include all Muslims. Nobody denies that America — or any other country — has the right to defend itself against terror. Nobody denies that America — or any other country — has the right and the obligation to safeguard the lives and property of its citizens. At the same time, America — and every other country — should realize that we Muslims too oppose terror. We too have suffered because of terror. America is not the exclusive victim of terror though it likes to think it is and to use that to justify many of its actions. The demonization of Muslims and the deliberate attacks on Islam by no less a person than US Attorney General John Ashcroft leave us sadly shocked and disappointed.

The cartoons ridiculing our Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, are justified by officials and the media who say — predictably — the press is free. Well, the press should be free but if it is, where are the cartoons, articles and TV shows presenting Arab or Palestinian opinions and views?

The ineffective and virtually impotent Arab PR programs have themselves become objects of ridicule and serve to do no more than increase the existing sense of helplessness. The self-appointed public-relations gurus spouting the usual platitudes about the success of those PR programs have failed to realize something very important. The anti-Islamic hysteria and the defamation of Muslims and their leaders has been a well-planned, well-orchestrated effort. It has been carried out with consummate skill and finesse. The hysteria and defamation cannot be countered or contained by the infantile puerility of the all too conventional Arab approach. The gurus serving Islam and the Arabs might just as well have not bothered to get out of bed.

As we look back at the year, we see that the attacks upon us have taken on a new and sinister dimension. Libelous and poisonous, the attacks have been both created and circulated by a powerful Zionist-backed lobby and its close allies. Against the background of sustained malicious attacks and allegations that distort, deal in half-truths, play to prejudices and simply lie, what can we do? What should we do? That may be a matter of debate but one thing is sure: We cannot, indeed we must not remain idle.

The time has come for us to look more closely at ourselves, to look honestly and analytically and to admit whatever we see — which will in many cases be painful to us. Once we have seen and admitted what is wrong, then comes the time for action. No self-indulgent pity, no claims that we are misunderstood and victimized, no turning away from the truth. A vital part of the success of this process depends upon our boldness in speaking out and challenging those who present and advocate ideas dressed in traditional language but which in fact too often run contrary to the best Islamic ideals of justice, fair play and tolerance. And a part of this tolerance will have to be — in the 21st century where we find ourselves — global cooperation. We are not an island, marooned and isolated; we are a part of the world and we must play our part in it. In order to do so, our children must be given a world-class education designed to produce caring, responsible and mature citizens, capable of making judgments, expressing logical opinions and demanding good governance.

As a society we have to learn something which is presently in short supply here: We must learn not only how to discipline ourselves but also the value of discipline in whatever we want to do. A part of the kind of discipline that is so necessary must be the conscious decision never to resort to violence as a way of solving our problems. We are, after all, the people of the Middle Path.

Indeed as has been said, whatever our options, a strong response must be made to those who speak and propagandize against us. We have no choice. We have no option. We must not fail ourselves or the world. At the same time, we must also pray that God Almighty preserve and protect our lands, our religion and our way of life, bring peace and prosperity to all humanity and strengthen men of goodwill whatever their religion. May God Almighty give honor to us all. Ameen.

— almaeena@arabnews.com

Old and New
Arab News, 1 January 2003

Unless you are a Brazilian football fan, there will be few good things to remember about 2002. The new year dawns with speculations of war, world stock markets down for the third year in succession, Palestine prostrate beneath one of Israel’s most hawkish Zionist governments and key OPEC member Venezuela tearing itself apart with a general strike.

George W. Bush set the tone for the year with his Jan. 1 State of the Union address, in which he said that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were part of “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world”. These were, said the president, terrorist states and his war on terror was only just beginning. He spoke truer than he knew.

The US forces in Afghanistan, sent to clean up after the overthrow of the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies, are still cleaning up 12 months later and seem likely to be at the task in the mountainous region bordering Pakistan for a considerable time to come. Will Bush demonstrate in 2003 that he has learned how much easier it is to initiate a conflict than to finish it?

