Arab governments were muted in their response to the US attacks Monday but on the streets there was a strong mood running in favor of Osama bin Laden, who is emerging as a much more formidable opponent than the US and Britain first believed. The US attacks on Afghanistan threaten to leave him more powerful than before. A widespread feeling among many Arabs is that he, rather than the US, is winning the war.
Bin Laden is successfully polarizing opinion. He proved tactically astute on Sunday in releasing his video soon after the attack. His videotaped interview was designed to address the three main Arab grievances: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Iraqi sanctions; and the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia. He also referred to America's atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an example of US "world crime."
It is risky to generalize too much, but there was repeated support in the Middle East yesterday for bin Laden's portrayal of the conflict as a black and white one between the West and Islam. "It is clear that this war targets the Islamic and Muslim renaissance," Jamil Abu-Baker, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest opposition group in Jordan, said yesterday.
Abu Hassan, 50, a real-estate employee in pro-western Bahrain, responded positively to bin Laden's call for a jihad against the west, saying all Muslims should "rise and support" Afghanistan.
"America wants to control the world. Are Israeli attacks on Palestinians not a terrorist act? Would America bomb Israel?" he asked.
There were few street demonstrations, though that could change if there are pictures of Afghan civilian dead. Where people did take to the streets, it was in support of bin Laden. In a Palestinian demonstration in Gaza yesterday, in which two were shot dead in clashes with Palestinian police, students carried pictures of bin Laden and chanted his name. Outside the Middle East, there were demonstrations in support of bin Laden in Muslim countries in Africa and Asia. In the Sudan, students chanted: "Long live bin Laden." At Zagazig University north of Cairo, students chanted: "Our rulers, why are you silent? Have you got orders from America?"
In Kuwait, one of the few Arab governments vocally to support the US yesterday, even moderates such as Hadi Abbas, a shopkeeper, 25, acknowledged the power of bin Laden. He said bin Laden should have targeted "military positions, not innocent civilians" but he felt he was a "a strong Muslim personality."
Ali Muhsen Hamid, ambassador of the Arab League in London, insisted support for bin Laden was confined to a tiny minority: "No one believes bin Laden will liberate Palestine or the Golan. He is not serving the interest of the Arab world or Islam." But he admitted: "Maybe now he will get support or sympathy because people will think he is the victim of a war that is unjust and without concrete evidence. But no one feels bin Laden is the right person to claim he is capable of liberating occupied territory." He was dismissive of the bin Laden video: "It is mere rhetoric. What matters in Palestine is the intifada, not a cry from the mountains of Afghanistan."
But what should be a matter of concern to the US and British governments is the way bin Laden held on to the video until the raids started. He has had five years to plan his offensive and each move so far appears to be well thought out. His strategy is to suck the US into a regional conflict in the hope that the repercussions will destabilize countries such as Saudi Arabia, making them vulnerable to Islamic fundamentalist groups.
RSS