Arab world terror tolerated 3

ARAB SELF-INFLICTED SOCIOENOMIC DISASTERS: LATE 1980S AND
BEYOND-- ARAB POPULATION EXPLODES. ARAB ECONOMIC MISMANAGEMENT, HUGE
SPENDING ON THE MILITARY; EVEN THE FRIENDLY UN HAS POINTED OUT ARAB
HUMAN RIGHTS FLAWS-IN A JULY 2002 REPORT POINTING OUT THE KNOWLEDGE
DEFICIT, REPRESSION OF WOMEN, WIDESPREAD ILLITERACY. SERIOUS SECULAR
VS. RELIGIOUS TENSIONS.
ARABS BATTLE OTHER MUSLIMS: Arabs attack Arabs, other Muslims--
Egypt attacked Yemen, Iraq battled Iran, Iraq attacked Kurds, PLO,
Hizbollah wasted Lebanon, Christian Arabs; Assad attacked his own
people; Iran-Iraq war kills 300,000: 6 times the lives lost on all
sides than in 40+ years of Arab-Israel conflict; Yemen civil war killed
230,000; Iraq officially recognized Kuwait 1962, went to war 1990;
Iran-Iraq signed peace treaty 1976, began 8-year war in 1980. Mecca
violence-- April 1997: 217 Mecca pilgrims killed, over 1000 injured:
wind-whipped flames at pilgrim camp outside Mecca. 1990: 1400 died in
stampede; 1994: 207 pilgrims dead in stampede; 1987: 402, mostly
Iranian, die during hajj in clash with Saudi security forces.
Refugees-- Iraq transferred 250,000 Kurds, Kuwait expelled 300,000
Palestinians, Saudis deported 750,000 Yemenis.
SYRIA TENSION WITH ARAB NATIONS: Mid-1980s-- Syria's relations
with most other Arab countries ranged from mutual distrust to outright
hatred. Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Persian Gulf oil states give
Damascus more than $1 billion a year in cash, partly because they deem
it essential to have at least one strong Arab state confronting Israel.
But the payment also serves as a form of protection money to ensure
that Assad does not try to overthrow those conservative regimes.
Kuwait, with its large population of Syrian guest workers, feels
especially vulnerable. The Syrian leader and Jordan's King Hussein
always have been deeply suspicious of each other.
Syria's ties with renegade non-Arab Iran have been highly
profitable for Damascus. When the Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980,
Assad, who has long been bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime of Saddam
Hussein, rushed to support Khomeini. Aside from giving Damascus an
estimated $600 million in cheap oil, the Ayatollah has bestowed his
blessing on Assad's minority Alawites, a sect that most Sunnis consider
heretical. In return, Damascus has shut down the Iraqi oil pipeline
that slices across Syria to the Mediterranean, thereby slowing the flow
of petrodollars to the financially strapped Baghdad government.
Syria's hand was more visible in the continuing campaign to
destroy Arafat. Though Assad and the PLO chieftain have worked together
in the past, the strains were always there. As early as 1969, when
Assad was Defense Minister, he tried to regulate the activities of PLO
guerrillas in Syria. As President, he supported Arafat's avowed enemy
Abu Nidal, a rogue PLO leader who ran the Black June terrorist group.
Assad had long been looking for ways to clip Arafat, and the
opportunity arrived in the mid-1980s-- Arafat unwisely elevated several
unpopular commanders within Fatah-- Palestinian fighters, outraged by
Arafat's appointments and by his growing preference for negotiation
over combat, rose up in revolt. Encouraged by Syria, and in some cases
backed by Syrian troops and artillery, the rebels gained strength
through the summer and eventually forced the loyalists out of Lebanon's
Bekaa Valley and into Tripoli, Lebanon. When Arafat joined his forces
there, the time was ripe for Assad to finish him off. Instead, Syria
blinked. As Arafat's forces retreated to Tripoli after putting up a
fierce fight against superior numbers in the city's suburban refugee
camps-- it became clear that the wily chairman could hold out longer
than expected. The Saudis and the Soviets, reluctant to see Arafat
destroyed, began putting considerable pressure on Syria to accept a
cease-fire. The siege seriously weakened the PLO.
