Fertile ground

By Salama Ahmed Salama

Western sources have drawn up a list of three or four names as possible perpetrators of the incidents in Kenya and Tanzania. The list includes the Saudi Arabian billionaire Bin Laden, members of Islamic Jihad, Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. Certain sources add Hassan Al-Turabi, who has repeatedly called for the establishment of a unified international Islamic front.

The task of mapping international terrorism -- its sources of funding, policy and executive branches, international routes and arms suppliers -- has become the major focus of intelligence services, governments and many think-tanks in the West. These institutions have targeted Islamism as their archenemy and braced themselves to destroy it, instead of reconsidering their own policies, which have created the ideal global arena in which terrorism can thrive and attract ever greater numbers of "fanatics" and "extremists" who believe in very different things, and whose only common ground may be their dispossession and desperation.

The gravity of the Middle East crisis, which has exacerbated Arab feelings of incapacity to breaking point, Israeli intransigence, US double standards, the indifference of the international community, and the humiliation of the Palestinians are not the only factors nurturing terrorism. The systematic and organised humiliation and mass murder of the Iraqi people are also unprecedented in the history of modern warfare. The West's attitude toward Iraq is provoking hostility and hatred of the US and the West in general, generating an urge for retaliation among a large and diverse array of factions. Terrorism is feeding off this hostility. The attacks on US troops and US interests in the Gulf were only the most visible expression of a generalised sense of outrage at the US's massive presence there. Arabs and Muslims have had enough.

President Mubarak's repeated warnings that the present state of affairs in the Middle East can be more destructive than an all-out war seem to have been proven accurate.

The environment created by the West is spawning seemingly limitless violence. The British M15 agent held by France has admitted that the British government was planning to assassinate Gaddafi in 1996. Britain's denial cannot alter the fact that terrorism is an integral part of official Western policy, and that illegal means are commonly used to realise political goals. What is the difference in the means Bin Laden, Clinton or Blair use to achieve their goals? US endeavours to assassinate Saddam Hussein, organise acts of sabotage and overthrow the regime in Baghdad violate international law and supply terrorist movements with justification to engage in extreme violence.

The events taking place every day in Kosovo constitute systematic and premeditated ethnic cleansing. The Serbs are slowly but surely eliminating the Albanian Muslims. The operations which have been going on for months under the auspices of NATO are yet another episode in the Bosnian tragedy. No wonder, therefore, that the "Arab Afghans" should find in Kosovo a haven and a new cause for which to fight.

The US can indeed track down and punish the men who plan terrorist operations, but flagrantly unjust and biased US policies will continue to provide the ideal environment for terrorism to flourish. As for us, we will pay the price for whatever Bin Laden -- or "Bin Clinton" -- chooses to do.