Throughout the year, Bush’s focus on Saddam and Iraq bordered upon the obsessive and seemed to justify the suspicion that he was out to finish his daddy’s unfinished Gulf War business. Yet, for all the talk of a February attack on Saddam, the new year begins with a far more potent and credible threat, on the other side of the world, from North Korea as it re-initiates its nuclear weapons program and places its fanatical armed forces on a high state of alert.

The old year was one of massive humiliation for the financial and business community, the very people who, five years ago, were telling us that they had finally invented the perpetual motion machine of prosperity. Energy trader Enron and telecoms group WorldCom crashed in two of the world’s biggest corporate bankruptcies, when it was discovered that they had lied and cheated about their financial results. Their internationally respected auditor Arthur Andersen was found to have helped them in their chicanery. Andersen collapsed and with it all other integrated consultancy and auditing practices which, we were once told, represented the epitome of efficiency and supervisory rectitude.

Some insiders may not have been surprised that beneath the glossy surface of business and auditing lay the corrosive rust of corruption. By contrast, many, including its architects, must have been extremely surprised that the European Union’s new single currency was launched on the first day of the year with hardly a hitch. As the year wore on, the euro recovered parity with the dollar. However, with the strict ground rules underpinning the currency already in danger of dilution, the euro may still need to prove itself in this new year.

Proof, in horrific abundance, is what 2003 saw presented at the Hague in the long-awaited trial of Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The war crimes and genocide cases will continue for months yet and Milosevic, allegedly ill, may not live to take his punishment. But his prosecution is crucially important. Here was a man who used his overwhelming power to try and crush infinitely weaker enemies. He cared nothing for world opinion, rejected the advice of his closest allies, the Russians and unleashed three separate conflicts, all of which in the end turned out disastrously for his own country. Might is never invariably right — something that a lot of “mighty” men should remember.

Liberty’s expansion in a turbulent world

By Jonathan Power

Arab News, 1/1/03

It always feels nice to open a New Year with good news. But that indeed is the message on the democracy front this week. It began in Kenya with the defeat last Sunday of the handpicked candidate of the longtime corrupt autocrat of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi. On Friday, Jan. 3, the election winner, Mwai Kibaki takes over as president and there is some hope that this clever ex-finance minister will be skilled enough to start to put the country back on its feet and to release the wealth of talent and energy that it has in abundance.

Despite the gloomy headlines that speak of war and dictatorship, Africa is in fact becoming more democratic. A decade-and-a-half ago few African countries held open elections. Now most do.

On Jan. 1, the working class hero, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will be sworn in as president of Brazil. In an interview I made with him 25 years ago when he was a young leader, he spoke of his vision of a new Brazil where terrible disparities in wealth would be reduced enough for the poor to be at least able to eat three times a day.

Against most of the predictions of the last decades, he has finally won the presidency, supported by a majority that encompasses rich, poor and the middle. His mandate, in part, is to implement this long-held vision, while enabling the vast Brazilian economy to grow at a steady pace.

Also on Wednesday, Greece, not that long ago a brutal military dictatorship, takes over as president of the European Union and on Sunday, Jan. 5, Lithuania, until quite recently a submissive corner of the Soviet Union but now proudly independent, will vote on whether its president deserves a second term. Also on this day, Milan Milutinovic leaves office as president of Serbia and is likely voluntarily to surrender himself to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague where he has been charged with brutal offences committed in Kosovo.

All this is to remind us that despite the rattling of sabers over Iraq, growing fears of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the absence of true democratic rights for the Palestinians and the ever- present threat of terrorists who abjure democracy, the world, in the round, is moving forward.

A new report from the authoritative Freedom House speaks of “significant worldwide progress in 2002” in expanding freedom and democracy. “Real gains outnumbered setbacks by a nearly three-to-one-margin”.

