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Interview with Robert Fisk at Beirut
Airport in Lebanon
Thursday, September 20 2001 @ 06:59 PM GMT
It sometimes comes down to the question of why when
people have brown eyes and darker skin, their lives
seem to be worth less than westerners
Radio New Zealan (ZMagazine)
Hill: Can I talk to you about Osama Bin Laden? I don't
know whether you are in favour of him becoming public
enemy number one at the moment but I do know that you
have met him and I wonder if you could give me some kind
of insight into, first of all, is he capable of this.
Fisk: Well, I've been trying to explain this in my own
paper, the London Independent over the last few days
and I'm not sure. We haven't actually seen the evidence
that directly links him to not just an atrocity but a crime
against humanity that took place in New York and
Washington. On the other hand, the Afghan connection
seems to be fairly strong.
Could he have done it? He certainly hasn't condemned it
although he denies being involved. The first time, no the
second time I met him in Afghanistan when he was there
with his armed fighters, I asked him if he had been
involved in an attack on American troops at Al Hoba, in
Saudi Arabia which had just taken place - 24 American
soldiers had been killed - and he said no, it was not his
doing, he was not responsible. He admitted that he knew
two or three men who have since been executed,
beheaded, by the Saudi authorities.
He then said, I did not have the honour to participate
in
this operation. In other words, he approved of it.
Now,
you can go on saying that kind of thing - he did,
several
times over about other episodes later. At some point
you
begin to say, "Come off it Bin Laden, surely you are
saying
there's a connection, but he's never said or admitted
responsibility for any such event and he's denied
specifically the atrocities in the United States.
Is he capable of it? Look, I'll give you one tiny
example.
The second time I met him in Afghanistan, four years
ago,
at the top of a mountain, it was cold and in the
morning
when I woke in the camp tent, I had frost in my hair.
He
walked into the tent I was sitting in and sat down
opposite me, cross-legged on the floor and noticed in
the
school bag I usually carry in rough country to keep
things
in, some Arabic-language newspapers and he seized upon
these and went to the corner of the tent with a
sputtering oil lamp and devoured the contents.
For 20 minutes, he ignored us, he ignored the gunman
sitting in the tent, he ignored me and he didn't even
know, for example, that it was stated in one of the
stories in the newspaper that the Iranian foreign
minister
had just visited Riyadh, his own country, Saudi
Arabia,
well, his until he lost his citizenship. So he seemed
to me
at the time to be very isolated, a cut off man, not
the
sort of person who would press a button on a mobile
phone and say, "Put plan B into action".
So I don't think you can see this as a person who
actually
participates in the sense of planning, step-by-step,
what
happens in a nefarious attack. In other words, I doubt
very much if he said, "Well, four airplanes, five
hijackers,
etc.". But he is a person that has a very large
following,
particularly in the rather sinister Jihadi community
or
culture of Pakistan. And there is such anger in the
Middle
East at the moment about the American' s policies here
and whether it be the deaths of tens of thousands of
children in Iraq, which Osama Bin Laden has spoken
about, whether it be continued occupation and
expansion
of Jewish settlements in Arab land which he's also
spoken
about, whether it be about the continued
dictatorships,
Ara b dictatorships, which are supported in large part
by
the west, especially in the Gulf area, about which
Osama
Ben Laden has spoken about and condemned, I think you
find in this region, enough people who admire what he
says, almost to conspire amongst themselves without
involving him, in the kind of bombing attacks that
we've
seen in Saudi Arabia and I suppose it's conceivable,
in the
atrocities in the United States.
But if you're looking for direct evidence, if you're
looking
for a fingerprint, all I can say is, the moment I
heard
about the World Trade Center attacks, I saw the shadow
of the Middle East hanging over them. As for the
fingerprint of Bin Laden, I think that's a different
matter.
We haven't seen it yet. We may. Perhaps the Americans
can produce the evidence but we haven't seen it yet.
Hill: The corollary of that, of course, is that should
they
decide to strike against Bin Laden, it will do no good
because, you know, there will be a thousand, a million
more, waiting to carry on doing the same thing, will
they
not?
Fisk: Yes this is the problem. It is very easy to
start a
war, or to declare war, or to say you are at war and
quite
another thing to switch it off. And after all, let's
face it,
this is a declaration of war primarily against the
United
States. But once America takes up the opponent's role,
saying we will retaliate, then you take the risk of
further
retaliation against you and further retaliation by you
and
so on.
