Green genies of revenge This article was first published in Czech weekly newspaper Literární noviny on September 20, 2001. The right to publish it in English was granted to Prague Watchdog.
While the plane is taking off the pilots and stewards of most of Islamic airways will address the passengers with these words: Bismi llahi r-rahmani r-rahim. The typical Islamic fatalism leads the believers to pronounce this cryptic sentence before any act of substantial importance. It could be starting a car before a long journey, triggering a grenade launcher, or the first scrape while digging a grave for one‘s own father. Basmala, Allah’s first invocation of the Koran, is the most frequently used sentence in the world. Provided that the terrorist was a Muslim, there is no doubt that this sentence was the last to pass through his head before piloting the airplane towards the American target. Bismi lláhi r-rahmáni r-rahím: In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Following the fall of the towers a sign appeared on the Manhattan sidewalk: KILL ARABS; men at the building construction near Prague‘s South Town neighbourhood said: BOMB THE HELL OUT OF THE MUSLIMS; and the youth at Prague's Central Station metro stop chanted: DEATH TO ISLAM. It seems like the world would not reflect on change, even after such a horrible crime as the one on September 11. Nothing new under the sun – hatred produces hatred.
The assault on the USA was not only an attack on the West but on the foundations of human coexistence as a whole. The terrorists attacked the very substance of two great civilisations: Atlantic and Islamic. Their crime contradicts all moral codes, be it the Old Testament or the Koran. To ensure the continued existence of our world, the causes of terrorism must be prevented, rooted out, stamped out. Eradicating this evil implies digging deeply and ploughing to the very depths of resistance and oppression. These two worlds should join their efforts to comprehend where terrorism originates and why it is born. It has been a week since the tragic Tuesday but not a single politician has asked the basic question: Why did they do it?
A couple of years ago I asked the Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, who is considered an ally of Osama bin Laden and one of the most dangerous terrorist of this century, why he attacked the civilian hospital in Budyonnovsk. "I fight against Russian terrorism," he said. Even back during the first and the second Chechen war, nobody asked where terrorism was coming from. In recent days some of my Chechen friends tried to explain this to me. Generally, it is possible to summarize their view in these words: "It is horrible what happened but at least the Americans finally feel for themselves what non-American people experience in wars all over the world. In Chechnya many more airplanes than those on the Manhattan island have killed people and many more civilians have been killed. Today the world is justified in feeling anger, but why was nobody bitter when our nation was being slaughtered. Are we second-rate people? Are we any worse than Americans?"
When I was standing in a cellar in Grozny watching the bodies of children torn into pieces by Russian bombs, the Chechen culture minister Apti Bisultanov said: "Russians launched this war against us that is much more cruel than the second world war was… And American President Clinton is "concerned". That‘s all. There is no future for a world like that."
It is not so long since we were interviewing the leader of anti-Taliban opposition Ahmad Shah Masud in Afghanistan. He said the following: "The Taliban menaces not only us. They menace the whole world." He said it while his units were losing the last centimeters of the town of Talican in the battle with the Taliban. The powerful world ignored him, the influential world paid no attention, he got no help. He had a couple of decrepid helicopters while the town was bombarded by US-made air-fighters piloted by Pakistanis.
Many years ago, before becoming the president of the country, Professor Rabbani talked to me in Peshawar about the Soviet occupation: "It would be of no use to try to persuade my nation that the devil who slaughtered one and a half million people in this country was not Christian." The Professor also spoke about justice – Russia was supposed to pay reparations to the destroyed country - but the Afghans have never seen a kopek from the Russian Federation, a country proud of its Christian traditions. No wonder then that the mujaheeds still consider the Afghan victory over the Russsian army to be a victory of Islam over Christianity.
America and Europe must punish those responsible with the use of military power. No compromises. To ultimately win this war though, it is necessarry to understand the roots of terrorism. It is necessarry to use not only military power but also retain the ability of deep retrospect. This means coming to terms with the painful loss of the feeling of Atlantocentrism, to recognize partial blame for the birth of this violence, to recognize mistakes, and to show the respect and humility which are so typical of the Koran as well as the Bible. There is great power in humility. One of the most difficult tasks for the democratic world is to make sure Russia, which has the world‘s longest border between Christian and Islamic countries, does not abuse the recent catastrophe for its own political aims. Mr. Putin‘s argument about Russia‘s fight against the Islamic peril is a clear political trick. It is, on the contrary, Russian political violence, be it in Caucasus, Tajikistan, or Afghanistan, that has been for many years waking up the little genies of revenge.
Bismi llahi r-rahmani r-rahim.
Jaromír Štětina is a Czech war correspondent, journalist, documentarist, author of several books, together with Petra Procházková co-funder of Epicentrum agency. Was one of six journalists who entered Grozny during the Russian attacks in late 1999. |
