7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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Victims and criminals
That the Arab Afghans are victims should not absolve them of the crimes they committed. Yet if you reduce their role to that of criminals, it is still difficult to ignore the context in which they committed their crimes. After all, they represent the tragedy of a large group of young Arabs who, politically committed and dreaming of paradise on earth, went straight to hell.
Since they arrived in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, these people have embodied absolute loyalty to a sacred text, loyalty that is completely blind to the surrounding circumstances, whether in terms of Afghan realities or political complications.
The tragedy of Arab Afghans resides in this "eternal" loyalty -- the compulsion to jihad -- which persists regardless of changes in the conjuncture of place and time. The notion that only (extremist) Muslims are good, that everyone else must be fought to the death, led everyone into a mad, lost war whose first victims were innocent Afghans.
The tragedy of the Arab Afghans, however, cannot entail a decisive condemnation of their crimes that disregards Washington's opportunism in dealing with the phenomenon before, during and after the Soviet War. Any reading of this tragedy must also take into account the crimes committed against these young people outside the sphere of law. It is necessary to understand, finally, that no religious text exists outside a context, and no idea, however noble or sacred, is implemented by angels -- only by people who are subject to making mistakes and committing crimes. They, too, are the victims of difficult circumstances.
*This week's Soapbox speaker is an analyst at the Al-Ahram Political and Strategic Studies Centre.
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