This is the trap that Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime
minister, has got himself involved in Israel with the
Palestinians because when the Palestinians send a
suicide
bomber wickedly, for example into a pizzeria and kill
many
innocent Israelis, the Israelis feel a need to
retaliate so
they fire tank shells or helicopters fire American
missiles
into a police post. Then a murder squad, or a
helicopter
fires a missile into a car of a man who the Israelis
believe
have plotted bombing. Then the Palestinians retaliate
by
sending another suicide bomber and so on and so forth.
It's one thing to use this rhetoric, like "rooting out
the
weed of world terror", "dead or alive", "a crusade" -
my
goodness me, that's a word that Mr Bush has been using
- not a word that's likly to encourage much
participation
on the American side in the Arab world because the
word,
crusade, is synonymous here with Christians shedding
Muslim blood in Jerusalem in 1099 and Jewish blood
actually, historically.
So, the real question is, what lies behind this
rhetoric? Is
there any serious military thinking going on? If so,
are we
talking about the kind of blind, indiscriminate attack
which
will only provoke more anger among Arabs, perhaps to
overthrow their own regimes which Mr Bin Laden will be
very happy to see, or are we talking about special
forces
seizing people, taking them out of Afghanistan, trying
to
have some kind of international criminal court where
we
could actually see justice done as opposed to just
liquidation and murder squads setting out to kill
killers.
Hill: George Bush, I suppose is entitled to his
internal
physical needs - the needs of Americans - to put out
bellicose rhetoric, such as "the new war on
terrorism", or
"we want Osama Bin Laden dead or alive" and so on, but
what he will do remains entirely obscure at the
moment,
doesn't it?
Fisk: Yes, yes it does. You see, I can understand -
anyone should be able to understand - not only how
appalled Americans are about what happened, in such an
awesome way - the images of those aircraft flying
through the skin of the World Trade Center and
exploding
are utterly unforgettable. For the rest of our lives
we will
remember that. And I think therefore the anger of
Americans is perfectly understandable and revenge is a
kind of justice, isn' t it, but these days we have to
believe in the rule of law.
Once or twice you hear Colin Powell talking about
justice
and law but then you hear President Bush using the
language of Wild West movies. And that is very
frightening because I don't think that NATO is going
to
support America in a blind and totally indiscriminate
attack
in the Middle East. And the other question is, how do
you
make your strike massive enough to suit the crime.
Afghanistan, after all, is a country in total ruins,
it was
occupied by the Russians for 10 years which is why it
is
seeded with 10 million mines - I mean it, 10 million
mines,
more that one tenth of all the land mines in the world
are
in Afghanistan. So any idea of America sending its
military
across Afghanistan is a very, very dangerous operation
in
a country where America has no friends.
It is very significant - though it's been largely
missed, I
noticed by press and television around the world - but
just two days before the attacks on Washington and New
York, Shah Massoud, the leader of the opposition in
Afghanistan, the only military man to stand up to the
Taliban, and the only friend of the west, was himself
assassinated by two Arab suicide bombers - men posing
as journalists, by the way. I've been asking myself
over
the last two days, and I have no proof of this
whatsoever, merely a strong suspicion, whether in
fact,
that assassination wasn't in a sense a code for people
in
the United States to carry out atrocities which we saw
last Tuesday. I don't know, but certainly if America
wants
to go into Afghanistan, one of the key elements, even
with a special forces raid, is to have friends in the
country, people who are on your side. [But they] have
just been erased, in fact erased two days before the
bombings in America, and I find that is a very, very
significant thing.
Hill: If one went to these people, if one went to bin
Laden
or any other, if one went to the Jihadians in Pakistan
and
said, "What do you guys want?" what would they say?
Fisk: Well, you would hear a list of objectives which
will
be entirely unacceptable to the west or in many cases,
to
any sane person here.
Hill: What do they want?
Fisk: Well, look, what you have to understand is, what
they want and what most Muslims in the region want is
not necessarily the same thing but they are trading
and
treading on the waters of injustice in the region. But
what
they want, they will tell you, is they want shariat
imposed
on all Muslim states in the region, they want total
withdrawal of western forces from the Arab gulf
region.
