| August 19, 2005 | Friday | Rajab 13, 1426 |
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Moscow’s correct stand
Safety in the air
THE 350 bomb blasts which rattled Bangladesh on Wednesday killing two people and unleashing panic in the country are the latest in a series of terrorist activities by Islamist militants all over the world. In Bangladesh the Jamayetul Muslimeen is suspected to be involved, which is calling for the implementation of “strict Islamic laws” and claims to be fighting a jihad against their enemies. The high incidence of violence by the jihadis has now emerged as a key factor in the international scenario. The day the bombs went off in Bangladesh, there were reports of a terrorist training camp being found in a seminary in North Waziristan which has been the scene of an army operation for the last three years. The same day two high-tension power transmission towers were blown up in Khuzdar, reward money was announced by the Sindh government for information on the whereabouts of a sectarian terrorist, a Madrid bomb suspect was arrested in Belgrade and the Philippines foiled a truck bomb attack on the US embassy in Manila.
The West’s response to the rising threat has been to tighten security and use its intelligence services to track down militants operating in their countries and also those who have taken sanctuary abroad. What have the Muslim countries done to counter this challenge? They must be fully aware that this phenomenon has grave implications for them as for the rest of the world. Apart from cracking down on terrorists and regulating the madressahs — which many governments are doing under American pressure —the Muslim governments have yet to address the root cause or causes of the problem. At times governments and the people even fail to recognize what the real issues are. Many believe this is the clash of civilizations that Prof Huntington had ominously forecast and Islam is under attack, so the Muslims have no option but to fight back. But no one can condone a strategy that seeks to kill people on sectarian grounds or because their governments have been oppressive towards the Palestinians, the Iraqis or the Afghans.
The fact is that the extremists are carrying forward a long tradition of violence, intolerance and exclusivism that a small minority has practised throughout Muslim history after the Holy Prophet. Be they the Kharijites, the Salafeen or the ones who followed them — the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia, the various Islamic seminaries in India — their basic traits were identical. They opposed progress. They wanted Islam to be a monolith. They had a self-righteous approach and portrayed themselves as the defenders of the faith who enjoyed self-assumed authority to decide who was a good Muslim and who was not. This obscurantist school of thought which had always remained on the periphery has now come into the mainstream. Armed with deadly weapons as well as political clout in many countries, this school of Islam is taking over the destiny of Muslim nations. Should this be allowed to happen especially when the majority of the Muslims do not subscribe to this point of view? But the rhetoric of the extremists is radicalizing Muslim masses. It is time Muslim societies began a dialogue with their own people to explain to them what Islam really means. This needs to be done before it is too late.
RUSSIA has joined voices of sanity by calling for a dialogue to settle the Iranian nuclear question, saying an attack on Iran would be “counter- productive” and have “unpredictable consequences”. Even though America and Israel have hinted several times at a possible use of force against Iran, Wednesday’s Russian response seems to be a reaction to President George Bush’s statement last week. Speaking in an interview over Israeli television, Mr Bush said he had not ruled out any option against Iran on the nuclear question. Hints of this sort have also come from Vice-President Dick Cheney and several Israeli leaders. It is true Iran has surprised observers by resuming work on uranium conversion, but Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty gives nations the right to make use of nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Tehran insists that it needs nuclear energy for non-military purposes — a claim not acceptable to the West. More than two and a half decades of strained US-Iran relations show that Tehran has not knuckled under to American threats and sanctions. The sanctions have proved counter-productive, for Mr Bush himself says that America has “sanctioned itself out of influence with Iran”. If America takes the case to the Security Council for sanctions, it is quite possible that China may not go along, given Beijing’s friendly ties with Tehran. As for Moscow, it is apprehensive of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but it is doubtful whether it would like to lose its clout with Tehran.
One result of constant American and Israeli threats has been to strengthen the hands of Islamic radicals. Mr Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s victory in the presidential election shows that hard- line clerics consider American brinkmanship a big help in sidelining the moderates. Besides, an attack on Iran will hardly strengthen America’s war on terror. This war has already been derailed because of Washington’s Iraq blunder. The US is hopelessly bogged down in Iraq, the insurgency continues unabated, and Washington seems to have no exit strategy, American casualties having crossed 1,800. An attack on Iran will unleash a new wave of anti-Americanism in the Middle East and will produce more terrorists and radicals whom it will be extremely difficult to control.
TWO plane crashes in the space of three days is not something that happens often. Last Sunday, a Cypriot plane with 121 people on board crashed north of Athens. Two days later, a Venezuelan airliner crashed near the border with Colombia, killing all 160 passengers and crew. In the first incident, it is presumed that the pilot and co-pilot had been knocked unconscious by lack of oxygen. The Larnaca-based airline later confirmed that the plane which had crashed had in the past experienced decompression problems. The cause of the second crash is said to be engine failure, which caused the plane to plummet to the ground from an altitude of over 10,000 metres. In both cases, technical faults appear to be the cause rather than human failure — a fact which would seem to run counter to the general belief that machines are now so sound that they can hardly ever go wrong and it is often human error that is to blame.
Air crashes make big headlines, unlike highway and road accidents that claim a far greater toll of lives (nearly 5,000 deaths in Pakistan alone in 2002-03). Nevertheless, the two successive airline tragedies should draw attention to the need for greater care in aircraft maintenance. There is a lesson for Pakistan too where airlines and the number of aircraft are proliferating. There are frequent reports of the odd engine catching fire, landing gear not coming down and, more recently, near misses. Safety standards need to be kept under constant and close scrutiny, and this is something that ought to concern all those involved in civil aviation.