[Oman-L] Bakuanys e-mail

Wed, 24 Oct 2001 21:06:32 +0200

Thank you friends for interesting mail,

Being on a mail list connected to an Arab country it doesn't harm to
understand the politics between West and Middle East/Islam/Arabs. All of us
are in one way or another touched by the recent events in WTC, might it be
that the shares has fallen, the new "Antiarabism" in Europe and America,
safety on Aeroplanes etecetera. At least we should be concerned, the next
time we ourselves might be in a shoping center blown up by terrorists.
Culture and History is not segregated from politics, it's involved in it.

For myself, I would be interested to understand why half the Muslim world
hates America. If I were an American I would be even more concerned what it
is these extremists want.

If America left the Middle East, why would it return to 1100 century? The
only country returning to 1100 did it with the help of USA, Saudi and
Pakistan.
We want to trade and have cultural exchanges with the Middle East. But
pointing a gun on them will hardly develop those countries, or?

We know what Bin laden wants:
1. America out of Saudi
2. Free Palestine
3. An united extreme Islam world.

Two of those conditions many of us can agree on. American troupes don't need
to be in Saudi. We all want peace between Israel and Palestine. The third
condition most of us are against (I hope) but failing the two first
conditions makes those favoring the third grow. We can hunt them and shoot
them, but one killed and two are born.

It wasn't long ago the Americans were terrorists themselves according to the
English invaders, Boston tea-party for example. Or freedom fighters. What is
the difference, and who decides that?

1982 Israel invaded Lebanon and 17500 CIVILIANS died in three days in a
country with a few million inhabitants. Hardly anything was written about
this in the western papers. The bombs literaly had USA stamped on them. And
we wonder why they hate us. When we use our aeroplanes against those who
can't defend themselves we don't call it terror, but when two planes crash
into WTC, then it's terror. Don't misunderstand me, I am very much against
the one created by us - bin Laden, and the extremists USA helped to power,
Taliban, but it would be good to find out who started the terror.

Personally I'm happy that USA is blowing the Taleban off the planet and bin
Laden with them. There might be a future for the women of Afghanistan again.
I doubt though that the Northern Alliance is any better. Americas suggestion
however is redicioulus, want's Moderate Talebans in a coalition. That's like
saying the Moderate Nazis should have been in the German post-war
government. There are other forces amongst the Pashtus with human and
democratic views (not all those are killed by the Taleban) that are able to
be in a coalition under Shah for example. Taleban was created by USA,
Pakistan and Saudi, and it's time to correct that mistake.

But blowing them away won't solve anything for us. Terrorism will continue
to grow as long as we don't let people have their own saying in their
political affairs. We have tried with conventional ways to stop terror ever
since the first Aeroplane was hijacked by PLO, and it has failed, the WTC
shows that.
No one is born a terrorist, but if we accept that people are chased away
from their homes to live in refugee camps without ID or passport or a
citizenship for the rest of their lives, many of them will turn to terror as
their only weapon. Not until we "INTELLIGENT WEST" understands that, we will
be able to live in a world without terror.

So to segregate terror and politics from culture and history would be a
grave mistake, in a couple of years we might not be able to travel and enjoy
Arab culture if we continue on the same track.

Tommy