They ask, for example, why does America still have
forces
in Saudi Arabia 10 years after the Gulf War, after
which
they promised they would immediately withdraw those
forces?
Why are American forces in Kuwait? Well, we know the
American answer is that Saddam Hussein remains a
danger. Well, that might be a little bit of a dubious
claim
now. And why are American forces exercising in Egypt?
Why are American jets allowed to use Jordan? What are
they doing in Turkey? On top of that, they will demand
an
end to Israeli occupation of Arab land.
But you have to remember that when you go to one end
of the extreme, like the most extreme of the Jihadi
culture
in Pakistan, you are going to hear demands that will
never
be met. But nonetheless, and this is the point, they
feed
on a general unease about injustice in the region
which is
associated with the west which many, many Arab Muslims
- millions of them - will feel.
So, this goes back to the Bin Laden culture. It does
mean, I haven't met a single Arab in the last week,
who
doesn't feel revulsion about what has happened in the
United States. But quite a few of them would say, and
one or two have, if you actually listen to what Bin
Laden
demands, he asks questions that it would be
interesting
to hear the answers to. What are the Americans still
doing in the Gulf? Why does the United States still
permit
Israel to build settlements for Jews, and Jews only,
on
Arab land? Why does it still permit thousands of
children
to die under UN sanctions? And UN sanctions are
primarily
imposed by western powers.
So, it's not like you have a simple, clear picture
here. But
where you have a large area of the earth, where there
is
a very considerable amount of injustice, where the
United
States is clearly seen as to blame for some of it,
then the
people in the kind of Jihadi culture - the extremists,
terrorists, call them what you like - are going to be
able
to find a society in which they can breathe, and they
do.
My point all along is, if there is going to be a
military
operation to find the people responsible for the World
Trade Center and for the people who support them and
for those who harbour them - I'm using the words of
the
State Department, the President, the Vice-President,
Secretary of State Colin Powell - then I believe that
the
wisest and most courageous thing that the Americans
can
do, is to make sure that it goes hand-in-hand with
some
attempt to rectify some of the injustices, present and
historic in this region.
That could actually do what President Bush claims he
wants, that is, end "terrorism" in this region. But
you see,
I don't think Mr Bush is prepared to put his politics
where
he's prepared to point his missiles. He won't do that.
He
only wants a military solution. And military solutions
in the
Middle East never, ever work.
Hill: Because it's like a tar baby. I mean as soon as
the
United States undertakes a military solution, then a
thousand more will instantly join the Jihadi or Bin
Laden
because, there you go, the United States has proved
itself to be the great Satan once again.
Fisk: Well, there is a self-proving element to that
for
them, yes, but again, you see, the point is, I said
before,
that Bin Laden's obsession with overthrowing the local
pro-American regime has been at the top of his list of
everything he's said to me in three separate meetings
in
Sudan and two in Afghanistan. And I suspect, and I
don't
know if he's involved in this, but if he was - or even
if he
wasn't - he may well feel the more bloody and the more
indiscriminate the American response is, the greater
the
chance that the rage and the feeling of anger among
ordinary Arabs who are normally very docile beneath
their
various dictatorships, will boil over and start to
seriously
threaten the various pro-western regimes in the
region,
especially those in the Arabian Gulf.
And that is what he's talked about. And indeed, Mr
Mubarek of Egypt, not you might think, a great
conceptual thinker, two weeks' ago, only a few days
before the World Trade Center bombing, and it's always
interesting to go back before these events to see what
people said, warned what he called "an explosion
outside
the region", very prescient of him and he also talked
about the danger for the various Arab governments and
regimes - he didn't call himself a dictator, though
effectively he is - if American policy didn' t change.
And
indeed, he sent his Foreign Minister to Washington to
complain that the Egyptian regime itself could be in
danger unless American policy changed. And what was
the Foreign minister told? He was told to go back to
Cairo
and tell Mr Mubarek that it will be very easy for Dick
Cheney to go to Congress and to cut off all American
aid
to Egypt.
