| |
THE ROVING EYE
You have the right to
remain irrelevant
By Pepe Escobar
CAIRO - It's a moment of truth unlike any other.
The UN weapons inspectors present a crucial report. The
Security Council remains split: five to four against a
US-backed resolution commonly seen as a war trigger,
with six undecided. France, Russia, China (all three
with veto power), plus Germany and Syria, are for more
and tougher inspections. The US, the UK (both with veto
powers), Spain and Bulgaria are ready for war. The
undecided six are Pakistan, Chile, Guinea, Cameroon,
Angola and Mexico. Nine votes - and no veto - still
separate the world from a "sanctioned" war.
War,
though, may be decided on a single word by Hans Blix,
even as 10 million people prepare to protest around the
world. Arabs meet in Cairo in desperation to find a
peaceful way out. North Korea says that it is able to
nuke California. Osama bin Laden, with an innate sense
of drama, moves markets and provokes spinning frenzy
just by reading a 16-minute message on an audiotape.
Saudi Arabia - supported by Egypt and Syria -
bets everything on what some might define as a wishful
thinking strategy: to bridge the abyss between America
and Iraq by calling for more thorough inspections - like
France, Germany and Russia - and at the same time
creating conditions for Saddam Hussein to gradually step
down. Diplomats say that the Saudis are at the stage of
extracting guarantees from the Bush administration. They
are also trying to engage Nelson Mandela as a mediator -
something that the Bush administration would never
accept: the Nobel prize winner recently criticized Bush
as "muddled mind" and qualified Tony Blair as "the US
foreign minister". Mandela, anyway, is ready to go to
Baghdad before the end of February along with fellow
Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter on a joint mission to try to
convince Saddam to do anything possible to avert war.
At the extraordinary summit of the Arab League's
foreign ministers on Sunday in Cairo, the Saudis will
discuss their next move. Greek Foreign Minister George
Papandreou - currently holding the presidency of the
European Union - will also attend. The diplomats' last
hope is that the Saudi proposal, mixed with the
Franco-German proposal, could offer a way out to both
Washington and Baghdad: "If the French, German and
Russians maintain their anti-war position in the
Security Council, this will give the Saudis the time and
manoeuvering space they have been trying to secure from
the Americans," says an Arab diplomat. Arab and European
diplomatic efforts will reach fever pitch these next two
weeks. The idea is that when the Security Council
receives a third report from the arms inspectors on
March 1, a definitive "peace plan" will be on the table.
The Security Council, meanwhile, won't stop. There will
be a public meeting next Tuesday - demanded by the
countries of the Non-Aligned Movement - and new
consultations about the inspections the next day,
demanded by Mexico and Chile. The Bush administration,
facing opposition on every front, has decided not to
oppose either demand. In the streets, up to 10 million
people in up to 400 cities in 60 countries on five
continents will be demonstrating on Saturday against the
war - in peace rallies, in vigils, in marches, in
parties, even in Antarctica, where dozens of scientists
at a US base on the edge of the Ross Sea will protest on
ice. Some countries will see their largest anti-war
demonstrations ever. One million people are expected in
London - a city where Heathrow Airport is protected by
tanks from a hypothetical al-Qaeda Stinger missile, not
one of Saddam's Al Samud missiles. More than 200,000
people are expected in New York, and more than 100,000
in Paris, Berlin and Rome.
The organizers
themselves are amazed by the depth and breadth of this
civil society mobilization across the world, even before
a war has started. According to a spokesman for ANSWER,
a coalition of US peace groups which helped organize a
march of 200,000 people last month in Washington: "This
is unprecedented. Demonstrations only got this large
against the Vietnam War at the height of the conflict,
years after it started." This "single largest day of
protests in world history" - as the word in the street
goes - could make a powerful case demonstrating how the
US and UK governments are completely isolated by world
opinion. The latest polls suggest the anti-war movement
is likely to keep growing even if the US manages to
impose a second resolution at the UN. Spanish and Dutch
polls show that more than 70 percent now oppose even
UN-mandated action, and more than 60 percent in Italy.
Fifty-seven percent in a Forsa poll in Germany see the
US "as a nation of warmongers". Fifty-one percent in a
Times poll in the UK see Tony Blair as a "US poodle".
Support for war even with a UN resolution is only 38
percent in Romania and 28 percent in Bulgaria, both
European Union hopefuls.
Meanwhile, many
disturbing questions are being asked - not only all over
the Arab world, but also in Europe - about the latest
bin Laden tape. It may not be classic bin Laden, but
there's also no doubt its timing helped the Bush
administration to bolster its case against Saddam. Of
course this plays to bin Laden's advantage as well: the
invasion of an Arab nation - Iraq - is about to
destabilize many "apostate" rulers in the Middle East,
fuel jihad on an unprecedented scale, and generate
"hundreds of Osama bin Ladens", according to famous
former Saudi Arabian oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Yamani,
who recently talked in Cairo about oil and war.