Notable improvements were made in parts of the world where terrorism poses a direct threat, including in majority Muslim and Arab countries. Muslim Senegal entered the top category in Freedom House’s league table — Free, meaning it has a full and open democracy and free expression. Bahrain moved from Not Free to Partly Free and there was significant pro-democracy ferment in Iran, Kuwait and Qatar. Muslim Afghanistan, Albania, Comoros, Tajikistan and, perhaps most important, already democratic Turkey took significant strides toward allowing more political and personal freedoms.

Contrary to much loose thinking, there is no unchangeable correlation between democracy and religious persuasion. Of course, it is a historical fact that democratic expansion first took place in the Protestant world. But as recently as the 1970s, commentators were arguing that there could never be an equal explosion in the Catholic world. But it happened in the 1980s, as it did in the authoritarian-inclined Orthodox world in the 1990s. Hindu India has long been democratic; and the concept of “Asian Values”, whereby it was argued that tradition-bound societies, influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism, could never accept democracy, has shown to be so much nonsense by the remarkable steps taken by Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand.

It is true that the Islamic world remains a democracy backwater but it is difficult to argue that there is some kind of inexorable link between tyranny and Islam. The Islamic world has been dominated by two extreme ideologies — secular Ba’athism (best known in Iraq) and revolutionary or jihadist Islamism. Both were shaped in the 1930s at a time when totalitarian movements dominated the European landscape.

Tragically, as a high official in the Bush administration, Richard Haass, recently admitted in an unusual speech, the US has made a grave historic mistake in supporting many of tyrannical regimes for its own short-term needs. If that could change, much else could change in the Islamic world.

According to the Freedom House survey, 89 countries are now Free, up from 43 in 1972. Fifty-six countries are judged to be Partly Free, up from 38 in 1972. Of the 2.2 billion people in the world who live in the Not Free countries, 60 percent live in China.

The message for the world’s enlightened democracies is that they must make sure that China never decides to set about undermining free Taiwan and that the freedoms inherited by Hong Kong are not wheedled away.

These two outposts of freedom must be encouraged and preserved if mainland China is ever to be persuaded that openness and democracy would be better ways of governing the mainland’s complex society.

Change China and the world will take a great leap forward. That, and real democracy and independence in Palestine are the two departures the world of 2003 badly needs.

A new year's wish for Mideast

By Rami G. Khouri

Jordan Times, 1/1/02

THERE IS something eerie and surrealistic about the lay of the land in the Middle East as we make the transition today into a new year. The region is plagued by violent conflicts within and between states and by tensions and fears in the lives of ordinary people everywhere, especially Arabs, Iranians and Israelis. The most distressing thing is that we've been through all this before — brutal Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Anglo-American armies poised to attack Iraq, Arab countries desperately seeking effective formulae for economic development and political governance, a few grotesque police states still hanging around as historical vestiges and political freak shows, public spaces contested by secular and religious identities, and oddball love-hate relationships between Middle Eastern and Western powers.

The double tragedy for most people in this region is that the chronic political violence in our lives has failed to achieve its objectives. The start of a new year is always an appropriate moment to define our future priorities, by weighing our achievements, failures and aspirations (the Islamic and Jewish new years will be upon us in March and September, respectively, so temporal purists can do this again then).

I remain optimistic, though, because daily I see the bounty and wisdom that define Middle Eastern life and societies, alongside our many sorrows. Despite the Middle East's tensions and distortions of power, security and economy, the strongest force that drives our societies remains the intense, indestructible humanity of our ordinary people. Hundreds of millions of ordinary Arabs, Israelis, Iranians, Turks, Kurds, Berbers, Armenians and other people wake up every morning, send their children to school, go to work, hold their heads up, breathe deeply, look their prevailing power structures in the eye, and declare that they will not succumb to the violence, they will not betray or relinquish their humanity.