Iran opposed-- Nov. 1987: Egypt suspended from Arab League in
1979 for signing Israel peace treaty; as Iran threatens, sudden move to
renew ties with Egypt: need for Arab counterbalance-- Dec. 1987:
Gulf-state Arabs meet to chart common defense strategy vs. escalating
Iran threats to shores and shipping; 26 ships attacked in gulf by Iran,
Iraq 12/87.
Turkey-- June 1996: Arab summit in Cairo calls on Turkey to
re-evaluate its defense pact with Israel; Turkey warns Syria, who it
views as terror sponsor, it may expand ties with Israel instead. Egypt
ostracized-- May 1989: Syria welcomes Egypt back into Arab fold:
isolated from 22-member Arab League, most Arab nations severed
relations, after Camp David accords; in past 2 years, only Syria,
Libya, Lebanon have not restored ties-- 5/89 is first return to Arab
League summit.
ISLAM BATTLES THE REST OF THE WORLD THROUGH THE 1990S AND
BEYOND-- While the world obsesses on the West Bank, a
defensively-occupied Delaware-sized area with 1.2 million Arabs, it's
worth noting other disputes involving Muslims which receive far less
attention from world and Arab opinion.
Bosnia: NATO intervened, but only after years of unchallenged
violence by Serbs against Bosnian Moslems. Kosovo: more of the same,
as Albanian Muslims are driven from their homes, attacked, murdered.
Kashmir: Muslim area of 11 million, occupied by 600,000 troops
of Hindu-dominated India. Now a flash-point for nuclear confrontation.
Central Asia: Russia occupied 50 million Muslim Central Asians for 100
years, pillaging resources, but no reparations requested. Russia still
maintains oppressive rule in Chechnya, China in Xinjiang.
Kurdistan: 25 million Muslim Kurds--denied a homeland by fellow
Muslims, who repress Kurd independence advocates.
Pakistan: military of this Muslim nation in 1971 killed three
million in about nine months in Bangladesh. The military and local
collaborators rape 300,000 Bengali women, among the worst such
brutalizations in history.
Indonesia: 1998--Muslim mobs engage in another periodic attack
of Chinese merchants, publicly humiliate scores of Chinese women.
Sudan: Muslims in the north war against southern blacks, force
conversions, displace 2 million; brutalization of women, enslavement,
starvation abound. Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations: women are
treated as chattel, possessed of inferior human and legal rights.
The list could be much longer. Causing disinterest: these do not
involve battles with Israel or Jews, a denominator which galvanizes
world action.

ISLAMIC REPRESSION OF SALMAN RUSHDIE, AND WORLD SILENCE: the
1990s: His disgusting violent treatment by Islamic extremists merits
the condemnation of the civilized world, though such condemnation has
been sorely lacking. If mainstream Islam does not clean up this
extremist cancer in its midst, Islam shall be the new Communism-an
ideology poising itself for a worldwide attack on all that is decent
and good. Despite Rushdie's humiliating gestures, fundamentalists
continue to hound him. In February 1997, Rushdie wrote of the red
carpet treatment accorded Iran by European nations, while he,
exercising the ultimate of Western values, receives no support from
Europe.
The history-in May 1989, 20,000 Muslims marched in London,
fought with police to denounce Rushdie's Satanic Verses, demand
change to British blasphemy laws. By August 1989, since the February
fatwa by Khomeini, Rushdie had moved over 56 times in England, closely
guarded, a virtual hermit. September 1989: three members of the Nobel
literature prize committee resigned after the Academy refuses to
condemn death threats vs Rushdie. 1989 featured anti-Rushdie marches
and demonstrations throughout Europe, even a demonstration outside
Viking publishing in NYC, with shouts of "jihad, death to Rushdie,"
and anti-Semitic posters and frenzied threats of violence; and a
February 1989 firebombing of Berkeley, CA, bookstores that sold The
Satanic Verses. A Bronx newspaper that wrote an editorial defending
Rushdie is firebombed; some booksellers agree to remove the book.
