Fear and Mistrust in Mideast Nations

While 94% of the American people support, at least to some degree, our military action in Afghanistan, the views in the Middle East and South Asia are very different. A survey of editorial comment in newspapers from the region of the conflict reveals almost universal suspicion about America’s motives and pessimism about the war’s outcome. And, while in the United States people see the bombing of Afghanistan as only tangentially related to the Israeli-Palestinian unrest, those in the region see the two issues as tightly linked. ( Compiled by Patricia Brown, translations by Asli Bali and Saleh J. Agha)

EGYPT

Afghanistan is the immediate target of the U.S. anti-terror drive. But who is next? This question is on everyone’s lips in the Arab world

--Unsigned editorial in the Egyptian Gazette, Oct. 10

INDIA

The world watches, almost as if it were mesmerized, as the Taliban is punished for the carnage of Sept. 11. That is what it is, no more and no less. All the windy rhetoric about the global fight against terrorism is just that, windy rhetoric.

--By Bhaskar Ghose, writing for The Telegraph, the largest circulated English daily in Eastern India, Oct. 11

IRAN

The U.S. operations will not be limited to Afghanistan ....One of Washington’s plans is to take the control of the Persian Gulf oil into its hands, for the fluctuations in oil prices, particularly during the past two years, have demonstrated that the USA does not at present have the leverage it wants over the oil of the Persian Gulf ....the U.S. war is based on selfish motives which will ultimately lead to the genocide of the innocent Afghan people.

--A staff writer for the Tehran Times, Oct. 11

ISRAEL

In his speech yesterday [on the bombing of Afghanistan], [President] Bush pointed out that “the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it.” No one in Israel could have put it better. We join with the rest of the civilized world in hoping and praying that the action launched [Oct. 7] will bring about a safer and freer world for all, Arab and Jew, Christian and Muslim.

--Unsigned editorial in the Jerusalem Post a day after U.S. attacks on Afghanistan

JORDAN

While we are sorry in advance for the enormous human and material damage this war may inflict on the impoverished Afghani people, it is noteworthy that the U.S. informed Israel of its war plan before it carried it out, while it did not inform any of its Arab and Muslim allies. This leaves us surprised before this American contradiction, in which allied countries are ignored, while the Hebrew state, which for a while seemed excluded from the so-called international alliance, is given full attention.

--Unsigned editorial in the Jordanian daily, Ad-Dustour, Oct. 7

LEBANON

For the third day running, the American fireworks festival continues in Afghanistan’s sky and on its land. The result: nothing other than reaping the lives of innocent people.... It is a war that is soaked to its ears in tradition and moreover disgustingly unbalanced. There is no need to wait and see, because the beginning does not bode well for how things will develop.

--By Amin Qammuriyyeh, in the Lebanese daily, An-Nahar, Oct. 11

PAKISTAN

On the battlefront, the air attacks [on Afghanistan] are continuing

Considering there may be 7 million people on the verge of starvation in Afghanistan, this is a joke in very poor taste.

Washington should be careful that in its eagerness to prove to its own people that it is going after the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 incidents, it does not let the arrogance of power trip it into taking on more than it can chew, setting off ripples of spreading hostile reactions to its expanding role of sole international policeman.

--Unsigned editorial from the Peshawar daily, Frontier Post

PALESTINIAN PRESS

Innocent Americans, after all, are no more and no less innocent and no more and no less human than the countless victims of America’s greed, hegemony and evil. We are all God’s children. There is no such thing as “children of a lesser God.” There is no lesser God.

We are in no way suggesting that the incineration of some 6,000 humans at the World Trade Center was justified by the silent and not-so-silent extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims in Iraq and Palestine and elsewhere by America or as a result of American policy

--Unsigned editorial from the Palestine Times, Oct. 10

QATAR

The truth is: The U.S. is the worst terrorist ever in the whole of history. The American military machine alone has killed 8 million human beings. Now it wants to recruit Arab and Muslim soldiers in its crusade against Arabs and Muslims. It wants to convince us into feeling sympathy for it, and to fight new wars to annihilate some of our peoples in revenge for the death of 6,000 of its citizens and residents in the bombings in New York and Washington.

If the U.S. wants to solve the Palestinian problem, it can order Israel to withdraw immediately--something it has never done, and will never do.

--By Abd al-Halim Qandil in the Qatari daily, al-Rayah, Oct. 10

RUSSIA

Russia’s official position is known. The Russian government is making a clear and significant turn to the West ... [Russian President Vladimir V. Putin] has to enter into a formal military-political alliance with the West, join NATO and integrate Russia as an equal into the global Western military-political system. The American-Afghani war gives Russia a unique chance to do it all.

But Putin is president of a relatively democratic nation. Whether he wants to or not, he has to take public opinion into account. Public opinion is known, too. 60% of the population of Pakistan condemns the United States ....Russia considers the war unfolding on its borders to be someone else’s war. It may be condemned, it may be sympathized with, but public opinion will not tolerate Russia’s involvement.

--By Leonid Radzikhovsky, for Vremya MN, Oct. 9

SAUDI ARABIA

While the strikes in Afghanistan have pushed the Palestinian struggle down to the second-lead position in media coverage, it remains the central issue for the region. Palestine continues to yield, every day, its dead and injured. Until that stops, all agree, there can be no peace in this region and also, it now looks, in many others. And the yielding-up of the dead will end only when the Palestinians have a sovereign home of their own, where they can be masters and live with honor without worrying about the moods and tantrums of Sharons and Netanyahus.

--Unsigned editorial in Arab News, Saudi Arabia’s first English-language daily, Oct. 10

TURKEY

In Turkey we believe our country should participate fully in this fight to eradicate this common threat to humanity. But in doing so, we feel our Western allies should take into account our own realities and especially the sensitivities of the Turkish masses who oppose any harm done to Muslims around the world and especially those who have been deprived of their rights in the Middle East. Turkish leaders are obliged to do a delicate balancing act to appease the public while fighting terrorists, and let us not forget our masses do have religious sensitivities.

--Editorial by Ilnur Cevik for the Turkish Daily News, Oct. 11

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“No doubt it is upsetting to view the images of Afghani women, children and the elderly running to escape a storm of missiles. Seeing bombs strike at mosques is heart-breaking and rightly brings tears to the eyes of Turkish audiences. But ... the Taliban leadership is as responsible for the bombs falling on Afghanistan as is American policy. And it is the duty of Muslims more than of any other people to question the role and responsibility of the Taliban. The Taliban has effectively issued an invitation to be bombed by refusing to turn Osama bin Laden over to the proper authorities for his links to the Sept. 11 attacks, in which thousands of innocents were turned to ash.”

--Editorial by Mustafa Unal for Zaman, a daily Turkish language newspaper, Oct. 12

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Now we have to sit and watch, as if we are merely uninterested bystanders. Watch as George W. Bush promises revenge or retribution or war or whatever it is called. It doesn’t matter what it is called, because, rather than address the cause of the violence, we are instead promised only further escalation, more tit-for-tat, more death, more orphans, more doom for the next generation--more of the same.

--By Abdullah Al Rahim for the Gulf News, Oct. 8

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Translations for this piece were provided by Asli Bali and Saleh J. Agha.