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	February 14, 2002	atimes.com

Front

Middle East's resistance to Bush's terrorism war grows
By Glen C Carey

CAIRO - The United States' campaign against terrorism has started to generate strong resistance in the Middle East. The shift comes amid new accusations that Lebanon may be harboring al-Qaeda members and US moves to freeze the assets of militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

In the latest salvo of accusations, The London Times reported on February 1 that al-Qaeda was trying to move its operations to Lebanon from Afghanistan, where the United States has waged a war aimed at destroying Osama bin Laden and his network.

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri dismissed as "pure lies" media reports claiming that bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was trying to transfer its operations from Afghanistan to Lebanon. "There is no party that feels the burden of this oppressive campaign and its ferocity as Lebanon feels. The Israeli and American newspapers are waging campaigns against Lebanon to tie it to global terrorism," Hariri said in a speech to parliament.

Hariri's statements underscore a larger sentiment held in the Middle East. Arab governments oppose the mounting accusations from Washington that radical Islamic groups, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, as well as Lebanon's Hezbollah, are terrorist. Instead, they are seen in the Arab world as resistance fighters, struggling against Israeli occupation, according to government officials and analysts - and much of the public. "The groups fighting Israel are resistance fighters," said Ahmed Khalil, a newsstand employee in Cairo. "They are defending the Arab people against Israeli aggression."

With popular support for Hezbollah and Hamas throughout the region, it is by no coincidence, then, that as US President George W Bush was pointing his finger at these organizations in his recent State of the Union address and fundamentally blaming Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat for the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence, Arab governments were crafting a much different picture.

"Fighting terrorism, whatever its source, is a top priority for our country and a duty spelled out by the Islamic religion," Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Saudi Arabia said during a three-day ministerial meeting held in Beirut from January 29-31. However, the acts of Palestinian militant groups against Israel in the occupied territories are a "legitimate struggle in defending land and honor", he added.

Reinforcing these views, Islamic scholars after a six-day conference held in the middle of January in the Saudi city of Mecca, under the auspices of the Islamic Jurisprudence Academy of the Mecca-based Muslim World League, also defined terrorism as "all acts of aggression committed by individuals, groups, or states against human beings, including attacks on their religion, life, intellect and property". But instead of targeting Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, the scholars said "the heinous terrorism perpetrated by Jews in Palestine" constitutes a prime example of state terrorism. "This is the most dangerous terrorism threatening world peace and security, and confronting it is a just defense and jihad is the way of Allah," the scholars said.

These differences between the United States and Lebanon, as well as the Arab world, over the definition of terrorism and accusations that Lebanon is a new haven for al-Qaeda will complicate US efforts to persuade Arab governments to take strident measures to curb the assets of militant Islamic groups fighting against Israel.

"When the United States placed Hezbollah on a list of terrorist organizations whose assets should be frozen, the Lebanese government repeatedly said that it considered Hezbollah a legitimate resistance party whose military activities were confined to occupied territories," said Cilina Nasser, a journalist for the Beirut-based newspaper the Daily Star. "Lebanon, therefore, made it known that it would not comply or move against Hezbollah, which is revered as a heroic resistance group that evicted the Israelis from the south [of the country]."

A European Union official based in Brussels also explained that it is nearly impossible for the Lebanese government to move against Hezbollah because the organization is fully integrated in the local political and social landscape. "It is a bit short-sighted and naive of the Americans to think the Lebanese government can move against Hezbollah," said the official, who asked to remain unnamed. "Hezbollah is too much a part of Lebanon's political life and is simply not seen as a terrorist organization."

Moving beyond the distinction between terrorism and resistance fighters, the United States will also have a difficult time using international law to pressure Lebanon to freeze the assets of Hezbollah. Nasser said that the Central Bank of Lebanon has offered four "technical reasons" to refuse compliance with US demands to freeze the resistance group's assets.

First, bank officials said the demand came from the United States, not the United Nations. Therefore the request was not binding because the measures adopted in September to fight international terrorism were endorsed in the context of UN Security Resolution 1373.

Second, the officials also said that the demand did not originate from the International Court of the Justice, whose requests are legally binding.

Third, the bank officials rejected the request because it was not the result of an internal criminal investigation, which would have required the Central Bank's intervention.

Finally, officials pointed to the absence of bilateral agreements between the US and Lebanon, which would prescribe the conditions for the freezing of bank accounts to be undertaken at the request of one of the two parties.

They say that while it may be difficult for the US to freeze Lebanon's assets, it can, however, make it more difficult for Lebanon to act on the global economic stage. The recent US veto on a Lebanese financial bailout outside the framework of the International Monetary Fund may have been an effort to penalize Lebanon for failing to fall in line with the US war against terrorism by freezing Hezbollah's assets.

(Inter Press Service)

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