In December 1990, poor Rushdie capitulated, much as Chinese on
trial had to capitulate during the Cultural Revolution. Rushdie swore
allegiance to Islam, repudiated portions of his work, nixed publication
of a paperback version of Satanic Verses. Despite these humiliating
gestures, fundamentalists still refused to renounce death sentence, and
Muslims debated whether he had redeemed himself. In March 1991, a
group of leading Iran clerics urged that the 1989 fatwa be carried out;
in July, the Japanese translator of Rushdie was stabbed to death in
Tokyo, and his Italian translator was stabbed and beaten in Milan;
later, his Norwegian translator was shot.
February 1995: Rushdie is still running after six years--some
airlines refuse him entry on their flights. He must hide his
movements, has greatly suffered professionally. As of 1996, it was
seven years since the Satanic Verses fatwa-he is showing up at more
literary events, but life is still far from normal: periodic
assassination plots, fatwa remains in effect from Iran.
In February 1997, Rushdie observed, in a column, "that the
European Union's response to such threats has been little more than
tokenist. It has achieved, in one word, nothing....The Europe for which
Europeans care would have done more than simply state that it found
such an assault unacceptable. It would have sought to place maximum
pressure on Iran while removing as much pressure as possible from the
lives of those threatened. What has happened is the exact opposite.
Iran is under very little, if any, pressure on this matter. But for
eight years, some of us have been under a fair amount of stress.
"During these eight years, I have come to understand the
equivocations at the heart of the new Europe. I have heard Germany's
Foreign Minister say with a shrug that there is a limit to what the
European Union is prepared to do for human rights. (A few months after
this statement, Germany, then Iran's biggest trading partner, gave a
red-carpet welcome to Iran's terrorist in chief, Intelligence Minister
Ali Fallahian. My Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot the
week after Mr. Fallahian's triumphal tour.)
"I have heard Belgium's Foreign Minister tell me that the
European Union knows all about Iran's terrorist activities against its
own dissidents on European soil. But as to action? Just a world-weary
smile; just another shrug.
"When Italy held the rotating presidency of the European Union
last year, the Italian Foreign Ministry refused to answer -- even to
acknowledge -- our letters on this issue...I have been refused entry to
Denmark, on the spurious grounds of a trumped-up "specific threat"
against my life, a threat that mysteriously vanished in the face of a
public outcry. But I know that Denmark, already a major exporter of
feta cheese to Iran, is trying hard to increase trade with that
country.
"Ireland, too, is looking to expand trade with Iran. During
the just-concluded Irish presidency of the European Union, I was
offered a meeting with *** Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister, which
oddly took six months and a lot of pushing actually to arrange. In this
meeting, Mr. Spring assured me that a strong statement about the fatwa
would be made at the European Union's summit in Dublin. No such
statement was made.
"This new Europe does not look to me like a civilization. It is
an altogether more cynical enterprise. Leaders of the European Union
pay lip service to the great European ideals -- free expression, human
rights, the Enlightenment, the right to dissent, the importance of the
separation of church and state. But when these ideals come up against
the powerful banalities of what is called "reality" -- trade, money,
guns, power -- then it's freedom that takes a dive.
"The extreme passivity of the British Foreign Office has
permitted the rest of the European Union to go to sleep on this issue,
and has given the Iranian people the sign that there is really no need
for them to do very much at all. I am of course pleased that the
Foreign Office has condemned the new bounty offer, but a few stiff
words once a year are no substitute for a policy."
In September 1998, hard-line Pakistani Islamic groups (mainly
Sunni) expressed outrage that Iran has softened its fatwa stance toward
Rushdie. Upon the "softening statement" by Iran's foreign
minister, Great Britain restored diplomatic relations with Iran,
removing a major impediment to an EU oil deal with Iran- and causing
further isolation of the US IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH IRAN.
This also is what Israel is up against, and why it should be
accorded maximum deference in its needs and demands.

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