Posted on 06/09/2003 11:37:30 AM PDT by knighthawk
George W. Bush's "road map" for Middle Eastern peace -- I remain dubious of its chances for success.
There are a few encouraging signs that the Palestinians and Arabs are finally as determined to bring about peace as the Israelis and Americans have been all along. Still troubling signs outnumber encouraging ones.
This weekend's terror murders of four Israeli soldiers was carried out by a newly formed troika of terrorism -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, an offshoot of Yasser Arafat's own Fatah movement -- specifically to undermine the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (a supporter of the road map), and thus destroy the chances for success. Despite Mr. Abbas's assurances that he will end terrorism "in all its forms" --inside the Gaza and West Bank, as well as inside Israel itself -- it seems unlikely anything short of a Palestinian civil war between Mr. Abbas's security forces and the major terrorist groups will settle the question of who speaks for the Palestinians.
Even though Mr. Abbas disavowed his previous assertion that killing Jews within the occupied territories was self-defence, not terrorism; and even though he overtly recognized Israel's right to exist, and did so in Arabic (things Mr. Arafat never did); no leader of an Arab state would do the same. Gathered together with Mr. Bush at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik, no Arab leader vowed security for a permanent Jewish state nor called on his people or the Palestinians to stop the bombings and shootings.
The Arab leaders present did agree to cut off funding for terrorism. But of the top three funders of terror attacks, only one -- Saudi Arabia -- was present at Mr. Bush's meeting. Both Syria and Iran were absent.
Mr. Bush was forced to hold two summits on two consecutive days -- one with Arab leaders and the other with Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- because even moderate Arabs refused to meet face-to-face with an Israeli leader and none was willing to slight Mr. Arafat by being seen with Mr. Abbas who Mr. Arafat appointed, reluctantly, in March and whom he has sought to marginalize ever since.
Since one of Mr. Bush's preconditions for releasing his road map last month was the shunting of Mr. Arafat out of any power position, the fact that Arafat still dictates who will meet with the Americans and Israelis, and when, means the Americans' first step along their own road map was right off the page.
There is another, deeper problem with all the recent Middle East peace plans: the failure to recognize that there is only one war on terrorism, not two. It is impossible to fight terrorism in one location and appease it in another, and expect to win the war against it.
The common enemy is radical Islamic fundamentalism. Of the 22 ongoing armed conflicts in the world, 20 pit Muslims against someone else. In addition to the Middle East, the Balkans and Kosovo are, in part, about Islam. Indeed, the Kosovo Liberation Army -- the side we in the West backed in the war in Serbia in 1999 -- were Osama bin Laden's drug runners to the cities of Europe.
To Western eyes, the war in Chechnya seems yet another example of the Russians' natural habit of oppressing people, but it is in large measure a war by the Muslim Chechens against the Western Russians. Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia and so on are wars between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines has little interest in Israel. Mostly it wants to kidnap and behead Christian missionaries. Still, until late 2001, the ASG was funded by the Taliban, who were funded by the Saudis and kept in office by the Sunni Muslims of Pakistan. Mullah Omar and the Taliban didn't care that the ASG wasn't killing Jews especially. They were Muslims fighting non-Muslims, and that was enough to make them brethren.
The best example there is that this is one war, with one enemy, is the fact that al-Qaeda is now basing its operations out of Iran. There are lots of other examples, but that is the key one for me.
David Frum pointed out in The Right Man, his fascinating account of his year in the Bush White House, that even though Iran and Iraq had just recently ended eight years of horrific warfare, when the United States first attacked Iraq in 1991, Saddam Hussein flew his air force to Iran for safekeeping.
The secular Baathist regime in Damascus harbours and promotes Shiite and Sunni terror organizations equally. And Saddam Hussein had connections with al-Qaeda, if not with the main organization, then certainly with its African affiliates. And when Marines swept into Baghdad, who did they happen to scoop up but that old murderer and hijacker Abu Abbas.
One war, one enemy.
We are reliably assured by those who would see the West's war on terrorism as distinct from Israel's that radical Islamists hate secular Arabs as much or more than they hate Westerners. But the way Islamists make common cause with the regime in Syria, and with the former regime in Iraq, puts the lie to that naive assertion.
The Saudis pay bounties to the families of suicide bombers regardless of the bombers' sect -- Sunni, Shiite, it doesn't matter, so long as the targets are Jews or the West. The Saudi kingdom's official religion is the most pernicious and vicious form of Islamic fundamentalism, Wahhabi Sunnism. Wahhabism holds that most non-Wahhabi Muslims are as evil as infidels. But when their enemy is the West, all such inter-Arab tribalism goes out the window.
The Saudis also fund madrassas and mosques worldwide, and export and pay for radical Wahhabi teachers and imams to spread fundamentalist propaganda, even here in Canada. The British Muslims who smuggled explosives into Israel inside Korans and blew up a Tel Aviv bar last month attended a Saudi-funded mosque, with a Saudi-paid imam sent directly from the kingdom.
The bombing last November of the Paradise Beach resort in Kenya was a joint operation by al-Qaeda (Sunni) and Hezbollah (Shiite). Thirteen people are dead thanks to the concatenation of two terror groups we have been told again and again could never bear to speak to one another, much less work together.
One war, one enemy.
Al-Qaeda is operating inside Palestinian refugee camps, and co-operating with Hezbollah. And Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorists, are co-operating with Hamas the Sunni terrorists. Indeed, Hamas and Hezbollah have had significant links and joint operations since at least December of 1992, when prime minister Yitzhak Rabin expelled 415 Palestinians to South Lebanon. Most of the deportees were from Hamas. South Lebanon is, of course, effectively governed by Hezbollah, who instantly welcomed their brothers in arms with open arms, despite the supposed theological impossibility of them doing so.
Hamas has recently made it known it intends to go global and begin targeting Jewish and Western targets, both inside and outside Israel. Israel's enemies are the West's enemies.
We know all these examples of how the war on terrorism is one war, with one enemy. Still, I believe the best proof is that al-Qaeda planned the May 12 bombing in Riyadh, and the ones four days later in Casablanca, from its new home in Iran.
Within Iran, al-Qaeda operatives are free to plan and direct attacks, receive visitors, exchange intelligence and manage their bank accounts worldwide. The ayatollahs who run Iran -- the most radical Shiites in the world -- are providing safe haven for al-Qaeda, the world's most radical Sunnis. Far from being at each other's throats, the West-hating Shiites of Iran are harbouring and aiding the West-hating Sunnis of al-Qaeda.
One war, one enemy.
Lenny Ben-David of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs claims that in Sudan, in Tanzania and Kenya, in Tajikistan, Lebanon and elsewhere, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are conducting joint operations. Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas, according to Ben-David, are even joining forces in, of all places, South America to attack Jewish and other Western targets in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
The chief suspect in the Khobar Tower bombing in 1996, a Sunni al-Qaeda operative named Imad Mughniyah, has been living in Shiite Tehran ever since.
We cannot confront this loose international network of terrorists (which is becoming more closely knit every day) with a battle plan in one location, a "road map" in another, and expect to triumph.
This is one war, with one enemy.
"This is one war, with one enemy."
Surely the Bush Administration recognizes this simple fact...
Surely the Bush Administration recognizes this simple fact...
One would hope so. It's also possible that in some cases he favors the terrorists destruction, in others favors negotiation.
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