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2002: The Year of Escalation
By Mowahid H. Shah
When the compelling need was to de-escalate, the year 2002 became a year of escalation. Indo-Pak military tensions on the frontiers may have subsided but the killings continue in Held Kashmir. In Palestine, the pummeling of Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces continues, punctuated occasionally by sporadic back-to-the-wall ‘Kamikaze’ operations by Palestinian youth.
In Chechnya, Russian guns keep blasting, taking horrific toll on civilian lives and property. And the Chechens have themselves resorted to self-annihilating retaliatory operations.
In Pakistan, negative perceptions of the United States may have reached an all-time high. A recent worldwide opinion survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, interviewed more than 38,000 people in 44 nations. The 89-page report, released in Washington, D.C. in December 2002, found that “while America is nearly universally admired for its technological achievements and people in most countries say they enjoy US movies, music and television programs” yet “the spread of US ideas and customs is disliked by majorities in almost every country” surveyed. The contrast is particularly striking in the Muslim countries surveyed. In Pakistan, just 10 percent of the public reported having a favorable view of America and 69 percent held an unfavorable view.
Reported FBI involvement inside Pakistani urban centers have further exacerbated public fury along with news of specific targeting of Pakistanis in INS dragnets and special registration requirements for Pakistanis in the US. David Rohde remarked in a recent article in The New York Times (“Anti-American Feeling Rises in Pakistan as US Confronts Iraq”, Dec. 22, 2002) that “suspicion of and disenchantment with the United States is spreading through all parts of Pakistani society” and “there is also fear that Pakistan could be Washington’s next target after Iraq.”
Such is the stage and context for the planned assault against Iraq on the implications of which Washington has only a hazy and perhaps a rosy notion. Douglas Hurd, former UK foreign secretary, observed recently that Washington’s forecast that victory over Saddam Hussein would bring peace to the Middle East “strikes me as a breathtaking example of the human capacity for self-deception. …The greatest danger might not arise in the fighting with Mr. Hussein’s forces (which could last only a few days) but in the aftermath of a war across a region that would see itself unmistakably under the domination of the US, the protector of Israel.” (“War With Iraq Would Not End the Dangers”, Financial Times, Jan. 3, 2003).
It is feeding a growing public sentiment of the Rest of the World vs. the Muslim World. Significantly, those who were ardent supporters of the West have become vehemently skeptical about prevailing US policies.
Even the old imperial-cum-colonial order had its constraints and resort to force was thought through. When Egypt’s Gamal Abdel-Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, it was President Eisenhower who successfully pressured France, Britain, and Israel to back off. The carrot of diplomacy was considered more effective than the stick of military force.
During the Carter administration, some had hoped that the era of gunboat diplomacy was fading. Jimmy Carter supported human rights, endorsed a Palestinian homeland and, despite a botched raid inside Iran, got all US hostages out of Iran safe and alive, after a 444-day ordeal, on the last day of his presidency.
The demise of the Soviet Union left America with the sense of being the unchallenged monarch of all it surveyed. Along with it came grandiose pretensions of being the ‘Sole Superpower’ - a nomenclature heretofore applied only to the Almighty Allah. Eager-to-please Muslim elites further compounded Washington’s hubris by parroting the ‘Sole Superpower’ slogan, contributing inadvertently to loss of Muslim leverage in the US and abroad.
And then came 9/11 with its ensuing wrong lessons.
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