It is widely recognized that Sep-tember 11, 2001 known now as 9/11 constitutes a significant turning point in contemporary international politics. Dubbed as modern history’s defining moment, this eventful day had an immediate and powerful impact on the mood and the politics of the USA. So rapid and comprehensive was the conceptual and active response of the American President, and with such an extraordinary urgency was the so-called war on terrorism started by the US (and the alliance swiftly assembled by her) that it was hard not to conclude that President George Bush had in fact been praying some thing like 9/11 to happen, so as to be provided with a powerful excuse for putting his long-held plans into operation.
It was in those days six years back that the famous statement of Bush (those not with us are against us) became the cornerstone of the policies not just of the US but also of those countries which had good reasons to feel frightened at the thought of being regarded by the US government as ‘enemies’. It goes without saying that Musharraf’s Pakistan had good reasons to allow itself to be terrorized into joining Bush’s War on Terror as a frontline state. Even though President Musharraf likes to claim firmly now that Pakistan is fighting terror and terrorists for its own sake and its own interests, he cannot with any degree of honest conviction deny that the terror we are fighting is a product of the US policies pursued in response to the 9/11 events, and that the terrorists we are confronted with, are products of the policies America has been pursuing since very very long. Let it be observed here that both General ® Pervez Musharraf, and Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto have been confusing clerical extremism and dogma with the militancy of those who are opposed to the US military presence in this region. Whereas the clerical dogmatism which is being militantly advanced by the likes of Maulvi Fazlullah of Swat may well be our challenge, to confront, the militants, who have made the mountains their homes, have no case against Islamabad except that Islamabad happens to be on the side of Washington. We may have no other option except to do what we are expected by the US to do, but we can’t honestly regard this as our war. It is America’s war we are fighting. If it had been our war, we would have devised indigenous plans and strategies to end it.
The anti-America sentiment that was behind the 9/11 events, and that is widely regarded to have been embodied in the ideology of Al-Qaeda was not born recently. The context in which the radical movement called Al-Qaeda emerged and gained support was, in summary terms, formed by three broad historical periods: (a) Colonialism, (b) the Cold War and (c) the post-Cold War period. The reorganization of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s after the defeat of the Turks in World War I, laid the basis for anti-colonial sentiment in the Arab World. This involved Arab hostility to the division or partition, of the Arab World into separate states, and Arab opposition to the creation of a Jewish community (and state) in Palestine. When Osama Bin Laden stated that the conflict with the West had been going on for eighty years i.e. since 1920s, this reference to the post-Ottoman settlement in the Middle East, the opening of Palestine to mass Jewish immigration, and the creation of different client states by the West, had wide resonance.
The Cold War played its part, in particular through the conflict in Afghanistan that began with the advent of the communists to power in 1978, and the arrival of the Soviet forces to support them in 1979. It was in this context that the mobilization of an Islamic opposition was carried out; one in which the conflicts of the Middle East became joined with those of South Asia, and in which Al-Qaeda had its origins.
America’s continuous support of Israeli occupation of the Arab lands (Palestine) against all principles of justice finally culminated in the events of 9/11, the price of the aftermath of which is being paid by Pakistan.
(This Column was first published on 05-12-2007)
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