Fallout from Sept 11 still being felt!

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MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR

There are efforts by ordinary citizens all over the world to heal the wounds left by the Sept 11 tragedy. Many people have been reaching out to one another with respect, humility and trust.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

UNLESS you’ve been on Mars this past week, you would have realised that it was the 10th anniversary of Sept 11 a few days ago. There had been so much news and stories about it everywhere.

Nobody doubts that the events of Sept 11 10 years ago were a horrific tragedy, and all sympathy should go to the families who lost loved ones that day. But it should also be remembered that the aftermath of Sept 11 has been equally tragic, and is still ongoing.

According to the costs-of-war project at Brown University, a “very conservative” estimate is that about 137,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and that the wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees in these countries.

The Brown project puts the wars’ ultimate cost, including interest payments and veterans’ care, to the United States at up to US$4tril – equivalent to the country’s cumulative budget deficits for the six years from 2005 to 2010. Think of how many people that money could feed and school.

What have all these gained? Even Americans have been affected by it. Today, they live in an environment so fearful of another attack that they have to suffer the indignity of all manner of surveillance and security inconveniences. One recent op-ed in the New York Times suggested that on balance the infringements on civil liberties that Americans have had to suffer are relatively minor.



It failed to mention that for its American Muslim citizens, these have been major. The blame, the humiliation and the abuses that they have had to endure are not yet over.

But despite all these, and its global impacts, there are efforts by ordinary citizens to heal these wounds. In the United States and several other Western countries, the issues that arose from Sept 11 were not glossed over but discussed and debated as a way to rebuild the broken bridges. Civil society, rather than governments or politicians, have been at the forefront of these.

I was just in Western Australia where I was asked to speak at a conference on Rebuilding Harmony in the post-Sept 11 world. It was heartening to see so many people interested in the subject, and so disappointed by the ongoing violence that has accompanied the event by all sides.

Many Australians had been opposed to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, correctly seeing that this was no way to have peace.

They emphasised that people of different backgrounds, cultures and faiths need to know one another in order to avoid war, and that politicians should be held accountable for their part in the violence.

In the evening after the conference, we attended a special service at the main cathedral in Perth to commemorate the anniversary of Sept 11. It was attended by all the state dignitaries as well as people from all faiths. The entire service was beautiful and solemn as befitted the occasion.

But what moved me most was something I did not expect nor had ever experienced. An imam from a local mosque got up and recited the Al Fatihah and two other verses from the Quran dealing with compassion to humanity.

To hear the first surah of the Quran recited in Arabic in a cathedral while everyone listened so respectfully was a profoundly emotional experience for me. Never had its meaning been more beautiful.

It led me to think about how elsewhere in the world so many people have been reaching out to one another with respect, with humility and trust. When I heard the Al Fatihah in that church, it made me love my religion more.

The translation was in the programme, along with the words of all the other prayers and hymns that day, Christian and Jewish.

And what struck me most was how the sentiments expressed, while coming from different holy books, were in fact similar. My religion is as compassionate and generous as any other, not just to our own people but to all of humanity.

It made me wonder why this does not happen at home, why there is so much mistrust that nobody steps into a house of worship that is not their own.

Surely to be able to know one another is a good thing. After all, God says in surah Al-Hujarat, verse 13: O men! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another.

By constantly isolating ourselves from each other, are we not rejecting what our Creator intended?

As Malaysia Day approaches, perhaps we should think about how we can reconcile with one another. Or at the very least, refuse and reject the many deliberate attempts to divide us.

Selamat Hari Malaysia!

A new world order emerging

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CERITALAH By KARIM RASLAN newsdesk@thestar.com.my

Indonesia and Turkey – two great countries on the far reaches of the Islamic world – are benefiting from the freedom their people enjoy, boosting their international reputations.

WE HAVE seen how the Sept 11 attacks and Washing­ton’s subsequent missteps have led to a diminution of Ame­rican power and influence just as China was beginning its dramatic rise. Ten years on, the US is weighed down by debt and its failed dreams of global dominance.

Changes have also been taking place within the Muslim world. Indeed, in the aftermath of Sept 11, as well the more recent Arab Spring, the balance of power in and between these countries has shifted fundamentally.

In the past, Arab nations were considered pre-eminent. The revolutions in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya have shattered the prestige of the Middle East’s autocratic rulers. The image of former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak on trial has transfixed the world.

We now find ourselves asking the unimaginable – which Arab nation or kingdom will be next? Which redoubt of injustice, corruption and mismanagement will fall at the hands of its people?

