Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2002, page 26

Special Report

 

European Editorialists Question Whether War On Terrorism Should Be Expanded to Iraq

 

By Lucy Jones

There was much criticism of the bombing of Afghanistan in the European press at the beginning of November. By the end of the month, however, editorialists had begun to question whether the war on terrorism should be extended beyond Afghanistan’s borders. This followed a demand in no uncertain terms by President George Bush that Iraq should comply with weapons inspections, or else. “The Europeans are anxious,” said France’s Le Monde on Nov. 1. “They don’t say so in public in as many words...but their questions, their hesitations, their refusal, even, to comment on the logic of the strikes against the Taliban and their increasingly worrying results, are worth a great many speeches.” But, the paper continued, European leaders “know that at the moment they have no choice but to maintain their support” for the military campaign. “There is no question at this stage,” it said, “of doing anything to weaken the American position and that of the international coalition so painstakingly put together.”

People in Britain, reported France’s Liberation on Dec. 1, “are becoming increasingly troubled by the [targeting] mistakes and the civilian victims of a conflict with no end in sight.” Prime Minister “Tony Blair is on the defensive,” it added. “There are increasing grumblings in his own party” and “unease even among the military, who wonder what exactly their role is in this conflict.”

By the end of November, however, once the Taliban appeared to have fallen, newspapers turned their attention to Iraq. “The drumbeats are getting louder,” reported the BBC’s Middle East analyst, Roger Hardy, on Nov. 30. Commentators in Washington, he continued, are saying that once victory is achieved against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the next target should be the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain. According to Hardy, President George Bush’s blunt warning to the Iraqi leader seemed to underline the message that Iraq must allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors or suffer the consequences. But the bombing of Iraq is unlikely, at least for now, the BBC correspondent said, noting that the Bush administration’s current slogan is “first things first” and that it has its hands full in Afghanistan.

In a column headlined “Americans want a war on Iraq and we can’t stop them,” Hugo Young in Britain’s Guardian wrote on Nov. 27: “President Bush’s prime purpose now is gearing up America for a wider war,” he said, and the conditions for moving against Iraq have “become looser.”

“But Iraq?” questioned Germany’s Die Welt on Nov. 28. “Still euphoric from the quick win against the self-proclaimed Army of God, Bush seems inclined to resolve all the rest of the world’s political problems,” the newspaper said. Opening a second front against an Islamic country could break up the international coalition, it argued, as it “would leave the Arab allies, in particular, at a loss for an explanation.”

 

Northern Alliance Unlikely to “Obey” West, Says Robert Fisk

As rival Afghan groups met near Bonn on Nov. 27 for talks on a broad-based government, European newspapers speculated about what future Afghans could look forward to once the war was over. Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani’s dropping of his initial objections to allowing members of the mostly Pashtun Taliban regime to join a transitional government, said London’s Financial Times on Nov. 25, made a workable solution for the warring factions “more likely.” “No one believes peace in Afghanistan is possible without significant involvement from Pashtuns, who comprise around 40 percent of the Afghan population,” the newspaper noted.

By the second day of the conference, however, newspapers were less sure that the Northern Alliance had actually agreed to include the Pashtuns. Addressing “a hastily convened press conference,” reported London’s Independent on Nov. 29, Yunis Qanuni, leader of the Northern Alliance delegation, “rejected any role for the so-called moderate Taliban.”

Also raised at the conference was the issue of the deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan. But in light of what it called “the bloodbath at the Qala-e-Jhangi fortress,” where non-Afghan Taliban prisoners staged a suicidal uprising, France’s Liberation said on Nov. 29 that the “reluctance” of the participants in the Bonn talks to accept a multinational peacekeeping force “does not augur well for the future.”

“The war is not even half-won, considering the political challenges that remain,” added Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the same day. “In the past five years Afghanistan has not functioned as a state,” the paper said. “There is no administration. The country is saturated with mines. Life expectancy is short and infant mortality high. A transitional government must be formed quickly before destructive forces unleash yet another civil war. That is the huge task facing the U.N.,” it said.

Spain’s El Pais of Nov. 29, however, said that just “bringing together for the first time some of the decisive actors in post-Taliban Afghanistan” made the conference “extremely important.” Of these, it continued, none is more vital than the Northern Alliance, upon whose “flexibility for reaching a compromise with the other aspirants to power” the talks’ success mainly depended. “The biggest incentive the USA and Europe can offer the Afghan representatives,” the paper said, “is money to rebuild their ruined country.”

However, veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk of Britain’s Independent made the point on Nov. 18 that the U.S.-led coalition was deluded if it ever expected the Northern Alliance to “obey us”: Afghan rules don’t work that way, Fisk pointed out. Ethnic groups and tribes and villagers don’t take orders from foreigners. Instead, they make deals. The West wanted to use the Northern Alliance as its foot soldiers in Afghanistan, while the Alliance wanted to use the American bombers to help it occupy the capital. For the Tajiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras, Fisk said, it was all very straightforward: They destroy the Taliban—and then take over Afghanistan, or as much as they can swallow.

 

Palestinian Terrorists “Desperate, Not Cowardly”

Peter Preston, writing in London’s Guardian on Dec. 3, after attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers in Jerusalem and Haifa on Dec. 1 and 2, wrote that Israel poses a problem far “more intractable” than does Osama bin Laden. “Whichever way our generals in this war against terrorism twist and turn,” Preston wrote, “we keep coming back to the Middle East, to Israel and the embryo state that might be Palestine. Nobody makes the connection. Yet it really couldn’t be clearer,” he continued. “Very soon now, despite last night’s frantic efforts at avoidance, the Israeli army and air force will be back exacting retribution as usual. They will move into Palestinian villages and towns, zap police stations and Palestinian Authority buildings, rocket homes that may—or may not—house terrorist leaders. They will go on denouncing Yasser Arafat as the fount and symbol of all evil and punish him for his failure to clean up his Gaza and West Bank act…Expect the latest vague American effort at mediation to founder in hopelessness,” he concluded.

 

EU Summit on Afghanistan “Pathetic,” Says Italy’s Le Figaro

British Prime Minister Tony Blair took heavy criticism across Europe following his handling of the Nov. 4 mini-summit of EU leaders to discuss Afghanistan. Italy’s Le Figaro on Nov. 6 described the meeting as “pathetic.” “Within the European Union,” it wrote, “the dinner in London created a certain discontent.” Originally only the French and German leaders had been invited by Britain, but the number of diners rose to seven amid “the gnashing of teeth of the small countries which had not been invited.”

The more difficult and unsatisfactory it becomes to reach a consensus in a growing European Union, wrote Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung, also on Nov. 6, the more tempting it must be for London, Paris and Berlin to arrange things among themselves. The same day, Belgium’s La Libre Belgique said Blair was to blame for the “disastrous” meeting. The summit’s “image of division” will “leave its mark,” it said.

 

Hungarian Daily Says 100,000 Afghan Refugees Wait in Ukraine to Cross Into Europe

The weekend edition of the Hungarian daily Nepszabadsag warned on Nov. 4 of a “threat of an Afghan refugee invasion.” According to unconfirmed information from Hungarian border guards, the number of Afghan refugees reaching Hungary’s eastern neighbor, Ukraine, may already have reached 100,000, some of whom, the paper said, will try to cross the border to the West. The risk of a “significant” refugee wave reaching Hungary is reduced, it noted, by the fact that most of the Afghans are still in Ukraine’s southern regions, far from Hungary, and that the majority of them are too poor to pay the human traffickers needed for illegal border crossings.

 

Italy’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Converts to Islam

The European press reported on the conversion to Islam of Italy’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia after a year at the post—the second Italian ambassador to Riyadh to make the switch. According to Spain’s El Pais on Nov. 28, Torquato Cardilli had always had an interest in the Muslim world, but he decided to embrace Islam on an undercover trip to Mecca (which non-Muslims are not allowed to visit). The news reportedly caused “a certain discomfort” at the Italian Foreign Ministry.

 

Afghanistan “Not Mentioned” in Turkmenistan

Although Turkmenistan and war-torn Afghanistan share a 500-mile border, Turkmenistan’s president, Saparmurat Niyazov, has declared a 10-day public holiday to celebrate the country’s 10th year of independence, reported the Irish Times of Nov. 5. With no competition from independent newspapers or broadcasters, the state media make little mention of the war or any other foreign events: “On the third night of the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan, for example,” the paper said, “the evening news show began with an account of the president’s movements that day, then came a report on the cotton harvest, then a piece on the upgrading of a desert pipeline. Afghanistan was not mentioned.” Although Turkmenistan has refused to allow U.S. forces to use its bases, it is a key hub for U.N. agencies sending aid into Afghanistan. After the war, Turkmenistan could find itself in a favorable position to open lucrative pipeline routes through Afghanistan, the paper noted, allowing it to market its oil and gas reserves to India and China.

Lucy Jones is a free-lance journalist based in London.

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