Most ordinary people in the Middle East will not embrace savagery as a routine operating procedure, refuse to adopt hypocrisy as a foreign policy guideline, and reject autocracy as a defining value of public governance. The problem is, these ordinary people do not make policy. This is why our region is so plagued by failed violence, domestic tyranny, the moral scourge of terror, degenerate occupations, civil wars, institutionalised corruption and mediocrity, and the barbarisms of assassination, colonialism and slow-motion ethnic cleansing as official policies. Yet, no Arab, Israeli, Iranian or Turk that I know would ever consciously choose violence over serenity, or war over peace, or would opt for a governance system based on tyranny, exploitation and subjugation rather than equality, liberty and dignity.

I have heard dozens of proposed solutions to the ailments of the contemporary Middle East, including democracy, integration, secularism, globalisation, modernisation, privatisation and many other sensible ideas. But I would like to make another, easier, suggestion. I would like to urge and challenge the Arab, Israeli and Iranian leaders and power structures to do something very simple: trust your people. Tap the humanity and power of your own citizens' sense of identity, faith and dignity. Put your faith and your fate in the hands of the hundreds of millions of ordinary Arab, Israeli, Iranian and other men and women who wake up every morning, send their children to school, go to work, hold their heads up high, and hold onto their humanity with every ounce of strength in their bodies. They do this day after day, war after war, assassination after assassination, dead child after dead child, failed state after failed state. They will not relinquish it. They will not betray it. They will not allow it to be stolen from them, ravaged or killed.

The most indestructible element and untapped force in our region is the rational, compassionate humanity of our people. It has never been mobilised to drive public policy, or to empower social and economic development efforts. My personal New Year's wish is that the leaders and power elites of the Middle East trust their own ordinary people and let their people define effective new policies. Unburdened by occupation, colonialism, subjugation and tyranny, they will choose the dignity of lives lived peacefully, equally, tolerantly, productively, spiritually, alongside Arabs, Israelis, Iranians and anyone else who shares these values.

The leaders and power elites of the Middle East will find in the minds and hearts of their own citizens at home that genuine stability and award-winning statehood that have never — never — been achieved through force of arms, restrictive domestic politics or Anglo-American armadas. Along with the Middle Eastern police states and other anachronisms of our region, such violent and failed mechanisms must be discredited and sent to history's garbage dumps — day after day, war after war, assassination after assassination, dead child after dead child, failed state after failed state.

The futile diplomacy of buying time

By Hasan Abu Nimah

Jordan Times, 1/1/03

PALESTINIAN LEADER Yasser Arafat has finally, and as expected, decided to postpone legislative and presidential elections, originally scheduled for January 2003, under pressure from Israel, the United States and the usual chorus that rallies behind such delaying tactics. The Palestinians had, however, been warning that the continued Israeli occupation and its paralysing impact on all aspects of life would have made carrying out elections all but impossible in the first place. They were right about that; the occupation makes elections impossible not only due to the cruel and repressive nature of the Israeli military dictatorship that rules over the Palestinians, but also because Israel intends not to allow the Palestinians to overcome any of the demands and hurdles that have been placed before them — such as political reform and unilaterally ending violence while Israel continues its massive attacks on civilians and leadership alike — ostensibly the preconditions for resuming a useful dialogue.

There are other factors of no less significance. One is the place of Arafat himself in the elections. Israel and the US (but what matters most here is the US) did not want Arafat to run. Arafat, however, has no intention of giving up his position. Yet he was reluctant to run in open defiance of the United States and he was hoping that as the January date approached, some favourable development in the troubled political scene would lift the US-Israeli embargo placed on his future. That has not happened either. Therefore, postponement was the most convenient option.

A second significant factor, which also relates to the Palestinian scene, is the current state of fragmentation of the Palestinian political formations and the steady erosion of the power of the Palestinian National Authority. A third factor is the absence of any form of strategy to guide the entirely legitimate Intifada, and the astonishing failure of the Palestinian leadership to formulate its own peace initiative to be placed before the Palestinian electorate, as well as the Israelis and international public opinion.

