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International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
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Bulletin 18 - Supplement 2 |
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After the Terror Attacks of September 11
Two Opinions
Black Tuesday
The View From Islamabad
Pervez Hoodbhoy 
Samuel Huntington's evil desire for a clash between civilizations may come true after Tuesday's terror attacks. The crack that divided Muslims everywhere from the rest of the world is no longer a crack. It is a gulf, that if not bridged, will surely destroy both.
For much of the world, it was the indescribable savagery of seeing jet-loads of innocent human beings piloted into buildings filled with other innocent human beings. It was the sheer horror of seeing people choosing to jump from the 80th floor of the collapsing World Trade Centre rather than be consumed by the inferno inside.
It is true that many Muslims also saw it exactly this way, and felt the searing agony no less sharply than anyone else. The heads of states of all Muslim countries, Saddam Hussein excepted, condemned the attacks. Leaders of Muslim communities in the US, Canada, Britain, Europe, and Australia have made impassioned denunciations and pleaded for the need to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and extremists.
But the pretence that reality goes no further must be abandoned because it merely obfuscates facts and slows down the search for solutions. One would like to dismiss televised images showing Palestinian expressions of joy as unrepresentative, reflective only of the crass political immaturity of a handful. This may be wishful thinking. Similarly, Pakistan Television, operating under strict control of the government, does give the impression of a nation united in condemnation of the attack. But the truth lies elsewhere, as I learn from students at my university here in Islamabad and in conversations with people in the streets. A friend tells me that crowds gathered around public TV sets at Islamabad airport cheered as the WTC came crashing down. It makes one feel sick from inside.
A bizarre new world awaits us, where old rules of social and political behavior have broken down and new ones are yet to defined. Catapulted into a situation of darkness and horror by the extraordinary force of events, as rational human beings we must urgently formulate a response that is moral, and not based upon considerations of power and practicality. This requires beginning with a clearly defined moral supposition - the fundamental equality of all human beings. It also requires that we must proceed according to a definite sequence of steps, the order of which is not interchangeable.
First, Tuesday's mass murder must be condemned in the harshest possible terms without qualification or condition, without seeking causes or reasons that may even remotely be used to justify it, and without regard for the national identity of the victims or the perpetrators. The demented, suicidical, fury of the attackers led to heinous acts of indiscriminate and wholesale murder that have changed the world for the worse. A moral position must begin with unequivocal condemnation, the absence of which could eliminate even the language by which people can communicate.
Analysis must come second, but it is just as essential. Since no "terrorist" gene exists or is likely to be found, surely the attackers, and their supporters, all presumably born normal, were afflicted by something that caused their metamorphosis from normal human beings capable of gentleness and affection into desperate, maddened, fiends with nothing but murder in their hearts and minds.
Tragically, CNN and the US media have so far made little attempt to understand this. The cost for this omission cannot be anything but terrible. Tuesday's attack was the first of similar tragedies that may come to define the 21st century as the century of terror. There is much claptrap about "fighting terrorism" and billions are likely to be poured into surveillance, fortifications, and emergency plans. But, as a handful of suicide bombers armed with no more than knives and box-cutters have shown with such devastating effectiveness, all this means exactly nothing. Modern nations are far too vulnerable to be protected. Therefore, simple logic says that one must go to the root causes of terrorism.
Only a fool can believe that the services of a suicidical terrorist can be purchased, or that they can be bred at will anywhere. Instead, their breeding grounds are in refugee camps and in other rubbish dumps of humanity, abandoned by civilization and left to rot. A global superpower, indifferent to their plight, and manifestly on the side of their tormentors, has bred a boundless hatred directed towards it. In supreme arrogance, indifferent to world opinion, the US openly sanctions daily dispossession and torture of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces. The deafening silence over the massacres in Qana, Sabra, and Shatila refugee camps, and the video-gamed slaughter by the Pentagon of 70,000 people in Iraq, has brought out the worst that humans are capable of. In the words of Robert Fisk, "those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people".
Where do we, the inhabitants of this planet, go from here? What, if anything, do we learn from still smouldering ruins of the World Trade Centre?
No one doubts that it is ridiculously easy for the US to unleash carnage. Secretary Colin Powell, has promised "more than a single reprisal raid". But against whom? And to what end? The bodies of a few thousand dead Afghans will not bring peace, or reduce by one bit the chances of a still worse terrorist attack. Today, the US is the victim but the carpet-bombing of Afghanistan will cause it to squander the huge swell of sympathy the world over. Osama and his gang, if they can be found, must be brought to justice. But indiscriminate slaughter can do nothing except add fuel to existing hatreds.
Ultimately, the security of the United States lies in its re-engaging with the people of the world, especially with those that it has grieviously harmed. As a great country, possessing an admirable constitution that protects the life and liberty of its citizens, it must extend its definition of humanity to cover all people of the world. It must respect international treaties, adhere to universally accepted norms of conduct in war, and cease the aggrandisement of wealth in the name of globalization.
There are important lessons for Muslims to learn as well, particularly those living in the US, Canada, and Europe. Last year I heard the Amir of the Jamat-I-Islami, Qazi Husain Ahmad, begin his lecture before an American audience in Washington with high praise for a "pluralist society where I can wear the clothes I like, pray at a mosque, and preach my religion". When the mis-placed anger against Muslims after the recent terrorist attacks dissipates, one can be fairly sure that the situation will not be too different. Nevertheless, there is a serious question as to whether this pluralism can persist forever, and if it does not, whose responsibility it will be. Any member of the Muslim community who thinks that ordinary people in the US are fair game because of bad US government policies has no business being there.
