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."
PHOTO: AP
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.
Some thought the video, far from being astute, might have negative repercussions. Mohammad Sayed Said, a political scientist in Cairo, said that during the broadcast bin Laden "implicitly but strongly" admitted his guilt in the Sept. 11 attacks. That "may really backfire," he said. "People will think this is a confession of sorts and see it with revulsion." But Said's was a minority view.
Bin Laden's appeal is of the ascetic figure, living in a cave, defying the might of the US, and the video reinforced this image. A fundamentalist Muslim cleric in London, Abu Hamza, hailed the air strikes on Afghanistan as a success for bin Laden: "It was a night of victory for bin Laden because he has shown this is the sort of aggression the Americans have used against Palestine. It is like slapping a giant and running from him. If the Americans win this war, there will be no triumph for them."
While there is sympathy with the victims of the New York and Washington attacks, there is a widespread sense of injustice in the Middle East that bin Laden is being targeted without sufficient evidence, at least in public.
Hamza, from Yemen, who lost both hands and an eye fighting with Muslims in Bosnia, mirrored a view repeated throughout the Middle East yesterday: "Tony Blair has said the evidence against him would not stand up in a court of law. Surely that is not enough reason to start a war. I think the west is exaggerating it and turning bin Laden into a martyr."
That is the danger for the international coalition. If bin Laden is killed by a bomb or shot by special forces, he will become a martyr, a symbol of defiance for future Muslim fundamentalists. If he is captured and tried, he will pose a problem for whatever country holds him, leaving it vulnerable to repeated hostage-taking in attempts to free him.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
RSS