Freelance diplomacy, such as the Nusseibeh-Ayalon, Abu Mazen-Beilin, and Abu Ala-Peres adventures, which offer the illusion of peace at a bargain price, have only further undermined the Palestinians' standing and distracted attention from the urgent and primary need to dismantle Israel's occupation completely as a first step towards any workable resolution to the conflict. Whereas the Palestinian leadership was quick to claim credit for the Intifada when it started, some figures like Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) now disavow and condemn “the arming of the Intifada”, as if it was not Israel that introduced lethal weapons and the Palestinians were not merely responding with the few weapons they had in order to defend themselves, as every other people under oppression has before them. Such statements implicitly accept the Israeli logic that separates the Intifada from the entire context of endless occupation which provoked it and made it necessary.

The PNA, for its part, has only been reacting to pressure and orders from Israel, the United States and the so-called “Quartet” (The United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN), mostly with helpless irrationality and spontaneity. And while striving to prove how positive, receptive and responsive to any ideas it is, in order to regain its adversaries' (and intermediaries') favours, the Palestinian leadership has seen its status and rights further reduced and compromised.

One should not be misled into believing that the postponement of the elections created any genuine disappointment, especially among those who had been calling for them most loudly. On the contrary, the postponement served the undeclared purposes of the Israelis, whose continued occupation and frenzied campaign of death squad killings and liquidations is provided the continued excuse of the Palestinian “failure to reform”. It also serves the Americans who, in line with their policy of declaring a goal but meandering endlessly to avoid reaching it, just decided to shelve even the rather timid “road map” of the Quartet — the outcome of over six months of work — until the Israelis decide if and when it should ever be timely.

The common belief is that the Americans badly need to avoid any pressure on the Sharon government while preparing for their war on Iraq. By avoiding a confrontation with Sharon, it is thought, Israel can be kept from further antagonising the Arabs while attacking Iraq. The truth is that while such calculations are a factor, there is no reason to believe that absent the Iraq issue, Washington would go in any direction which does not meet total Israeli approval, or which Israel could not subject to endless delay and sabotage, as has happened with every single US peace initiative in history. And it is evidently clear that the US decision to shelve the “road map” against the insistence of the EU (and probably the other two members of the Quartet) simply followed Israel's open rejection of the plan.

With the expiry of both the prospect of Palestinian reform and the “road map”, the region has no more to look forward to but the outcome of the Israeli elections which will, most certainly, produce another ultra-right-wing government led by Sharon. With a renewed mandate, he is certain to intensify the brutality of the occupation with the intention of settling the conflict the “Israeli way” once and for all. The other factor is the outcome of a war against Iraq, which promises only greater disaster.

The war itself, for which almost no one in the world sees any justification, will exact an unacceptable price in devastation and regional destabilisation, and may only whet the appetites of the extremists within the US administration who harbour the desire to impose on the region a new form of imperialism. In addition, this war will end any prospects of winning the “war on terror” and deal a severe blow to hard-won gains in the effort to establish international rule of law in the past fifty years.

It is time that those who bury their ill intentions and political failures and hypocrisy in mountains of documents, “peace plans” and initiatives explain how any policy can at the same time combine appeasement of Israel's absolute refusal to truly end the occupation; the Palestinians' need and right to live free (in a state built on a fraction of their national homeland); the entire Arab world's expressed desire for a just and comprehensive peace; the planning for Middle East peace; and finally the preparations for a devastating war on Iraq that may set the hopes of the region back for generations.

A diplomacy of buying time, based on irreconcilable contradictions, inevitably carries the seeds of its own failure. That is why such diplomacy — as we have seen from the United States and its Quartet — declares the ultimate goal but then undermines any genuine effort to reach it. It is amazing that the US invests effort and political capital in establishing an objective — an end to the occupation so that two states, Israel and Palestine, can live side by side — and then invests extra efforts into diluting, undermining and avoiding anything that could bring this closer.