As the Arab world – propelled by dramatic developments on the Internet, communications and social media – enters a period of turmoil and transition, other Muslim countries are emerging from the margins of history.

Most notable are Indonesia and Turkey, two great countries on the far reaches of the Islamic world. As fully-functioning democracies, neither need fear a repeat of the Arab Spring within their borders.

Indeed, their economies are benefiting from the freedom their people enjoy. This is boosting their international reputations while anti-reform Arab leaders appear morally bankrupt.



Indonesia has traditionally de­­ferred to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, whose King is also the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The relationship is also economic: some 1.5 million Indo­nesians work in Saudi Arabia as maids and construction workers. Indonesia is also a big importer of Saudi oil and gas.

Still, controversies over the ex­­ploitation and abuse of Indonesian migrant workers in the kingdom have soured their relationship.

The NGO Migrant Care reports that some 1,105 Indonesian workers died in Saudi Arabia from 2006 till last year. Under Saudi law, however, there’s little chance for aggrieved foreigners to seek redress.

Indonesian anger was further stoked by the execution of Ruyati Sapubi, a 54-year-old West Java­nese maid. She was convicted of murdering her Saudi employer, who she claimed was abusing her.

The mounting Indonesian anger culminated in protests in August by local activists and academics when the University of Indonesia conferred an honorary doctorate on Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

The protesters complained that the award was inappropriate, given recent events and Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record.

As Anis Hidayah, executive director of Migrant Care wrote in Kompas: “The conferral of an honorary doctorate on Abdullah is an insult to the nation, especially to the Indonesian migrant workers who have contributed to the country with their sweat and blood, often in the face of death.

“Indeed, they are more dignified and respectable than academics who have willingly sold out their integrity.”

Indonesia has thus suspended all migrant labour to Saudi Arabia until it signs an agreement on worker protection. The republic’s growing prosperity means that these shows of independence, and its determination to protect its citizens, will increase.

Meanwhile, on the far western flank of the Islamic world, Turkey is positioning itself as a regional power. Blocked in its attempts to join the European Union, Turkey has turned eastwards with great effect.

With its booming economy and dynamic society, Turkey is poised to seize a prominent role in Middle Eastern affairs – especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Ankara, for example, has demanded an apology and compensation from Israel for last year’s raid on the Gaza flotilla. With neither forthcoming, Turkey has frozen ties with the Israeli military and expelled Tel Aviv’s ambassador.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has also maintained an independent stance on both Libya and Syria. He insisted on joining Nato’s Libyan intervention but demanded special terms – principally that the enforcement of the no-fly zone be led by the alliance itself and not France.

The Turks are charting their own diplomatic course. They are no longer content to remain mere allies of the West, or a silent, acquiescent Middle Eastern neighbour.

Indeed, Indonesia and Turkey are bidding for leadership, not only of their respective regions but also of the Muslim world at large. As members of the G-20 Summit, they demonstrate how democratisation and liberalisation can strengthen nations.

Malaysia, for its part, is now at the crossroads. Can we embark on the more difficult, but ultimately far more rewarding, path of reform?

Whatever we choose, democracy – even in the Muslim world – is on the move everywhere. We must ask ourselves: are we to become the victims of history or its victors?

Who is America’s new enemy?

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America’s new enemy?

By ANDREW SIA star2@thestar.com.my

 It used to be the Nazis, the Soviet Union and then Osama and al-Qaeda. Now that he is dead, who will become the new enemy America focuses its energies on?

 SO what now? With Osama bin Laden dead, will his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, continue a new wave of terrorism against the West?

Yet a report in British newspaper The Guardian in late July indicates that most Syrian activists reject the new al-Qaeda leader. Mohammad Al-Abdallah, the spokesman of local coordination committees in Syria, said: “Zawahiri is trying to convince the world that he has supporters in Syria, which will provoke international public opinion against us and give the regime the right to commit crimes against our people.”



For Tom Engelhardt, academic, author and editor of Tomdispatch.com, al-Qaeda was a ragtag crew that engaged in some dramatic terror acts over the past 10 years but, in reality, it had limited operational capabilities, while the movements it spawned from Yemen to North Africa have proven “remarkably unimportant”. While Osama sat isolated in a Pakistan mansion, ironically, it was the Americans who did the work of creating war and chaos (and increasing people’s resentment of the United States) for Osama!

“Think of him as practising the Tao of Terrorism,” writes Engelhardt, comparing Osama to the way a tai chi master fights – not with his own minimal strength, but leveraging on his opponent’s strength, in this case, America’s massive fire power.

 

China rising: Will the United States next turn its attention to China?

And what can we hope for 10 years after 9/11?

