A different War and Its Impact

By: Fe'reeha M. Idrees
(The Writer is Editor of "Pakistan Post" a leading weekly from london)

Fe'reeha M. Idrees

There is no justification for what happened in America on September 11. The act was barbaric, brutal and inhuman. There never were, nor can ever be two opinions about it. However, the reaction, or, should I call it the over- reaction of the western media and their leaders is quite intriguing.

While media portrays a different picture of Muslim sentiment on that day, I bear witness to seeing tears in hundreds of Muslims at the catastrophe.

Incidentally I was in Pakistan that day on my fifteen-day training week in journalism, on Asian Politics. As the news broke in, I saw people looking in horror at the TV screens. I remember the TV presenter in CNN saying, "Those of you who have just tuned in and are thinking that this is an unreal scene,
should know that this tragedy in America is really taking place." My dad, a senior government official, in Civil Aviation and ex-Air force officer was having a nightmare of a day. My mother, a housewife, was on
her prayer mat; praying for everyone in American, including her own two brothers who work in Chicago.

There was confusion, disbelief, and horror and more than anything else, there was sympathy. The days to follow included special prayers for the victims in mosques. The elite and the educated sectors were all showing concern, and there was a lot of speculation as to what the President Musharraf's policy would be over the issue. The International media, however, was showing an entirely different picture.

I am no fan of Osama's, but then I could be an exception being educated in very different and better environment than an average Pakistani. However I know that students of recognised institutions, government officials and educated and enlightened class of Pakistan share my sentiments. Yet it was surprising to see that within the first half hour of the incident, Osama's name started flashing over the media screens, without any concrete evidence, it was called that Islam is an extremist religion.
President Bush, in his haste for an impressive word, chose the word, "crusade", which set an anti-Arabic and anti Islamic mood in the nation. CNN did maximum damage by projecting day and night the Arab hijackers and other stories of terrorism by the Muslims all over world in general and Arabs in particular.
Such projection by this powerful medium has resulted in numerous attacks on the lives and property of the American Muslims, including killing of a Sikh for his mistaken identity for Taliban. Muslim workers are being laid off, as a first priority wherever laying off is needed. Muslim students are faring no better in their colleges and universities. President Bush had to appear on TV to defend the American Muslims whom he called equally patriotic and loyal. But, did it have the desired effect? Apparently, not.
The damage has been done to the degree that Mayor Giuliani has even spurned the 10 million dollars offered by a Saudi Prince for the victims of the twin towers, just because the Prince opined that USA should change her policies towards the Middle East. Giuliani says that the Prince had tried to justify
the attack on WTC by suggesting so!! Little does Giuliani know that no less than a political pundit of the calibre of Henry Kessinger himself has in one of his recent articles "Moderation is no substitute for terrorism" strongly advised the US government to revise its Foreign Policies of which the most important factor should be to have Better Relations with the Islamic World.

How many times the presidents of the United States of America have vowed to protect American interests the world over with the resolve of 'whatever it might take'? Was it not in 1853 when Japan, living peacefully and wishing to be left alone, was forced by the American gun-boats to open up its trade
to satisfy American interests? When they obeyed, and bought the new technology and developed it for a century, it turned out to be too much for American comfort!

As soon as America mass-produced Automobile, the entire oil reserve of the Middle East turned into an American interest and still remains so, with the addition of Central Asian reserves and the access route to them through Afghanistan. Manipulating oil purchases for a pittance, America grew filthy rich and contrived a proxy state to terrorize the people of the oil-yielding area to keep the oil prices low.

When the excessive use of cheap oil threatened life on earth and the mankind screamed, the incumbent president of the largest polluter nation found in his great wisdom that it would not be in the American interest to spend money on reducing the undesirable emissions. It proposed an International Criminal Court, but wanted to be excluded from its jurisdiction ostensibly for being a super-power assuming the policing role, but actually claiming license to use all devices outside the pale of law in self-interest. It is the political and democratic norm for every presidential candidate to promise greater riches to the already prosperous.

American citizens endlessly, with no concern for the rest of the world. Super- power may be a new name but is an old phenomenon. History has witnessed such unchallenged powers as the Roman Empire and the Arab Empire collapsing under their own weight, not being able to keep the state apparatus integrated
and operational due to their enormous sizes and complex needs.

The USSR was the latest causality, which has left behind the rival USA on the anvil of history, to be hammered and reshaped into a more acceptable member for the world community. Call it natural justice or the process of cause and effect, strange things happen to super-powers. The leadership become complacent and arrogant, losing touch with the pains of those who suffer at their hands.

The citizens getting used to secure and easy living tend to become indolent, pleasure loving and negligent towards serious aspects of life. The individual, who is the brick that build the edifice of society, thus
deteriorates in quality. No wonder the half-wild soldiers fighting for Hannibal found the well-drilled Romans soft and frightened in the battlefield, and Changez Khan's barbarians saw the famous Persian and
Chinese armies run away along with their emperors after giving a brief fight.

