Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2002, pages 47, 49-50

Islam and the Middle East in the Far East

 

Phalcon Fight Over at Last, as Israel Agrees to Pay China $350 Million

 

By John Gee

Israel has agreed to settle a long-running quarrel with China by paying $350 million as compensation for the cancellation of a deal to supply the Phalcon early warning radar system. The dispute has chilled relations between the two states since July 2000, when, under heavy pressure from Washington, Israel canceled the deal. The compensation, however, is significantly less than the $1.26 billion originally demanded by China.

Concluded in February, the settlement came too late to save the planned celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and China from being downgraded by the Chinese in a big way. A delegation from Israel had gone to Beijing at the beginning of January to try to resolve the dispute before the Jan. 24 anniversary, but no agreement was reached. After the Israelis left, Beijing abruptly shifted the venue for the celebrations away from the National People’s Congress building to a small room elsewhere. Guests turned up to find the Norwegian flag displayed instead of the Israeli one, suggesting that someone in the Chinese Foreign Ministry has a well-developed sense of humor: it would have reminded many of those present of Norway’s role in the contacts between Israel and the PLO that led to the Oslo agreement and the subsequent “peace process,” which current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has done his utmost to undermine.

Other “mistakes” made by the Chinese included putting up Christmas decorations and serving pork and shrimp, when they know full well that Israeli diplomats, when they are guests of honor at an event, expect kosher food to be served.

The chill of the last two years has had little impact on business ties between China and Israel, however. China generally makes a distinction between trade and political relations, so that disputes over political matters generally don’t interfere much with business. Some in Israel are concerned about the impact of cheap imports from China, and perhaps none more so than textile manufacturers, who see the opening of the Israeli domestic market to Chinese imports as potentially ruinous for them.

Reported Avraham Tal in an article on “Globalization and Chinese exposure” in the Jan. 21 edition of Ha’aretz: “Ramzi Gabai, who chairs the textiles industries division of the Manufacturers Association and who himself is a veteran chief executive officer of a successful plant, Ofis Textiles, in Mishmar Hashiva, points out that in 2001 imports of clothing and other finished products from China rose 121 percent (more than doubled) in a single year to total $127 million. More than 60 million textile items were imported from China. Incredible as it may sound, simple arithmetic indicates that every Israeli bought 10 Chinese textile articles last year.”

Gabai noted that some 80 Israeli textile and clothing plants had closed down or switched operations to other countries during the last two years as a result of economic difficulties.

Trade is not all one way, by any means. In January, Israel Aircraft Industries signed an agreement to supply two AMOS-3 communications satellites to the Chinese-owned Hong Kong Satellite Technology Group at a price of $180 million. The Chinese company has an option to buy eight more. The satellites will come in handy when Beijing hosts the 2008 Olympics, but one must wonder how much agonizing was done in Israel over the deal before it was concluded. It seems very unlikely, but wouldn’t it be extremely embarrassing, to say the least, if Washington decided that these satellites had military applications that could strengthen Beijing vis-à-vis Taiwan, and called for this deal to be scrapped?

 

U.S. Troops in the Philippines

With the Taliban regime in Afghanistan demolished, the Bush administration appears eager to pursue its “war on terrorism” by finding a pretext to attack Iraq, despite the opposition of most of the rest of the world. Meanwhile, it has sent American troops to participate in a little conflict in Southeast Asia.

Their target is the Abu Sayyaf group, which launched armed operations in the southern Philippines in 1992 with the declared aim of establishing an Islamic state in the region. There have been claims since that it was covertly encouraged by the Philippines military, who envisaged it playing a useful role in splitting the Muslim forces then fighting against Manila. Certainly, for most of Abu Sayyaf’s existence, the army has shown a distinct lack of zeal in combatting it—a feeling apparently reciprocated by Abu Sayyaf, which chiefly has targeted civilians.

The group built a strong base of support on the desperately poor island of Basilan, but had little success elsewhere. It has become notorious for its kidnappings of Christian Filipinos and of foreigners. Most of the victims have been taken for ransom. Those whose families are unable to pay usually are beheaded by their captors. The same fate has befallen hostages taken as human shields in clashes with the Philippines army, such as the 10 Christians seized in an Abu Sayyaf raid on the town of Lamitan last August. Abu Sayyaf leaders seem to rejoice in their bloodthirsty reputation: when the bodies of two plantation workers whose families were too poor to pay ransoms were found last June, one had a note written in blood on his shirt: “Commander Robot is in Basilan and will chop off heads.” “Commander Robot” is the alias of Ghalib Andang, one of Abu Sayyaf’s top leaders.

U.S. citizens are among the recent victims of Abu Sayyaf. One, Jeffrey Schilling, was rescued in April 2001 after spending eight months in captivity. Guillermo Sobero was less fortunate: he was beheaded by his captors last June. At the time of writing, Abu Sayyaf holds a Filipina nurse, Deborah Yap, and two American missionaries, Martin and Gracia Burnham. Nevertheless, the primary reason given for the deployment of U.S. troops to the southern Philippines was that the Abu Sayyaf group is connected to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.

The evidence for this is thin. While Abu Sayyaf’s founder, Abdurajak Janjalani (killed in 1998), was trained in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, so were thousands of other Islamist militants who do not have al-Qaeda links. Osama’s brother-in-law is said to have given money to Abu Sayyaf when it was launched. Even when Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, accused of being a member of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network, was arrested in Manila in January, he was not associated with Abu Sayyaf.

