
Story
of the three stooges
Salah
Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
The world
should feel extremely uncomfortable and angry at the
notorious activities of three stooges of present day’s
world, who are trying to do everything to defend
terrorism and Islamist militancy. One is Iranian
President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad; others
are Bangladeshi foreign minister Morshed Khan and Syrian
President Bashar Al Assad.
In recent
weeks, Israeli forces were compelled to launch
offensives on
Lebanon to crash
several bases of mega terrorist organization Hizbullah,
since this notorious group captured two Israeli
soldiers. It is known to the world that Hizbullah
continues to get support and patronization from
Lebanon,
Syria and
Iran. These
three countries have already turned into a direct enemy
of humanity and obstacle to the theme of war on
terror.
Meanwhile,
for the first time, the entire Muslim world, including
Saudi
Arabia criticized
Hizbullah’s notoriety, while only two countries namely
Iran and
Syria as well
one man, Bangladeshi foreign minister Morshed Khan
passed bad comments on anti-Hizbullah offensives.
Commenting on Hizbullah, a unnamed Saudi Government
official said, "Viewing
with deep concern the bloody, painful events currently
taking place in Palestine and Lebanon, the Kingdom would
like to clearly announce that a difference should be
drawn between legitimate resistance and uncalculated
adventures carried out by elements inside the state and
those behind them without consultation with the
legitimate authority in their State and without
consultation or coordination with Arab countries, thus
creating a gravely dangerous situation exposing all Arab
countries and their achievement to destruction with
those countries having no say. The Kingdom views that it
is time that these elements alone bear the full
responsibility of these irresponsible acts and should
alone shoulder the burden of ending the crisis they have
created. . . . The Kingdom will continually seek
security and stability in the region, exerting every
possible effort to protect the Arab Nation from Israeli
oppression and transgression."
Saudi
Arabia had
earlier accused the Shiite Hezbollah group, without
naming it, for what it said was its 'uncalculated
adventures' that threaten the 'destruction of the
achievements' of other Arab countries without consulting
them.
United Arab
Emirates leading
newspaper al-Ittihad
published
a commentary of Yusuf
Ibrahim, where he wrote, "We have seen this film before
and accordingly we can expect its end. It is not
important how many times a film is shown as long as the
end is the same. It means destruction, misery and
evacuation of homes for the Lebanese and Palestinians. .
. . In fact, we will be actually irresponsible if we do
not stop and think for a moment. Over more than 15
years, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, has kept
saying that he is keen on consulting
Damascus
and Tehran,
but this makes one wonder about the reasons that made
the leader of Hezbollah refrain from consulting the
government of his own country,
Lebanon."
Lebanese
politician Walid Jumblatt said, "The war is no longer
Lebanon's
. . . it is an Iranian war. . . .
Iran
is telling the
United
States:
You want to fight me in the Gulf and destroy my nuclear
programme? I will hit you at home, in
Israel."
Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah II
in a Joint Statement said, "The region is being dragged
along by an adventurism that does not serve the
interests of Arab affairs. . . . The necessity for all
the parties in the region is to act responsibly and not
to move towards an escalation aimed at taking the region
to a dangerous situation and confrontations that will
leave the countries and their peoples bearing the
consequences."
Ahmed
Al-Jarallah, editor of Kuwait Arab Times said, "People
of Arab countries, especially the Lebanese and
Palestinians, have been held hostage for a long time in
the name of 'resisting
Israel.'
. . . While the people of
Palestine
and Lebanon
are paying the price of this bloody conflict, the main
players, who caused this conflict, are living in peace
and asking for more oil from Arab countries to support
the facade of resisting
Israel.
. . . This war was inevitable as the Lebanese government
couldn't bring Hezbollah within its authority and make
it work for the interests of
Lebanon.
Similarly leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud
Abbas has been unable to rein in the Hamas Movement.
Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only
way to get rid of 'these irregular phenomena' is what
Israel
is doing. The operations of
Israel
in Gaza
and Lebanon
are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the
international community."
