Kicking and screaming
By
Shawqi 'Aql*
In a Youssef Idris story a wretched man stands naked in the middle of the village calling out that he is hungry and can find no food. He is studiously ignored by the villagers, that is until he raises his cane to the heavens to proclaim his apostasy and heresy. Only then, horrified by his words and fearful of divine wrath, do the villagers feed and calm the man down. Soon enough they forget all about him until he repeats the same exercise and is fed once again.
The citizens of North Korea are living on the verge of starvation. It is a country shouting and screaming like the naked man in the story, raising its cane in the face of the mayor of our global village in despair over the US reneging on a promised economic assistance package. But the US pays no attention to North Korea's tantrum because it knows the latter's nuclear capability does not constitute a real threat, and because Washington is busy preparing for a war on Iraq. That country is itself screaming for justice: inspectors have combed the country for weapons of mass destruction but have found only rust on the padlocks left behind by their colleagues in the 1990s.
Washington brushes aside Pyongyang's call for direct negotiations with a smile, saying: "Not now; there's no rush." But North Korea's leader realises that it's either now or never. His turn is coming, though the US doesn't want to open up another battle front just at the moment. China, which helped his father during the Korean war, is preoccupied with its access to Mac world.
Today, the balance of international relations is governed by considerations of profit and the first rule in ensuring profitability is not to upset the god of the global village. To do so results in expulsion from the paradise of Mac world. Comrade Kim Jung Il wants the US to sign an agreement not to attack or else he will continue in his nuclear programme. This does not interest the residents of the White House. The road to Iraq is now open.
* This week's Soapbox speaker is an Egyptian engineer with numerous writings on domestic and regional politics.
