~~GULFWIRE~~VOICES OF THE REGION~~WEEK OF OCTOBER 14, 2002 (fwd)

["Clement M. Henry" <chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu>]

Here is my latest Gulfwire - nothing about that Qatar msg I sent earlier
so it must have been misinfo as I have not heard anything about any
attempted coup in Qatar on any of the standard news media, including Arab
ones - sorry to have passed on that earlier item!

*****************************
Clement M. Henry
Professor of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX 78712
tel 471-5121, fax 471-1061

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 11:48:21 -0500
From: GulfWire e-Newsletters <GulfWire@arabialink.com>
To: "<<GULFWIRE>>" <GulfWire2@arabialink.com>
Subject: ~~GULFWIRE~~VOICES OF THE REGION~~WEEK OF OCTOBER 14, 2002

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            ***** GULFWIRE ~~ VOICES OF THE REGION ******
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           THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON U.S.-ARAB RELATIONS AND
            THE U.S.-GCC CORPORATE COOPERATION COMMITTEE

                       WEEK OF OCTOBER 14, 2002

=========================================================================
COMMENTARY FROM LEADING FIGURES AND MEDIA OUTLETS IN THE ARAB GULF STATES
=========================================================================
THE VIEWS CONTAINED IN THESE ITEMS DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF
       GULFWIRE OR THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON U.S.-ARAB RELATIONS
=========================================================================

GULFWIRE ~ VOICES OF THE REGION ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS

·  NORTH KOREA, IRAQ - Arab News - Editorial
·  BUSH'S UNILATERALIST APPROACH ON IRAQ IS UNACCEPTABLE: UAE DAILY -
     Emirates News Agency
·  ABDULLAH TELLS YOUTH TO SHUN EXTREMISM - Arab News Report
·  JOURNALISTS AND SAUDI WOMEN - Arab News Op-ed
·  HOW TO PREVENT TOMORROW'S TERROR TODAY - The Jordan Times Column
·  GULF NEWS SAYS: IMPERIALISTIC DESIGNS - Gulf News Editorial

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NORTH KOREA, IRAQ
Arab News - Editorial - 19 October 2002

It appears that North Korea has admitted to US officials that, despite its
commitments enshrined in a 1994 agreement, it has undertaken a program to
enrich nuclear fuel as part of a covert drive to acquire nuclear weapons.
North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, comprise the states branded by
Washington as an "axis of evil". President Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq
was also known to be busy trying to acquire a nuclear capability, but it is
widely believed that UN weapons inspectors detected and then destroyed most
of the equipment needed to create a nuclear bomb. The new UN inspection
regime probably stands a good chance of discovering and destroying any new
Iraqi nuclear program.

North Korea, also like Iraq, has invaded a neighbor and obliged the UN, led
by American forces, to intervene massively. North Korea's past and present
leaders, Kim il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-il are like Iraq's dictator, the
subject of official personality cults.

So, are the 40,000 US troops based in South Korea being quietly put on a war
footing and is Washington squaring up for a second attack on an axis of
evil, one which, presumably, it believes subscribes to and supports
international terrorism? Apparently not. If the US has the slightest
intention of behaving to North Korea the same way that it is to Iraq, there
was precious little indication of it in the hours after the North Koreans
finally confirmed what the world at large had long suspected. Many White
House watchers indeed detected confusion within the US administration. This
is odd for a president who tells us that he is embarking upon an aggressive
campaign based upon principles. It is hard to see how the principles could
be applied differently toward Iraq and North Korea.

A further anomaly in Washington's behavior came with the spin that was put
on Pyongyang's nuclear admissions. Far from being outraged that the North
Koreans had completely broken solemn and binding assurances, administration
officials were saying that maybe now that Pyongyang's program was out in the
open, it was a positive step. This was echoed by the South Korean
government, who averred that the only reasonable course was to continue to
negotiate with their northern cousins.

All of a sudden, everyone is ignoring that Pyongyang is a renegade regime
which has kidnapped foreign tourists, murdered its own officials on foreign
trips, very probably blown up an international airliner, sunk South Korean
fishing boats as recently as three months ago, and demonstrated that any
agreement to which it puts its name is worthless. Yet Washington and Seoul
seem prepared to keep talking.

This is odd. One of the main reasons that Washington and London say they
need to be prepared to attack Iraq is that time and again Saddam and his
ministers have proven duplicitous and slippery in negotiations in which they
have been involved. They are masters at playing for time, experts at
obstructing at precisely the moment when international will is weakened and
extremely good at magnifying their social and economic distress and blaming
them on everyone but themselves.