Journalist Robert Fisk, writing in British newspaper The Independent, said, “Bin Laden told the world that he wanted to destroy the pro-Western regimes in the Arab world, the dictatorships of the Mubaraks and the Ben Alis. He wanted to create a new Islamic Caliphate. But these past few months, millions of Arab Muslims rose up and were prepared for their own martyrdom – not for Islam but for freedom and liberty and democracy. Bin Laden didn’t get rid of the tyrants. The people did. And they didn’t want a caliph.”

Jason Burke, author of The 9/11 Wars, notes that back in 2004, American intelligence agencies had foreseen “continued dominance” for many years to come. But in 2008, they judged that within a few decades the US would no longer be able to “call the shots”.

“If the years from 2004 to 2008 brought victory, then America and the West cannot afford many more victories like it,” he adds.

But in this second decade of the 21st century, will America learn the lessons of history?

Two years ago, when President Barack Obama intoned general platitudes about human rights for the Middle East in his landmark Cairo speech, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had this to say about the Egyptian dictator: “I consider President and Mrs Mubarak to be friends of my family.”

As the comedian and talk show host Jay Leno once joked, the invasion of Iraq was initially supposed to be called Operation Iraqi Liberation, until they realised that it spelt O.I.L. – and the name was then changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Haroon Siddiqui, a columnist at the Toronto Star, believes that Obama has reverted to Washington’s old double standard of one law for allies, another for adversaries. And so dissidents in Iran and Syria will be cheered on and materially backed to overthrow their regimes but not the people rising up in Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Oman, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

Uri Avnery, a former Israeli Member of Parliament and author of several books about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflects that the American empire always needs an antagonist, an “evil, worldwide enemy” to focus its energies on, be it the Nazis or the Soviet Union.

“The disappearance of the communist threat left a gaping void in the American psyche, which cried out to be filled. Osama bin Laden kindly offered his services as a new global enemy.

“Overnight, medieval anti-Islamic prejudices are dusted-off for display. Islam the murderous, the fanatical, the anti-freedom, anti-all-our-values. Suicide bombers, 72 virgins, jihad,” he writes in the online “political newsletter”, Counterpunch. Avnery adds that the present Islamophobia hysteria is similar to how Europeans used to demonise Jews in the past.

American civil rights lawyer, columnist and author Glenn Greenwald predicts in online news and culture website salon.com that even though US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta has acknowledged that al-Qaeda has a grand total of “fewer than two dozen key operatives” on the entire planet, the War on Terror will be continued by trotting out more “fear-mongering propaganda” against a new alliance of villains from Somalia and Yemen – the “scariest since Marvel Comic’s Masters of Evil”.

As the future unfolds, will other villains be found to replace Osama? How about China?

John Feffer, the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus (a project of the Washington DC-based Institute for Policy Studies), notes that perhaps the only country in the world that has benefited from the War on Terror is China.

“Beijing has watched the United States spend more than US$3tril (RM9tril) on the war on terrorism, devote its military resources to the Middle East, and neglect pretty much every other part of the globe. The United States is now mired in debt, stuck in a recession, and paralysed by partisan politics. Over that same period, meanwhile, China has quickly become the second largest economy in the world.”

What a difference a decade makes. When US President George W. Bush came into office over 10 years ago, he called Beijing a “strategic competitor” rather than a strategic partner. When a US spy plane flying off Hainan Island was involved in an accident with a Chinese plane, the Americans refused to apologise.

Ten years later, after US government debt was downgraded, we see China’s official Xinhua news agency lecturing the Americans – in English, mind you – that “the days when debt-ridden Uncle Sam could leisurely squander unlimited overseas borrowing appear to be numbered.”

In a Time magazine article in April, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that “the single biggest threat to our national security is our debt”.

While America is still building aircraft carriers at US$15bil (RM45bil) a pop, China is developing missiles expressly designed to sink them – at a cost of US$10mil (RM30mil) each. Talk about being cost efficient. Economix, a unit of the New York Times, reveals that the US accounts for 43% of all the military spending on Earth – six times as much as China, which accounts for 7.3% of world military spending: “We’ve waged war nonstop for nearly a decade in Afghanistan against a foe with no army, no navy and no air force. We send US$1bil (RM3.02bil) destroyers to handle five Somali pirates in a fibreglass skiff.”

Yet the irony is: “(The US is) borrowing cash from China to pay for weapons that we would presumably use against it. If the Chinese want to slay us, they don’t need to attack us with their missiles. They just have to call in their loans.”

If Time’s scenario ever comes to pass, then the war on terror would be ended by Chinese financial tai chi.