Instead of courageously facing the fact that unconditional material and diplomatic American support for Israel's colonisation and repression fuels the killing of innocent Israelis and Palestinians, all efforts are designed simply to obscure this from view and to keep the blame and initiative focused firmly on those with the least power to change the situation — the Palestinians.

The writer is former ambassador and permanent representative of Jordan to the UN.

Confronting poverty must take priority
By Linda Heard | Gulf News, 31-12-2002
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"Earth can provide enough to satisfy everyone's needs but not everyone's greed," said one of the wisest men of the last century, Mahatma Gandhi. With avaricious Western war clouds looming over one of the richest regions of the world and wealth in the hands of so few, it's hard not to agree with the former Indian leader.

A World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report issued earlier this year talks of dwindling stocks of fish in the oceans, shrinking forests - needed to absorb emissions of carbon dioxide - and polluted air and water. The report says that the U.S. is the greatest threat to the environment after discovering that the average American consumes 24 times as much as most Africans and twice as much as the average Briton.

In a world where millions of children are forced to work instead of going to school, where drug abuse and violent crime are prevalent on the streets of our cities and where the joint wealth of just 400 billionaires is superior to the annual income of the poorest 45 per cent of the world's population, we are poised not to dampen the grumbling volcano but instead to wage war. Isn't there something inherently immoral about this? Shouldn't we be waging war on poverty and misery, not creating more of the same?

Reduced to begging

Let's take Argentina. Latest estimates show that enough food is produced by Argentina to feed more than 300 million, and yet more than half its 40 million people survive on less than one dollar a day. One quarter of its population is unemployed, malnutrition is common and when you stroll around Buenos Aires in the evening, you will witness the desperation of humanity searching in garbage bins for a morsel to eat. This was one of the richest countries in the world, which has been reduced to begging from the IMF due to corruption, foreign interference and economic mismanagement.

Brazil fares little better. You may not be surprised to know that almost a quarter-of-a-million children live rough on its streets, but you will probably be amazed to learn that according to a new report commissioned by the Mayor of London, 600,000 children in London live below the official poverty line. Yes, that's London, England.

Some 36 per cent of the British capital's pensioners and 1.8 million of its workers also suffer from poverty. The report further indicates that poverty is fuelling rising crime and diminishing educational standards. Substandard housing is causing an increase in such diseases as tuberculosis. Yes, I thought that had been eradicated too. The poor state of Britain's National Health Service is well known, as are the deficiencies of its transport system but such concerns do not deter Prime Minister Tony Blair from his tally-ho, pro-U.S., foreign policy.

Homeless

Yet while the British government pleads poverty when it comes to pensions and a decent wage for its firefighters, nurses and teachers, it is quite happy to position its troops in the Gulf and its ships in the Red Sea along with bombs and missiles, some costing as much as a three-bed London semi-detached house.

Leading the charge to war is the U.S. where one in every 11 families, one in nine individuals and one out of every six children is poor, and that's official. A report issued earlier this year puts the official poverty standard in America at $18,104 for a family of four. More and more Americans are becoming homeless and 40 per cent of homeless men are veterans. Feted as they sail off on their warships to do their government's bidding, they are often cast onto the social scrap heap once they've served their purpose and returned home.

Indeed, the U.S. economy looks far from being healthy. Its stock markets have witnessed huge sell-offs due to pre-war jitters and corporate scandals, while investor confidence has never been lower. Unemploy-ment is rising and yet, it is all set to spend billions, if not trillions, on attacking Iraq. At the same time, the American taxpayers are responsible for supporting another country, oceans away, to the tune of $3 billion plus each year.

Thomas Stauffer, an economist, says that since 1973, Israel has been a burden on the U.S. to the tune of $1.6 trillion. He compares the bill to double the cost of the war in Vietnam. But Israel's monetary requirement is like a bottomless pit. It had no qualms about recently asking the American government for an extra $4 billion plus $8 billion in loan guarantees, and it is likely to get it. A cash-strapped U.S. government will have to borrow itself so as to be able to accede to Israel's request this time.

