Monday, December 31, 2001

Year-ender 2001

IT WILL BE an understatement to assert that the world changed during the year 2001. If anything, the winds of change that swept the globe were unprecedented and brought about a new set of rules to life on the planet.
No one was spared the effects, direct and indirect, of the attacks on Sept. 11 when suicide hijackers took over four American airliners, slammed two of them into New York's landmark twin World Trade Center towers and one into the Pentagon in Washington; the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers resisted the hijackers and fought with them in the cockpit.
The Sept. 11 events were the most devastating terrorist attack in history; more than 3,000 people died New York alone. Equally stunning was the fact that the United States, which had been spared terrorism — spare the Oklahoma boming of 1995.
How did the assaults change the world?
It would be a gross overstatement that a clash between religions is taking place now. But it is true that the orchestrated campaign by the Western media to smear Islam has been intensified in the wake of Sept. 11. The campaign has been going on for decades. It could be easily seen that the Western media were largely successful if only because of ineffective, misguided, misrepresented or half-hearted approaches to correct the image and portray the realities of the Islamic faith.
It would take many years before the true image of Islam takes hold in the West, again because of the negativism that has been bred by the media there. It needs a broad and well-planned strategy that takes in the realities on the ground to tackle the issue. Any campaign that sidesteps the Western public mindset would fall short of the mark.
That is the challenge that the Sept. 11 events pose to the Islamic World.
For sure, Arab-Muslim relations with the US would never be the same again.
Within the US, the attacks in New York and Washington have brought in a completely new dimension to the way the United States looked at the rest of the world. They prompted the administration of President George W. Bush to declare and wage a war on global terrorism, starting with Afghanistan's hardline Taliban regime, which refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda network was accused of carrying out the attacks.
With the large-scale military phase of the war against the Taliban over, the US is shifting focus to other countries it accuses of sponsoring terrorism.
In political terms, Sept. 11 was a wake-up for all governments regardless of whatever definition and outlook they had for terrorism. They had no choice but to adopt measures to counter any action that could be construed as terrorism under the parameters set by the US and fight whatever means were being used to finance terrorism.
There is no ambiguity over Bush's stand: He is determined to see this through and he has the kind of people around him to accomplish it, be it Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell or National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice.
The equation is simple: Any country which does not fall in line with the US-led war on terrorism will have to pay the price. Bush made it so clear when he said, "either you are with us or against us."
The impact the US approach has on international relations is one of the most important changes heralded by Sept. 11. The US-led military campaign against Afghanistan (regardless of whether Osama Bin Laden was caught dead or alive) clearly sent a strong message to the world that the US position is uncompromising. There could no longer be any wavering on any country's stand on terrorism. Indeed a highly welcome development.
But the catch remains with Israel. As long as the US refuses to accept that Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians is not state terrorism, US credibility in leading the war against terrorism will remain weak.
Adding insult to injury to the Arab and Muslim worlds is the US labelling of Palestinian resistance organisations as terrorist.
For the moment and indeed for the foreseeable future, it is difficult to make any dent on the US stand. It is as simple as that. Any country trying to apply any pressure on Washington over this particular issue will incur US wrath and risk being labelled along the same lines as terrorism-sponsoring states.
The US is taking aim at Iraq as well as Somalia in its drive; at this point it is not known whether it intends to re-enact a military campaign similar to the one in Afghanistan in any other country.
Brought into focus by the US drive against international terrorism are the problems in the Indian sub-continent over Kashmir and the crisis in the Philippines.
But the Kashmir and Philippines problems do not have a direct bearing on American life, and as such the US approach could not be expected to be as strong as the case was with Afghanistan.
Another major fallout of the Sept. 11 events is the shift in the US approach to immigrants, legal or illegal.
Arabs and Muslims have come under hate attacks and they continue to live in fear. Life has undergone a major change for them in the US. In due course of time, neighbourhoods might tend to forget the negative aura that the Sept. 11 events created for Arabs and Muslims in the US, but the administration and powers that be would not.
Arabs and Muslims living in the US for decades now say that they feel like aliens or being treated like aliens with little regard for their blemishless record as law-abiding citizens of that country.
Many of those detained as "suspects" since Sept. 11 are Arabs or Muslims, and they face an uphill task to convince the authorities of their innocence. The approach of the authorities contradict the age-old system of justice -- innocent until proven guilty -- since it is now based on guity by association or thought until proven innocent.
Hundreds of Arab students have opted to leave the US and try to pursue their studies elsewhere, preferably in Europe.
Hundreds of thousands of aspiring immigrants are living in the US at various stages of legalising themselves as residents of the country. The rule of the thumb, if you will, until Sept. 11 was an assumption that even if you are an illegal resident of the US, you did not risk being caught until you commit a capital crime or be deliberately pinpointed as an illegal. There are "illegals" in the US trying to rectify their status for decades while making a living there and, for all practical purposes, having "Americanised themselves."
Today, that situation has changed. They are no longer safe with the belief that if they stay away from entangling with the law in the US.
There is a well-orchestrated campaign under way in the US to identify illegal residents and take appropriate action against them. For many, the administration's offer to help them legalise themselves if they provide information on "terrorism" might be an attractive proposition, but then that opens a Pandora's box.
For the nationals of the oil-producing Arab countries, obtaining a visa for the US was relatively easy. Today, they face a screening process.
The US is no longer a preferred destination for Arabs and Muslims. Even Europe is being shunned now.