Ordinary US citizens offer a lesson to South Africa

It is clear that September 11, 2001, will go down in the annals of history as a day that shook the world. Necessarily, both the people of the United States and those of the rest of the world, including ourselves, still struggle to cope with the fact and the consequences of the terrorist attack that took place on that day.

It is still too early to arrive at a comprehensive set of conclusions about this callous act and its terrible consequences. Undoubtedly, the volume of knowledge about who was responsible, how they organised the operation and how many perished increases everyday.

No sane person anywhere in the world has any doubt but that this catastrophe should not be repeated anywhere else in the world and that all humanity should act together to achieve this result. But I believe that, as South Africans, we already do have some lessons we can draw from the terrible disaster that suddenly befell the people of New York, Washington DC and the United States.

Perhaps, whatever else we are still doing and will have to do to respond to this tragedy, including accounting for all our own citizens who might have perished on that day, we should begin asking ourselves the question - what lessons should we draw for ourselves from the events of September 11. Clearly, one of these lessons is that, once again, we should review the measures we have in place to respond to disaster. This must include dealing properly with the question of what education and training should be extended to our people as a whole, so that they are organised to respond to sudden calamities of various sorts.

During the Cold War, throughout Europe, civil defence programmes were instituted, among other things to educate the people how to respond in the event that the weapons of mass destruction were used during an armed conflict during the period of the Cold War. This is not to suggest that we should establish the same infrastructure as was prepared for such civil defence or that we should necessarily take such protective measures among the people as were adopted to protect them from the effect of weapons of mass destruction.

The point however is that the government and our people as a whole should take such measures as we may, together, agree are necessary and adequate responses to such potential disasters as we may face. I would like to believe that this is one of the important lessons that we can already draw from the massacres in the United States.

But I am also convinced that we also need to draw some important lessons from the way that the people of the US as a whole have responded to this particular moment of crisis in their lives. We refer here to a number of issues.

One of these is the way in which the United States came together into a largely united whole, to respond as one to the tragedy that confronted the country. The predominant sentiment that has informed the thinking and the actions of the majority of the population and the country's institutions, is the need for the people to put aside their differences and to respond together to a catastrophe of immense significance to their country.

Whatever other considerations we may have about the attack, its origins and its aftermath, I do not believe that anyone of us can avoid being moved by the speed with which the American people responded to unite, so that they could, together, handle the consequences of the tragic events of September 11.

I believe that another major lesson we should draw from these events is the importance of a shared patriotism, such that the people recognise that there are some issues that constitute what should be considered as being of national interest and importance. The events of September 11 evoked the strong sense of a common patriotism among the American people that enables the overwhelming majority of these people at all times to express and demonstrate love for their country, its cultures, its constitution, its democratic practices, its institutions and the possibilities it provides for personal fulfilment.

Yet we all know that, at the same time, this is an unequal society. Very serious challenges, all of them of long standing, remain to be addressed. Among these is the level of poverty among millions of people in both town and country, in the wealthiest and most developed country in the world.

Among the most affected by this poverty and its multiple social consequences, are the indigenous native Americans, the African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans as well as pockets of white Americans. Many among these, experience levels of poverty, marginalisation and social degradation that, relatively, are no different from those that many of our own people are forced to endure to this day.

It was for this reason that, correctly, the fate of these communities was one of the issues that came under the spotlight during the recent Durban World Conference against Racism. And yet it is clear that, as Americans, these who suffer from injustice in their own country, are nevertheless American both in their nationality and their loyalty to their country, which they struggle to change.

In the face of the indiscriminate attack of September 11, they too would feel that nobody from elsewhere in the world has a right to destroy them, their fellow citizens and their country, whatever their own critical view of themselves, their grievances against some of their fellow citizens and their criticism of their own country. Thus would they also speak out, to say that, like everybody else, they have a right to be free from the fear of death from all terrorism, whether domestic or foreign. So would they also speak out that they too, have a responsibility themselves to defend the integrity of their own country, whatever its blemishes.

Thus can they guarantee themselves a place that is their home, within which they can continue a struggle to capture their own right to lead a life of dignity as equal citizens with all other citizens of their country. We must also commend the US mass media for the way they have handled particular elements of the consequences of the massacres of September 11. Naturally, we refer here especially to the US and other international television networks, which continue to provide "saturation" coverage of this affair.

