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Is America supporting tyranny again with its ‘war-on-terror'
(Jamie Barton, Al Bawaba, June 6, 2003)
it is the American policy on human rights abroad that has become the first casualty of this new war on terror. . . . The U.S-led campaign against terrorism has brought a resurgence in realpolitik, as the very nature of this new war requires a great deal of cooperation from other countries. This provides an opportunity for many countries to attempt to take advantage of American desperation to respond to 9/11 . . . Pakistan, for example, was viewed with great mistrust by the U.S pre-9/11. Not only was it a military autocracy, it was supporting religious extremists in Kashmir and had tested nuclear weapons. But Washington needed Musharraf’s assistance in toppling the Taliban regime, so within days a new, close relationship between the two countries was forged. The U.S lifted its sanctions on the Central Asian country and gave it a guarantee of aid, arms and enduring friendship. . . . the U.S gets what it desires and the obliging regime is to be contracted more flexibility to handle its own internal opposition and struggles as it sees fit. This is not a pleasant development, especially for those minorities and political opponents who live under authoritarian regimes across the globe. . . . Pakistan’s newly unbound free hand allowed Musharraf’s military junta, who seized power in a coup, to launch a massive internal crackdown on radical Islamic opposition parties and a brutal suppression of popular dissent against the governments overt cooperation with the Bush administration. . . . Nationalist movements, including the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, are now increasingly able to be branded and labelled as Islamic terrorists and fundamentalists by certain regimes who have wandered into the American inner circle since 9/11 and are now able to brutally suppress them to somewhat muffled at best, if not inaudible criticism from Washington. . . . One of the most worrying state of affairs is the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that he sees the bloody battle against the Chechens as under the umbrella of the ‘war on terror’ and claiming that Russia is a target of Islamic extremism, warranting Washington’s silence on a subject which, along with human-rights organisations, it used to be very vocal about. . . . But with Putin equating his struggle with the Chechens with Bush’s fight against Al-Qaeda, consequent U.S acceptance will identify the United States with Russia’s ruinous war and feed the myth that America cares little about Muslim lives. . . . The U.S cannot afford to be seen to be doing this - as it already is in regard to Israel and the Palestinians; to conceitedly put its own security before that of the suppressed, disenfranchised poor people of the Arab world. By covering its eyes to acts of state terrorism and repression in certain nations that may prove useful in prosecuting the new war, the U.S will suffer in the long term, only serving to create even more angry young Muslims to carry on the struggle to be heard and to continue the jihad against the seemingly disinterested West.

posted by LoZo 1:49 PM