Author: T V R Shenoy
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 22, 2003
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=24345
Introduction: In Casablanca, it
could be the start of a beastly trend
Was it just a fortnight ago that
President Bush flew to the USS Abraham Lincoln, to proclaim the beginning
of the end of the war on terrorism? Days later, Al-Qaeda struck back with
a synchronised onslaught in Riyadh, followed by suicide attacks in Casablanca.
So, tell me this: what message were the terrorists sending out, and to
whom? There was one message to the ruling Al-Saud dynasty in Riyadh: you
maintain your posture of friendship with the United States at your own
peril. But what was the signal to Morocco? Perhaps it was: do not be so
secular!
Several commentators seized the
opportunity to poke fun at President Bush. Surely, they say, this proves
that the war on Iraq was pointless, that terrorism still has a free run
in the Arab world. I am not so sure. Up to the September 11 assault on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Al-Qaeda was able to get away
by attacking American targets directly. (Remember the suicide attack on
the USS Cole and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center?) I think Al-
Qaeda severely underestimated the American response. It has lost its Afghan
sanctuaries, almost half its ground troops are behind bars (or dead), and
under American pressure to deprive bin Laden & Co of the "sinews of
war" even the fabled secrecy of Swiss banks has begun to crack. It is a
sign of weakness, not of strength, that Al-Qaeda is making fellow Arabs
the target rather than challenging the United States directly as in earlier
years.
You might say that bin Laden has
come full circle. It has been almost thirteen years since he first made
the decision to tread the terrorist path. Iraq had just invaded Kuwait,
and there was little or nothing to stop Saddam Hussein's tanks from rolling
into Saudi Arabia as well. Bin Laden offered to lead his fellow "Afghan
Arabs" - those veterans of the struggle against the Soviet Union - to defend
the kingdom. King Fahd and his advisers preferred the more substantial
protection of US Marines (followed by their army, navy, and air force colleagues).
This, protested bin Laden, was anathema, a violation of the law laid down
by the Caliph Omar that infidels could not set foot in the Holy Land.
Scholars have never reached any
agreement on how far precisely the ban extended; was it just Mecca and
Medina that came under the prohibition, or the entire Hejaz, or Arabia
as a whole? Bin Laden, never an academic, apparently chose to define it
in the broadest terms - meaning any nation where Islam was the dominant
force. This, of course, puts him at odds with Western - or non- Islamic
- forces everywhere between Croatia in the north to Australia in the south,
between the Atlantic Ocean on one side to the Rann of Kutch closer home.
And this brings us to Morocco, the most western, in every sense of the
word, of the lands of Islam.
There is no blinking the fact that
bin Laden struck a chord in several hearts in his native Saudi Arabia,
all the way from hovel to palace. But Morocco has never been a happy hunting
ground for Al-Qaeda and its adherents. The distaste for the fundamentalist
school is something that begins at the top, and is nothing new. Morocco
has a history of remarkably good relations between Muslim and Jew, for
instance, hateful news to a group to whom "Zionist" is an abusive term.
Morocco, like the rest of North
Africa, came under Germany's eagle eye during World War II, people not
notably enthusiastic about Jews. One fine day, Hitler's envoy went to the
palace to meet King Muhammad V. The Nazi came to the point; how many Jews
were there in Morocco? "Seven million!" came the instant response.
The total population of Morocco
at the time was seven million. The Germans were trying to round up the
Jews with a view to sending them off to an extermination camp to be quietly
disposed of. The king, who understood the game, was saying that Morocco
was prepared to resist because the kingdom made no distinction between
one citizen and he other. When the state of Israel was revived after a
two-thousand-year hiatus several Moroccan Jews emigrated, but they never
forgot how they had survived to tell the tale. There are homes in Israel
even today where a portrait of Muhammad V occupies a place of honour. (One
of his successors was asked to put in a good word for some party or the
other during an election in Israel. The amused monarch refused, but chuckled
over being the only Arab leader asked for a public endorsement by Israeli
politicos.)
The relationship with the Jews has
continued. Hassan II was the second Arab head of state to meet an Israeli
leader publicly. (President Sadat of Egypt was the first.) Morocco was
also one of the first Arab states to publicly condemn the rape of Kuwait
in 1990. Today, King Muhammad VI' s financial adviser is a Jew. I suppose
it was only a matter of time before Al-Qaeda made its disapproval clear.
As noted, bin Laden's definition
of the Islamic world extends to Pakistan in the east. And the Al-Qaeda
boss is closer, in geographical terms, to Islamabad than he is to Rabat.
Will he really look with a kindly eye on General Musharraf's measures to
diminish the tension with the "infidels" in New Delhi? If he could pull
strings in distant Casablanca how many suicidal morons can bin Laden summon
to his assistance in Rawalpindi?
