Sunday, July 31, 2005
Very Bad News
With the apparent death of John Garang in a plane crash the integrity of Sudan's peace process will be thoroughly tested. Garang was to serve as a counterbalancing force in the new Sudanese government. With their longtime nemesis gone, will Sudan's hardliners still accept a compromise peace with the Christian South? Or will they see the possibility of the SPLA unraveling just as the Angolan UNITA militia did after the death of Jonas Savimbi?
The implications for Darfur are hard to discern. If Sudan's peace process comes undone, this undermines Khartoum's primary alibi for forestalling intervention: that precipitous action would halt the peace process. On the other hand, if the government gets dizzy with success, it may step up its actions in Darfur as well. Trying times for Sudan and the region lie ahead, whatever the case.
The implications for Darfur are hard to discern. If Sudan's peace process comes undone, this undermines Khartoum's primary alibi for forestalling intervention: that precipitous action would halt the peace process. On the other hand, if the government gets dizzy with success, it may step up its actions in Darfur as well. Trying times for Sudan and the region lie ahead, whatever the case.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Giving the Hatemongers No Place to Hide
Tom Friedman's latest column is a brilliant and unusually constructive essay on the need to expose hatemongering in the world today. Too many people ask "why do they hate us?" choose their top 3-5 favorite answers (ones which usually reduce terrorism to some kind of converse reaction to the West, rather than a product of the actual goals, ideals, and methods of the terrorists themelves) and then call it a day.
A recent Pew Report on attitudes toward terrorism in the Muslim world trumpeted a 8-10% drop in support for terrorism in various states. Hey, any decline in that figure is great, but presidential popularity can fluctuate about as much during an election year without this really deciding the outcome.
Far more significant was the finding that a vast majority of Muslims hold negative views toward Jews. Unfavorable views toward Jews ranged from 60% of respondents in Turkey to 100% in Jordan. Although the results were not nearly as one-sided, unfavorable views toward Christians were in the majority in Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey.
There is fundamentally no escaping the theological character of this war, and the ways by which it is fueled by sectarian hatreds. Fortunately, as Friedman notes, hatemongers tend to cringe when their words are publicized and exposed. Years ago, a Saudi newspaper publisher was forced by public opinion to denounce a story in his paper that repeated the infamous blood libel. Strong consistent pressure against hate speech - which can, even-handedly also attack extremists in the Christian, Jewish, and Hindu faiths - can have positive results. It won't stop the militant bigots, but it can constrain those who operate in the open. After the Pew Report, the argument that these attitudes are a mere reaction to unfavorable Western policies seems pretty thin. "We just hate your government's policy" no longer seems an alibi for such widespread attitudes.
A recent Pew Report on attitudes toward terrorism in the Muslim world trumpeted a 8-10% drop in support for terrorism in various states. Hey, any decline in that figure is great, but presidential popularity can fluctuate about as much during an election year without this really deciding the outcome.
Far more significant was the finding that a vast majority of Muslims hold negative views toward Jews. Unfavorable views toward Jews ranged from 60% of respondents in Turkey to 100% in Jordan. Although the results were not nearly as one-sided, unfavorable views toward Christians were in the majority in Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey.
There is fundamentally no escaping the theological character of this war, and the ways by which it is fueled by sectarian hatreds. Fortunately, as Friedman notes, hatemongers tend to cringe when their words are publicized and exposed. Years ago, a Saudi newspaper publisher was forced by public opinion to denounce a story in his paper that repeated the infamous blood libel. Strong consistent pressure against hate speech - which can, even-handedly also attack extremists in the Christian, Jewish, and Hindu faiths - can have positive results. It won't stop the militant bigots, but it can constrain those who operate in the open. After the Pew Report, the argument that these attitudes are a mere reaction to unfavorable Western policies seems pretty thin. "We just hate your government's policy" no longer seems an alibi for such widespread attitudes.
