Two thousand and two was the first full year of the US’s ill-conceived “war on terror.” What started ostensibly as a campaign to stamp out terrorists and extirpate the roots of terrorism rapidly revealed itself to be a misguided and, in one’s opinion, ultimately doomed imperial endeavor.

Already, the spin campaigns have started, and already future targets have been identified. Dark murmurings have started in the media: implausible allegations of “A-teams of terror” in Lebanon, rumblings against the Mullahs who support “terror” in Iran.

The Gregorian New Year is not celebrated in Islam. The timing for this brief retrospective, however, is appropriate, as events in the world are currently being guided by powers who mark their reign in terms of that particular calendar, a privilege bestowed by the current, yet transient ascendancy of their culture.

As such, this has become a date for reflection upon 365 days past, and 365 days to come. Inevitably, it will dwell on the suffering inflicted upon the targets of the new global war: Muslims.

This is not meant to be objective. This is not meant to be academic. This is merely one Muslim’s perspective on the events that, to the Muslim in question, most shaped the past year and are likely to shape the next.

One cannot do justice to all the tribulations undergone by the Muslim nation during the past year. Our prayers and thoughts are with them all, and their forgiveness is begged if we have not done justice to their plight…  

• Afghanistan

• Chechnya

• Palestine

• Bali

• Iraq

• Torture and the Death of Civil Liberties

• Hate

• Conclusion

Afghanistan

Afghanistan was the first to fall, and with it ended the lives of a few thousand people, condemned to burial in reports consigned to the “could not be independently verified” folder of corporate media hypocrisy.

The war and devastation wrought on the tragic people of Afghanistan was one of vengeance and retribution; promises of development, stability and rebuilding have yet to materialize. “In Afghanistan, women are dancing in the streets,” one American confidently told me. “There’s obviously an improvement.” What a terrible price to pay, 3,000 human lives, for women to dance in the streets.

Afghanistan should be interesting to watch throughout 2003. One wonders how long puppet presidents can survive, protected as they are by foreign forces, from their own enraged people. Sadly, they have been known to last quite a while, through coercion or bribery. However, there is a certain irony in watching Afghanistan degenerate under US occupation. Once more, the heroin trade is thriving, although it had been almost completely stamped out in the last year of the Taliban’s rule. Warlords continue their petty yet destructive fighting, while their provinces tremble under their iron-fisted rule, marked by intimidation, torture, and killing.

Additionally, reports are increasing, suggesting that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are regrouping and training, and that Hekmatyar has allied forces with them to repel the American occupation. So much for the US liberation of Afghanistan.

Chechnya

In Chechnya, a berserk rampage of killing, raping and pillaging continues on a daily basis, as Russian troops seek to quell the armed resistance of the fierce mountain people. Chechens, however, have never been a people known to lie down and die, and they have performed admirably against the Russian army the past year.

The Chechens have adopted the tried-and-tested strategy of inflicting unacceptable losses on the invading army to force a withdrawal. At the same time, the Chechen mujahideen are engaged in a campaign to break the back of the Russian-sponsored proxy government of Chechnya. To that end, the Chechens have made 2002 a year of terrible cost for Russia; firstly, with the shooting down of an Mi-26 helicopter on August 19 that claimed 116 Russian lives; secondly; the October 23rd hostage-taking in the Palace of Culture, which ended with the Russian government killing 129 of its own people (a Pyrrhic victory, some argued, but blatant incompetence seems to sum it up more aptly); and thirdly, the bombing of December 27 that demolished the heavily-guarded heart of the Russian administration in Chechnya, killing 80.

Russia’s decrepit military behemoth grinds on, however, and leaves in its wake the corpses of thousands of Chechens, a situation bound to continue through the next year, and possibly the next, until Russia learns that inevitable lesson that many have learned in the post 9/11 world, that wars, even proxy ones, have a nasty way of coming home.  

Palestine

How does one begin reference to the violent culmination of decades of apartheid, persecution, and war crimes? Palestine is once again aflame, and its people once more prey to the murderous whims of its settler occupiers.

Poetic references to justice, peace and forgiveness have acquired a certain sourness in the context of a people made stateless for over fifty years. Asking a Palestinian to forgive the rape of his land, the killing of his children and the robbing of his birthright is like asking a Jew to forgive the Third Reich.

The current Intifada is merely another eruption of the violence that is so surely bred by despair and abuse. While many have accused bin Laden of cynically using the Palestinian cause to further his own ends, there is no doubt in ones mind that the perennial suffering of the Palestinians is a primary component of the rage of the Muslim word that Osama bin Laden is an avatar of.

Willfully blind to these realities, the US, the UK, and countless others continue to pump arms and funds into the Zionist cancer. Arms and money are the antibiotics that suppress the inevitable immune system rejection of a foreign body. But all the arms and money in the world have not been able and will not be able to save Israel from an existence wallowing in blood.

Bali

In Bali, a tropical paradise of vice and debauchery, 187 lives were claimed in a new and bloody chapter of the war on October 12, signaling a resurgence of the dispersed operatives of al-Qaeda. The bombing added fresh impetus to the war, with Australia’s ludicrous support of Washington’s risible doctrine of preemptive war being symptomatic of the widespread and nameless dread that consumes most of the Western world in the wake of September 11.

The bombing also focused attention on the Islamic movements of South East Asia, many of which were birthed from either liberation movements engaged in a war against an alien occupier (such as the ongoing war between the Moros and their Philippine occupiers), or were fighting against a repressive ruler and/or tyrannical regime (such as the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiah), or emerged from sectarian violence (such as the Laskar Jihad in Ambon). This has served to highlight the insidious legacy of colonialism and the brutality of many US allies.