Simple observation shows that immigrant Muslim communities have, by and large, chosen isolation over integration. In the long run this is fundamentally unhealthy, and raises serious ethical questions about drawing upon the resources of what is perceived to be another society, while maintaining distance and suspicion. This is not an argument for doing away with one's Muslim identity, but without closer interaction with the mainstream, pluralism will be under great threat. Above all, survival of the community depends upon strongly emphasizing the difference between extremists and ordinary Muslims, and on purging from within jihadist elements committed to violence.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. email: hoodbhoy@isb.pol.com.pk.
Seven Steps to Improving US and Global Security
David Krieger
The terrorist attacks against the United States have shocked the world and left Americans feeling vulnerable and fearful of future attacks. The US has made a major military deployment to the Middle East and seems intent on military action against Osama bin Laden and possibly Afghanistan and other states that may harbor terrorists or be linked to these attacks. But the military is a blunt instrument that could easily increase the cycle of violence by causing the deaths of more innocent civilians.
The US response to the attacks should adhere to three basic criteria: it should be legal, moral and thoughtful. It should be legal under both domestic and international law, sanctioned by the United Nations, and multilateral in scope. It should be moral in not taking more innocent lives. And it should be thoughtful in asking why this has happened, what grievances against us are legitimate, and what can be done to decrease the cycle of violence.
Taking these criteria into account, I would urge the US to implement the following seven policy actions in order to increase both domestic and global security.
1. Protect Americans by improving our intelligence gathering and analysis, and by taking far stronger preventative security measures. Particular emphasis must be placed on preventing weapons of mass destruction from being used by terrorists, and in considering how terrorists might turn other technologies, such as aircraft, into weapons of mass destruction as they did on September 11th. We must make an honest assessment of why our intelligence services failed to prevent the September 11th attacks. Why were known associates of Osama bin Laden, for example, not being effectively tracked by US intelligence services? As a specific example, why did the arrest of a known associate of bin Laden for suspicious behavior at a flight school weeks before the attacks not alert the FBI of the danger to Americans?
2. Work multilaterally to find the perpetrators of the crime and bring them to justice. This should be done under the auspices of the United Nations and the international treaties on terrorism and sabotage. Since the September 11th attack was an international crime against citizens of some 80 countries, the perpetrators should be brought before an International Tribunal established for this purpose.
3. Focus on preventing the use of biological or chemical weapons against population centers. There are indications that the terrorists involved in the September 11th attacks may have been planning chemical or biological attacks with crop dusting planes. Stopping such attacks should be a top priority.
4. Bring all nuclear weapons in the world under control and move rapidly toward banning them under international law. A critical part of this effort is to rapidly reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals to a controllable number, such as 100 weapons per nuclear weapon state in the short term, so that these weapons can be adequately safeguarded and will not fall into the hands of terrorists. An international inventory of all nuclear weapons, weapons-grade materials and nuclear scientists should also be established. The US should increase its financial and technological support for Cooperative Threat Reduction programs that strengthen non-proliferation efforts in the former Soviet Union while reductions are being made. Plans should be developed for taking control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in the event that the government of Pakistan should fall to extremists.
5. Provide military protection to all nuclear power plants in the US and urge that these plants be phased out as rapidly as possible. Nuclear power reactors are dormant radiological weapons located in the proximity of major US cities. Flying an airplane into a nuclear reactor or waste storage site could result in a Chernobyl type release of radioactive materials causing panic and enormous potential for death in surrounding populations. Until shut down, all operating nuclear power plants should be protected by military forces, including anti-aircraft weapons. Radioactive waste sites, including those at nuclear power plants, should also be guarded by military forces, as should shipments of all radioactive materials that could be used for nuclear or radiological weapons.
6. Ask the question to ourselves: Why is the United States hated so much that terrorists are willing to commit heinous acts and give their own lives to attack the country? President Bush has expressed his belief that it is because these terrorists hate freedom and democracy. In fact, while the reasons may include an antipathy to American society on social, cultural and economic levels, there is also deep hostility to American policies, including our military presence in the Middle East, our support of a despotic Saudi regime, our conduct of the Gulf War, and our ongoing economic and military support for Israel. If we cannot at least neutralize the intense hatred of the United States by changes in our policies, then no amount of security may be able to protect Americans from future attacks.
7. Use our wealth and power to help make the world more just and equitable, and to uphold human dignity for all persons. In doing so, we will make America safer and the world a more decent place. Throughout the world, there are still some 35,000 children dying quietly each day from malnutrition and preventable diseases. America must assume the responsibility of leadership to uphold justice, human rights and sustainable development. We cannot escape the fact that we are one world and each country must contribute to the security of all. The job must be done globally by the United Nations, but America must not shirk its responsibility for leadership.
The world is at a turning point. By resorting to the old methods of military force, we are likely to intensify the hatred toward the US without substantially reducing the threat of terrorism against us. We should never lose sight of the fact that biological, chemical or nuclear terrorism could be thousands of times worse than what we have witnessed to date. Following the seven-step plan outlined above would provide a comprehensive way to make both the US and the world more secure in all respects.
David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. email: dkrieger@napf.org.
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