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COLUMN
SEVENTY-SIX, OCTOBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
1. LESSONS FROM SRI LANKA
Subject:
Friedman1
Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 11:19:23 -0400
From: al aronowitz <info@blacklistedjournalist.com>
Organization: THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST
August
7, 2002
By
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
COLOMBO,
Sri Lanka " It's often forgotten that while suicide bombing started in the
Middle East, the people who perfected suicide as a weapon of war were the Tamil
Tigers militia here in Sri Lanka, the island-state off the southern tip of
India. In the last decade, Tamil suicide bombers, many of them women, killed
some 1,500 people, including an Indian prime minister and a Sri Lankan
president. And in a bizarre twist, the Tigers filmed many of their suicide
bombings to show and motivate their troops.
But
since last December a cease-fire between the Tigers?who have been militating
for a separate state for Sri Lanka's Tamil Hindu minority in the northeast?and
the government, which is dominated by the Buddhist Sinhalese majority, has
halted all suicide bombings. No one can be sure it will last, after 18 years of
civil war. But it's still worth examining how suicide was defused here, and
whether any of this might apply to Palestinians and
To
begin with, one of the key factors in halting Tamil suicide bombings was the
Tamil diaspora, living in North America, Europe and India. This Tamil diaspora
had been the main source of funding for the Tamil Tigers. But the Tamil diaspora
is made up largely of middle-class merchants and professionals, and when in the
late 1990's the U.S., Britain and India all declared the Tigers a
"terrorist" group, not freedom fighters, the Tamil diaspora became
embarrassed by them and started choking off their funds.
"The
Tamil diaspora started out as a force encouraging Tamil radicalism, but
eventually it evolved into a source for moderation," said Suresh
Premachandran, head of a Tamil rights party in Sri Lanka. "Sept. 11 changed
that even more. People here knew after that there would never be any sympathy
for any suicide bombers."
Unfortunately,
in the Middle East Arabs and Muslims continue to indulge, justify, praise or
provide religious legitimation for Palestinian suicide bombers, even after 9/11.
The Palestinians have convinced themselves, with the help of many Arabs and
Europeans, that their grievance is so special, so enormous that it isn't bound
by any limits of civilized behavior, and therefore they are entitled to do
whatever they want to Israelis. And Israelis have convinced themselves that they
are entitled to do virtually anything to stop it.
Second,
Sri Lankans had to pay retail for their extremism. They had no oil or foreign
powers to finance their war. And because so much domestic savings was diverted
to the war, Sri Lanka's roads and infrastructure today are decrepit. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the peace movement, which blossomed in the last two
years, was led by the business community?particularly after the Tamil Tigers
blew up Colombo's airport in July 2001 and sent the country into an economic
tailspin.
"The
business community finally said, `Enough is enough,' " said Mahesh Amalean,
chairman of MAS Holdings, Sri Lanka's leading apparel maker. "That turned
the tide. Our motto became `Sri Lanka first.' "
Israelis
and Palestinians, by contrast, got to buy their extremism wholesale.
Palestinians could engage in suicide bombings without becoming destitute because
the Arab states are always ready to pass the hat for them. Israelis have been
able to build insane settlements in the heart of the West Bank, because the U.S.
was ready to provide aid with no limits attached.
Third,
in Sri Lanka the government realized it had no military solution for suicide
bombers'that the only way they could be stopped was if the Tigers themselves
could be induced to turn them off. The Tigers, meanwhile, realized that while
they could terrify the government with suicides, they couldn't even hold their
own ethnic capital, Jaffna. So they both finally opted for negotiations.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians abandoned a peace offer and opted instead for
the delusion that suicide bombing will get them more, and Ariel Sharon has opted
for a purely military response.
Finally,
while Jews and Arabs have carried out their war with all the world watching?and often meddling in ways that prolonged the conflict'sri
Lankans have conducted their war, in which 64,000 people have died, with almost
no coverage.
"Ours
has been a forgotten war, and we've had to live with our mistakes and to find
our own way out," said Milinda Moragoda, one of the government's peace
negotiators. "It had its disadvantages, but also its advantages."
(Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company) ##
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2. WHERE FREEDOM REIGNS
Subject:
Friedman2
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 11:19:23 -0400
From: al aronowitz <info@blacklistedjournalist.com>
Organization: THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST
August 14, 2002
Where Freedom Reigns
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
BANGALORE, India " The more time you spend in India the
more you realize that this teeming, multiethnic, multireligious, multilingual
country is one of the world's great wonders " a miracle with message. And the
message is that democracy matters.
This truth hits you from every corner. Consider Bangalore,
where the traffic is now congested by all the young Indian techies, many from
the lower-middle classes, who have gotten jobs, apartments " and motor
scooters " by providing the brainpower for the world's biggest corporations.
While the software designs of these Indian techies may be rocket science, what
made Bangalore what it is today is something very simple: 50 years of Indian
democracy and secular education, and 15 years of economic liberalization,
produced all this positive energy.
Just across the border in Pakistan " where the people
have the same basic blood, brains and civilizational heritage as here " 50
years of failed democracy, military coups and imposed religiosity have produced
30,000 madrassahs " Islamic schools, which have replaced a collapsed public
school system and churn out Pakistani youth who know only the Koran and
hostility toward non-Muslims.
No, India is not paradise. Just last February the Hindu
nationalist B.J.P. government in the state of Gujarat stirred up a pogrom by
Hindus against Muslims that left 600
Muslims, and dozens of Hindus, dead. It was a shameful incident, and in a
country with 150 million Muslims " India has the largest Muslim minority in
the world " it was explosive. And do you know what happened?
Nothing happened.
The rioting didn't spread anywhere. One reason is the long
history of Indian Muslims and Hindus living together in villages and towns,
sharing communal institutions and mixing their cultures and faiths. But the
larger reason is democracy. The free Indian press quickly exposed how the local
Hindu government had encouraged the riots for electoral purposes, and the
national B.J.P. had to distance itself from Gujarat because it rules with a
coalition, many of whose members rely on Muslim votes to get re-elected.
Democracy in India forces anyone who wants to succeed nationally to appeal
across ethnic lines.
"Even when Gujarat was burning, practically the whole
of India was at peace " that is the normal pattern here," said Syed
Shahabuddin, editor of Muslim India, a monthly magazine, and a former Indian
diplomat. "India is a democracy, and more than that, India is a secular
democracy, at least in principle, and it does maintain a certain level of
aspiration and hope for Muslims. . . . If there were no democracy in India,
there would be chaos and anarchy, because so many different people are aspiring
for their share of the cake." It is precisely because of the
"constitutional framework here," added Mr. Shahabuddin, that Indian
Muslims don't have to resort to terrorism as a minority: "You can always
ask for economic and political justice here."
It is for all these reasons that the U.S. is so wrong not
to press for democratization in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Is it an accident
that India has the largest Muslim minority in the world, with plenty of economic
grievances, yet not a single Indian Muslim was found in Al Qaeda? Is it an
accident that the two times India and Pakistan fought full-scale wars, 1965 and
1971, were when Pakistan had military rulers? Is it an accident that when
Pakistan has had free elections, the Islamists have never won more than 6
percent of the vote?
Is it an accident that the richest man in India is an
Indian Muslim software entrepreneur, while the richest man in Pakistan, I will
guess, is from one of the 50 feudal families who have dominated that country
since its independence? Is it an accident that the only place in the Muslim
world where women felt empowered enough to demand equal prayer rights in a
mosque was in the Indian city of Hyderabad? No, all of these were products of
democracy. If Islam is ever to undergo a reformation, as Christianity and
Judaism did, it's only going to happen in a Muslim democracy.
People say Islam is an angry religion. I disagree. It's
just that a lot of Muslims are angry, because they live under repressive
regimes, with no rule of law, where women are not empowered and youth have no
voice in their future. What is a religion but a mirror on your life?
Message from India to the world: Context matters " change
the political context within which Muslims live their lives and you will change
a lot.
(Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company) ##
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