911 is OUR fault
Arabs: Terror War Has Spread Instability
By PAUL GARWOOD
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Victims of the Sept. 11 attacks were mourned worldwide Saturday, but in the Middle East, amid sympathy for the dead, Arabs said Washington's support for Israel and the war on terror launched in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse have only fueled anger and violence.
From Egypt to Yemen, Arabs said the world had become less safe during the three years since 19 militants from the Middle East hijacked four passenger planes in the United States and used them to kill more than 2,900 people.
``Sept. 11 was a tragic day in our history because so many innocent people were killed at the hands of militants, who find a fertile ground in our region in view of the biased U.S. policies toward Israel and against Arab causes,'' said 34-year-old banker Mahmoud Obeid in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and other bombings since have fueled widespread soul-searching among Arabs over the connection between Islamic extremism and terrorism.
But that has not shaken a long-held belief that U.S. policies in the region - including Washington's support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians - are also to blame for fomenting the kind of anti-American hatred that could drive people to launch an attack of the magnitude of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York and Washington D.C.
Egyptian columnist Fahmy Howeidy called for critical self analysis from people in the Middle East and Islamic worlds ``because those people who committed the Sept. 11 attacks ... were (also) Muslims and Arabs.''
``But ... the problem is the Americans don't want to criticize themselves,'' he told The Associated Press. ``They don't look at their policies and mistakes, like the U.S. position toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By defending the terrorism committed by Israel against the Palestinians, they are filling people with anger.''
The archbishop of Canterbury, in Egypt to help mend religious rifts, urged Muslims, Christians and Jews to move beyond ``the way the faithless world thinks'' and reject violent revenge, terror and the killing of innocents.
``If we do act in the same way as our enemies, we imprison ourselves in their anger, their evil,'' Rowan Williams said during a speech to religious leaders at a top Sunni Muslim center in Cairo.
``We are not forced to act in revengeful ways,'' added Williams, who was in New York when al-Qaida militants slammed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center's twin towers three years ago.
For some, the anniversary underlined the need to press on in military action. U.S. troops in Iraq held small ceremonies to coincide with the moment the first jetliner slammed into the World Trade Center.
Commemorating Sept. 11 ``reinforces the fact that we should go kick ...,'' said Sgt. Dionna Eves, 23, a medic from Clearwater, Fla. ``It reminds you of why you're here. Anyone who poses any kind of threat should be taken out to prevent something so tragic from happening again.''
But Capt. Rick Hewitt, 31, of La Crosse, Wisconsin, said the attacks don't ``really change our mission here one iota. We're trying to rebuild this country.''
The U.S. 9/11 Commission has said there's no evidence Saddam Hussein's ousted regime had a role in the attacks or a ``collaborative relationship'' with al-Qaida. Still, the Bush administration has painted the Iraq war as part of the war on terror and says bringing democracy to the country will help reduce support for extremism.
Russia pointed to last week's tragic hostage-taking at a southern school, which was blamed on supporters of Chechen separatists and which ended with some 330 hostages dead.
After the Sept. 11 attacks ``the world had changed irreversibly,'' the Russian Foreign Ministry said. ``But not all of us then fully understood the real danger of the enemy appearing before us. (Now) the whole world recognized this, shuddering from another barbaric terrorist act - this time in Russia, this September.''
The ministry rankled at past criticism of the Kremlin's bloody war in Chechnya, where it says separatists have al-Qaida links. The ministry called for ``a new level of antiterrorism partnership, free from 'double standards'.''
Spain's press linked the anniversary with the six month commemoration of the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people. Leading daily El Pais said the world has not become safer since Sept. 11, with Casablanca, Istanbul and Jakarta being added to the list of cities affected by Islamic terrorism.
The third anniversary of the attacks was welcomed by some, particularly contributors to militant Islamic Web sites.
``I thank God that He made us see such a day,'' said one online contributor who identified herself only as Umm Rafida. ``Whenever I look to the picture of the tower while its collapsing, tears well in my eyes and I thank God.''
The Saudi English-language Arab News daily denounced the Sept. 11 plane hijackers, including 15 Saudis, as ``twisted fanatics'' and called for a ``jihad - struggle - ... to rid Islam of its deviants ... to restore the honor of Islam.''
In an editorial, it called for an end to the ``blame game'' among Arabs, which it said perpetuates ``our own poisoned sense of victimhood.''
In Amman, Jordan, supermarket owner Hamzeh Ghazawi, 26, said the anniversary for him only marks the start of a more dangerous world.
``On this day every year, I remember the beginning of the chaos, the fear and the insecurity which the United States has brought upon the whole world,'' he said.
09/11/04 14:12
cnn.netscape.cnn.com |