Bangladeshi
foreign minister condemned the killing of civilians in
Israeli attacks on
Lebanon
and urged the international community to rein in ‘state
terrorism’ and ‘aggression’ by
Israel
against Lebanese and Palestinian people.
‘We are
deeply concerned over the current situation in the
Middle
East. We feel
the world community should come forward to restrain the
state terrorism of Israeli aggression on Lebanon and the
people of Palestine,” the foreign minister, M Morshed
Khan, said when addressing members of the Overseas
Correspondents Association of Bangladesh in
Dhaka.
Morshed Khan also termed the recent attacks in
Lebanon and
Palestine by the
Israeli soldiers an act of fundamentalism and religious
terrorism.
He was critical of the double standard
maintained by certain Western powers, which he said were
patronizing the aggression.
‘Attacking
Lebanon and
killing innocent civilians… I think, it is a heinous
act,’ Morshed Khan said.
Without naming the
United
States, he
castigated its role in the aggression saying the
‘guardian of democracy’ should give up the strategy of
maintaining double standard.
The White House
administration has reportedly given
Israel a tacit
green signal to take a week it needs to neutralize
Hezbollah.
The United Nations was drawing up a plan
for an international force to try to restore clam in
Lebanon, but the US president, George W Bush, who says
Israel has the right to self defense, insisted that
Hezbollah had to be reined in before there could be
peace in the region.
The Europeans fear mounting
civilian casualties will play into the hands of
militants and weaken
Lebanon’s
democratically elected government.
Referring to the
Middle East situation, Morshed Khan said Bangladesh
fully supports the inalienable rights of the Palestinian
people, including their right to have a state of their
own with Jerusalem as its
capital.
‘Bangladesh maintains
its principled stance for a comprehensive solution of
the Palestinian question in accordance with the relevant
UN resolutions, the Arab Peace Plan and the Road
Map.’
He said
Bangladesh remains
committed to the cause of unity, peace and progress of
the Muslim fraternity. ‘Our support for the cause of
Palestine and for a
peaceful and durable resolution of the
Middle
East problem
including Arab sovereignty over Holy Jerusalem is an
abiding commitment.’
Meanwhile, according to
international press reports,
Egypt
persuaded Israel
against a planned land attack on the Lebanese capital of
Beirut
following Hizbullah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers
earlier this week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said
Sunday. The Egyptian leader also disclosed an Iranian
offer to negotiate a settlement with Hizbullah as part
of Arab initiatives to resolve the crisis, but called
Tehran's
bid "a trap."
Egypt
was keen not to let the Israelis into
Beirut,"
Mubarak told reporters Sunday after talks with the
president of the
United
Arab
Emirates,
Sheik Khalifa bin Zayid al-Nuhayyan. "If we hadn't
stepped in, Beirut
would have been destroyed," Mubarak
said.
Egyptian
officials have been talking to the Israelis in a bid to
find a diplomatic solution to the latest regional
military confrontation, the Egyptian president said. "We
are talking to them more than once a day," he said. "We
told them that attacking civilians and civil
infrastructure is wrong, because the Lebanese people are
helpless."
Like
regional heavyweight
Saudi
Arabia,
Egypt
has criticized Hizbullah
for starting the latest Mideast crisis.
Mubarak said he was also in contact with Syrian
officials and that Tehran was
interested in participating in Arab mediation efforts.
"They (the
Iranians) want to attend the Arab foreign ministers
meeting and form a joint committee that would have
included Hizbullah and Hamas," he said.
"Egypt realized
that that was a trap."
Moderate
Arab nations, such as
Egypt,
Jordan,
Saudi
Arabia
and oil-rich countries in the Gulf have expressed fear
that Iran
is using its Lebanese Shiite allies to expand its
regional influence. Meanwhile,
Iran's
top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Hizbullah
Sunday and said it would not give up its weapons.
"Thanks
to the power of Hizbullah, the Lebanese resistance has
disturbed the dream of the Zionists," Khamenei said in a
speech broadcast on state television. "The
US
President says Hizbullah must be disarmed. It's clear
that (the US)
and Zionists want this, but it won't happen," He said.
