Patrick Cockburn, the award-winning journalist and author, has reported extensively from Iraq, Afghanistan and Jordan. Here, he explains how the ‘war on terror’ has fuelled resentment of the West and brought new levels of death and destruction.
“Yesterday was another black day in the “war on terror”. Across the Middle East, wave upon wave of violence engulfed the region and paid testament to the new, bloody reality five years on from 11 September.
The focus of some of the violence yesterday, the victims of attacks in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Jordan, were Britons. Be they military or civilian, British citizens are increasingly at risk everywhere in the area because Britain is seen as the closest political and military ally of the US.
A group of tourists were looking at the remains of a Roman amphitheatre in the heart of Amman, the capital of Jordan, yesterday morning when a lone gunman approached them, shouting “Allahu Akbar” – ” God is Great” – and opening fire. One Briton was killed and six other people, including two UK nationals, were wounded. A Jordanian man was arrested for the shooting. Hundreds of miles away across the great stony desert dividing Jordan from Iraq, a British military unit came under attack at Ad Diyar, north of Basra. A roadside bomb tore apart their vehicle, killing two British soldiers and severely wounding a third. The deaths bring the total number of British dead in Iraq to 117. Still further east in Kabul, Afghanistan, a suicide bomber in a car blew himself up beside a British convoy, killing one British soldier and wounding three others, one of them seriously. Four Afghans were also killed.
It may be egocentric to write only of British dead. They are but a small percentage of the casualties in the multiple crises which are now cross-infecting each other in the Middle East.
Abdul Rahman Imran, a Palestinian I met in Nablus in the West Bank yesterday, spoke with anger of the plight of his people while the world looks away. In July and August, 251 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army. Half of them were civilians, including women, children and the elderly, the Israeli daily Haaretz said.
It may soon become uncommon for a day to pass without a Briton, soldier or tourist, to be killed somewhere in the Middle East. It is dangerous to be a foreigner in any part of Iraq but I noticed last year that my Iraqi translator had started stressing to anybody we met that I was Irish rather than British. He claimed that The Independent was a well-known Scandinavian publication. Mr Imran is just one of many in the region whose outrage at the British and US governments is growing every day. “I want to kill Bush and Blair because of what they have done to us,” he said. “They are against Islam whether it is in Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan.”
To Tony Blair, due to visit Israel next weekend, the problem is very straightforward. Speaking in Los Angeles last month he produced a terrifyingly over- simple view of the Middle East saying “the Iraqi and Afghan fight for democracy is our fight. Same values. Same enemy.” He claimed that “we have to empower Moderate, Mainstream Islam to defeat Reactionary Islam”.
The American and British governments will apparently decide in future just who belongs to the latter strand of Islam and go to war with them. They will have their work cut out. The Britons who were killed yesterday in attacks across the Middle East died at the hands of very different people. The suicide bomber in Kabul was almost certainly sent on his mission by the Taliban, who are fundamentalist Sunni Muslims……
I have spent most of my time since 2001 in Afghanistan and Iraq. The reason for the rise of radical Islam is foreign occupation. Iraq had a secular tradition. Fanatical Islamic groups made little headway under Saddam Hussein not only because he persecuted them but because they had little popular support.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of Tony Blair’s analysis of militant Islam is his blindness to the extent to which foreign invasion and occupation has radicalised the region and legitimised militant Islam.“
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.