Yet Washington appears glad to talk to one of them while preparing to launch
a major assault against the other.

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=19537

[Reprinted with permission of Arab News]

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BUSH'S UNILATERALIST APPROACH ON IRAQ IS UNACCEPTABLE: UAE DAILY
WAM

Abu Dhabi, Oct.12, 2002 (WAM) -- A major UAE English daily today commented
on what now appeared to be an inevitable war looming on the region as the US
Congress and Senate let lose the hands of US President, George W. Bush, who
has sworn to go to war with Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. Commenting
editorially in its issue of today under the topic "Gathering Storm," the
Sharjah-based "The Gulf Today" said in part, "Armed with war powers from US
Congress, President George W. Bush has begun plotting the invasion of Iraq.
The reaction from Baghdad was on the expected line: It is ready to confront
within the hour.

"Adding credence to the imminent war is the reported success by British
Prime Minister Tony Blair in sewing up a deal in Moscow. In an apparent
softening of Russian stance, President Vladimir Putin agreed with Blair on
the need for a tough new Security Council resolution on weapons inspections.
This was a departure from Moscow's earlier stance that inspection of Iraq's
alleged weapons could be effectively done under existing resolutions.

"However, Putin has rejected the US-British draft resolution that threatened
Iraq with military action if it did not co-operate with weapons inspections.
It favored the French proposal for a two-stage ultimatum -- one setting out
tough conditions for Iraqi co-operation on inspection and another
threatening force if conditions were not met.

"Now Bush is trying for a compromise. Washington could agree to consult with
council members before taking military action and get a resolution to show
that Iraq was in breach of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire terms. This might
give a legal camouflage for the attacks.

"But the way the US is beating the war drums, there is no way Bush would
back down from the decision to strike at Baghdad. There was enough evidence
for this in Friday's Pentagon statement and in the comments of the White
House spokesman. The Defense Department said that after securing the alleged
weapons of mass destruction, the American forces would unfold its plans for
a government in Baghdad. These could include, as Washington did after
occupying Japan at the end of World War II, installation of a US commander
in place of Saddam Hussein.

"Although the White House spokesman did not give credence to such reports,
he said the US would quickly transfer governmental power to 'the Iraqi
people both from inside Iraq and outside Iraq.' This is aimed at assuring
neighboring countries that fear that toppling Saddam would unleash
destabilizing forces. 'The United States will not cut and run,' the
spokesman said. He assured skeptics that Washington and its allies would
find a way to help preserve the stability and maintain peace in the region
particularly that of Iraq as a unified country.

"If the US is committed to the regime change without harming regional
stability, the UN -- whose approval it is seeking for waging war against
Saddam -- should be made privy to such plans. So far Bush has not taken into
confidence the 15-member Security Council on this issue. Neither has he
consulted them in framing an international plan for a post-Saddam era.

"Such an approach is a cause of concern to Arab countries as they are going
to be the frontline states to be affected by the US attack and subsequent
fallout. Bush's unilateralist approach is unacceptable while the storm is
gathering over the Middle East."

http://www.wam.org.ae/2002/Oct/12/738489.htm

[Reprinted with permission of Emirates News Agency]

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ABDULLAH TELLS YOUTH TO SHUN EXTREMISM
Arab News - By a Staff Writer

DHAHRAN, 16 October — Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of
the National Guard, has called on Saudis to keep away from religious
extremism, saying Islam is a faith of moderation.

"I call on our sons, the students of today and the men of tomorrow, and
every citizen to stick to their faith without excess, for Islam is a
religion of moderation and wisdom," Prince Abdullah said addressing the
students of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals here.

"At the same time we must be aware of currents of deviation and decadence on
one hand and currents of excesses and extremism on the other," the prince
added.

Prince Abdullah warned that religious extremism will lead to catastrophe.
"Beware of extremism, because the annihilation of nations that came before
you was caused by religious extremism," the crown prince said quoting a
saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him).

Saudi Arabia has voiced concern over the security of the Gulf region after
the crackdown in Kuwait on a cell with indirect ties to Osama Bin Laden's
Al-Qaeda group, blamed by Washington for last year's attacks on US targets.
Prince Abdullah urged Saudi students to imbibe the qualities of kindness and
benevolence.