We refer here to four particular elements. One of these is the astounding reality that these networks have, assiduously and correctly, avoided imposing on the US and world public images of the bodies of those who perished in the massacres we are discussing. This demonstrated an eminently commendable respect for the dead and injured and their relatives. It evinced a similarly sensitive consideration of the fact that the damage caused was already too great a level of trauma for the people.

Accordingly, there was no need further to assault the people by seeking to achieve the sensational effect that would be caused by broadcasting images of mangled bodies, burnt bodies, bodies oozing blood, and life.

The networks have also avoided conveying images of the breakdown of thousands of people in mass scenes of grief, with people weeping uncontrollably and otherwise abandoning themselves, and genuinely, to heart-rending expressions of sorrow. Thus they have helped to discourage mass despondency, in a situation in which it would have been only too understandable for millions to succumb to the purposes of terrorism to demoralise the people.

While not shutting out dissenting voices within the United States, especially those who question the correctness of a military response to the terrorist attack, despite its brutality and effect, the networks have not sought to place themselves in a contrary position, such that they focus on those that differ with mainstream opinion.

Within the United States, questions have correctly and understandably been raised about the failure of intelligence, which resulted in the fact that the impending attacks were not foreseen and were therefore not stopped. Very legitimate as these questions are, it is clear that, as has been said elsewhere, there is time for everything - a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to criticise and a time to agree. Like the majority of the US population, clearly the networks decided that the circumstances demanded that now was the time to agree to act together to respond to the attack that had taken place.

Undoubtedly, they are aware that the time will also come when the question will be asked and an answer justifiably demanded - why was such a horrendous act of terrorism allowed to happen. However justified the question, no reasonable person would agree that work to deal with those responsible for the murders, should be held back while the issue of the failures of intelligence, and therefore of governance, is being assessed. Accordingly, while not avoiding asking the question - what went wrong - to their credit, the networks have not sought to highlight this as the most outstanding question facing the people.

As a country and people, we too face our own national emergencies that will take time to overcome. These include issues that derive from our legacy of centuries of injustice, of poverty, racial and gender imbalances. It is clear that none of these problems can and will be solved overnight. However, it is also obvious that if they are not solved in time, they will generate levels of conflict and instability that will threaten everything that we, together, have been doing since our negotiations began, to date, aimed at the creation of a new South Africa.

Despite this common dire threat, it is painfully true that we have, so far, failed to rally around a new patriotism that would unite us in action to confront the common challenges. Too many among our people seem to be driven by the ignoble sentiment - everyone for himself or herself, and the devil take the hindmost!

When fire fighters, police officers and ordinary citizens did what they could to rescue those trapped in the twin towers in New York, perishing in the effort, they demonstrated what we mean when we speak of ubuntu. By laying down their lives so that others could live, they taught us a lesson that we should absorb fully and honestly, in our own interest.

Middle East

Negotiation only way to end cycle of violence and retaliation

A pattern of incitement, retaliation and collective punishment has come to characterise the ongoing violence perpetrated against the people of Palestine and Israel, according to Members of Parliament who conducted a fact-finding visit to the Middle East in July.

The group's report, which was tabled in the National Assembly this week, urged Israel and the Palestinians to urgently resume negotiations and immediately implement the recommendations of a committee chaired by former US senator George Mitchell. The report encourages humanitarian aid to Palestine from the South African government and civil society, and the possibility of voluntary service of South African medical interns in the region.

The report traces the history of the conflict in the region and details the various peace initiatives over the years. It records the perspectives of both Israeli and Palestinian officials and non-governmental organisations on the Oslo Accords and Camp David negotiations; incitement and violence; and key issues in the conflict like the inalienable rights of the Palestinians, the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements.

Israeli and Palestinian NGOs reported that since the occupation by Israel of Palestinian territories in 1967 and throughout the negotiations process, Israel had committed gross violations of human rights and various acts amounting to war crimes by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinians occur regularly, contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly forbids any attacks on 'soft targets' in times of war or conflict. Between September 2000 and June 2001, 34 Israeli civilians were killed inside Israel. Suicide bombings represent contraventions of international humanitarian law, the report said.