Hill: The trouble with arguing, as you do, as many
other
people do, that, you know, 1800 people were killed in
Sabra and Shatila, maybe half a million people have
died in
Iraq as a result of the sanctions, how many
Palestinians
have died as a result of the Israeli attacks, it
begins to
sound like moral relativism in some peculiar way. I
talked
to David Horovitz [editor, Jerusalem Report] earlier
this
morning. You won't be surprised to hear that he
disagrees
with a lot of the things you say. And he said, look,
this
terrorist attack on the United States last week was
beyond the pale, was unacceptable, cannot be compared
with anything else. This is it. How do you respond to
that?
Fisk: I'm not surprised that David, who I know quite
well,
would say that. I don't think it's a question of moral
relativism. When you live in this region… I go to New
York
and I've driven past the World Trade Center many
times.
This is familiar architecture for me too, and familiar
people, but when you live in this region, it isn't
about
moral relativism, it sometimes comes down to the
question
of why when some people have brown eyes and darker
skin, their lives seem to be worth less than
westerners.
Let's forget Sabra and Shatila for the moment and
remember that on a green light from Secretary of State
Alexander Haig, as he then was, Israel invaded Lebanon
and in the bloody months of July and August, around
17,500 people, almost all of them civilians - this is
almost
three times the number killed in the World Trade
Center -
were killed. And there were no candlelight vigils in
the
United States, no outspoken grief, all that happened
was
a State Department call to both sides to exercise
restraint.
Now, it isn't a question of moral relativism, it isn't
a
question in any way of demeaning or reducing the
atrocity
which happened - let's call it a crime against
humanity
which it clearly was - is it possible then to say
well,
17,500 lives, but that was in a war and it was far
away
and anyway they were Arabs which is the only way I can
see you dismiss the argument that, hang on a minute,
terrible things have happened out here too. That does
not
excuse what happened in the United States. It doesn't
justify by a tiny millimetre anything that happened
there
but we've got to see history, even the recent history
of
this region if we are going to look seriously at what
happened in the United States.
Hill: That's like setting out on a marathon though. I
mean,
of course David Horovitz says, look, we made the
Palestinians a fantastic offer and they turned it
down.
What more can we do? They keep coming at us. We're
trying, we're trying, we're trying. If you say, yes…
Fisk: Wait a second, there's an inaccuracy in this,
and
this is not meant to be a criticism of David, this is
my
view, they were not made a great offer, they were not
offered 96% of the West Bank, they were offered 46%
roughly, because they were not being offered Jerusalem
or the area around it, or the area taken illegally
into the
new Jerusalem and its municipality, or certain
settlements
elsewhere, and they were to have a military buffer
zone
that would further reduce the so-called 96%. It was
not a
good offer to the Palestinians. You see, it has become
part of a narrative to get away from the reasons for
injustice and not to deal with these issues.
Hill: I didn't reproduce it in order to say, it was a
fantastic
offer. I did it to illustrate that very point, that
there are
narratives going on and the narratives are of
different
pages, different books, different libraries and they
are
getting increasingly different. I can't see how we can
ever align those narratives and it's getting harder
and
harder. How do we do it?
Fisk: Well, I think this is wrong. I think I disagree
with
you. Look, you can't say that you don't understand the
narrative of children dying in Iraq. Nobody is going
around
claiming that they are not dying. They are. They
clearly
are. And if they were, and I'm going to stick my neck
out,
if they were western children, believe me, they would
not
be dying.
Now this is a major problem. Again, you see, anyone
who
tries to argue this, then you get smeared with, "O,
you
are on Saddam Hussein's side". Now Saddam is a wicked,
unpleasant, dirty dictator. But the fact remains,
there are
children dying. And if they were western children I do
not
believe they would be. And this is a major problem.
And many, many Arabs put this point of view forward,
not
in hating the United States, but simply saying, why?
And
of course why is one of the questions you are not
supposed to ask in this region is about the motives of
the
people who committed this mass murder in the United
States. Actually, I have to point out, they haven't
told
us, have they, the people behind this haven't even
bothered, they've just given us this theatre of mass
murder, which is the most disgusting thing.
But you've got to come back and realise, these things
don't happen in isolation. These 20 suicide bombers
did
not get up in the morning and say, let's go hijack
some
planes. Nor did the people who organised it and funded
it.
They knew they were doing it in a certain climate.
Otherwise it would never have been able to happen.
That
is the problem. That is why we need to get at the
question, why.
Hill: It's very nice to talk to you. We hope to do it
again
soon. Thank-you, Robert Fisk.
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