22 - 28 November 2001
Issue No.561
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 22 - 28 November 2001 Issue No.561 |
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To an American friend
Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed* sums up the difference between explanation and justification
I have been wanting to write to you for a long time. In fact, the thought has been in my mind since 11 September. It occurred to me every time I saw an American journalist, read an American newspaper or watched a programme on US satellite television -- indeed, every time the question was posed: why do Arabs and Muslims hate Americans so much?
I know that you do not think along these lines, as you have visited many Arab countries, including Palestine, and you have many friends in this part of the world. You have met many Arabs, who think highly of you and who at the same time are very critical of US foreign policy; but I do not believe it ever occurred to you that they hold you, or any individual American citizen, responsible for your country's foreign policy. It is true that your country claims to be a democratic one, and indeed one cannot deny that the civil and political rights of the majority are respected in the US, but we realise that foreign policy matters, in the US like in many other countries, are not a major concern for public opinion. Interest groups, lobbies and a number of people believed to be experts in international affairs are the ones who really influence your country's foreign policy. So many Arabs and Muslims are quite critical of that foreign policy, but this does not make them enemies of the American people. I am sure you know how well Americans get along with Arabs in Arab countries; surely you have reflected that, despite what happened in the US on 11 September, and despite the assaults on Arabs and Muslims in the US, there have been almost no attacks on Americans in Arab countries.
I am amazed that despite the many area studies research centres and foreign policy think tanks, despite the thousands of intelligent and well- informed professors in your universities, this simple truth does not get through to most of your country's mass media. They continue to ask the same question, over and over: why do the Arabs hate America? It has never occurred to them that we strongly object to US foreign policy in our region. Indeed, recent US foreign policy makes no sense to most people, in the Arab world or elsewhere.
Has the US not taken unilateral positions on many issues, with no support from other quarters? Which countries supported the administration's plan to ignore the SALT treaty and proceed with the construction of a missile defence shield to protect itself against imaginary threats? Did a number of US scientists not criticise this programme as ineffective, costly and dangerous? How many countries supported the US government when it rejected the Kyoto treaty on climate change, an accord to limit trafficking in small weapons, the establishment of an international criminal court, or the UN conference on racism? Surely you know that Arabs and Muslims are not the only ones who are critical of US foreign policy; virtually the entire international community opposed it on these and other matters.
It must be equally easy for you to understand why many Arabs resent US policies in the Middle East. Key Arab governments, including the Palestinian Authority, entertain the best of relations with your government. On the other hand, your government, and many commentators in the American media, take the Arabs for granted. They expect the Arabs to fall in love with your government, which arms Israel to the teeth then does almost nothing when Israel makes a mockery of official US positions. As I recall (and you know that I am a political scientist by profession), your government does not formally recognise Israel's claims over Arab land in the West Bank and Gaza, the Golan Heights or other territories occupied in June 1967.
The Oslo Accords were signed in the White House, in the presence of Bill Clinton, your former president. Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of Israel, declared these accords dead mere days before the murder of the Israeli minister of tourism. He took that murder as a pretext to reoccupy Palestinian towns. His tanks and armoured vehicles, made in and supplied by the US, are still there.
I am sure you agree with me that Israeli actions in Palestinian territories can only be described as state terrorism, and your government has declared a global war on terror; but what has it done to stop Israeli acts of terror, which the US makes possible through supplies of state-of-the- art military hardware? Do you expect Arabs to dance in the streets because your president begged the Israelis to withdraw their troops as soon as possible? Israeli tanks still stand in Palestinians villages; and the policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders, Israeli officials have declared, will continue.
Should I continue to list Arab grievances against US foreign policy in the Middle East? Other items on this list are just as well known -- including the absurd determination to maintain sanctions against the Iraqi people, and the plans members of the Bush foreign policy team had made to drag Egypt and other Arab governments into a military effort to topple the Iraqi regime, long before 11 September, for no other reason than the satisfaction of their Cold War appetites.
Your commentators do not realise that Osama Bin Laden is seen in the Arab world not as a hero but as a victim -- or, if he is indeed responsible for what happened on that tragic day in September, as an inevitable product of US policy in the region. This policy causes frustration and leaves no room for a reasonable dialogue with Arabs, or non-Arabs for that matter. No one supports military operations in Afghanistan because, for the Arabs, the military approach is not the best way to deal with such a complex problem as terrorism. When Arabs say that the US should examine the political causes of terrorism, they are not justifying acts of terrorism. In fact, they are trying to do the US government a good turn by advising your senior officials to save lives, time and resources, just by sticking to international law. Those officials boast that they are defending international law, but their actions tell a different story.
Force breeds only the use of force. Is it difficult for you to convince your government, and commentators like Thomas Friedman and William Safire, of this simple truth? I hope you will succeed -- for the scene in Afghanistan, even after the beginning of Ramadan and the "victory" of the Northern Alliance, is truly ugly.
* The writer is director of Cairo University's Centre for the Study of Developing Countries.
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