The Israeli government and armed forces were reported to have committed several gross breaches, including extra-judicial executions of Palestinians considered by them to be alleged 'terrorists'. Shooting at civilian demonstrators with live ammunition and rubber-coated metal bullets when there is no threat to the lives of soldiers has resulted in high numbers of Palestinian deaths and injuries. Other reported abuses include torture and inhumane treatment of detainees, destruction of Palestinian property, use of unlawful ammunition, and excessive use of force.

Equally devastating are the various 'collective punishments' imposed on Palestinians. These include the closure of Palestinian territories; sieges of towns, villages and areas in the West Bank and Gaza; and the imposition of curfews. This latter practice confines an entire population to their homes. When the delegation visited the town of Hebron, an area known as H-2 was under 24-hour curfew for the fifth consecutive day. "This meant that the entire Palestinian population of the H-2 area was under house arrest and all businesses in the area, including the central market were closed. In addition to instituting the curfew, the Israeli Government prevented the Palestinian municipal authority from providing basic services such as refuse removal," the report said.

Such restrictions on the movement of people and goods has seriously affected workers' ability to reach their place of employment, and hampered the ability of suppliers and dealers to conduct business. These factors have severely impacted on people being able to work and sustain their livelihood, resulting in a sharp increase in poverty and unemployment, the report said. According to World Bank figures, the poverty rate in Palestine increased from 11 percent before September 2000 to 32 percent by January 2001 and about 50 percent by April 2001. "It is estimated that more than 1 million Palestinians now live below the poverty line, with increasing fears that the most destitute among them would start to starve," the report said.

Since October 2000, the Israeli government has withheld taxes owing to the Palestinian Authority, affecting its ability to pay employees' salaries and provide basic social services. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat estimates US$100 million has been lost during this period. Israel says such revenues would be used to subsidise Palestinian security forces attacks on Israelis.

This conflict is essentially about people and land. Two major areas of disagreement are therefore the issue of Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements. The Palestinian refugee population currently numbers over 5 million and constitutes nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian people. Yet Israel refuses to accept a UN General Assembly resolution of 1948 which recognises the right of return of these refugees, arguing that it did not initiate the wars which displaced them.

Following the 1967 Six Day War, the Israeli government encouraged the settlement of Jews in the Occupied Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem. As international law prohibits the annexation of territory by force, Israel's colonisation policy is considered illegal. The UN Charter states that territorial gains from war are unlawful even if achieved in the course of self-defence and that any state is obliged to withdraw once it has protected itself from danger. While the government has indicated that "no new settlements will be built", it has approved over 40 new outposts that were erected since 1996.

According to the report: "The actions taken by Israel do not only constitute violations of signed agreements between Israel and Palestine but also of international law. A cursory analysis of the issue of Jewish settlements reveals a calculated and systematic strategy to infiltrate and 'colonise' the Palestinian territories. Settlements are established at strategic locations - on hilltops and over the main aquifers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This represents extremely advantageous strategic positioning not only from a military perspective but, considering the value of fresh water in the region also from an economic perspective."

The discriminatory practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories and within Israel, the nature of arrests and reported torture of Palestinian political activists in Israeli prisons and the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the Government of Israel, fuels the ongoing conflict and should be brought to an end immediately, the report said.

"It becomes difficult, particularly from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression experienced by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression experienced in South Africa under Apartheid rule," it said.

The MPs said it was critical that the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority reaffirm their commitments made in existing peace agreements and embark seriously on taking steps to implement them.

MORE INFORMATION:

• Report of the fact-finding mission to Israel and Palestine, National Assembly, 26 September

Fighting terrorism

The uses and abuses of anti-communism

The terrorist attacks two weeks ago on New York and Washington have caused outrage and shock across the world. Speaking on behalf of the ANC, President Thabo Mbeki said the acts should be condemned without reservation. Addressing Parliament last week, South African foreign affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said that South Africa is opposed to terrorism. She emphasised that during the course of the armed struggle, the ANC had scrupulously avoided terrorism as a tactic. All these are absolutely true.

After the terrorist bomb attacks on New York City and Washington, the government of the USA declared "war on terrorism". President Bush sounded extremely earnest in his declaration, but a question arose in my mind: Is the USA in fact opposed to terrorism? Closer examination of the dramatis personae involved in the September 11th outrage sheds a rather different light on US pronouncements past and present.

