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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 April 2000 Issue No. 477 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 April 2000 Issue No. 477
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Winds of war
By Salama Ahmed Salama
The Middle East seems braced to join an arms race. Huge purchases of new defensive weapons coincide with a marked escalation in threats and anxiety not known since the Gulf War ended and Iraq's attempt to invade Kuwait was foiled. It looks like the Middle East is sitting on a powder keg of hostility waiting to explode at any moment. It is a state of affairs in which the United States is both the instigator of the potential explosion and the guarantor that it will not take place, depending on which way the wind blows.
If this were not the case, why did US Defence Secretary William Cohen undertake such a busy tour of the region recently, during which he was personally involved in monitoring the conclusion of arms deals for billions of dollars? I do not refer only to the deal to provide Israel with $17 billion worth of fighter planes and sophisticated missiles as soon as a peace agreement is signed with Syria and Lebanon. Cohen also made a stopover in Cairo to approve Egypt's request to set up a mutual defence system, and specifically to acquire state-of-the-art air to air long- and medium-range defence missiles.
Cohen had a few other stops on his itinerary, too. He went to the Gulf to peddle an early-warning anti-missile system to deter biological and chemical weapons. He made the same proposal to Jordan, which was invited to join Israel, Turkey and the United States in military manoeuvres in the Mediterranean, off the Syrian coast. Cohen's statements regarding the need for a collective defence system in the Gulf to protect population agglomerations from targets of biological or chemical weapons are astonishing, coming as they do at a time when Washington is -- or claims to be -- involved in efforts to make peace in the region, efforts that have so far resulted in a fragile peace. At the same time, Egypt and other Arab countries are striving to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from the region, including the nuclear arsenal maintained by Israel, and to establish a weapon-free zone.
With the possibility of another military conflict looming over the region, the US seems determined to sow seeds of fear and doubt, and to give credence to rumours of military confrontation between parties other than those that have been traditionally involved in the past half-century of regional conflict.
The biological and chemical weapons against which the secretary of defence is warning, and against which defence systems must be established, have nothing to do with Israel, whether as the instigator or the target of such attacks. Instead, Iraq or Iran are posited as the two potential sources of threat once peace and good neighbourly relations with Israel are established. Certainly, such a scenario for the future of the region, as envisaged by the US (after Iraq and Iran replace Israel in the power equation), fits well with US plans to maintain Israel's absolute military supremacy and insert it into a mutual defence agreement with the US and NATO. It should be noted that, in all the defence arrangements Cohen proposed, Israel's nuclear power was never mentioned. Instead, attention was turned to fears that Iraq and other Arab countries, including Syria and Egypt, were producing chemical and biological weapons. It is no coincidence that such implicit accusations are made as the air attacks on Iraq by British and US aircraft are resumed, and as Iran-Iraq skirmishes are once again instigated. The US was quick to fan the embers, publishing pictures of military bases where the sworn enemies of the regime in Tehran, the Mujahidin-i Khalq, are training inside Iraqi borders. Only the US's plans justify the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in the past few days.
No doubt the prolonged conflict between Iran and Iraq, and Baghdad's failure to improve relations with neighbouring Arab countries, compounded by its failure to cooperate with the UN, are the pretexts the US cites when arousing security fears in the Gulf. The US is determined to sell more weapons while diverting attention from Israel's nuclear arsenal. Given the absence of an Arab security system, we must remember that, whether peace is attained or not, allowing the US to run the show will not necessarily be beneficial to the Arabs.