Rather than being convinced that in tackling Abu Sayyaf, it will cut off one tentacle of al-Qaeda, the Bush administration may have other ends in view in the Philippines.

Abu Sayyaf’s fighters have been estimated as numbering anywhere from 70 to 500, but around 200 seems like a good estimate. They are hated for their brutality by most Filipinos and have very limited popular support. Most of this comes from the relatives of members or from those who have benefitted from the largesse of a small organization with millions of dollars of ransom money to spend: it is not based upon political conviction. The majority of Filipinos would welcome U.S. support against these terrorists.

In short, destroying the Abu Sayyaf group looks like an objective that can be realized fairly quickly and at little risk to U.S. interests. This would serve to maintain the American public’s sense of momentum in the “war on terrorism” and to encourage public support at home for further foreign operations by U.S. military forces—including possibly a much bigger one against Iraq in the near future.

In the West, the failure of the Philippines’ armed forces to wipe out Abu Sayyaf so far has sometimes been ascribed to the inferiority of their military equipment and incompetence on their part. Military corruption and collusion with Abu Sayyaf, however, also are factors. In Into the Mountain: Hostaged by the Abu Sayyaf, published last year, Jose Torres, a former hostage, claimed that Abu Sabaya, an Abu Sayyaf leader, made satellite phone calls to an army officer in order to coordinate his fighters’ movements with him. This was to ensure that they had left their base before it was shelled and captured by the military. Other former hostages have told of being taken through army checkpoints by Abu Sayyaf members, with no attempt made to stop them. Perhaps with U.S. forces at their shoulders, such practices will be checked.

In January some 650 American troops, including 160 Special Forces personnel, were sent to the southern Philippines. Officials in Washington and Manila said that the U.S. forces would not be involved in military operations, but would train Filipino troops and exchange knowledge with them in a joint exercise code named “Balikatan”—“Shouldering the Burden Together.” The U.S. troops’ main base is at Zamboanga, on Mindanao, the Philippines’ second largest island, but they are being deployed in Basilan alongside Filipino troops fighting against Abu Sayyaf, officially in a non-combat role.

There are people in the Philippines who fear that the U.S. military role in their country might grow. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which is negotiating with Manila to seek a peaceful settlement of the conflict in the south, has particular cause for concern. Its area of operations overlaps with that of Abu Sayyaf, and it has units on Basilan and near Zamboanga. In January, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said that the U.S. troops are not the MILF’s enemies and that it will not attack them, but he expressed concern that clashes could take place by accident. This is a serious danger in a war zone without front lines and clearly demarcated areas of control, but both the U.S. and the MILF, with its 15,000 fighters and significant popular support, may think twice about allowing any minor crisis to escalate into something far worse.

 

Singapore Worries

Even before the Jemaah Islamiah arrests (see March 2002 Washington Report) had faded from the local headlines, other issues involving relations between Muslims and non-Muslims cropped up. On Jan. 18, the BBC’s “The World Today” program broadcast an interview with Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff, chief executive officer of a Muslim group known as Fateha. Zulfikar criticized the Singaporean government’s support for U.S. actions in Afghanistan, which he characterized as not only strikes against terrorism, but also an attack on an Islamic country and against Muslims. Muslims in Singapore, he said, were concerned about certain past actions by the U.S. against Iraq and Palestine as well as the Singapore government “aligning itself so closely with the U.S. and Israel.”

These remarks might have done no more than ruffle a few feathers in the government if Zulfikar had not gone on to issue statements and give interviews in which he suggested that such grievances might have motivated the actions of the Jemaah Islamiah arrestees, implied that Osama bin Laden was a better Muslim than local Muslim MPs and raised the sensitive issue of the refusal of the government to allow Muslim girls to wear headscarves in national schools.

Fateha, a small association which had been working quietly and with little publicity for 18 months, immediately came under the spotlight. Its Web site was found to be carrying an invitation for Muslims to go to a certain mosque (unbeknownst to its imam) and volunteer to fight in Afghanistan. Faced with a barrage of negative publicity and criticism, Zulfikar and seven members of Fateha’s working committee resigned.

The Straits Times correspondent Chua Lee Hoong produced a lengthy defense of Singapore’s foreign policy on Jan 23. She argued the benefits of strong ties with Washington, but mentioned a few aspects of U.S. policy of which Singapore had been critical. Turning to Israel, she wrote that Singapore had supported all U.N. resolutions “pertinent to the Palestinian question” except for those equating Zionism with racism or questioning “the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state.” Quoting from ex-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs, Chua noted his description of how, in January 1991, during the Gulf war, he cautioned George Bush, Sr. about the way Israel “kept building more settlements” on the West Bank, as it had inflamed Arab and Muslim opinion. Lee wrote:

“I urged America’s public support for a Middle East solution fair to both Palestinians and Israelis, to show that it was not supporting the Israelis, whether they were right or wrong.”

Chua had nothing to say about the benefits of Singapore’s ties with Israel, which were very close in the first decade after Singapore became independent and remain significant in the economic field. Perhaps this is a sign of the times.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: Israel and the Palestinians, available from the AET Book Club.

< Prev		Next >