The U.S. aid to Africa, on the other hand, has dropped by 20 per cent since 1990, although one in every three Africans is malnourished and one child in seven dies before his or her fifth birthday, with half of these deaths caused by malnutrition. While people in Africa were succumbing to diseases such as HIV/AIDS because they cannot afford expensive treatment cocktails, the U.S. was dropping daisy cutters ($27,000 each) and J-dams ($20,000 each) on Afghanistan destroying entire villages and bringing wedding parties to an abrupt finale.

It seems to me that there is something seriously wrong with this scenario. America and Britain, both suffering from weakened economies, appear to be hell-bent on attacking Iraq even though Baghdad hasn't threatened them. Indeed, Iraq, unlike North Korea, is not thought to have intercontinental ballistic missiles and, therefore, cannot be a direct danger to London or New York.

Iraq is perceived to be a danger to Israel, however, and Washington has shown time after time that Israel must be protected at all costs, both economic, and ethical. The administration's neo-conservatives would probably attempt to make the point that Iraq could sell weapons to America's terrorist enemies. Indeed, it could, but so could North Korea and many former Soviet countries. In any event, this argument is pure speculation.

Deserve scrutiny

The ethics (or absence of them) of Western so-called civilised countries doing absolutely nothing to prevent the Palestinians being treated in an inhumane fashion by an occupying power, while plotting to come up with a pretext to drop bombs on the long-suffering Iraqis, deserve scrutiny.

Apart from the terrible toll, which will no doubt be exacted on Iraqi society with aid agencies predicting almost one million displaced persons and refugees, a conflagration in Iraq will affect the entire region. Even in a best-case scenario, economies will be flattened, tourism will be at a standstill and investor confidence in the area will be eroded.

Why should Iraq's neighbouring countries, many of which have worked hard to bring prosperity and security to their peoples, have to suffer due to unbridled U.S. ambition?

Although it is true that Saddam's armies invaded Kuwait 12 years ago, those countries surrounding Iraq no longer see Baghdad as a threat to their security. They are shouting from the rooftops that they don't want war. They clearly warn that war with Iraq will be destabilising and could inflame their already volatile street; but sadly they are not being heard.

Thirst for revenge

Why aren't we helping one another, and ensuring that mankind flourishes instead of focusing our thinking and resources on destruction and hatred? It bothers me that the U.S. Navy sees fit to use steel salvaged from New York's Ground Zero to build a warship. This has been done as a tribute to those who lost their lives during that fateful September. For how long is this thirst for revenge going to play out? It is the same thinking, which led American pilots to write the names of the 9-11 victims on the outer casings of bombs destined to be dropped on Afghan civilians who had never heard of the WTC.

Gandhi's assessment that greed surpasses need is a good one but I would like to add arrogance and will to power to the stew. While Israel erects a wall destined to separate it from the West Bank, the U.S. is busy erecting a wall surrounding self-interest. The world's main consumer is ensuring that its people will continue to consume at a similar or accelerated rate for a long time to come with the aid of cheap oil - and woe betide anyone who gets in its way.

A WWF spokesperson warns: "We would need at least two planets like the Earth, if all the people consumed natural resources at the same rate as the average American and British citizen". He needn't worry. President Bush and his administration will, no doubt, ensure that they never get the chance.

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs.

Bush let Blair and the world down
By Mustapha Karkouti | Gulf News, 31-12-2002

It makes you wonder why United Kingdom Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has reduced his full fledged commitment to "revive final status negotiations by this year's end", to merely a conference to "speed up reforms in the Palestinian Authority" next month.

Addressing the Labour Party annual conference last October, Blair said "by this year's end, we must have revived final status negotiations and they must have explicitly as their aims an Israel state free from terror, recognised by the Arab world, and a viable Palestinian state based on the boundaries of 1967."

