Editorial: Troubled times

www.arabnews.com 1 February 2003 Published on 01 February 2003

We live in very troubled times. Too many people with the power to wreak destruction are doing, or are about to do, their worst. Hardly anywhere in the world seems free from conflict or the threat of imminent war.

At least 18 people have been murdered in a blast that destroyed a bus near the Afghan city of Kandahar. Remnants of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters have been blamed. India and Pakistan remain poised on the edge of war. North Korea continues to play its enigmatic game of nuclear brinkmanship which could yet lead to a horrific new conflict. In the Ivory Coast, a French-brokered peace deal with rebels who now control a half of the country appears to have collapsed.

Ariel Sharon, the greatest enemy of just peace for the Palestinians has just been re-elected, giving him a mandate to resume his oppressive Zionist policies, designed ultimately to drive the last Arab from land which Sharon and his fellow hawks believe should be exclusively Israeli. The general strike in Venezuela may be faltering but the deep social wounds that have been inflicted in the confrontation between President Chavez, champion of the poor, and the country’s affluent elite, will surely leave deep scars. Venezuela, an important member of OPEC, may yet be heading for civil conflict.

Last, but by no means least, closest to home, we face the prospect of a US-led invasion of Iraq, preceded by a long campaign of high-technology slaughter, dealt out via remote control by military technicians far from the front line. Whatever heroics the Iraqis may produce in their defense, the result of the fighting is a foregone conclusion. What are entirely less certain, are the consequences of the ouster of Saddam Hussein — both for Iraq itself and for the region as a whole.

Whatever the Americans may protest, this will be seen as a war about oil and power. It will also be seen as an act of oppression against the Muslim world, exactly parallel to the Zionist crushing of the Palestinians. The Bush White House, however, is too wrapped up in the mental body armor of its immense military power, to see that, just as Zionist might has bred extremism among the Palestinians, so the crushing of Iraq will foster many more implacable foes for America and its policies.

At first glance, it would seem that no one is giving peace a chance. But there are two places from where Bush, Blair and Sharon, the faceless killers of Al-Qaeda and everyone else who has the power to destroy could all learn an important lesson. Both Sri Lanka and Rwanda were once riven by catastrophic ethnic conflicts that left between them well over a million dead. Now each country is at peace but neither pretends that the danger of new conflict has gone away forever. Rather, they know that they have to work hard, not for months, but for years, to resolve peacefully all of the issues which once brought their different communities into such savage conflict.

There is little cause for optimism, unless the world can learn to use the Sri Lankan and Rwandan solution to conflict, rather that brutal means of Sharon, Al-Qaeda and, it seems, very soon, the United States of America.