The contemporary scene seems to be not too different, and shows the quality of individual in poor light. The myth of the Great Russian Army and its state-of-the-art weapons exploded in Afghanistan as did the mighty American forces in Vietnam.

Terrorism, like super-power, is also a new name for an old phenomenon. The Vikings, the Vandals, the Huns and the Mongol herds terrorized the civilized world for excluding them from the march of progress. The fact that they dissolved themselves in the vanquished societies after breaking through the closed doors, is proof that their aim was not to impose their beliefs on others or to hate the way of life of the rest, but to join them as equals.

Terrorism, therefore, is not a disease, but a symptom, although painful and undesirable for the victim as well as the perpetrator. Centuries ago, when leaders of terrorist clans could not be bought and compatible weapons were available to all; it took pitched battles to settle the issue. In the modern context, however, the covert acts of the super-powers to deprive others, and to overwhelm them by their superior power, leave no option for their humiliated victims, but to sneak and strike at their oppressor
to make them think, if not to obey. True, Afghanis should have cooperated with Americans, but it should be kept in mind that Afghanistan is a barren and forgotten land. The people are illiterate. Most of them don't even know where America is or what Islam means; they are just relying upon the little knowledge that they have gathered through the maulvi in mosque. Now that maulvi himself has a pathetic life story to tell. He was left at the Islamic madrasa by his parents so that at least he would be getting food. The teacher who taught him had hardly read two chapters of Quran himself, and that too in Arabic version, without realising the translation of what he read. They are like parrots repeating the foreign language, not realising one bit of what they are reading, and later on preaching. What Taliban preaches is not Islamic,
in fact it is hardly human, yet, their demand for a solid proof against Osama was not that illogical.
It's the same in Afghanistan like it is in America. The general public is innocent and naive. Having spent quite a few years of my life in west, my heart goes out to all the Americans. For they are good people, peace loving and peace giving. It is the same with Afghanis. An average man is basically a good man and as compared to an average American, unblessed massively on educational and financial levels. We have to make the world realise that the man going out with a suicide bomb is not doing that after reading Quran, but driven by hunger and depression. The whole phenomenon is regional and cultural rather than that of religion. Yet the media is busy drawing a different caricature. Look at the people shown in protest strikes on TV from Pakistan. They are mostly the unemployed and the street mongers. For a person living in the cultured world of Europe and America, it is very hard to imagine the sort of lives these protesters lead. The average youth in the remote areas of Pakistan is in need of an identity. The Afghan culture has especially hit the borders of Quetta and Peshawar. One can see what major differences have been made in England by the presence of the immigrants from around the world, yet this is a developed country. Back in the Russian war days, the influx of refugees in Pakistan was too burdensome for the developing world of Pakistan. How could a country too poor to hold its own economy deal with extra load of thousands of shattered settlers? However, with the passage of time, they started settling in, intermarriages took place and business started shifting to these new-comers. The mosque, due to the unfortunate steps taken by the Military government of Zia-ul- Haque in those days, started becoming a "profession", rather than an honour.

In Islam, the leader of the State has to be a religious scholar, however, the religion is never meant to be "the means of his income." The meddling of material started tarnishing the true religious preaching, repeating what Christianity went through in the medieval days, as Chaucer mentions in his Canterbury Tales, where a nun was forced to give her life to the Church as she has "no other profession." So the "maulvi" was made busy by the government's inverted policies to forget the world in his worries for food.
Such is the extent of poverty in Pakistan, that a maulvi whose job was in fact according to religion, to read and preach, was immersed in the worry of how to fill his empty stomach at night. Henceforth, new
injunctions and sects started being born. The remorseful plight of the maulvi compelled him to say yes to whatever the person who gave him food said. Hence, mini-extensions of Taliban emerged, forming a lethal network in the country.

We have to remember the mental level of these people and then negotiate. The media today should realise that in order to sink sense into the uneducated clergies, it will have to tread softly and not blindly the way it has been doing in the recent days.

Injustices have done repression of Muslims in general, and has bred a sense of helplessness, deprivation and frustration which breeds hatred and when people's economic conditions also deteriorate to a stage that they find it difficult to survive. Such situation leads to extreme desperation and in some cases towards terrorism because then they have nothing more to lose.

Muslims all over the world condemned the barbaric act of Sept 11, 2001, yet media still use the words, Islamic Terrorism. May I ask if IRA people are Catholic Terrorists? CNN and BBC calls them IRA, similarly other terrorist and militia organizations have names, so let us refrain using such words and
acts which are leading towards hatred to Islam and Muslim. Were Muslims or Jews supposed to hate Christians when Hitler started killing Jews? No matter what President Bush or Tony Blair says, the fact remains on the ground that an obvious hatred has started against Muslims and Islam by the western
powers and media. Long live Humanity and Peace to world!