A United States newspaper reported: "Last week [the US govt] pledged another $43 million in assistance to Afghanistan, raising total aid this year to $124 million and making the United States the largest humanitarian donor to the country." (The Washington Post, 25 May 2001)

This was barely four months ago. Digging deeper into the recent archives of the United States press one finds yet other reports. Among the most interesting we find: "The Afghan resistance was backed by the intelligence services of the United States and Saudi Arabia with nearly $6 billion worth of weapons. And the territory targeted last week, a set of six encampments around Khost, where the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden has financed a kind of 'terrorist university', in the words of a senior United States intelligence official, is well known to the Central Intelligence Agency."

"The CIA's military and financial support for the Afghan rebels indirectly helped build the camps that the United States attacked. And some of the same warriors who fought the Soviets with the CIA's help are now fighting under Mr Bin Laden's banner. From those same camps, the Afghan rebels, known as mujahedeen, or holy warriors, kept up a decade long siege on the Soviet-supported garrison town of Khost.

"Thousands of mujahedeen were dug into the mountains around Khost. Soviet accounts of the siege of Khost during 1988 referred to the rebel camps as 'the last word in NATO engineering techniques'. After a decade of fighting during which each side claimed to have killed thousands of the enemy, the Afghan rebels poured out of their encampments and took Khost. 'This was the most fiercely contested piece of real estate in the 10-year Afghan war,' said Milt Bearden, who ran the CIA's side of the war from 1986 to 1989." (New York Times. 23 August 1998)

Dig a little deeper to discover further surprises when Steve Coll, writing in the Washington Post', of 19 July 1992, reveals: "A specially equipped C-141 Starlifter transport carrying William Casey touched down at a military air base south of Islamabad in October 1984 for a secret visit by the CIA director to plan strategy for the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Helicopters lifted Casey to three secret training camps near the Afghan border, where he watched mujahedeen rebels fire heavy weapons and learn to make bombs with CIA-supplied plastic explosives and detonators."

"During the visit, Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that they take the Afghan war into enemy territory - into the Soviet Union itself. Casey wanted to ship subversive propaganda through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union's predominantly Muslim southern republics. The Pakistanis agreed, and the CIA soon supplied thousands of Korans, as well as books on Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan and tracts on historical heroes of Uzbek nationalism, according to Pakistani and Western officials.

"'We can do a lot of damage to the Soviet Union,' Casey said, according to Mohammed Yousaf, a Pakistani general who attended the meeting. Casey's visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to sharply escalate US covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of US high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralise Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet empire."

The so-called mujahedeen, led by Osama Bin Laden, now accused of being the chief suspect responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Centre (WTC) and the attack on the Pentagon, it transpires, has been an ally of the United States Intelligence community for well nigh two decades. If the US press is to be believed, he and his network are in large measure a creation of the virulently anti-Communist elements in the US establishment, who not only supported them with funds, but also helped train and equip them to fight the then Soviet Union. During those years the CIA, its helpers in Pakistan and the Saudi rulers taught Bin Laden and his associates a host of skills, including how to move money to fund their operations from country to country.

As one US commentator writes: "The system is no surprise to the US government because Washington and its allies have used it, too. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was a British-Pakistani bank that used secret offshore accounts to effect a global money-laundering fraud that cost victims $8 billion. Before it was shut down in 1991, it was used to fund the mujahedeen, then fighting the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan. The money came from US and Saudi intelligence. Now many of the formerly US-supported mujahedeen are members of bin Laden's network. They know all about how to launder money through the international bank secrecy system."

Yet the alliance among Bin Laden, Taliban, the Saudi monarchy and the New Right in the United States establishment is not as odd as it might appear at first sight. There is a remarkable convergence of views among these allies. In the USA, the New Right's platform includes a very fundamentalist reading of the Christian scriptures, (indeed there are states where pressure from its more extreme supporters has succeeded in having the theory of evolution banned from the school curriculum). New Right opposition to women controlling their own fertility in extreme cases spills over into attacks on doctors and clinics that terminate unwanted pregnancies. "Family values" is the New Right code for the restoration of patriarchal relations in the family. Its opposition to any reforms that will accord equal rights to all US citizens is as legendary as its xenophobia. The New Right are the most vociferous proponents of a retributive penal system and the death penalty.