Still, with the deployment of US Special Forces to the Philippines and the ongoing crackdown against Muslim activists in the region, the situation promises to turn bloody.

Iraq

Washington currently has its sights on Iraq, a nation it has already starved into submission across a decade of disease, hunger and ruin. As 2002 draws to a close, the world watches and waits, waiting for the first bomb, for the countless reports of civilian casualties that “cannot be independently verified.”

Washington has learned a successful trick or two off its more vocal Zionists. Much as Zionists have taught people to mindlessly parrot the words “anti-Semitic” at any criticism of Israeli terror tactics (disregarding the fact that many of the Arabs leveling the accusation are also Semites, as Jews do not maintain a monopoly on that particular family) Washington has set things up so that any objection as to the inevitable slaughter of Iraqis that is sure to ensue can be portrayed as either support for Saddam Hussein, or merely being un-American and hence treasonous.

We will avoid the countless arguments as to why Washington’s casus belli amount to utter garbage. Writers far more skilled and researchers much better versed in the details of the conflict have handled that particular issue admirably. Let us merely note that Iraq has been a hotspot for the past few months, and will remain so for the foreseeable future, particularly when the body count hits the four digits.

Torture and the Death of Civil Liberties

The grim realities of the new era are brought home more forcibly with every passing day. Initially, the allegations of torture were confined to the more colorful sectors of the press. But one can no longer ignore certain realities, realities reported in the Washington Post, among various other papers, pertaining to the US’ treatment of prisoners, particularly in Bagram, Diego Garcia and elsewhere where laws are abstract and loose. All the euphemisms and the legal loopholes in the world do not change the ugly nature of torture. Torture inflicted by the US, or torture inflicted by the US’ allies after suspects are handed over for the express purpose of extracting information, it makes no difference. The US remains culpable. The “moral ambiguities” the US has grown so fond of, the alleged gray areas that aren’t gray at all; these are reflective of the rapid moral decay, the apathy that increasingly eats away at Western culture.

And now begin the Nazi-like round-ups and arrests. December 19 saw what many knew was coming: the mass arrest of hundreds of Muslims in the United States. Seeking to register themselves officially, they were rounded up and detained. One wonders if World War II-style detention camps will soon be coming to a base near you.

It was also an unpleasant surprise to many to realize that no more would they be guaranteed the protection of their powerful governments, as evidenced by the ineffectual British response to the arrest and trial of three British citizens in Egypt, on the grounds that they belonged to the Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Britons in question have been detained in Egypt since April, on charges of attempting to resurrect the party’s presence in Egypt. There, they have been severely tortured. One wonders how committed the UK is to securing their freedom, given the fact that a number of British citizens currently languish in cages in Guantanamo.

For once, states have come together in a unified plan of action and agreed to cooperate. And one specific area of cooperation is the arrest and interrogation of Muslim activists.

Hate

While the US and the world were swept up in mourning for the victims of September 11, Muslims in America were battening down and waiting for an expected and much-feared wave of anti-Muslim violence. The statistics are certainly distressing: Muslims and Arabs were subjected to a 1,700% increase in hate crimes.

The nature of the violence itself is perhaps indicative of nothing more than the rampant ignorance and bigotry that afflicts some Americans, as demonstrated by, among other incidents, the tragic killing of a Sikh, planting flowers in his gas station, on the grounds that he was a “rag head.”    

As several human rights groups pointed out (most notably Human Rights Watch), the obvious question to be asked is why, when any sane human being could see this backlash coming and when the recent past is rife with examples of anti-Muslim violence in response to current events, did the US administration not take adequate steps to protect the Muslim community? Why did the government choose to wait and react, rather than act and secure Muslim communities and centers? The answer seems glaringly obvious.

Conclusion

One need not be a fortuneteller to predict that 2003 will bring more tragedy and pain unto the Muslim nation. Through it all, we will be comforted by the US assurance that this has nothing to do with Islam; that the dying thousands, the tortured thousands being Muslim is mere coincidence; we should take no notice. Move on. There’s nothing to see here.

Some Apologist Muslims will reassure us, will condemn other Muslims and will apologize for Islam until they’re blue in the face. And in this, they will be complicit in the destruction wrought on their people. And it will avail them nothing. They will neither protect nor succor the masses from the US Empire, nor will they stay its tyrannical might.

The US is rapidly approaching the Rubicon in its relations with the Muslim world. And with the situation appearing to be increasingly polarizing between the US on one side and the “Apologists” on the other, then eventually, Muslims may come to realize that they will find no refuge in the arms of the Apologists, nor with their brutal puppet governments. And the reality the world would confront once that realization is made will be a grim and terribly violent one. That is when Muslims come to understand that there is nothing left to lose, and nothing to give but life itself. This is the Final Choice that stares back from the depths of despair.

One is at a loss as to how the US can be turned back from its terrifyingly portentous march unto that critical junction, to prevent the cataclysmic events that will ensue once it is reached. If the US would avert destruction of epic proportions, an alternative must be found, lest the Final Choice come to pass. When that happens, the question that will then remain to be answered is when, not if, the Empire will collapse.

Azizuddin El-Kaissouni is a staff writer for IslamOnline. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, he holds a BA in Political Science with a specialization in International Law. He frequently writes about the status of Muslim minorities around the world. You can reach him at azizuddin@islam-online.net.

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