ABC RADIO
US response should be carefully considered: analyst The World Today - Thursday, September 13, 2001 12:18
JOHN HIGHFIELD: And there's a contrary view coming from the respected Middle East reporter and analyst, Robert Fisk, who writes for The Independent and is a regular contributor to ABC Radio National and The Philip Adams Program. He's amongst those urging caution. He agrees that the suicidal nature of the attacks suggests a Muslim Fundamentalist connection.
But Robert Fisk has been telling Matt Peacock in London that an immediate strike on Arab targets could be just the sort of response US enemies want, given high feelings right across the Middle East over things like the deaths of up to 10 million Iraqi children from starvation and lack of medical treatment, because of sanctions over the past 10 years.
ROBERT FISK: The problem is that the Americans and, to some extent, Mr Blair, are so obsessed with the word terrorism. I don't know if you've noticed, it's become a punctuation mark in any report now, that they've not begun to understand and think through what they're getting involved in.
This is not an enemy that stands out in front of you and waits to have a pitched battle. Or an enemy that builds up a whole army of people behind it. It's an enemy which is trying to provoke the other side, in this case the United States, to do something which will overthrow the regimes in the Middle East because of the mass popular fury.
MATT PEACOCK: And that's what you think will happen?
ROBERT FISK: Well look the people of the Middle East, in general, I'm talking here of the Arab Muslims, are already enraged over the number of casualties the Palestinians have suffered at the hands of the Israelis at the start of Intifada just over a year ago.
The Middle East is, here we go, cliché time again, a tinder box. Arab governments, I mean people like Mubarak can scarcely keep the millions off the streets at the moment.
And people like Mr bin Laden, for example, would like people like Mr Mubarak overthrown.
So the more America does in the way of retaliation, the happier Mr bin Laden, if he's behind it, will be.
MATT PEACOCK: What you're saying is that, if there is some kind of Western retaliation, then that will lead to a profound shift in the regimes in the Middle East.
ROBERT FISK: Yes, and they are our regimes, most of them, aren't they.
MATT PEACOCK: So what do you think would happen?
ROBERT FISK: I think people like Mr Mubarak will be in great danger of losing their thrones. And the same particularly applies to King Abdullah, who's not very popular at the moment, and half of whose population anyway is Palestinian. I think Bashar Alafed [phonetic] would be alright. I'm not at all certain what would happen to the Maghreb countries like Tunisia or Morocco.
And certainly the most dangerous area would be the Gulf states, because Saudi Arabia is not a democracy even though it claims itself to be a friend of the West. It's a theocratic dictatorship.
If you start losing major oil states as your allies, it's a bit difficult to know whether there'd be any real American presence or power left in the Middle East. That, of course, is what people like Mr bin Laden want. They want to cut and emasculate that power.
JOHN HIGHFIELD: Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East analyst, was speaking there with Matt Peacock and, just in case I misread something there, if I said 10 million children have died, I meant to say that up to a million Iraqi children may have died from starvation and medical problems. It's still a very bad thing, is it not.