In the Muslim world, but specifically in Afghanistan, the coalition of forces represented by Bin Laden and Taliban also insists on a very fundamentalist interpretation of the Q'uran. They are opposed to women exercising any choice regarding their fertility, and they enforce strict patriarchal family relations with violence. Women in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan of today probably have fewer rights than chattel slaves in the American South before the civil war. It should come as no surprise that among the principal grievances cited by the mujahedeen when they rose in rebellion were attempts by the then Soviet-backed government to extend equal rights to women. Like their New Right allies, Taliban employs the most brutal forms of punishment ranging from public floggings to executions. The parties to this alliance represent the forces of reaction and extreme backwardness

It might turn out that the US New Right have sown dragon's teeth by arming and inspiring what was essentially an anti-modernist rebellion against a left-wing government. The reality is that Bin Laden, the Taliban and others of their ilk are today striking out at what used to be a doting parent. A parent who not only gave them life but also armed them to wage war on the 'godless Communists'.

But what could have persuaded these reckless offspring to turn against their parent? On examining the roots of the anti-left rebellion in Afghanistan one gets to understand today's events better. The left-wing party that seized power in Afghanistan during the late 1970s had no intention of introducing socialism to that country. Afghanistan was an impoverished, semi-feudal society, barely touched by the modern world. While Babrak Karmal and his colleagues indeed drew inspiration from and looked to the Soviet Union for assistance, their immediate aim was to bring their country abreast of the rest of Asia. That would have entailed mass literacy by the building of modern schools, the secularisation of the society, and the construction of modern infrastructure such as roads, electrification, and telecommunications. These would have ended Afghanistan's isolation and narrowed the distance between its people and the modern era. But it would also have curtailed the power of the Muslim clerics. Intellectual emancipation would be one outcome of modernisation.

The standard around which the USA, its helpers in the Pakistan intelligence agencies, the Saudi monarchy and the conservative religious leaders in Afghanistan mobilised opposition to this government was rejection, not of socialism, but modernism itself. They appropriated the banner of Islam for that purpose and advocated a fundamentalist interpretation of the Q'uran. The CIA, with a purely instrumentalist approach, recognised that religion would be a powerful symbol around which to rally opposition to the Soviet-backed government, but paid little attention to the unplanned-for outcomes that might produce.

The "bleeding ulcer" of Afghanistan was among the many factors that sapped the strength of the Soviet Union, leading to its collapse. What US policy-makers did not realise is that to the radically anti-modernist mujahedeen, the USA - the land of the skyscrapers, the home of Hollywood, with hundreds of television channels, millions educated women and with a strong emphasis on the separation of the church and state - represented the epitome of the modernism they had been mobilised to crush. The ideological affinities between the US New Right and Taliban sealed the alliance. But while the former necessarily took elements of modernism for granted, the latter regarded even its most benign expressions as satanic deviance. Thus the stage was set for the offspring to rise against their parents.

The history of the last century abounds with numerous examples of politicians who have sought to harness anti-Communism, in a very instrumental manner, to their project. In most instances these have been reactionaries and conservatives defending discredited systems of oppression and exploitation. But there have been numerous instances of liberals, nationalists and ostensibly progressive people being tempted to either play the anti-Communist card with a view to some immediate political advantage or to capitulate to it in the hope of gaining some dubious political advantage. US policy-makers during the liberal Carter administration of early 1980s probably thought they could ride the tiger of anti-Communism with impunity. The conservative Reagan and Bush administrations of the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s , as the US media reports indicate, thought they could take that even further.

Anti-Communism, they are discovering today, is a doubled edged sword. While its keen blade helped sweep away what President Reagan once called "the evil empire", on its back-swing it returned as a guillotine to wreak terrible havoc in the very citadels of US power. There is a lesson there, somewhere!

But the last word should go to two US foreign policy specialists, Tom Barry and Martha Honey : "As Americans deliberate an effective response to this tragedy and crime, we must first reject the call for war. The gauntlet goading us to militaristic responses that treat human life as callously as the terrorists treated ours must be categorically rejected. As with any other crime, the perpetrators and their accomplices must be brought to justice-in the courts of law, not according to the fundamentalist 'eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth' precepts. In recent years, we have made encouraging progress in establishing and enforcing international norms for human rights and crimes against humanity. This is an opportunity to forge a broader international coalition-bringing disparate nations together in a common determination to fight against such crimes against humanity. A first principle, then, must be that we treat this as an international crime, not an act of war, and that the rule of law should guide international response."

Z. Pallo Jordan is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee. This article is written in his personal capacity.

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