Saddam & Bin Laden - oil and water

PV Vivekanand

IT has been made more or less clear that there had been no links between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. It would have been actually surprising if there was any link, given that Bin Laden is a fierce critic of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but a sympathiser with the suffering of the Iraqi people following the 1991 Gulf war over Kuwait.
Indeed, Baghdad had tried to woo Bin Laden, and even offered him asylum when US threats mounted against him following the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. But, according to Arab intelligence sources, Bin Laden turned down the offer.
Those who knew Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 90s say that the Yemeni-origin Saudi dissident was highly critical of Saddam for one thing — for inviting American military intervention in the Gulf by invading Kuwait in August 1990.
"Saddam's biggest mistake, Bin Laden used to say, was his invasion of Kuwait without realising that the Americans were waiting for a back-door military entry to the Gulf region," said a Jordanian who knew Bin Laden in the mid-90s in Afghanistan. "The Iraqi move into Kuwait gave the Americans the pretext to come in militarily; look a the situation now'," the Jordanian quoted Bin Laden as saying in reference to the strong US military presence in the Gulf and Washington's post-1991 defence treaties with the countries in the region.
Bin Laden also saw Saddam as a "bad military strategist" and as having committed "a series of military blunders" in the seven-month run-up to the US-led war to liberate Kuwait. "Saddam had many options to avert the war or to make it very costly for the Americans in the event of a war, but he offered himself as a sitting duck until the Americans decided to strike at their convenience," Bin Laden was quoted as saying by the Jordanian.
"Bin Laden also refused to believe that Saddam was becoming a true Muslim when he went on a spree of building mosques and upholding Islamic principles such as banning alcohol in Iraq," he said. "He (Bin Laden) accurately assessed that these moves were politically motivated and efforts to send a message of Saddam's 'firm belief' in Islam to his own people and the Muslim world with a view to gaining Muslim support and sympathy," he added.
At the same time, Bin Laden sympathised with the people of Iraq whom he saw as a victim of the Saddam regime as much as of the US-enforced UN economic sanctions that have sent the Iraqis to absolute poverty despite the country's known oil reserves (11 per cent of the world's proven oil deposits).
"Bin Laden did not want to have anything to do with Saddam since he saw that aligning himself with the Iraqi president was contradictory to what he believed in, and often said that 'I want no share of his sins against his people'," said the Jordanian.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in the US, Washington said it had evidence to prove that Iraq had a link to the aerial assaults. It said Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the hijackers of the planes that were slammed into New York and Washington targets, had met with an Iraqi diplomat in the Prague in early 2001.
That purported meeting was the only "evidence" cited by the US in its effort to link Iraq with the attacks.
Baghdad has denied that such a meeting took place. Western as well as Arab intelligence sources believe that even if it was true that Atta had a one-time meeting with an Iraqi diplomat there was nothing since then to indicate continued contacts or any other evidence to show that there was an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 events.
Britain said there was no evidence linking Iraq to the attacks. France and Germany have warned the US against expanding the war against terrorism beyond the borders of Afghanistan.
It is against this background that US President George W. Bush said on Monday that his definition of the war against international terrorism included countries which "develop weapons of mass destruction to terrorise" others and warned Saddam that "he'll find out" the consequences if he refused to allow UN inspectors to verify his country's weapons programme.
Predictably, Baghdad has scoffed at the demand and reiterated its stand that UN inspectors were welcome only after the crippling UN sanctions were lifted totally.
Arab leaders have warned that any US military action against Iraq — whether in name of fighting international terrorism or in the name of Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction — would be destablising to the region, a warning that Bush could ill afford to ignore. But, it is not likely that the US president, whose agenda is dictated by his pro-Israeli advisers and strategists, would take note of the warning.

