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Sajjad Khan | |
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It is one of the ironies of our globalised era, that despite the abundance of available information and the plethora of alternative resources much of the western world remains stuck in its narrow ideological state. The memorable phrase from Orwell’s Animal Farm of four legs good two legs bad has now been incorporated in todays international relations lexicon. Under the Global War on Terror (GWOT), we now have Western values good Muslim values bad, Western WMD good, Muslim WMD bad, Western occupations good, Muslim resistance bad, Western backed regime change good, Muslim support for Islamic governance bad. Of course some will argue that this characterisation of what is going on is overtly simplistic and lacks any sophistication and nuance. Yet the GWOT is not renowned for nuance or sophistication as the people of Fallujah, Kandahar and Baghdad can testify. Though the GWOT has been largely defined by military power, it is the ideological aspect that is so insidious. Constant repetition of key objectives and values leads to a monopoly of the premise and parameters of any discussion. For most people the criticism of the GWOT is not about its aims but about its execution, the war in Iraq, Guantanomo Bay, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition are all cited as evidence that the war is not achieving its objectives not that the goals are really the issue.
Yet this critique misses the central point, which is that the battle is not about how the war is going but surrounds the premise of what the war is for?. The GWOT is presented at best about protecting western citizens, i.e. fight over there so we don’t have to fight them over here, producing stable liberal landscapes in the Middle East makes people safer in London and Washington. Of course many people will critique this objective arguing that the GWOT has more sinister objectives and seeks to achieve hegemony, energy security and the satisfaction of corporate avarice. But lets put this to one side and take Messrs Bush and Blair at their word, if this is really about making western citizens safer why should citizens who don’t live in the west support the GWOT especially when they disproportionately suffer at the front line. Here the supporters of the GWOT argue that terrorism is a global problem affecting people across the world from New York to Bali. However if the GWOT is not discriminatory and is about making all the citizens of the world safer rather than those that live just in the west, how do we then justify the current stance towards Iran.
You see the only way that the stance towards Iran makes sense is if the GWOT only concerns itself about western citizenry. The debate about Iran is always in the context of its perceived threat to international (code for western) stability. This is why western states are not concerned about Israel’s or India’s nuclear arsenal, no one in their wildest dreams can envisage an Israeli or Indian Prime Minister launching a nuclear missile into Paris, Berlin or Birmingham, though plenty exactly envision this scenario with the Iranians. The problem with this rationale is that plenty of people in the Muslim world and countries like Venezuela, China and North Korea feel more threatened by the United States and her allies than they do by a nuclear Iran. In a recent University of Maryland poll 68% of Muslims polled in the Middle East cited the US and Israel as nations they felt most threatened by. Millions of people do wake up in Damascus, Amman and Cairo more worried about what could emanate from Washington and London that what might come from Tehran.
It is this fundamental blind spot that is the fundamental flaw of the GWOT. Everything that emanates from the GWOT is filtered through a western prism, a western lens and a western keyhole. It is about protecting western citizens, about protecting western interests, about ensuring protecting energy security for western states and promoting only western values. Large parts of the western media inevitably go along with this ideological stance, not daring to challenge this false premise and flawed foundation of the GWOT. In the case of the Iranian conflict very few have sought to look at it from a different perspective, from the side of the Muslim world or tried to assess the security concerns of the indigenous people who live in the Middle East. This deficiency in reporting the true context is not confined to Iran. In a devastating indictment on the BBC’s reporting in the Middle East an independent panel chaired by John Quentin performed a detailed analysis of BBC coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. They concluded that the BBC’s coverage was not consistently full and fair and "in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture." Only "a small percentage of Palestinian fatalities were reported by BBC News", the analysis noted, while "the killing of more than one Israeli by Palestinians either by gun or bomb was reported on nationally broadcast programs". At the same time, there was found to be little reporting of the difficulties faced by the Palestinians in their daily lives and a "failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other side lives under occupation". Deaths of Israelis received greater coverage than Palestinian fatalities, while Israelis received more airtime on news and current affairs programs.
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