Issue No. 602
Opinion
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5 - 11 September 2002 Issue No. 602 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Repercussions from disaster
Ibrahim Nafie examines the unravelling of events following 11 September
Wednesday marks the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. I happened to be in the US that fateful day and experienced first hand the horror, confusion and alarm. What strikes me most, a year later, is how many questions remain unanswered, both with regard to how the attacks were carried out and their long range consequences.
The fall out of the events of 11 September reverberated more profoundly than would have been the case had they occurred anywhere else in the world. The victim of that attack was the world's sole superpower, and the attacks were the first time that the US mainland had been subjected to foreign assault. Indeed, apart from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, US territory had, through two world wars, remained inviolate. The events of last September, then, were of unique significance and magnitude. The current direction of Washington's policy has been dictated by the events of that day.
Simply put, the US after 11 September is not the same place as before that date. This bastion of liberal democracy was cataclysmally shaken, and reeling under this shock it revised long- held values. Security began to reign uppermost as a series of legislative and executive acts chipped away at the edifice of historically acquired rights and freedoms.
Many in the US protested. Such measures, even in the name of security, they held, constituted an enormous setback for the principle of liberty and permitted flagrant breaches of human rights, especially against Arabs and Muslims in the US. Others countered that the reactions were no more than the adjustments customarily undertaken by democracies in times of danger and that as soon as that danger lapsed things would return to normal.
In fact this dispute, kindled by the post-11 September climate of alarm, is an extension of a conflict that dates back to the founding of the US. On one side were the champions of inalienable freedoms, on the other those who held that the exigencies of safety and security justified the restriction of civil liberties and more extensive executive power. Over time these two strands of opinion fought for ascendancy and it was always in times of international tension that the conflict between the two flared most intensely. Two world wars, and sporadic crises during the Cold War, furnished the ideal climate for mobilising support for security exigencies at the expense of human rights.
The end of the Cold War in favour of the US- led camp made the US system of government the ideal against which all other systems of government were measured. Washington began to issue periodic reports on the state of democracy and human rights. It also drew up lists of what it called "rogue states" -- nations that purportedly did not respect human rights and were, hence, undemocratic. Subsequently, it added "freedom of religion" and began to issue a special report on the state of religious freedoms.
The rise of Western political, economic and cultural liberalism as the measure against which all other nations were to be judged triggered a race among the members of the former soviet camp to catch up. However, as most of these nations essentially fall within the larger realm of Western civilisation they encountered few major obstacles. This is not the case with nations belonging to other civilisations, especially the Arab and Islamic civilisations. It is the belief of these nations that freedom, democracy and human rights are universal values, and that no nation or civilisation has a monopoly on delineating their constituent parts.
Nevertheless, from the end of the Cold War until 11 September, the US and Europe waged an uninterrupted battle against Arab and Islamic states over these values, which they believed were embodied in their systems of government and society to the exclusion of all others. They then started to harp on subsidiary issues and tangential causes, some of which are alien to Arab and Islamic beliefs and values. It was more than apparent that human rights, democracy, religious freedoms and the like were being rallied to the service of Western interests.
The terrorist attacks against the US last year led to a swing in favour of security exigencies, as epitomised in legislation increasing the powers of the national security services over American citizens, resident aliens and visitors. In this connection, it was mentioned that the terrorist groups that masterminded the strikes against Washington and New York had infiltrated their adherents into the US under various guises. There were repeated calls to place harsher restriction on US entry permits and student visas in particular, as well as to draw up a list of foreign students -- especially from the Arab and Islamic world -- to be kept under surveillance.
Simply by contemplating such policies the US has begun to emulate those systems of government it has branded as undemocratic. Evidently, too, in its determination to wage war on terrorism and eliminate the organisations alleged to be behind the September attacks, the US administration appears willing to cast aside many moral reservations.
Many areas of the world were affected by the the events of 11 September. But because the finger of suspicion pointed to Arabs and Muslims as the perpetrators of the attack, the Middle East was the region to feel the heat of America's thirst for revenge. Afghanistan was the first country to fall victim to Washington's wrath, and it seems increasingly likely that a another country in the region is soon to be attacked. Exacerbating the effects of this is Israel's programme to break the Palestinian resistance, towards which end it has received US backing.
The shift in American priorities has widened the gulf between the US and the Arabs. Washington, today, appears further than ever from that "ideal" that had captured the imagination of millions in the Middle East. As one Arab commentator put it: "Welcome, America, to the Third World."
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