"God is benevolent and likes benevolence in all matters," the prince quoted
Prophet Muhammad as saying.

He criticized the so-called Islamic scholars who give edicts (fatwas)
without proper knowledge of the religion.

Prince Abdullah, who is on a visit to the Eastern Province, also called upon
Saudi students to participate in the Kingdom's development and help in
solving its problems.

He urged university professors to assist the administration by making
available their ideas and expertise.

The crown prince said the Kingdom will continue its efforts to strengthen
the economy and, create more jobs for Saudis.

He urged Saudis to stand united to face the challenges. "If we stand
together, deepening our faith in God, we can face any challenge, realize our
goals and remove the obstacles that stand in our way," he added.

Prince Abdullah came to KFUPM on Monday to attend the university's 40th
anniversary celebrations and inaugurate its development projects. He
received an honorary doctorate in administrative science from Dr. Abdul Aziz
Al-Dukhayyil, KFUPM's rector.

The degree was conferred in appreciation of Prince Abdullah's efforts for
the Kingdom's development, his expertise in managing the affairs of the
National Guard and his contribution to world peace and security.

The crown prince laid the foundation of the university's industrial research
center, the fifth phase of its campus project and an experimental workshop
for new oil refining technology.

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=19473

[Reprinted with permission of Arab News]

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JOURNALISTS AND SAUDI WOMEN
Arab News - Amal Al-Hussein - October 15, 2002

I wish the authorities would allow women to drive. The decision would
permanently close the door to those asking the perpetual question about
women driving. This happens every time a foreign visitor comes to this
country and wants to know something about Saudi women.

In just one week I met three foreign journalists preparing reports on the
status of Saudi women, including employment and rights in general. They
wanted to know if the Saudi woman could really hold a job without driving.
Driving is the subject that dominates every discussion and the visitors
claim they want to know whether Saudi women suffer from any injustice.

The way this question is normally raised indicates the questioner is more
interested in stating a fact than in seeking an answer. The achievements of
some Saudi women on the international level are ignored.

When a well-informed foreign journalist with extensive experience pretends
to know nothing about a prominent person in a senior international position,
it is not our duty to volunteer to tell them anything. It is essential for
anyone wishing to interview somebody to have some background or some basic
information about the person to be interviewed. These are the ABC's of
journalism.

What actually happens with some visitors to this country is that they come
loaded — not with questions but with piles of accusations. The meeting turns
into an interrogation session instead of being a useful discussion.
Saudi women should have faith and confidence in themselves and refuse to be
treated like suspected criminals who must defend themselves before foreign
visitors.

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=19434

[Reprinted with permission of Arab News]

=== voices ====== voices ====== voices ====== voices ====== voices ======

HOW TO PREVENT TOMORROW'S TERROR TODAY
The Jordan Times - Rami G. Khoury - October 16, 2002

The world seems to be terrorized by attacks in Indonesia, Finland, Yemen,
Kuwait and Washington DC, that targeted, respectively, tourists, a shopping
mall, a French oil tanker, American troops and random civilians. We wonder
if these attacks are related and if they emanate from an organized global
terror network such as Al Qaeda. But such an analysis misses the main point
of why and how political terror happens, and therefore usually leads to
mistaken, mainly military, strategies to fight terror.

A thorough analysis of political terror attacks should consider current
events in Pakistan and Turkey, for example. In last week's Pakistani
parliamentary elections, the alliance of Islamist parties that is very
critical of the US military presence in the country won an unprecedented
high number of seats (45 out of 342) in the National Assembly. The
Islamists, who had never before secured more than nine seats, are the third
largest party in parliament, will participate in deals to form a government,
and will control two of Pakistan's four provincial governments — if they are
allowed to. In Turkey, the Nov. 3 parliamentary elections are already
slightly marred by the state's prohibiting the candidacies of very popular
Islamists like Recep Erdogan and Necmettin Erbakan. The Turkish elections
board will decide this week whether or not to allow the pro-Kurdish
Democratic People's Party to participate in the elections.