On
Saturday, Israel
said that 100 Iranian troops from the elite
Revolutionary Guards were in
Lebanon,
and that they helped Hizbullah fire a sophisticated
radar-guided missile at an Israeli warship blockading
the Lebanese coast late Friday.
Israel
said the rocket was made in
China
and upgraded in
Iran,
and was a radar-guided C-802 missile.
Iran
on Sunday denied the Israeli claims.
Political
analysts say that very surprisingly,
Bangladesh
foreign minister has echoed the voice of Ahmadinejad abd
Bashar Al-Assad, which certainly will put his country
into a very doubtful position.
US
assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher is expected
to arrive in Dhaka
on August 2, and possibly Khan’s comments will also come
into discussion table, as
United
States
in one of the biggest development partners for
Bangladesh
as well a committed force in war on terror. Some of the
political analysts are predicting a very dangerous fate
for Dhaka
waiting following the new strategy of the foreign
minister. Dhaka
will possibly see a good response from
Iran
and Syrian while will experience harsh criticism from
the Western world as well many of the moderate Muslim
nations.
Commenting
on Morshed Khan’s statement, a former diplomat in
Dhaka
said, he knows nothing of diplomacy or world politics.
He behaves like a clown.
Bangladesh
should have carefully monitored the entire situation in
the Middle
East
as well the past track record of terrorism of Hizbullah,
before terming Israeli actions as ‘state terrorism’.
This will not only annoy the global powers but will also
put Bangladesh
into the worst ever situation, which will also hamper
its business and exports in the near future, he
said.
It is known
to the world, notorious groups like Hizbullah, Hamas and
Al-Qaeda are continuing murder of innocent people in the
name of holy war.
American writer Paul Shehaan narrates this situation
in his own words saying, “When
historians narrate the beginnings of the third global
war, a war already under way with more than 200,000
killed, they may choose the moment on October 12, 2000,
when a small fishing skiff sailed up to an American
destroyer, the USS Cole, at anchor off Aden harbour in
Yemen.
“As
the skiff approached, the two Arabs on board smiled and
waved at the sailors on deck. Then the two men stood to
attention.
“In
the next instant, the Cole was gutted by an enormous
bomb. It liquefied the bombers, killed or wounded 56
sailors, and disabled a heavily armoured
state-of-the-art warship. Other suicide bombs had
exploded before, and many more since, but the attack on
the Cole was the first frontal assault on the US
military by al-Qaeda, and the emergence of al-Qaeda
globalised and modernised the cause of
jihad.
“War
and murder have been carried out in the name of Allah in
Thailand, Bali, Sumatra, the Philippines, Nigeria,
Algeria, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq,
Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Afghanistan,
Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Bosnia, Albania, Kenya,
Tanzania, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain,
Denmark, Russia, the United States and Sudan, where mass
murder and mass rape have been the tools of cultural
war.
“What
makes this global war different from the First and
Second World Wars is that there are tens of thousands of
combatants who actually want to die, and in the process
kill as many non-believers as possible. As the bombs,
missiles and rockets have been exploding in Lebanon,
Israel and Gaza, medievalists who are key drivers in
this cultural struggle have been ecstatic. You can hear
it in the rhetoric of Hezbollah's spiritual leader,
Hassan Nasrallah, and Iran's President, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
“Most
disturbingly, jihad is being driven by three separate,
distinct and often competing strands of Islam: Sunni,
financed by the oil-powered Wahabist fundamentalists of
Saudi Arabia, and dominated by the ideology of al-Qaeda
and Osama bin Laden; Shiite, an extension of the
theocracy of Iran, and highly active in Iraq, Lebanon,
Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories; and
Pakistani Muslim nationalism, the wellspring of jihad in
Kashmir, support for the Taliban, and terrorist attacks
in India and Britain, with its large Pakistani emigre
community.