Sensing the explosive dangers emanating from the deadlock in the Middle East peace process, with Iraq war looming above our heads, he told the conference delegates: "Yes, what is happening in the Middle East now is ugly and wrong - the Palestinians living in increasingly abject conditions, humiliated and hopeless (and) the Israeli civilians brutally murdered. I agree United Nations resolutions should apply to all parties (in the region)."

I questioned in this section (October 10) Blair's ability to convince United States President George Walker Bush and guarantee his support for such an initiative.

What Blair has done, I said then, "is put the perennial question of how much influence he has in Washington to a further test. Blair may compete with Israel's premier Ariel Sharon over the President's ear, but can he win?"

Now we know.

To be fair to Tony Blair, he has always realised the vital links between Iraq and Palestine, since the early days of the US administration campaign against Saddam Hussain's Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD).

He knows fully well that in order to succeed in this campaign, the world needs to move quickly on the Palestine issue and revive the dormant peace process.

Blair told a re-called House of Commons Iraq's emergency debate on September 24, that "we need a new conference on the Middle East peace (with) a massive mobilisation of energy to get the peace process moving again."

All this rosy expectations turned out to be based on sand. This is only one blow, among many, from the administration towards its friends and allies in just almost one week.

The second blow came when the U.S. declared, just 48 hours before a meeting of the "Quartet" was due to take place in New York last week, that its plan known for a "road map for peace in the Middle East" was not ready yet.

Representatives of the "Quartet" - the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the UN, who held an informal meeting with President Bush last Friday, had been told earlier of the administration's proposal to postpone the declaration of the "road map" until after Israel's general election on January 28.

International mediators of the Quartet were to hold their long-awaited and carefully-planned meeting in Washington, at the invitation of Secretary of State Colin Powell, to formally announce the "road map for peace".

This was a the biggest gift the right-wing coalition government in Israel could ever dream of. It is quite clear now whose side the U.S. administration is taking in the Israeli election.

Not only is the U.S. on the side of this Israeli evil, but it makes the Bush administration look as if it has become the highest barrier to progress on the Middle East peace process. The administration is sending humiliating messages not only to the Arabs, but also to the Europeans, the Russians and as well as the UN.

Secretary Powell has tried hard to explain this setback to peace efforts. "We think it would be wiser in this instance for us to continue work on the road map and wait until after the Israeli election is over," he said.

With his back against the wall in view of the increasingly strengthened right-wing pro-Israel contingent within the administration, the bruised Powell said: "It's just a matter of weeks until that is resolved and then we will engage with all the parties."

But, speaking for the EU, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said the revelation of the "road map" plan now would put Israeli volatile voters in a better position to decide.

"It is very important, in the European Union's opinion, that the voters of Israel know what the world thinks about the situation," he said. "Being an enlightened voter means that you also have the information on which you build your vote."

Moeller is absolutely right. The Quartet represents the world and many believe if this body fails to bring the Middle East closer to peace, no one else can.

Powell has worked very hard over the past weeks and months with his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and European External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, to bring the Quartet's road map to its final conclusion.

At their summit in Copenhagen on December 11, EU leaders voiced the hope that the "road map for peace in the Middle East", would be adopted at last Friday's meeting in Washington.

The UN coordinator for peace in the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen told a group of Arab journalists early in the month in London of his high expectations of the Washington meeting.

But one more time, Bush let everyone down. The third blow happened just few days ago when the U.S. representative at the Security Council vetoed a Syrian drafted resolution condemning Israel for the killing of civilian workers for UNRWA in the Occupied Territories.

A British worker, Iain Hook and two other Palestinians were shot by Israeli soldiers while on duty last month. The killings drew strong criticism against Israel from Kofi Annan and the British government.

The U.S. used its power of veto to torpedo what many consider to have been a humanitarian draft resolution. All other security council permanent members - Britain, France, China and Russia voted in favour.

Mustapha Karkouti is the former president, Foreign Press Association in London.

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