Israel sends clear message

By PV Vivekanand

THROUGH another "targeted killing" of three Palestinians, one of them a prominent Hamas activist in the West Bank, Israel has sent the message clear that it wants little to do with the new American diplomatic effort to revive peace talks with the Palestinians and is also determined to pre-empt any chance of its success. For, if Israel was genuine in its pronunciations of commitment to peace talks with the Palestinians, then it would not have carried out the assassination of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud and two others two days before US emissaries William Burns and Anthony Zinni were due in the region to push the effort for revived talks.
Israel knew well that the killings, coupled with the death of five Palestinian boys in the blast of an Israeli booby trap near their school in Gaza, would incite Palestinian fury and foil chances for an atmosphere conducive to the Burns-Zinni mission. And sure enough, the more than 60,000 Palestinians who gathered in the West Bank and Gaza on Sunday to mourn the slain activists made a public pledge to avenge the killings.
We can now expect, notwithstanding whatever security measures in place, Palestinian retaliation in the form of suicide attacks in key Israeli areas.
Let us not forget that Abu Hanoud was the reputed mastermind behind several suicide attacks in Israeli towns and cities. Unlike amateurish activists who get intercepted on their way to suicide missions or die in prematured attacks without causing major damage, Abu Hanoud's men have a record of successful operations, and now they have an added reason to step up their activities.
It is no exaggeration that there are thousands of Palestinian youngsters ready for suicide attacks against Israelis. The suffering, indignity and humiliation they have gone through since birth under Israeli occupation and bleak prospects for future, coupled with a sense of serving the cause, have prepared them to accept martyrdom.
There are many in the world who question the futility of suicide attacks. Well, the simple answer is: it is one of the few options available to the Palestinians to press their resistance, given the military might of Israel and hi-tech equipment the Israelis use in their vain bid to quell the Intifada. What else a people armed at best with machineguns and crude homemade mortars could do when faced with an army supported by the most advanced weapons and surveillance and "security" equipment?
The Geneva Conventions define it as a right ot a people under foreign occupation to resist the occupier with whatever means available to them; the Intifada — the revolution of stones — and suicide attacks represent the means that are available to the Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation of their territory. That is precisely why Israel refuses to accept that the Geneva Conventions apply to its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
If anything, to say the least, it is a highly lopsided equation in Palestine.
Effectively, the Israeli military, which controls the land, sea and airspace around the Palestinians, is picking and choosing its targets and hitting them at will with little fear of direct military retaliation or international punitive action.
If anything, the impunity with which Israel is going around implementing its policy of "targeted killings" adds to the determination of the Palestinians to retaliate through whatever means available to them.
The international community and the UN, the very organisation which was created with the aim of preventing any country from undertaking such actions, seem powerless to act. At best, the UN could issue statements condemning Israeli actions and often even such symbolic actions are pre-empted by the powers that call the shots at the world body.
The geopolitical elements of the Middle East at this point in time rule out a military option to reverse Israel's occupation of Arab land. The only way to hit Israel is to hit it where it hurts most: posing real threats to the "security" of Israelis.
The only effective means to keep the Israelis reminded of the reality of the Palestinian struggle is to keep them always on their toes and looking over their shoulders with the hope that sooner or later they could come to accept the inevitability of respect, recognition and acceptance of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.
Definitely, it is not a method that the so-called advanced world would accept as a means of liberation. But then what has the so-called advanced world done about containing Israel's state terrorism against defenceless Palestinian civilians?
By any stretch of imagination, is there any justification to the death of the five children in Gaza on Thursday? An accident? But then, placing booby-trapped bombs in close proximity to a school could not have been an accident. It was a deliberate trap and Israelis could not care less whom it killed as long as the victim or victims were Palestinian.
Isn't that a crime that warrants retaliation in the same currency?
It is audacity at its peak for Israel to assert that Friday's killings were part of its fight against "terrorism" while affirming its "commitment" to achieving a "truce" with the Palestinian National Authority (I would not call that "truce" a ceasefire, since "ceasefire," in my reading, means an agreement between two warring parties with roughly balanced military capabilities to call off their guns. Here, Israel is the sole warring party and the Palestinians are the victims who are desparately trying to defend themselves against a militarily mightier enemy).
The Abu Hanoud killing has effectively drawn a bitter dark cloud over prospects for any truce. It has further weakened Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's ability and manoeuvrability to convince his own people to stay put while he tries the diplomatic approach as represented by the Burns-Zinni mission.
Regardless of what Israeli leaders have to say, the situation on the ground has become radicalised by their own actions and turned the elements around so drastically against prospects for the UN mission.
No doubt that is what Israel wanted since behind the Burns-Zinni effort is the reality that there is a 180-degree shift in the decades-old American stand that ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in Palestine.
What better way to foil it than fait accomplis that would do nothing other than conditioning the Palestinians for retaliation that would play to the Israeli game of holding them responsible for the volatility of the situation and accusing them of being terrorists?