“What
these distinct mutations of Islam have in common is an
appetite for war and murder and sexual oppression. It is
no coincidence that the governments in all three of
these wellsprings of jihad have weapons of mass
destruction. Pakistan has the first "Islamic bomb",
acquired through a campaign of theft, stealth and
illegality. Saudi Arabia and Iran have a different kind
of bomb - oil in immense and strategic
quantities.
Iran,
the prototype of the modern Islamic theocracy (which
also wants the nuclear bomb to match and trump Israel's
nuclear option), is stronger today than it was a week
ago. It already wields disproportionate power in the
Middle East through its proxies helping to tie down
150,000 US troops in Iraq, which is 60 per cent Shiite.
Now, thanks to its proxies in Lebanon, Israel has been
goaded into an attack on a democratic
neighbour.
At
the weekend, the foreign ministers from 18 Arab League
nations held an emergency meeting in Cairo after which
the Secretary-General of the League, Amr Moussa,
declared that the Middle East peace process was
"dead".
Lebanon's
Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, said that Israel's "war
machine" had turned his country into a "disaster
zone".
Another
victory for the provocateurs of Islamic fundamentalism.
Every time chaos has engulfed the Middle East, militant
Islam has emerged with greater power. Creating chaos is
thus the modus operandi of
jihadists.
Lebanon's
newly reborn democracy and stability, after 20 years of
civil war, has been the greatest act of national
reconstruction in the Arab world, an enormous
achievement. The Government in Beirut relies on a
detente between former enemies, Christians, Sunnis,
Shias and Druze, some 18 separate
factions.
No
one in this fragile democracy is willing or able to
disarm the Hezbollah militia dominant in the Shiite
south of Lebanon. Far more important has been the
multibillion-dollar rebuilding of the
economy.
The
United Nations may have passed Resolution 1559 calling
for the disarming of Lebanon's militias, but who in
Lebanon would be willing to go into that hornet's nest?
Who would be willing to plunge the nation into another
civil war? By blaming the Lebanese Government for
Hezbollah's actions, Israel has demanded the impossible
from its neighbour.
Hezbollah
has been thriving on chaos since it began in 1982 in
response to Israel's invasion. When it launched its
first major suicide attack in the region on April 18,
1983, killing 63 people at the US embassy in Beirut, it
created the template for the borderless war we are part
of, whether we want to be or not.
The
only glimmer of good news at the weekend was the
criticism of Hezbollah by the governments of Saudi
Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. And to put the current mayhem
in perspective, the Cold War was waged for more than 50
years between democratic capitalism and totalitarianism,
with nuclear weapons massed on either side. It was not a
cold war for the tens of millions of people who died in
purges within China and the Soviet Union, and in wars or
civil wars in Vietnam, Korea, Latin America and
Africa.
The
Cold War ended with no nuclear weapons being used. But
compared with medievalists waging jihad, the communist
powers of the Soviet Union and China were prudent,
rational players. In today's global struggle, the
objective evidence is overwhelming that where militant
Islam goes, bloodshed follows. In a whole range of
different settings, for many adherents of Islam the
Koran is not a book of peace but a call to
war.”
Look
at this comment! Just because of nasty activities of
some notorious groups, using the term of jihad to justify
their evil deeds, Islam is now coming into challenge.
Everyone knows, every religion including Islam promotes
peace. But these bad elements in Hizbullah, Hamas or
al-Qaeda are continuously using the good name of Islam
for terrorism and murder of innocent people. Does
Bangladeshi foreign minister understand this reality.
Before he passed the remarks, he should have at least
studied the past track record of terrorism of
Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hizbullah or Al Qaeda.
Crtitics say, Khan is a mere businessman, who made his
fortune with blessings from several Japanese companies.
But, diplomacy is something else. Here, you just can not
utter a word without knowing the consequence. Although
top most level of Bangladesh government remain silent on
the Middle East issue, foreign minister Khan’s remarks
could place the country into serious jeopardy. Morshed
Khan has no right to place Bangladesh into the queue of
Iran or Syria and he should not let the international
community take Bangladesh as another patron of
terrorism.