US intelligence agencies determine Arab states' security agendas
by M. A. Shaikh
US
intelligence agencies, whose operatives now maintain
a strong presence in Arab capitals and rural areas,
play a decisive role in determining what
organisations, or individuals, are to be classified
as terrorists or financiers of terrorism, and
therefore prosecuted or banned. The result is that
Arab leaders are devoting most of their time to the
‘pursuit of terrorists’, to the neglect of more
pressing social and economic issues. Laws relating
to security and human rights have been drastically
amended, as have fiscal laws, to facilitate the
persecution of ‘suspected terrorists’ and ‘al-Qa’ida
sympathisers’, and to block the flow of funds to
Islamic organisations (even charities) labelled as
such. Arab governments are mobilizing Arab Muslim
scholars and ‘intellectuals’ to hold meetings to
"reinterpret" the Qur’an and ahadith and
depict ‘Islamic extremists’ and their backers as
‘terrorists’.
Arab rulers, who openly
back the ‘war on terror’, do not feel it necessary to deny the
presence of CIA and FBI agents in their countries. Yemeni president
Ali Saleh Abdullah, for instance, admits that the FBI and CIA have
offices in his country, as they do in other Arab countries. In an
interview with ash-Sharq al-Awsat, an Arabic daily, on June 29, he
denied that he had given permission to the US to set up a "regional
FBI office", adding that "the agency has only a local office similar
to that of the CIA". He made it clear that many Arab states have
allowed similar ones to be established in their territories.
Yemen not only has a
regional FBI office butalso hosts US troops helping it pursue
"terrorist groups" in the south. The FBI office is regional in the
sense that its agents, are active in the pursuit of ‘al-Qa’ida
terrorists’ in the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, Somalia,
Eritrea and Djibouti.
But FBI and CIA agents are
also active in other Arab countries, especially Morocco and Saudi
Arabia, where attacks on May 16 and May 12 provided a pretext for
Washington to establish a strong presence, and take over the running
of the security machinery. Washington accused Moroccan and Saudi
officials of ignoring warnings that the attacks were imminent, and of
failing to take pre-emptive action. Both governments gave in to
pressure, agreed to receive FBI and CIA agents, and began
unprecedented action against Islamic organisations and activists. This
tendency to give in to the Americans has grown since September 2001.
Sana was not so
co-operative when the destroyer USS Cole was bombed in Aden harbour in
October 2000; all that American officials could do then was grumble
about Sana’s non-cooperation. But all that changed in September 2001,
and Yemen, like most Arab states, is now a willing tool of the West’s
‘war on terrorism’: i.e. the war against Islamic activists and
organisations.
Washington has also
decided to place teams of US inspectors at sea-ports in Muslim
countries, and in other smaller, strategically located ports, to "help
prevent terrorists from using cargo containers to smuggle chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons", US officials say. According to the
officials, the department of homeland security plans to place teams of
inspectors indefinitely in Dubai, which is an important trans-shipment
point for containerised cargo in countries with large Muslim
populations. The Americans say that al-Qa’ida has a large presence in
Dubai and Malaysia, and that the network uses cargo ships to take its
conventional weapons and explosives to its targets. More than six
million cargo-containers arrive in the US from overseas every year.
The department of homeland security has already placed 130 inspectors
as part of the first phase of its programme, with 170 in training.
Many of these 170 will
doubtless go to Arab ports, as Arab officials are unlikely to refuse
to receive them, judging from the enthusiasm with which they are
supporting the ‘war on terrorism’. Arab leaders even warn Washington
to beware ‘sleepers’ in the US, who are allegedly lying low until they
are ready to strike. President Mubarak of Egypt, for instance, in an
interview with the Washington Post, said: "You have several
organisations in the US. Now they are all sleeping...as if they are
very innocent, until they feel there is some freedom. Then they are
going to attack." He even claimed that those behind September 2001
were responsible for a decade of terror in Egypt, including the attack
that killed 58 tourists in Luxor in 1997.
The idea of ‘sleeping
terror cells’ is very attractive to American officials. The idea
justifies not only security measures already being taken against
Muslims in the US and Europe but also those being planned. Action
against terrorists also enables European officials to kerb immigration
and to deport Muslim immigrants already in their territories. Already
legislation is being drafted to withdraw citizenship from Muslims and
deport them. Muslim dictators are only too happy to receive Islamic
activists, and to see Western countries seize the assets of Islamic
activists, who finance many charities in the Muslim world that the
dictators prefer to have shut down.
Arab governments also
supply information (almost invariably false) that US and European
authorities then use against Islamic activists, or against Muslim
immigrants generally. They even supply the UN with reports on
‘terrorists’ and on the al-Qa’ida network, as a report issued June 26
shows. According to this disgraceful report, a new generation of al-Qa’ida-trained
terrorists, as well as veterans, continues to threaten the "global
community". The report also mentions al-Qa’ida’s potential access to
nuclear and chemical weapons, saying that "there is evidence from the
network’s training manuals and other intelligence" that al-Qa’ida has
investigated "the ways and means of developing weapons of mass
destruction". The continued overplaying of al-Qa’ida’s "threat to
world peace" helps to justify the US’s unilateralist imperial policy
and programme of ‘regime-change’.
But one of the most
dangerous developments is the Arab officials’ call on the ulama to
"reinterpret" the Qur’an and persuade young Muslims that belonging to
‘extremist’ Islamic groups is against Islam. On June 19 prince Naef
bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi interior minister, called on "Sheikhs, ulama,
thinkers and schools and universities in Saudi Arabia, to keep youths
busy, work hard to rectify their beliefs and to protect them against
weird and devastating doctrines". On July 2 an Arab League meeting of
interior ministry officials in Tunis, devoted to the ‘war on
terrorism’, made similar remarks. Dr Muhammad bin Ali, the
secretary-general of the organisation of Arab League interior
ministers, underscored the role of religious organisations and centres
to "make citizens aware of Islamic teachings which reject violence and
value human life".
It will probably not be
long before Arab governments change the school curricula and
university programmes to brainwash future generations of Muslims and
stigmatise Islamic activism as ‘terrorism’. It is one of the logical
next steps after changing many other laws to suit the West’s agendas.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2003 Crescent International & M. A. Shaikh
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