Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
> ==============================
> The Guardian (London) Wednesday October 10, 2001
> Interview
>
> 'There isn't a target in Afghanistan worth a $1m missile'
>
> It feels surreal to be talking to Mohamed Heikal, the Arab world's most
> respected political commentator and the former foreign minister of Egypt,
> in the lounge of Claridge's, one of London's swishest hotels. As the
> missiles rain down on Afghanistan, Heikal unveils his vision of the
> possible chaos ahead to the accompaniment of a tinkling piano and a
> lilting clarinet. Rarely has the gulf between west and east, first world
> and third, seemed so great.
>
> Heikal, an effortlessly urbane 78-year-old, spans those worlds and unpicks
> the hypocrisies of each. He has been a journalist for almost 60 years, was
> editor and chairman of the influential Egyptian daily Al-Ahram for almost
> 20, and has written a dozen highly regarded books on Egypt and Iran. From
> the first days of the revolution, he was close to President Nasser, and
> was briefly - and reluctantly - his minister of information and foreign
> affairs in 1970. He enjoyed an equally close but rather more volatile
> relationship with President Sadat, who imprisoned him in 1981 for opposing
> the Camp David negotiations.
>
> Heikal can see no logic in the attack on Afghanistan. For a start, he
> says, there is nothing there worth attacking. "I have seen Afghanistan,
> and there is not one target deserving the $1m that a cruise missile costs,
> not even the royal palace. If I took it at face value, I would think this
> is madness, so I assume they have a plan and this is only the first
> stage."
>
> He also questions whether Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network were
> solely responsible for the September 11 attacks, arguing that the limited
> evidence so far presented is far from convincing. "Bin Laden does not have
> the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush
> talking about al-Qaida as if it was Nazi Germany or the communist party of
> the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been
> under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and
> al-Qaida has been penetrated by American intelligence, Pakistani
> intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not
> have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation
> and sophistication."
>
> Heikal gives little credence to suggestions that a more central planning
> role may have been played by Bin Laden's nominal deputy, Ayman
> al-Zawahiri, the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. "He is dangerous and
> was involved in the assassination of Sadat, but he is not a great thinker
> or a great planner. He played a peripheral role in the assassination,
> which itself was marked by superficial planning and only succeeded because
> of luck. As their interviews with al-Jazeera showed, Bin Laden and
> al-Zawahiri rely on nothing but their instincts. This is not Hamas or the
> Muslim Brotherhood, this is an isolated minority who reflect neither Islam
> nor our times. They are the historic residue of oppression; they don't
> represent the future."
>
> There may, Heikal believes, be some as yet undiscovered element in the
> atrocity of September 11. Whatever the truth, he says that the
> explanations so far have been hasty, inconclusive and remarkably
> convenient. "I understand that the American administration wanted an enemy
> right away to hit, to absorb the anger of the American people," he says,
> "but I wish they had produced some real evidence. I read what Mr Blair
> said in the House of Commons carefully: they had prepared the atmosphere
> for that statement by saying he is going to reveal some of the proof, but
> there is no proof, nothing; it is all deductions. Colin Powell was more
> honest than anybody: he said if not this, it doesn't matter, he has
> committed so many other crimes that necessitate taking action against him.
> But that is like the Chinese proverb: 'Hit your wife every day; if you
> don't know the reason, she does.' You can't do it this way."
>
> It is important, Heikal says, to differentiate between the powerful
> anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East and the response to the
> attack on the World Trade Centre. "I know there were some demonstrations
> by people who expressed happiness," he says, "but they are not
> representative. People in the Middle East know what terrorism means. When
> tourists were shot at Luxor, there was indignation in Egypt. On the other
> hand, there is an unbelievable degree of anti-American feeling all over
> the area."
>
> The reasons for that loathing of the US are, he says, easy to pinpoint -
> the Americans' "blind" support for Israel and their backing for
> illegitimate, discredited regimes across the Middle East. He castigates
> every government in the region, including his own, and blames the US for
> propping them up. "The people did not choose these governments and in any
> free election none of them would succeed. They are not legitimate
> governments; they do not represent anything other than power."
>
> This is bad enough, but the fact that the US - the shining city on the
> hill - colludes with them is even worse. "The US supports the status quo
> whatever it is. They talk about democracy and then ignore it; they talk
> about the UN and ignore it; in every way you can accuse them of double
> standards. It is revolting to see them talking about democracy and then
> supporting undemocratic regimes. They talk about international legitimacy
> and then support what the Israelis are doing." All this is said with an
> analyst's precision, rather than an orator's passion.
>
> So will Islam now rally to the cause of Afghanistan? Heikal says there is
> little direct sympathy for the Taliban, who he describes as being "out of
> this world". He relates the story of Mullah Omar Mohammed, the Taliban
> leader, attending a meeting of Islamic leaders in Pakistan and refusing to
> sit down until a picture was removed from the room. "But that is Jinnah,"
> [Mohammed Ali Jinnah led Pakistan to independence in 1947] protested his
> Pakistani hosts. "Who is Jinnah?" he replied. He also failed to recognise
> Yasser Arafat. Heikal tells the story to demonstrate that just as the
> problems of the Middle East fail to register on Mullah Omar's radar, so
> the Taliban is not the key issue for the rest of the region.
>
> Nevertheless, as a symbol of American imperialism, the attack on
> Afghanistan is potent, and there are likely to be far-reaching
> repercussions, especially if Iraq and other countries in the region are
> added to the target list. Inevitably, says Heikal, when there is a vacuum,
> Islam - a ready-made cultural unifier and the answer to the region's
> multiple identity crises - is there to fill it. He identifies Pakistan as
> the country most likely to be destabilised. "There is a danger that the
> action will bring down the Pakistani regime," he says. "It could create a
> split in the army, where many of the officers are pro-Islamic. The
> worst-case scenario is chaos with no one strong enough to take over, and
> that chaos could easily spread into the Middle East." He also says that
> Turkey is vulnerable, despite the army's self-proclaimed role as the
> bastion of secularism.
>
> Standing behind everything is the issue of Palestine - unresolved and
> apparently unresolvable. "The current crisis in Afghanistan can spill over
> into other countries," says Heikal, "but the chronic crisis is the
> Palestinian issue." He is pessimistic about any compromise, recalling the
> telegram sent to the Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl, by the two rabbis he
> dispatched to Palestine to look at the land that might form the state of
> Israel: "The bride is beautiful but she is married."
>
> His solution is a Palestinian state and "an Israel for all its citizens",
> where the million Arabs are not second-class citizens. "The most important
> thing is to get religion out," he says. "You are talking to me about a
> Muslim state, yet you are not discussing a Jewish state - a state built on
> religion. That cannot be. Religion can be no basis for a state."
>
> He has no faith in the current softening of the American line towards the
> Palestinians, which he says is a replica of their approach during the Gulf
> war. "Whenever the US needs the Arabs, they are ready to offer a carrot,"
> he says. "In 1991 the Arab world was lured into the Gulf war against Iraq
> because they were promised that they would be compensated by a just
> solution of the Palestinian problem. The Americans sent letters of
> reassurance to all the parties and the Arab states went to Madrid to
> negotiate on the basis of those assurances. It is 10 years since Madrid
> and nothing has happened. Now the same scenario is being repeated.
> Strangely enough, it is even the same people - Cheney, Powell, a Bush. It
> is as if nothing has changed. People in the Arab world will see that our
> leaders are deceived again. Those who repeat their lessons are very bad
> pupils, and we are very bad pupils. We don't learn from our mistakes, so
> we are doomed to repeat them."
>
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