Turkey and Pakistan reflect the most basic, important and operative
principle that determines whether people choose to pursue peaceful politics
or violent terror — the principle that ordinary men and women must be
allowed to exercise their right to express their cultural/religious or
political/ethnic identity, to air legitimate grievances and to participate
in open, fair political processes that address and redress those grievances.
When these rights are exercised, individuals and groups feel their
empowerment is real, their dignity is respected, their hope is protected and
their humanity is affirmed. When these rights are denied them, or blatantly
restricted to the point of being meaningless, people feel degraded,
humiliated and powerless. Ultimately, they become dehumanized — and finally,
a few of them act in an inhuman, beastly, manner by adopting terror.
It takes many years of political, social, economic and human degradation to
create a terrorist; so fighting terror can only succeed by re-humanizing
degraded societies, by undoing, one-by-one, the many individual acts of
repression, obstruction, denial, marginalization and autocracy that
cumulatively turned wholesome developing societies into freak nations and
decent, God-fearing people into animals that kill with terror.

One way to stop future terror is to stop current regression and degradation.
In Pakistan, an autocratic government that is encouraged to adopt
anti-Islamist policies has led directly, and unsurprisingly, to
unprecedented electoral victories by the opposition Islamists. If the
Islamists are allowed to participate in an honest political decision-making
system, Pakistan will move slowly towards a more legitimate and peaceful
democracy; if they are nipped in the bud by their own state, or by American
or Arab anti-Islamist dictates, some will inevitably give up on politics,
and a handful will turn to violence and terror.

Turkey, similarly, grapples with challenges of how to wed democratic
pluralism with freedom of expression and participation for all. The assorted
recent bans on expressions of Kurdish and Islamist identities led some
disenchanted groups to violently confront the state. Turkey remains at a
crossroads, heading either for a more open, inclusive democracy or towards
an oligarchy where only selected groups share political power. The world can
promote peace and preempt terror by encouraging maximum, open, honest
participatory democracy in places like Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and the
entire Arab world today — right now, not next week or next year, but today.

Many Arabs and Asians who use terror against their own states or Western
targets once traveled paths similar to those that now define Pakistan and
Turkey. In their own countries, many future terrorists once raised both
legitimate and far-fetched grievances. Some of them tried to engage in the
political process, but found that they were barred from it or that no
political process existed for them to engage in — because Arab, American,
Russian or other states concurred that it should be so. Some tried turning
to their religion for solace, but found that their religion was also banned
to them as an instrument of political expression. Finally, some gave up and
in a desperate, criminal fury they transformed Arab and Western governments
from their tormentors into their targets.

Their terror bombs are now going off around the world, and they will
continue to go off until the world wakes up and admits the obvious: the
world's few criminal terrorists must be militarily hunted down, prosecuted
and jailed or executed if found guilty — but only political means can
address widespread legitimate grievances about abuse of power, economic
inequity, political brutalization and human indignity that are routinely
expressed by several billion other discontented ordinary men and women
around the world. Those billions are the environment from which the handful
of terrorists emerge. It's correct to keep looking for Al Qaeda, but it's
more urgent, ultimately, to acknowledge and remove the real causes that
allow a group like Al Qaeda to come into being in the first place.

[Reprinted with permission of The Jordan Times - http://www.jordantimes.com]

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GULF NEWS SAYS: IMPERIALISTIC DESIGNS
Gulf News Editorial - October 18, 2002

It is very obvious that from the diplomatic viewpoint, George Walker Bush is
not his father's son. Nor, would it seem, does he wish to mould himself in
that light. For whereas George Herbert Walker Bush, when American President,
advised caution tempered with moderation, the current American President,
deems it politic to adopt an opposite line. More specifically, Bush junior
wants to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussain, to "complete the job his
father failed to do", while his father states that the mandate given in 1991
did not allow such an invasion and the allied forces would not have accepted
such a proposal. So it now raises the question, is it personal revenge the
son seeks, or a vain attempt to show his father that he is the tougher of
the Bushes.

But there is worse. Whereas Bush senior went to great lengths to get Israel
to hold back during the Gulf War, even when it was being attacked by Scud
missiles from Iraq, Bush junior sees the issue differently. For he has given
a green light to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that, if attacked,
Israel "has a right to respond."

The language from the president is daily getting more worrisome, especially
to those in the Middle East. Because now Bush has increased the demands he
makes upon Saddam by demanding relevant Iraqis and all their families be
allowed to leave the country for questioning. Bush is also condoning Sharon
increasing pressure on the Palestinians, even during the Iraqi crisis – or
perhaps more correctly, especially during the Iraq crisis, since public
attention will be diverted. And now, Bush has warned countries in the Middle
East not to shelter any Hezbollah, as "it poses a threat to Israel". Will
there be no end to the American President's imperialism?

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/opinion.asp?ArticleID=66001

[Reprinted with permission of Gulf News]

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