Conspiracy
Of Silence In
The Arab world
By Robert Fisk
12 February, 2007
The
Independent
Could
Rifaat al-Assad's day in court be growing closer? Yes, Rifaat - or Uncle
Rifaat to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria - the man whose brother
Hafez hurled him from Damascus after he tried to use his special forces
troops to stage a coup. They were the same special forces who crushed
the Islamist rebellion in Hama in February 1982, slaughtering up to
- well, a few thousand, according to the regime, at least 10,000 according
to Fisk (who was there) and up 20,000 if you believe The New York Times
(which I generally don't).
Either way, I've always regarded
it as a war crime, along with the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra
and Chatila camps in Beirut by Israel's Lebanese militia allies a few
months later. Ariel Sharon, who was held personally responsible by Israel's
own court of enquiry, is an unindicted war criminal. So is Rifaat.
That's why the faintest breeze
blew through my fax machine this week when I received a letter sent
to the UN Secretary General by Malik al-Abdeh, head of the London-based
Movement for Justice and Development in Syria. Abdeh left his Syrian
town of Zabadani before the Hama massacres - he works now as an IT consultant
for a multinational - so he's hardly able to breathe the air of Sister
Syria. But then again nor can Rifaat, who languishes - complete with
bodyguards - in that nice EU island of refuge called Marbella. And refuge
he probably needs. Because Abdeh is asking the UN to institute an enquiry
into the Hama bloodbath in the same way that it is powering along with
its tribunal into the murder almost two years ago of Lebanese ex-prime
minister Rafiq Hariri.
Ouch. In the letter Abdeh
describes how "warplanes and tanks levelled whole districts of
the city (of Hama) ... the evidence clearly suggests that government
forces made no distinction between armed insurgents and unarmed civilians
... the assault on the city represents a clear act of war crimes and
murder on a mass scale". The letter has now been passed to the
UN's legal head, Nicolas Michel, who is also involved in the Hariri
murder case. The sacred name of Rifaat has not been mentioned in the
letter but it specifically demands that "those who are responsible
should be held accountable and charged...".
Now, of course, there are
a few discrepancies in the facts. The Syrians did not use poison gas
in Hama, as Abdeh claims. They certainly did level whole areas of the
city - they are still level today, although a hotel has been built over
one devastated district - and when Rifaat's thugs combed through the
ruins later, they executed any civilians who couldn't account for their
presence.
But of course, the Hama uprising
was also a Sunni Muslim insurrection and the insurgents had murdered
entire families of Baath party officials, sometimes by chopping off
their heads. In underground tunnels, Muslim girls had exploded themselves
among Syrian troops - they were among the Middle East's first suicide
bombers although we didn't appreciate that then. And the Americans were
not at all unhappy that this Islamist insurgency had been crushed by
Uncle Rifaat. Readers will not need any allusion to modern and equally
terrible events involving Sunni insurgents to the east of Syria. And
since the Americans are getting pretty efficient at killing civilians
along with gunmen, I have a dark suspicion that there won't be any great
enthusiasm in Washington for a prosecution over Hama.
But still... What strikes
me is not so much the force of Abdeh's letter but that it was written
at all. When the Hama massacre occurred, neighbouring Arab states were
silent. Although the Sunni prelates of the city called for a religious
war, their fellow clerics in Damascus - and, indeed, in Beirut - were
silent. Just as the imams and scholars of Islam were silent when the
Algerians began to slaughter each other in a welter of head-chopping
and security force executions in the 1990s.
Just as they are silent now
over the mutual killings in Iraq. Sure, the mass killings of Iraq would
not have occurred if we hadn't invaded the country. And I do suspect
a few "hidden hands" behind the civil conflict in a nation
which never before broke apart. In Algeria, the French spent a lot of
time in the early 1960s persuading - quite successfully - their FLN
and ALN enemies to murder each other. But where are the sheikhs of Al-Azhar
and the great Arabian kingdoms when the Iraqi dead are fished out of
the Tigris and cut down in their thousands in Baghdad, Kerbala, Baquba?
They, too, are silent.
Not a word of criticism.
Not a hint of concern. Not a scintilla (an Enoch Powell word, this)
of sympathy. An Israeli bombardment of Lebanon? Even an Israeli invasion?
That's a war crime - and the Arabs are right, the Israelis do commit
war crimes. I saw the evidence of quite a few last summer. But when
does Arab blood become less sacred? Why, when it is shed by Arabs. It's
not just a failure of self-criticism in the Arab world. In a landscape
ruled by monsters whom we in the West have long supported, criticism
of any kind is a dodgy undertaking. But can there not be one small sermon
of reprobation for what Iraqi Muslims are doing to Iraqi Muslims?
Of course, but the real problem
the Arabs now face is that their lands have been overrun and effectively
occupied by Western armies. I worked out a few weeks ago that, per head
of population - and the world was smaller in the 12th century - there
are now about 22 times more Western soldiers in Muslim lands than there
were at the time of the Crusades. How do you strike back at these legions
and drive them out? Brutally and most terribly, the Iraqis have shown
how. I used to say the future of the Bush administration will be decided
in Iraq, not in Washington. And this now appears to be true.
So what should we do? Allow
the Rifaats of this world to go on enjoying Marbella? And the killers
of Hariri go free? And the Arabs remain silent in the face of the shameful
atrocities which their brother Muslims have also committed? I'll take
a bet that Rifaat will be safe from the UN lads. In Iraq right now,
he'd be on "our" side, wouldn't he, battling the Islamic insurgency
as he did in Hama? And that, I fear, is the problem. We are all Rifaats
now.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited
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