Egyptian author Tawfez el-Hakem wonders why
Colin Powell switched to breaking-news mode even before
Al Jazeera acknowledged that it had the new bin Laden
tape. Al Jazeera journalists are forbidden to talk on
the record about the affair. But el-Hakem managed to
talk to some of them. He discovered that as early as
Tuesday afternoon, the Al Jazeera newsroom in Doha,
Qatar, was bombarded by phone calls from newsrooms all
over the planet, but until nine in the evening the
network refused to confirm that it had received a new
bin Laden tape.
Hakem quotes a journalist, "We
felt something was happening when the chairman of the
board, Sheikh Hamid Bin Thamer al-Thani [a member of the
Emir of Qatar's family] arrived at the end of the
afternoon." Only after a meeting presided over by the
sheikh with Al Jazeera director Mohamed Jassem al-Ali,
chief editor Ibrahim Hilal and famous former Kabul
correspondent Taysir Allouni, was it decided that bin
Laden's tape would be broadcast in the nightly news. It
was Allouni who authenticated bin Laden's voice: after
all, he had met and interviewed him in Afghanistan. Of
the full 16-minute audio, only an extract was broadcast.
And curiously, according to Al Jazeera journalists,
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was right on
cue to intervene live, saying "its obvious there are
links and contacts between the Iraqi regime and
al-Qaeda". Everybody is puzzled. It could all amount to
tremendous American pressure on Qatar, or it could be
"cooperation" between the US and an emirate ally where
the Pentagon stationed the ultra high-tech Central
Command.
Bin Laden's message, anyway, was very
clear: "We also point out that whoever supported the
United States, including the hypocrites of Iraq or the
rulers of Arab countries, those who approved their
actions and followed them in this crusade war by
fighting with them or providing bases and administrative
support, or any form of support, even by words, to kill
the Muslims in Iraq, should know that they are apostates
and outside the community of Muslims. It is permissible
to spill their blood and take their property." It's
enlightening to compare this radical message with the
most recent one by Sheikh Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, the
grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, and - unlike bin Laden - a
certified theological authority: "The Islamic nation is
confronted by many challenges put by its enemies … who
wage war against Islam, its fundamentals, its
principles, its values and its culture."
If
Middle Eastern regimes are bin Laden's apostates, France
and Germany, as it stands, are certainly Washington's.
This correspondent has insisted that a peaceful solution
for the Iraqi crisis lies within Europe. France and
Germany have learned the hard way. After five centuries
of wars, including the uninterrupted war of 1914-1945,
they have created the nucleus of a European Union with
the same currency and the ultimate objective of adopting
a common foreign policy. This is nothing less than
revolutionary in terms of uniting ancient and proud
nation-states, fierce rivals and different cultures. The
European Union - still a work in progress, with
undeniable flaws - is the first instance in history
where nation-states abdicate their national sovereignty
and join what can only be defined as a common project
for a whole civilization.
This vision explains
why everybody and his neighbor, from Turkey to the
impoverished Eastern Europeans, are willing to do
anything to join the club. It doesn't require a trip to
Brussels to learn that the European Union is
fundamentally based on democracy, defense of human
rights and civil liberties and the absolute
impossibility of any member waging war on another
member. By any standard, the EU is de facto a new
emerging global power, but not capable of realizing its
full potential before 2020. But the EU is not only about
power: most of all it's about consensus. As the whole
world is watching, and voting "no", this current version
of Pax Americana is based on total monopoly of power, an
explicit agenda that nobody in the Bush administration
even cares to disguise. Pax Europa is based on
consensus. Asia Times Online has been confirming with
diplomats in Europe that the Bushites themselves
provoked the strategic divide between the US and the
core of the European Union. Again the numbers are clear:
in NATO Europe public opinion is overwhelmingly against
US foreign policy. This has nothing to do with
anti-Americanism. Popular opinion in NATO member
countries is more than 80 percent opposed - and even in
Eastern European countries, 70 percent opposed - to a
war not sanctioned by the UN Security Council.
The question until a few days ago used to be
whether France will veto a US-UK second resolution
authorizing war. The question now is whether the US-UK
will veto a Franco-German-Russian resolution expanding
the UN mandate. Asia Times Online has learned that
according to the latest estimates in Brussels, the
Security Council remains 11 to 4 in favor of a tougher
UN mandate. This is also the will of public opinion
demonstrated in practice all over the world this
Saturday.
But the whole world may also know that
the Bush administration doesn't see it this way. It will
attack Iraq. Maybe not in the beginning, but certainly
before the end of March. With or without the UN. And
whatever public opinion screams and shouts in any corner
of the world. By going to war, at least the
administration will finally be able to prove that the UN
is irrelevant, the EU is irrelevant, NATO is irrelevant,
we are all irrelevant.
(©2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
