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October
13, 2001
Alexander
Cockburn
War
Can't Save the Economy
October
12, 2001
Imran
Khan
Try
Them in Court
Vijay
Prashad
War
in a Passive Voice
Patrick
Cockburn
Bombing
the Taliban
October
11, 2001
David
Vest
Bob
Dylan and 9/11
Amb.
Edward Peck
Bush
War Plan "Dumb"
Hani
Shukrallah
West
Is As West Does
Patrick
Cockburn
Looming
Humanitarian Crisis
October
10, 2001
Tom
Turnipseed
Earth
is Our "Homeland"
Steve
Perry
What
Is To Be Done?
Simon
Jenkins
The
Dumbest Weapon
Tariq
Ali
The
Pakistan Maelstrom
Cockburn/St.
Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
October
9, 2001
David
Vest
The
Rout That Wasn't
Michael
Mandel
This
War Is Illegal
Patrick
Cockburn
Bombs
Weaken Taliban
Lenni
Brenner
Powell
the Owl
Zha
Marginalization
and Terror
Steve
Perry
It
Begins
October
8, 2001
Zbigniew
Brzezinski
How
Jimmy Carter and
I Started the Muj
Philip Agee
The
USA and Terrorism
Mahajan
and Jensen
A
War of Lies
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance
Builds an Airport
October
7, 2001
John Pilger
Hitchens'
Slurs
Tariq
Ali
Who
Said History
Stopped Being Ironical?
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 3, 2001
8-Page Special
Issue
Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on
Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for
Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
God
Nostrodamus
Jam-maker
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
Al
Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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New Stories:
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Clash of Civilisations? Think Again
By Marwan Bishara
As
the war begins in Afghanistan, you can expect straight talk from
Republicans. And they are telling you: Islam is not America's
enemy. While targeting Taliban regime with missiles, the Bush
administration is showering the principal Islamic powers surrounding
it with generous financial and military aid. But as it works
to dispel a "clash of civilisations" theory, America's
apparent alternative is no less dangerous.
The Bush administration has
released $100 million to Pakistan, and prepared an additional
$600 million economic package to co-opt this second largest Muslim
country, the holder of the "Islamic bomb." US lawmakers
have called for their "key" ally, Turkey, to be relieved
of $5 billion in military debt and encouraged the IMF to pledge
$19 billion in new assistance.
Equally important, if not more
so, is the role of the Wahabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia -- the
US's most prominent ally in the Gulf and indeed the whole Arab
region.
For the Bush administration,
this strategic triangle is preferable to the regional alliance
it attempted to forge during the last decade of peace negotiations
between the Arab countries and Israel, for the present coalition
includes the larger Middle East region and thus gathers the larger
Islamic countries, which are capable of securing America's Asian
and Middle Eastern interests all at once. By the same token,
however, this alliance will further marginalise the Middle East
and downgrade Egypt's strategic importance.
Brilliantly located between
China and Russia, the new strategic alliance could facilitate
the long-term projection of forces and influence in this energy-rich,
politically unstable region.
Moscow is no less enthusiastic
than the US about a new geo-political configuration. It will
transform what Russia has long considered a crescent of instability
into a triangle of tranquility. Not only has Russian President
Putin withdrawn all his objections to America establishing a
foothold in Central Asia; he has even expressed his readiness
to subsume his strategy-making within US leadership to secure
Russia's southern flanks from growing regional dangers, notably
Islamic fundamentalism.
Once considered by Russia as
the "Islamic NATO," Turkey and Pakistan are now expected
to act against the spread of Islamic radicalism in the former
Soviet republics. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is expected to end
all support to the ''extremist Wahabis'' in Russia's provinces,
especially Chechnya, and in neighbouring states. A notable target
will be the Hizb-e Tahrir, a Taliban-style movement that has
growing support in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The
totalitarian regimes in these countries are especially enthusiastic
to coordinate with America.
On the surface, this sounds
like the perfect geo-political alliance. Common interests and
goals are defined by all the members of the alliance with the
military, economic and diplomatic means to implement them.
So what is the down side to
this potential geo-political success story ?
Well, first and foremost, all
the regional members of the unwritten alliance are unstable,
undemocratic, gross violators of human rights. To ally with them
would be to repeat the mistakes made with the Shah of Iran in
the 1970s, military regimes in the 1980s, Osama Bin Laden and
the Taliban in the 1990s... Totalitarian and military regimes
do not produce long-term stability; they themselves are temporary,
and they arouse violent opposition to their rule and hostility
toward America. Unfortunately, decision-makers in Washington
have limited their choices to bombing the countries that host
and support the terrorists, or coopting them. The latter response,
articulated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, has taken the
upper hand so far, while leaving room for bombing Iraq at a later
stage.
This is precisely the trap
America has fallen into in the past. You would think that after
11 September, it would no longer be geo-political business as
usual. Both the geography of violence and the politics of geography
have been transformed in recent years, and as the New York and
Washington bombings clearly show.
Though Washington's new balance
of power is meant to defuse Bin Laden's "balance of terror,"
it is nonetheless projecting more power and less balance into
the unstable Asian/Middle East region. As soon as America's credit
from the 11 September disaster runs out, China, which has shown
increasing interest in the energy-rich countries of Central Asia,
will evince its hostility to the new alliance. India will be
no less opposed to any such alliance, which includes a stronger
Pakistan while Kashmir continues to boil violently.
For Europe, the alliance may
sound like the lesser of two evils, but is not. Further, it runs
contrary to everything Europe stands for in terms of a vision
of stability and development in a logic of shared neighbourly
relations. Hopes of a Euro-Mediterranean culture will suffer
most from the brutal, short-sighted geo-strategic alliance being
established.
Alarm bells must be ringing
in the Arab world too; already weak and divided, it will be alienated
and destabilised by the new Pax Americana. It is precisely the
absence of Arab leadership, caused by the humiliation and defeat
Israel has inflicted, that led to the instability and turmoil
we have been witnessing in the Islamic and Arab worlds. Referred
to as "moderate," the Arab states hesitant to join
the "international" coalition will be marginalised
even more; the liberalisation of Arab societies generally will
suffer from the transformation of the Islamic periphery states
into the centre of the Islamic world, leading to a wider regional
crisis and creating a rift between Arab and non-Arab Islamic
countries.
The search for peace between
Israel and its neighbours will suffer no less. To my knowledge,
Bush's recent proposal for a Palestinian state, to which many
are pinning all their hopes, is based on an initiative introduced
several months ago to Cairo, and rejected because of the humiliating
long-term conditions attached to it.
In the post-Afghanistan world,
none of the new players have a vested interest in the fair resolution
of the Palestinian question beyond the Islamic holy sites. Continued
violence in Palestine will aggravate already hostile public opinion
in the Arab world. Geo-strategy will win yet another round against
the notion of a "clash of civilisations" as it responds
to terrorism.
A geo-strategic alliance with
bankrupt regimes, too, will undermine democracy, human rights
and other factors indispensable to long-term stability. The absence
of such fundamental and universal rights will further alienate
Muslim societies there, and lead to more violence, terrorism,
and hostility towards America and the West. This, then, will
be a "clash of wills" between victims and victimisers.
As America goes to war, the
West needs to take stock of its relations with the South, which
it refused to do in Durban. It is high time for it to support
democratic reform and respect for human rights; it is time for
it to end all form of foreign occupation with the same vigour
and determination it has shown in its vow to fight terrorism.
As for the Arab world, the new crisis is proving more dangerous
than that of the post-Gulf War era. In the absence of minimum
coordination between the major Arab powers and the Palestinians,
much will be lost. A marginalised and divided Arab world can
only bring more catastrophes on its people. Unless they rebound,
united, they will have only themselves to blame for the consequences.
Marwan Bishara teaches at the American University of Paris
and is the author of Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid
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